Quietish

Turns out we took waaaay too many pictures to really represent well in a single post, but I thought I’d get you the highlights anyway. My photo blog has a few besides these as well.

We all met up at our little rental cabin that was quite nice, by the way. The kitchen was a little cramped and outdated, but we managed.

We found out that fall colours actually *do* appear in Oklahoma. Sometimes.

Jamie got some belated-birthday action, complete with ladybug cupcakes.

On Friday we went on a family nature walk at one of the local parks.

Nymphadora came too

and I finished her that night.

Even though it was only about 2 hours to our getaway, I still seem to be taking the typical couple-day recovery time. I have found time to knit though! Nymphadora2 is about 1/3 done and I made Jamie a hat since we got home.

Shining Star pattern by Kate Gilbert.

I need to bid you all a farewell, as the fam has rented a cabin south of here in the Arbuckles for our Thanksgiving extravaganza. Ok, maybe “extravaganza” is a bit much, but I am sure we will have a great time. Who doesn’t love stuffing themselves with thanksgiving food and enjoying nature? It will be a blast!

It will be somewhat interesting anyway, as I have a new tattoo that I haven’t quite gotten around to mentioning yet…

Nymphadora1 is ready for it!

She hasn’t gotten a whole lot of love lately while I’ve worked on other Christmassy things. She will be my only knit project accompanying us on this trip though, so it will even out some.

And speaking of knitting: I’ve gotten quite a bit of hate e-mail (playful joke, you know. not really hate mail) lately regarding my influence on other aspiring knitters or straight-up non-knitters. Close friends of mine as well as people I hardly know have accused me of influencing them and enabling their fast-growing addictions to yarn, shopping for yarn, and knitting/crocheting.

I must defend my innocence. I am but a humble crafter who simply enjoys her hobbies and is somewhat of a materials-snob. I apologize profusely to those many folks who have seen my well-meant, happy posts about my crafting ventures and instantly caught the bug themselves. Especially to those 3 or 4 that banged their shins or twisted an ankle in a mad dash to their local yarn stores. Sorry about that. I truly didn’t know I had so much influence on those around me. Hee.

Although I probably should have guessed based on my experiences with scrapbooking. =P

Ok, I totally need to pack and stuff. All you US people have a great Thanksgiving weekend!

I only get one more day!

I am, in fact, here and alive. Although some of you did hear from me and if you were one of those lucky people you got to endure my complaints about achiness, headachiness, and general nastiness.

Sorry about that.

I seem to be fully recovered this afternoon with nothing more than a headache this morning. That too has passed *thumbs up*

There are a few updatey things:

I am in computer-issue hell. Or close to it, I guess. Not like in the bowels or anything. But yeah, this weekend my computer was doing its everything-freezes-up-so-now-you-have-to-just-hit-the-power-button-neener-neener dance so I went ahead and restarted. Or tried to. It never rebooted. So I pulled out the back-up laptop while Justin lugged my tower to work with him the next day to try to at least save my pictures and iTunes folder. (PSA: When iTunes tells you to back up your library, just take its word for it. Really.)

The stupid thing actually booted up fine for him after sitting all night, so he went ahead and backed everything up anyway and brought it home. All was fine until Monday when it did it over again.

So now I’m back typing to you from the laptop. I don’t have the patience to deal with Mr. Desktop right now. The fun thing is that Mr. Laptop has a whopping 10G or so hard drive in it. I feel so special.

Being on the laptop isn’t all bad though. It means that this weekend when I am ready to go to Angie’s I can unplug the thing and go. So… woohooo!! I’m grabbing a sampling of crafty projects, getting on a plane, hopefully NOT losing any article of baggage, and flying to Tennessee to do…. well, whatever the heck we feel like. (I assume lots of stitching and Mario Party.) Wheeeeeeeee!

Ahem.
In the meantime I’ve gotten a little reading time in (read: laid around with Prince Caspian because my body hurt too much to sit upright for very long) and knitting.

Oh yes, knitting! My sock-in-progress (SIP, I guess. I think I’ll use that.) now has the starting of a heel.

SIP does already have a name, but I thought I’d throw out another point-opportunity. In the interest of discovering just how predictable I am, I have points to give to the first person to EMAIL me with a correct guess at this lovely sockiness’ name. But not you, Mary. Or you, Katie.

