I love the Vine program, especially lately since the newsletters have been much much better targeted to my interests.
If you don't know about Vine, it's a buzz program that Amazon does, people who are a part of it get 4 books or other products a month to review. There are 2 newsletters, the first one, on the 3rd Thursday of the month is a targeted newsletter you can pick 2 items off of, it's targeted by purchases you've made and things you've reviewed. In the last few months, the targeted letters have gotten shorter, but for me at least, they are much better targeted. The second newsletter is the leftovers letter a week later, and you get to pick from whatever is leftover from everyone's newsletters plus things leftover from previous months. You have to review at least 75% of what you get to order more books, and you can't post the reviews in other places.
I'm easy. Even the newsletters that weren't super well targeted had things I was interested in. I like books. I ordered a lot of young adult novels for my kids in those first couple of months, plus business management books for Mike. I read them, reviewed them, then handed them to the family member I thought would enjoy them. The last few months though, I've been getting a lot more of what I love. Cookbooks. Craft books. Happy Shala! The idea that people will send me free books for writing essentially a book report.. YAY! I can do that.
So my books haven't arrived from what I ordered last Thursday of course, but my first choice was easy. Sticky, Chewy, Messy, Gooey Treats for Kids by Jill O'Conner. It's mostly for E of course. Her eyes lit up when she heard the title.
The second book was a harder choice. There was one on Tai Chi that looked interesting, but there was also Cookin' With Coolio: 5 Star Meals at a 1 Star Price. So I finally just asked Mike which he thought I should get. Well.. he dithered. I don't think he wanted really to admit which one he wanted. Finally he said "Cookin' With Coolio, but it's your choice!"
So I ordered it. I'm looking forward to getting it.
( Coolio has a cooking show- youtube vid behind cut )
Looks like a lot of fun. Really truly. Mike had to run out in the company van today, and the radio station was set to what the last person who drove it liked, and on that station there was an interview with Coolio about his new cookbook. So now Mike's even more intrigued. I think he plans to bring the cookbook with him to work after I finish reviewing it to show to a couple of his co-workers.
In other news- car still isn't fixed. Our mechanic had a couple days off, but it should be fixed Wednesday hopefully.
Yesterday I strained the vanilla beans out of my extract, and laid them out to dry. So I'll be mixing them with sugar for E and Splenda in a pretty jar for Lamar. I'll probably recycle an old jar and put a pretty label on it and maybe put some fabric over the top.
If you mixed in the bottle like I did for my vanilla extract, you'll need to shake the bottle occasionally to loosen up the beans to get them all out. I strained into a strainer with a coffee filter in it to make sure I got out all the caviar into a glass measuring cup. I only have about a half cup of extract left because after it went a month, I started using it. It's developed very nicely, but I know for the next batch I do, I'll need to use two bottles of vodka if I want plenty to give away. It's really just that good.

I read some more of H.E. Bravery's wonderful Home Wine Making Without Failures last night before bed. A lot of the recipes look amazing and the introduction says you can make wine for a bob* a bottle. Doing the math, you can't really do it for that little now. If you buy the fruits, it winds up being anywhere from 2.00 a bottle to 5.00 a bottle not counting cost of the bottles. Still very reasonable, and if you are making it for your home you can reuse bottles.
So all that said, when I read a recipe for a port like Elderberry wine, 2 things go through my mind. The first is "Your father smelt of elderberries" because clearly I have some very real problems. The second is heartsease and how much she would love this book. It's primarily wine recipes. Lots of them using potatoes, parsley, flowers, fruits, dried fruit, parsnips, all sorts of things.
It was reprinted a bunch of times, so you should be able to find a copy reasonably inexpensively at used book stores, Ebay, any place that has used books if you look.


*A bob was a slang term for a shilling, or 12 pence. They went out of circulation in 1971. This book was written in the 50s.

