Kokomo

Oh wow, am I behind. I have been so busy since we got back! Oh yeah, I was out of the country just 2 weeks ago, but it feels like forever ago. Our cruise was so awesome!

The Caribbean Princess

Jamaica and Mexico were definitely my favorite places. We also stopped in the Bahamas and Georgetown, Grand Cayman. Those were our beach days, which were very relaxing and beautiful.

On the beach at Princess Cays, Bahamas

But I' just love seeing and doing everything I possibly can,
so I had so much more fun on the days that we went on tours.

Laundry Mat in Ocho Rios, Jamaica

At Jamaica, the boat stopped in Ocho Rios and we jumped on a bus and headed for the Green Grotto Caves. It was a great ride, except for the scary left hand driving and constant honking, our guide said that in Jamaica you honk for two reasons, one to say hello, and another one to say get outta my way... yeah mon. But we got to see a lot of the countryside. There were a bunch of fishermen villages along the side of the road, with brightly colored shacks like this one:

These people have such a great sense of humor and all of the places we saw had so much character, it was really exciting. We drove through St. Ann's, where Bob Marley was born, and where Christopher Columbus landed in 1494.

The Green Grotto Caves were really, really cool. The sea level caves have been used for so many different things; they were a hiding place for runaway slaves, they have been rum storage, and they were even used as a nightclub in the 1990's. There were tons of fruit bats flying around and when we went into the below-sea level caves, it was so pitch black, I couldn't see my hand in front of my face.



Then we took off for Dunn River Falls, which is a 900 feet of waterfalls that lead into the sea.

And we climbed them! The groups form long chains of people holding each others hands, and you work your way up. It was so beautiful and kind of weird to see these gorgeous falls treated like a water park. Lucky Jamaicans.

In Mexico, the boat stopped in Cozumel, an island off the mainland of Mexico. We took a ferry to Playa del Carmen on the mainland, I loved the city and wish we had more time to look around.

But we got on a bus and road to the Mayan ruins, Tulum. Our guide was a Mayan descendant and told us that we were not in Mexico, we were in Mayan lands now. He told us that he didn't even speak Spanish until he learned in it school because they all speak Mayan in their homes.

Tulum is amazing. It's right on the beach and a lot of the structures are still in fairly good shape. Most of the stone carvings on the buildings have been worn away, but there was one building, the Temple of the Frescoes, that had one face that was almost complete.

Temple of the Frescoes

It's amazing that all of these buildings once had hand carved decoration all over them. Our guide said that only about 450 rich and noble Mayans lived in this group of structures and about 10,000 lived outside their walls. So I'm guessing that those were the people responsible for all of the stone work.

Tulum, Mexico

So the rest of the time we were on the Caribbean Princess, our hotel on the sea. I really liked sailing with Princess, the food is great and the boat has tons of stuff to do. We saw comedians, watched movies under the stars, and ate and ate and ate. And when we just could not take anymore entertainment or food, we watched the sunset.

We really should have just stayed there, getting home was a bit of a pain in the butt, we were delayed in Dallas and then our plane was cancelled, but Tan and Paul helped us get home and fix our broken car that was waiting for us when we got there. I was telling my mom about what a pain it was to come home and back to real life and she told me, "Well, what did you expect?Vacations just put it on hold, it doesn't make it go away." Aptly put, thank god for vacations!

So Dean, Bellatrix, and Ravelry all went into a bar...

Been feeling like I should update this. I haven't felt like much has been going on (unless of course you consider the times that I'm way to busy to post here), but once I sort of list it all out, I realize that I really never stop doing stuff :) So I've been knitting and planning knitting. Ravelry has inspired me to finish some of my UFOs that have always been perfectly good projects - just not in plain sight, where I might remember to finish them. I've finished a lacy scarf and started the 2nd glove to the one that I finished at least a year ago. I'm thinking about writing up a pattern for the gloves. They're pretty simple, but I need to start somewhere if I want to start designing.

I got some new yarn that I'm planning to use for the Bellatrix socks. This picture really doesn't do the color justice, but the name does: Electric Midnight! Found it on Etsy from Spindle Cat Studio.