Til later. I’m going to go try to get my photo blog updated now. *sigh*

There was a coronation at the Quail Springs mall today when Jamie decided that she did indeed like princesses and glittery, poufy ball gowns.

We stopped in at the Disney Store, on the way to get groceries, to pick up our previously pre-ordered copy of the new Cinderella DVD, and because we had done so we were also entitled to 15 percent off of any purchase we might have made during that visit. Even cooler is that the 15 percent off was on top of any sale item, including Halloween costumes which were 25 percent off.

Of course Jamie had noticed the quite large display of Cinderella merchandise on the way in (”Wooooah, look at those gass sippers!”) but just to be sure I showed her all of the other princess costumes. Nope, she was set with a Cinderella dress (Not the $80+ version, thankfully), “gass sippers,” and a “cwown.”

Once those things were bought, she marched around the mall fully adorned and sat through lunch talking about how pretty she is. Oh, and throughout the grocery shopping experience as well. We finally pried it all off of her right before bathtime.

It makes me happy.

Anyhow, I’ve kept busy. I had a rockin’ visit with Mary on Thursday, and she brought me pumpkins! I love pumpkins. Drove home on Friday. That’s about all one needs to do in one day. Then I cropped all day (literally–10am to midnightish) Saturday with Amy at Just 4 Keeps. I did 4 layouts. Simply amazing.

Tonight, I rest :)

Still getting very little done. This surprises me. Here we are in a hotel room. No outside obligations, well-behaved (well, you know, mostly) children, plenty of time. Yet the books still sit in the bedside table drawer and my Earth dragon has been out of my Qsnaps since Tuesday or so when I put maybe 10 stitches in.

You know what’s eaten my time? This:

I love it. I really do. Every day however, I forget that while the finished product will be smallish, there are a lot of stitches in this over-one piece. I’m not too upset that the other things have gotten put aside though, because I am relieved to be knocking out some Christmas present type things.

Mary is on her way to visit again, so yay! I think we’ll get to spend a little time being crafty while we wait for Justin to get back in. Hopefully we’ll remember to take some pictures this time…

Sometime after we began our trek East on I-40 towards Ft. Smith Sunday, Justin looked into the rear view mirror. “Did we forget something? I can see out of the back window?” Har, har. Yeah, he was right; We usually bring so much crap on a road trip that we really can’t see out of our hatchback window.

I don’t really know what we left behind to make our load lighter. It certainly didn’t seem lighter when we unloaded at the hotel and used two trolleys to wheel it all up here. I’m going to assume we’ve just become master packers and fit everything into the trunk better; having gleaned expertise from our backgrounds in vigorous Tetris playing and our many, many roadtrips.

I by nature, am a light packer. When I’m flying, I like to fit all of my stuff into a carry-on sized bag so I don’t have to check anything. (Too much lost luggage, I’m sure you could guess.) Besides, I just like to keep it simple.

When traveling with the whole troop though, there are things we can’t leave behind. We don’t really bring a lot of toys. A few, maybe. And some books. But then we need our cloth diapers and nowadays, a potty seat. Clothes, bathing suits (hotels with pools!), 2 blankies, 2 small coolers for the ride, a family-sized personal hygiene arsenal, and coffee.

Once it is obvious that we’re bringing everything we own with us anyway, I feel that I can give myself permission to load up every crafty project I have in the works. Knitting, cross stitch, scrapbooking supplies, a stack of the books that are next on my reading list. On one trip I brought a baby quilt with me to quilt on. Usually though, I don’t work on most of it. I just like to have options.

Anyhow, all that to say that while I brought a plethora of crafty options with me, I only have worked on a couple. I put about a foot and 1/2 on one of my scarves in the car on the way here and stitched on 2 things a little bit yesterday:

(Click for bigger.)

And an ornament I started by M Designs, from the Christmas 2005 Just Cross Stitch issue:

More stitching today! This afternoon, I get to hang with Mary.

• Aquadoodle CHECK
• 3 knitting projects CHECK
• 4 cross stitch projects CHECK
• 5 of the 7 Chronicles of Narnia books CHECK
• laptop CHECK
• Harry Potter Uno cards CHECK
• french press CHECK

All packed and ready to spend the week at a hotel in Ft. Smith, Arkansas. Will have internet access.

Progress.