Yesterday, we did plan on going out to one of my son's and my favorite places for lunch. I completely forgot I promised E an afternoon out for tea and cakes, just the two of us. So we discussed it, and decided on something less formal for the whole family. We went to Bear Tooth for lunch, then to Middle Way Cafe for cake and coffee. At the Bear Tooth, William had an ahi blackened steak served with bok choy and rice, E had a great big taco salad and Mike and I had the lunch special, salads served with a mushroom and chicken pasta with marsala sauce. The kids and I shared a pitcher of their wonderful cream soda and Mike had coffee.
After that we went to the Middle Way Cafe, who only had ONE cupcake left. E had that. William had a smoothie, and I just enjoyed a cup of fairly decent drip coffee. The Middle Way Cafe is in a strip mall with the biggest locally owned bookstore in town, Title Wave, so of course we had to go there. William and E both found books they wanted. William opting for a nice big omnibus of the Foundation books, and E of course, got a Dr. Who book.
I found a copy of the out of print Home Wine Making Without Failures by H.E. Bravery that was printed in 1959. I think it was originally written in the 40s. I love older books, it's not just the smell, the feel of the print under my finger tips, the creamy paper or all that. A big part of it is the language, even books that were written conversationally in tone were the sort of conversations you'd have with someone much older who you respected very much. The authors use proper English and punctuation. They wrote knowing that people would read what they wrote and form an opinion based on that so they wanted to make a good impression. Good manners in writing, even angry editorials if you read that sort of thing. I love slipping into those sorts of books, it's like being young again and wearing my best dress while I talked with the ladies at the club my grandmother belonged to and trying my very best to be a credit to her while being fascinated with their experiences, gentle laughter and kind natures. This book is wonderful and informative and it just makes me smile reading it.
I also found an out of print copy of The World of Origami by Isao Honda. Not unfortunately, the big 1960s edition, but the abridged version that was put out in the 70s. That's fine though, it was a book I didn't have on my origami bookshelf, and it's a wonderful book. Written by a master, it has a lot of functional models which are the kind I like best for origami.
After I got home, I made a new treat box template and this morning I decorated it, printed, assembled and posted it. The new printables are here if you're interested. One is a bat design, one is a cobweb design.

Long story short.. E sneaked up behind Mike and bounced a bunny hand on his shoulder saying "SQUEAK SQUEAK SQUEAK" in a deep scary voice, and Mike said "That's one angry rabbit." at which point she put the bunny ears on the duck hand and said "Squack!"
So of course I had to do it too. Within a couple seconds all you could hear was duck bunnies saying "Squack Squack!"
My family is nuts. But I like it that way.
Recently posted at Don't Eat the Paste- a tutorial on making PDFs using Open Office Writer to create circle tags (or whatever you need to create a 300 dpi pdf of). You can find that here.
At Beadwork at BellaOnline.com, some tips on following a peyote pattern, you can find that here.
Today we headed up to Value Village for their half price Labor Day sale, and EEEK! It was so crowded. Seriously kind of scary. Fortunately, most of those people were looking for way different things than we were looking for so we weren't too crowded until we got to checkout.
I found 3 kids records, a vintage issue of McCalls Needlework I didn't have from 1978, one craft book from 1973, and one from 1977. Happy vintage crafty Shala!
I also got 3 vintage slips, the 1960's tricot-y bias cut ones? Very happy Shala. But a lot of people get all squicky about vintage lingerie, even slips. Not me. I like vintage slips very much thank you.
E and I found the coat she needed for her Halloween costume, and she was so thrilled as soon as we were through check out she ripped off the tag, and wore it for the rest of our little outing. Ick. It's like 65 which is a heat wave swimming weather here. And she's walking around in a black overcoat. She also got 2 more button down shirts, and a book from the 80s on making teddy bears. I told her she was a thrift store queen. I love that she likes thrift stores. She has her own style, and lately it's been button down shirts and ties, which are dead cheap and so very green to buy used at thrift stores.
After that we headed to Wal-Mart to get some necessities. E is running low on her allergy medication, and it's been sunny enough she's been super sneezy girl. We also got her some craft supplies. Home again home again.

This time I did them in pretty close to exactly 1/12 scale.
( want to see a couple? )
The new book page is here

Well, I redid the coding on a big part of my page yesterday. It's set up for a bit higher resolution now with a whole new layout. And ads. I didn't want to, but I finally had to admit to that while some people were willing to donate a couple dollars here and there for what I had up, it wasn't going to be enough people to pay for the site. My graph paper page has thumbnails for all 38 kinds of graph paper I offer. (I added some plain graph paper in different sizes and some knitting graph paper)

In fact, it's safe to say.. yesterday? About all I did was work on coding. I've still got to do the graphic tutorials and make a decision on what I'm going to do with the choker tutorials. (leave the code as is or write a new layout for them), then pull down the whole mini-book page and replace all the graphics and printables with new better ones.