I made a zine, my very first, for the My Town swap on Swap-bot. It was kinda fun, a lot of work, but nice to have a record of the things I'm doing in SLC right now. It's part travel guide and part stories about life in Salt Lake City. It's called, "Oh My! Salt Lake City" and there are exactly 3 copies in existence.

Have been thinking a lot about our cruise. As the ticker above is showing, it is getting very close and so I've been trying to plan out everything. Our big dilemma has been Hurricane Dean. We have been watching it's course non-stop. It happened to visit every place we are going except the Bahamas. It's ended up passing them all up with minor damage, so we'll go down and (hopefully) be able contribute some money to them :) Now I'm just crossing my fingers for clear skies until the 10th of September.

Also been looking at a lot of people's art online. Mostly with the help of Craftzine. They find so many interesting art projects, it's just amazing. One that's just great is High Concept Softies. The broccoli and crazed bunny just makes me laugh. Then there's Mamaqilla's felted fiber gallery, which is so good, it's kinda creepy. If you go to this page, you can see step by step pictures of how she does it. Another place I've been playing on is Indie Public. It's a community website for independent designers and the people who love them. Basically designers can post pictures of things they've made and offer to sell the pattern if they want. It's very cool and I think that with all of these online communities, I really could spend the rest of my life on the Internet.

Ravelry!

OH MY GOODNESS! Did they know? Did they know that if they sent me my Ravelry invite on a Saturday morning that I would spend all of said morning on Ravelry? It is SO cool! I'm really surprised I got in. I signed up for an invitation about 3 weeks ago and I kinda thought they were only inviting podcasters and all those famous people that I'm not. But I got in early!

Anyway, what have I been doing for the last 3 hours. Well, first looking at patterns: there are 1582 sock patterns listed on Ravelry, all of which can be saved as favorites so you can go back to them later. Then I started playing with My Notebook. I can upload my stash, books I own, needles I own, and FO's/UFO's. They track your blog posts for you and there's even room for notes about your yarn and projects. And I can't help but think, I will never have to remember anything ever again! Yay!!! Look for me, I'm yarnpie.

Chicago

I really think I had way too much fun in Chicago. Too much fun to consider it a business trip anyway. Don't get me wrong. It was A LOT of work. I haven't been on my feet for that long in 6 years. It's been since I moved from the lovely world of working in sandwich shops to working in an accounting office. And constantly engaging people is pretty much what I don't do all day. I sit in my quiet office and interact with a computer, so the trade show was a nice change of scenery. But like I said, I really had too much fun to consider it work.

The moment we got off the plane, we had to rush to get to the hotel and get ready to go to the city. Our hotel was a half hour cab ride from downtown Chicago, in good traffic. But it was going to take us an hour and a half because it was rush hour. So we had exactly 20 minutes to get ready and the hotel had given away our room. Oops. So we did finally make it downtown in time to see the bean before dinner.

So cool, so weird, who knew that a giant reflective bean in Millennium Park could be such a famous attraction. After dinner, we walked down the block to see WICKED at the Oriental. Oh so a dream come true. I have been waiting to see this play for 2 years! And it did not disappoint. It is the best play I have ever seen. It's hilarious. Especially Glinda the "good," who is actually really stuck up and full of herself, and likes to swish her hair in an extremely strange fashion. And Elphaba, who is the wicked witch of the west, and concerned with animal rights. The singing was perfect, the costumes were awesome, and the story is excellent. Loved it!
I know that some many be concerned, I was in Chicago and how ever did I get my Harry Potter book. Never fear, I reserved one at the downtown Barnes and Nobles. We went to the midnight sale and I started it in the cab on the way home. I absolutely love it! I'm almost finished and that's all I'm going to say about that right now.
Here's me working. Everyday we had 9am-5pm in the booth and then ran to get ready and get in a cab for the city. Another one of these awesome excursions (all planned out by my boss, by the way) was the architectural tour. We floated the Chicago river and the tour guide told us about the city. My favorite building was the Corn cobs:
I can't remember their real name, but we did end up back there another night and went to the House of Blues at the base of the building. The art that covers all the wall space in there is so cool and there was an awesome blues band from Chicago named Rob Stone & the C-Notes playing.