Naked and Angry is another Skinny Corp company like Threadless (who are currently having a one week long teeshirt sale, lots of shirts for 5 or 10 dollars YAY!). N&A focus on patterns, and making things like purses, wallpaper, neckties and even dishes with the patterns. I submitted one and if you've got a threadless account, it's the same log in to vote on my N&A submission. You can find that here. They don't really give you a choice what they will put it on, but I'd love to have it on one of their melamine dish sets. Ahh.. who am I kidding? If it doesn't score high enough? I'd seriously consider sending it to Spoonflower to make enough fabric for me to make myself a frilly 50s style apron with.

So other than the massive amount of coding, checking the code, swearing a lot when I realized I messed up the email link on every single page I did right after I loaded them all.. and wondering why I was hand coding instead of just buying myself a new editor, I didn't do much of anything this weekend.
Oh.. wait.. I did. I went to the DMV for a new id card. Do you watch Reaper? We do, it's Mike's favorite show. In Reaper, the DMV is an outpost of Hell. "Any place that seems like Hell on Earth is." That's it exactly. When I got there and got my number and E's (she needed an id too) I pulled 155 and 156. They were calling up 97. Skip forward a couple hours, and I talked to a lady I knew and gave her my card to help her with her crochet and we bemoaned the fact they got rid of the vending machines there and I finally got my id done. Of course, then I needed the id card I just surrender to sign off on E's, and Mike was pretty stressed and told the lady who was helping E "You have her birth certificate and all that stuff, I didn't know I had to bring mail to. You can SEE she's right there which should be some sort of proof she exists." and I came in and said "She's got my id right over there." and everything was settled. Pictures taken. New id cards issued. So.. in my rush to get there? I didn't pay attention to what I was grabbing for clothes. Black skirt, black teeshirt. Turned out the teeshirt was my "I Killed Amanda Palmer" shirt and the way the picture wound up framed, it looks like I've got the word "Killer" stenciled on my chest. With the mug shot aspect of DMV pictures anyway.. yeah. I thought Mike was going to hurt himself laughing.
Tomorrow is a day of choices for me. A new book by Yasmine Galenorn, Laurell K. Hamilton, Mary Janice Davidson and Simon R. Green all released on the same day. That's the way to madness. Well, I can scratch MJD, I haven't read the last book yet, so I need to read that one first. So the toss up is really, do I get the Simon R. Green or the Yasmine Galenorn first? Mike is just busy being very happy with digital delivery, I'm not having him pick up LKH at the bookstore for me. "It always makes me feel so dirty." Yeah. I feel that way when I'm done reading one of her books. Doesn't stop me though.

A little bit about it... I love Little Red Riding Hood, which isn't exactly a hidden secret, and my favorite LRRH designs and themes are things like the web comic, No Rest for the Wicked, where LRRH can save herself from the Big Bad Wolf*. I had the idea and tried to sketch it out, but my sketch didn't work out as planned. So I talked about the idea with E, and she thought it was a great idea, and agreed to pose for Little Red Riding Hood. I snapped a couple pictures of her, and used her as my model. She loves how it turned out, so if the design gets published, it will thrill her to have it as a teeshirt.
I'd love it if you could share the design and encourage your friends to vote for it as well.
Please? Pretty please?
I've decided that if it does get published, to celebrate, I'm going to have a drawing on my other blog (since they number comments) and use the random number page to pick two people who will both win gift certificates. If it gets published. Because I know I'm just going to be that happy if it does.

*I know wolves are wonderful animals. I like wolves a lot. The Big Bad Wolf in my drawing is an archetype like the Big Bad Wolf in the story. I know that not anywhere near all men are the type who want to destroy and possess something innocent, but enough are, that the Big Bad Wolf as a symbol of those sorts of men works. Which is why I like LRRH stories and images that have a girl or woman who is no one's victim, who can stand for herself.

I wound up going out to meet Miss Teri for coffee last night as planned, and as usual, seeing her was very calming and nice. She's just that way. We discussed a lot of things. The lack of good inexpensive earring collection books and if I should do one. Since you know.. I've got lots of earring patterns, I showed her my kindle 2 and all the niftiness of it. Of course, one of the drawing points for me seems to be a down point for everyone else. The screen is not backlit. I like that. It means for the way I read, no fatiguing eyeglare.
She gave me a little coffin shaped keyring flask to bead, which absolutely wants a little bat on it, and some new thread to try. *happiness*
We talked for a couple hours. About vampire books and tv shows, and sci-fi from the 70s. Emma Peel and Dollhouse. I took a flexeril shortly after getting there, and she was sufficiently distracting to help me forget how much I'd been hurting all day.

After we got home, I fixed cod for dinner with melon. It was a low fat way of doing the cod. I covered it with key lime juice and then mixed in some seasoned cornflake crumbs and baked it until nice and flaky, then we all had a lot of melon as a side dish which kept it nice and easy for me. Not a lot of standing time. Everyone liked it. Even E who thinks unless it's beer battered halibut, fish should be stick shaped.
Other then baking and spending time with Miss Teri, I didn't do anything yesterday. That's part of why I was so frustrated. I feel like I should get something accomplished each day, and it just wasn't happening yesterday. Today looks to be a bit better.
Part of what Mike, Teri and I talked about yesterday was the possibility of me doing print copies of the greyscale bead instruction book I'm working on and selling it with a cd with a collection of my patterns on it.

I decided to create a blog specifically for printables. I'll also be cross posting recipes and stuff in there, but this *will* remain my primary blog. I just won't be posting printies in it. I will however mention in here if I update the other with something I don't put here.
Which I did, because since I started it, I needed to post something right? Some knotwork boxes.
Click here to see.

Now back to regular posting. Still loving my Kindle. One of the nifty things about it is that there are a bunch of free books available. Some of them are public domain and also on Project Gutenberg, so the big thing is just convenience. Made-Over Dishes (Project Gutenberg link) is full of great ideas for "household economies". Some of the ideas are just not workable today. I mean, who eats mutton? But some of them are still wonderful ideas for stretching out food and cutting costs. One idea for serving Hamburg steaks with a tomato gravy made Mike insanely happy, so we discussed ways to make it a bit more healthy. As soon as I'm NOT sneezing or blowing my nose every 5 minutes, I plan to try it.

One of the gifts I got for E was a bag from Enderby Designs, and it arrived on Christmas Day. E was *thrilled* Bouncy happy thrilled. Especially since there was a lovely note from Meg in the package. Meg does the Decor It Yourself segments on ThreadBanger.
( How to make a cape video with Meg of Enderby Designs )
Which makes it even odder something I sent 3 weeks ago never arrived at it's destination. *grumbles and complains about the US mail service*..

I really enjoy Yasime Galenorn's books, and Night Huntress which is the new book in her Sisters of the Moon series is coming out on January 6th, so I need to remember to reserve my copy. *grins* My husband HATES picking up my paranormal romances, and always asks if they can wrap them in plain brown paper wrappers when he leaves the book store. But I'm pretty picky about them. Just having a vampire isn't enough. I like these books because the romance isn't the most important part of it, the characters are strong women, and the romances themselves are alternative types of relationships. Not the "swoony woman falls in love with big strong rescuer". All 3 sisters are perfectly capable of saving themselves. It's a great alternate world. Yeah.. I'm pretty excited. You know.. like I haven't been reading much more than I should be lately.

Wow... I just got an obscene phone call from someone who doesn't seem to understand the concept of "Caller ID". I'm sort of impressed.

Yesterday, I tried showering with old coffee grounds. I'm pretty sure I'll try it again, there were some definite pros to the experiment, but also some drawbacks.
They were MESSY. Really messy. Felt like washing myself with dirt and a bit counterproductive, but pro, I drink a very dark roast coffee, and umm.. not the mermaid, but dark roasted coffee that's not burnt or dried out, they left a light coat of coffee oil on my skin which made it very soft. I didn't have to use body butter after my shower. The grittiness felt good, very exfoliating.
Another con? Trying to explain to Mike why there was coffee in the shower. He was pretty baffled. It's really a lot messier then using sugar as a scrub. But the oil in it made me think it might work well as a pre-treatment to washing my hair occasionally to add some conditioning. I'll have to try it.

Last night when Mike came home, W was giggling up a storm. We had been watching True Blood, and discussing vampires in books. Mike asked why he was laughing so hard, and W tried his best to gasp out the answer, and I finally I told him..
"You know those books E's reading?" He said yeah.. I said "Well.. written for tweens right?" and he looked wary, but asked what it was that had W laughing so much.
"Well, vampires don't burn up in the sunlight, they sparkle."
"Oh, okay." He goes into the bedroom to change his clothes, and a couple seconds later (he was pretty wiped from work)
"They do WHAT? Are you F*&%ing KIDDING ME?"
And E yelled (from the computer room, she was NOT watching True Blood with us) "WELL.. IT'S BETTER THAN BURNING TO A CRISP!"
At which point W is holding his sides from laughing so hard.
Mike came out glowering "Let me burn. Unless Liberace is one of the undead, there is no reason for vampires to SPARKLE."
E said "What about Michael Jackson?"
I didn't hear much after that. I was having hysterics at that point.
After I calmed down, Mike said "Well, I don't get it, look at all the people who died in the Harry Potter books? If kids can handle that.." and I said "Ah.. but Twilight was written by an American author, and American authors are frequently guilty of making the world of children's literature a gentle, kind, happy, unicorn princess fairy tale kind of place."

And yes, E and I have had several discussions about the romance in the books, so she knows what I'm uncomfortable about with them.

Well, I already posted how much I liked this zine from Microcosm Publishing, and the author both has his own book, and there's one he recommends that I'm interested in. So I put them both on my wishlist for right now, but I'll probably be ordering them in the next month or two.
The first one, Wild Fermentation, is by the same author of the zine, Sandor Ellix Katz. I know I love the zine, it's got a lot of recipes I'm interested in trying. It's informative and non-intimidating, so I'm pretty sure I'll like the book as well.
The second one, Sacred and Herbal Healing Beers: The Secrets of Ancient Fermentation is one that Katz specifically recommends in his recipe for Ethiopian Honey Wine, truth is, home brewing, the really simple kind, has always interested me. I remember when we made raisin wine as teens, sort of like the infamous prison wine but without the moldy bread, the dirty sock, or anything else that made do for something prisoners might not be able to get, but teenagers can easily, and making mead as an adult when I hung out with gamers who could more then afford a bottle of wine, but wanted to drink mead out of pewter mugs. (frankly, the raisin wine, which we added all sorts of fruits to tasted better).
I don't drink anymore. With the amount of muscle relaxants and NSAIDs I'm taking to keep my back pain under control, alcohol is a really bad idea, but I still like the idea an awful lot, and want to experiment with it some more.
---
When my son was little, he teethed on homemade graham crackers I rolled thick and baked to pretty hard. I'm looking for the recipe for all the new mothers out there. My daughter teethed on biscotti and ginger snaps. I don't recommend ginger snaps. They turn to mush too easily, and she always smelled faintly of them, because it was near impossible to wash the ginger snap paste out of her hair.
And she doesn't mind when I tell stories like that on her, she thinks they are funny. She's currently nail polish girl. It's the only cosmetic she wears, but she been allowed to polish her nails since she stopped biting them, and she loves having brightly colored nails, a close friend of the family gave her a box filled with nail polish, so she's changing colors daily right now. She should get it out of her system soon, but right now they are exact shade of purple as Mike's old jeep. :)

More mail happiness this week. I got the most gorgeous necklace in the world. I'll take pictures later so you can all agree it's the most gorgeous necklace in the world from Bette. It's a 3 dimensional dark red rose with 3 Russian leaves on a black beaded ribbon edged in a gold color, all done in 15s. Serious patience. And oh yeah. it's the most gorgeous necklace in the world.

I also got the BESTEST care package in the world. It had candy, it had Hello Kitty, it had that very hard to find black worsted weight cotton, it had EVERYTHING! Even superballs. Seriously! Superballs. How absolutely fabulous is that? Someone MAILED me superballs.

Which is just the thing I needed, because I've been a bit blue most of the week, see, I pulled a muscle in my back right by my right shoulder. I'm left handed so this didn't completely ruin my week, but do you know how often you use the muscles in your right shoulder? I do. I was made aware all week. Yesterday I was delibrately very careful of it. When we went to the book storm (what E used to call the book store and the bead store was storms, all the other stores she called stores) I had Mike pull down magazines I wanted to look like. I felt a right proper idiot having to have him help me so much. See, I'm not good at asking for help. Ask anyone who's seen me doing dishes while crying because my back hurt so much. So with achy shoulder making it so I couldn't crochet, bead, do origami, knit (yeah.. seriously.. you use your non dominant hand and the muscles in your shoulder for all those things) I've been a bit moody. Alright, a lot moody. This morning I started crying because 1) E ate my leftovers and 2) I was absolutely certain Dad wasn't going to bring Wm over like he said he might. Turned out Dad was going to. Poor Mike.

But my shoulder is a lot better for taking it very easy yesterday. (I pulled it a week ago, this is the best it's been all week)
Yesterday we went to the local big Chinese New Year celebration, much fun was had by all. As well as odd little fruity candy in red and gold wrappers, after that, the book store, I got the Ready Made book which has been on my wishlist forever, and the Generation T book (and took both off my amazon wishlist). Like every metalhead turned punk in the 80s, I've sliced up far more then my fair share of shirts, and turned shirts into dresses and other things (I've got one dress Kim covets muchly if I ever make one on the sewing machine instead of hand stitching it), Generation T has some great ideas for things to do with teeshirts. I've got a lot of teeshirts I don't wear often. Happiness!!!
Readymade? Rocks my docs. Seriously. If you are into recycled crafts, there are tons of ideas in it, as well as timelines of the components (how plastic was invented/used et cetra) and brief scientific descriptions of the components. So it's not only a great idea book, but it's got a ton of information in it as well.
A lady at the book storm was looking at Metal Clay and Mixed Media Jewelry, and I told her I'd reviewed the book recently (you know, I'm going to have to come back in and put all the links in here I'm skipping aren't I?), and that it was fantastic. It is. If you have any interest in PMC? Get the book. It's wonderful.
TV yesterday: The morning news. That was it all day. Saturday night we watched the news, and then two of Woodworking Online's video podcasts. Those were GOOD. Mike liked them a lot, and I enjoyed them. Even though we don't have a table saw we need to tune up and clean, now we know how to do it. I don't think the tv in our room has been watched at all this week. I knew we weren't big tv people, but looking at the diary, I've realized that other then the Big 3 in this house, the only thing we watch with any consistency is the news. The Big 3? N.C.I.S., Heroes, and Battlestar Galactica. Heroes, well.. Hiro reminds me an awful lot of my eldest child, and I just adore him, BG? Lots of pretty people, great plots. Speaking of which, I like all the BG comics, but the really great one is the story of Zarek. Worth checking out if you are a big BG fan, they are alterverse, but well written, and fantastically illustrated and they stay true to the characters.
Dad's new boots fit him, and he's really impressed with them, and agrees they were a good buy. Of course, he STILL wants shoe goo to repair the 4 year old pair that got ripped because "They are still in good condition." The FUNNY thing about this is when you think about the hoodie. Years ago I got Wm a hoodie in Hell for 11 dollars for Christmas, it's a full zip heavy fleece hoodie with a rubber design on the front, and it didn't fit quite right, but Dad tried it and loved it (the start of dad and hoodies right there). I went back a week later, and they were marked down to 9 dollars, and I got 2 for Wm in his size. This hoodie was my dad's favorite. Well, at some point, it got burned in the elbow with a cigarette, so there is this small hole in the elbow. So now his hoodie is to him, completely unwearable. So he's willing to give up on a 2 year old hoodie for a small hole in the elbow, but the boots need repairing. I do actually agree he should repair them, but a repair isn't going to be the best thing walking in knee deep snow, so he needs the other pair too. The hoodie? I'm taking the sleeves off it and turning it into a hooded vest for me probably.

So I took a look at that book I picked up for Mel to fold, spindle and mutilate, and it's too good not to share, so I'll have to scan the whole thing.
See, it was written and illustrated in 1972.
"When a computer has finished a job the OUTPUT UNIT prints the answers on paper for people to read. This part of the computer is like a type writer, and the answers it writes are called the PRINTOUT."
With an illustration of old feed style paper, some with the bars like schools used, and some plain white to show what a PRINTOUT looks like.
This is why I have to send Mel the book, it begs to be altered, but I don't think I could.
And it's got a pink cover. Pink covers on 1972 computer books are good.

What I forgot to mention was another thing on the freebie table was an Amiga 500 manual. I plan to rip the pages out, and replace them with a blank text block to use a journal. It's geeky I know, but I used to have an Amiga 500. Yeah. I'm that old. Yeah. I'm that geeky.

Emily loves Wonder Woman, the old series. Can't blame her, I'm right there with her on that, in fact Mike got it for me, and Emily got hooked that way. Answering questions from an 11 yo about typewriters and reel to reel tapes on computers that fill up rooms makes me feel incredibly old. It also convinces me that aliens are responsible for the speed of new tech coming out. I have a little green guy to thank for my tiny little ipod that has more memory then the Pentagon's computers in the 70's could handle. (of course Kim just thinks I'm going crazy and should spend more time with people and less time plugged into my ipod making things)
Lots of things to get done today. So I'd better start them.

Last night Emily helped me with dinner, I'm really bad about having people in the kitchen with me, makes me nuts, but I felt very patient and she followed my instructions promptly. We made beef stew with tons of mushrooms, and Emily wanted me to use tomatoes in it, so we did. Then she took a piece of garlic bread and spread it with pizza sauce and cheese and we put that in the oven to have with it. Very yummy. Well, I assume, I was too sick to eat dinner last night, and she and her dad finished off the bread. The soup was good though, I had some this morning.
Our local day old bakery has boboli pizza sauce packets for 5¢ each from Boboli that's no longer good, so we always have those on hand for her to make herself sandwiches and mini pizzas with.

M- Last night, I crawled into bed, and put my cold cold feet against Mike, he yelped. "Where are your slippers?" and I said "In the living room" "Oh.. they do LOTS of good in there." I think he's planning on writing a sign to hang someplace I'll see it to remind me to wear my slippers. *grins*

I got my new slippers!!! They are blue and have pompoms and they are soo soft and warm and wonderful and on my feet right this minute! I should take a picture shouldn't I? They are a lot like the ones that friend of my grandma's made except he knitted in the round and these have soles. And did I mention how soft they are?
The pair Sheeri sent me will be perfect for those really cold days when my feet get entirely too cold because they are a tighter knit and ankle high, this pair is perfect for fall and the rest of the time. (Sheeri's pair is almost too warm, but still very awesome) and my feet are warm!
*grins* You have saved my husband the ultra cold feet being pressed against him while he sleeps, so I'm sure he's very grateful too.
*wiggles toes* I feel like dancing. Because I've got adorable little booties to do it in.
As most of you know, 90% of my mail goes to my dad's house, since I really don't trust the kids in our neighborhood and my open mailbox. So when I get my mail, I get it all at once.
So I got books to review, GREAT books. Oh my gosh they are so great. I'll let you all know exactly how get soon.
We got an envelope for a Disney movie club, we probably won't join, we aren't movie club people, but that means LOTS of tiny colored pictures of Disney movie covers for crafting AND there were stickers in the envelope. Disney stickers make crafty 11 yos very happy. Esp. when they are free.
My Popular Science came in, which means an hour of laying down time I won't be fretting and whining about having to lie down. I think Dad was dropping hints about a second subscription sent here because it had a buy one get one free renewal deal on it (I've got a 3 yr that's only 6 months old). I know what it is, he HATES turning them over. He's got stacks of old ones from the last time we had seperate subscriptions, but really, he could read them then give them to me, the problem is, there are ALWAYS things he wants the 15 yo to read and discuss with him, and he doesn't want to keep them that long. So I'll read it. Mike will read it, then I'll give it back to him. I think I'm glad he hasn't figured out how good Seed Magazine is or I'd never get my copies of that! I got my sub to Seed off eBay for a couple dollars for 2 years, if you can find it at a low price on there still, I really recommend it, it's like Scientific American for the rest of us, well written, entertaining, and a lot of the articles are about how technology impacts economy and politics.
OH YEAH! I posted some patterns to BellaOnline. Bead like a Pirate! YARRRR!

Books, science, slippers. Heart, head and sole.
I'm soo happy!!! and spoilt. Quite spoilt. I know.
-Shala
EDIT!! Oh! Happier then I thought! I got so enthused about my slippers, I didn't check the rest of the package, and I was picking things up, sorting into "I'll use that for" and "okay.. this is garbage" and the envelope was a bit heavy.. there was a SECOND pair in there!!! I had done this little bouncy dance in front of E and said "Aren't you jealous? I've got new slippers!" and she said "No." but then I pulled out the other pair which were PURPLE and her eyes LIT up. So she's a doubly.. triply happy girl too. One of her cooking mags came as well so she's sitting with warm feet and reading recipes!

It never ever occurred to me to check Project Gutenberg for needlework books. Why is it I can't think that way? I LOVE Project Gutenberg. I love needlework. I love old needlework. Why didn't I ever think of it?
Beeton's Book of Needlework

I'll have to look for cookbooks later.

Next question: Does anyone have my Jayne,Blue Sun or John Lennon crossstitch charts?? I may have posted them somewhere and I'll search later. If I find them, or if someone has copies,does anyone want them?

-Shala

Try to figure out where I put my book making supply box to be out of the way. For whatever reason I have a half dozen or so cheap plastic folders running around. I think Mike gets them from his drycleaner, and I have most of the other supplies handy, but not my tiny craft knife or my linen thread.
If I can find that, make Nema a tiny coptic stitched book or see what sort of smaller books I have stuck in there that never got used for anything else. There should be 3 or 4 pamphlet stitched decorated blank books in there. Whoops. Can't do the coptic stitched tiny book. I don't have the thinner paper I prefer for smaller books. Okay. Need to pick up some of that.
Decorate matchboxes. It offends my sensibilities to have undecorated plain matchboxes in the kitchen. One of those projects I keep meaning to do is to make a box for them out of silver with a piece of emery board to strike the matches on. I haven't worked with silver in years but possibly since I posted this, someone else who does silversmithing will thing "Oh how nifty! I never thought of that" and make one for herself.
Work on that hat.
Send out my newsletter (any bets on if it will happen?)
Go through my findings and such looking for things William can use on his blank book. Have you read Paint It Black by Voltaire? A bit pricey, I should have used one of my full Hot Topic cards to buy it, but it's soo funny. Last weekend when I was reading it and giggling, William naturally got curious, so he read it and giggled even though I'm sure he missed some of the humor of it, but there was one project that inspired him. It was a way of decorating a blank book. I told him if he can find the supplies he wants, I'll buy him the blank book and let him use my glue gun (where is my glue gun? Darnit. I knew big boxes to hold craft supplies in were a bad idea. Just because I don't use anything in months is no reason for it to go into a big box and be impossible to find. Do I look? Or just spend the 8 dollars on a new glue gun??) And yes. I told him to collect the supplies himself. But the truth is, I have the niftiest things in my stash. So I'll go through it. Which reminds me.. Did anyone else do the burnished aluminium foil over glued down yarn art in school? That would be a fun companion project for Emily yes? Where you glue down the yarn and other dimensional things to a surface, then glue (spray adhesive as I recall) crumpled and straightened out heavy duty alumnium foil over that, burnishing it with the eraser on a pencil over the yarn and other things so you can see the designs, then going over that with acrylic paint and wiping off the excess. If I recall correctly, we made broaches using that technique that had a celtic feel to them, but I think with Emily, it would be neat on a blank book yes? I think if you were very careful, and used high quality heavy duty foil, you could probably cut out little windows in it and bezel set flat marbles on the book too for added bling. Glue down the marble first to the surface your working on. Spray sealer over the whole thing.
Work on my hat. Get my hat done so I feel like I can start another big project. I have a graphed out design of bats I designed for Rosemary I really want done in blank and pink.
Try to find my spare roll of black duct tape. I need it. I need to make a purse for my Naet and I hate having to buy a roll when I *know* I have one here. Of course, maybe I should get Duck brand for her purse anyway. The right tape in it's place. 3m is marvelous for clothing, wallets, and roses. Better then Duck brand because their colored tapes are thinner and more flexible, but Naet's purse needs structure.

And Shala dear.. try NOT to let Rosemary or anyone else inspire you in a way that will distract you from what you mean to do today.

-Shala