So I love this city, did I mention that? I think I'll be going back for another look around because I saw tons of art galleries that were all closed by the time we made it downtown. Plus I think Todd would appreciate their taste in pizza.

Wanna be a Simpson?

Go to simpsonsmovie.com and make one. Todd Simpson

Joanne Simpson

Knitting Torture. Knitting Therapy.

Do you want to torture yourself or your loved ones? Knit a plastic bag. Or better yet, ask someone else to do it for you.

Plastic bags are crunchy and stiff. They scratch your hands. So why would I ever want to finish knitting this? After cutting up 30 some bags to make "yarn" you already feel pretty invested in the project. Honestly, now that I'm finished, I love it. It looks cute and it's really sturdy. I'm never making another but I've got this one, that's all I need. And once you get over the "yarn," it's pretty easy. I cast 54 stitches on circular 15's and knit round and round until I got the desired length. Then bound off 9 stitches for the handle. Another nice thing is that if you run out of "yarn," you can just cut more plastic bags into strips and add them on using a slip knot.

My knitting therapy (for the plastic bag knitting and my classes) was the duck walk socks (inspired by a Nicky Epstein stitch) And two more cable hats. I had one request from my Mom and Kimberly's last hat got stolen in the hospital. They are so quick, so I'm even thinking about making myself one now.

Also went to the Toadally Frogs exhibit this weekend at the Natural History Museum at the U. It was pretty cool, not as big as I thought it would be, but they did have some pretty cool frogs. I couldn't get any good pictures of the frogs, but I did get one of this great little statue:


Before that we made a trip to the London Market for Harry Potter candy. They've discontinued a lot of the HP candy, but they still had Jelly slugs and Bertie Bots Every flavored beans. I think I'll have to go through those before the movie. I really don't want to get a booger or vomit bean accidentally in the movie theater. The whole errand was funny, I haven't planned a trip to the candy store with friends since I was 10.

Wikibirthday

I found this on Tan's blog and thought I'd try it (thanks Tan). I love knowing who shares my birthday and all that. So first, you go onto Wikipedia and put in your birthday w/o the year. Then list... (checking)... 3 events, 2 birthdays, 1 holiday.

September 20th
event: 1519 - Ferdinand Magellan - set sail from Sanlúcar de Barrameda with about 270 men on his expedition to circumnavigate the globe.
event: 1946 - The first Cannes Film Festival is held.
event: 1969 - John Lennon leaves The Beatles but does not make a public announcement
That last one is sad for me, but not as sad as all the bloody events that also happened on my birthday and probably everyone elses for that matter. Ah, aNyway...

birthday: 1486 - Arthur, Prince of Wales, son of King Henry VII of England
birthday: 1934 - Sophia Loren, Italian actress
Weird couple, huh? Well, they were the only people I know anything about on the whole list! :)

holiday: In ancient Greece, the seventh day of the Eleusinian Mysteries, when the secret rites in the Telesterion began.
Umm... Woohoo, another reason to party!

Utah Arts Festival

What a blast! We had so much fun last weekend. There were so many shows, dancing, music, 100 degree weather! Our favorite thing this year was the Salt Lake Capoeira and Samba Fogo.The Salt Lake Capoeira is a dance/fighting group backed by drum beats. The guys (and girl) did amazing flips and kicks at each other without ever touching each other.
Samba Fogo was the firedancing. This woman wore gloves with fingers of fire (pictured above), one baton, and two batons. She put some of the flames out on her tongue and rolled the fire across her arm. IT was SO cool! Not to forget the drummers, they were amazing. Music like that is so raw and exotic.

Over by the entrance they had working urban artists. These are our favorites. I still can't figure out how they do that with spray paint. It's so amazing that they have that much control.

The Filthy Gorgeous fashion show this year was pretty different. The dancers were a great addition, I couldn't help but get an 80's feeling though. I guess trends do tend to repeat themselves. Legwarmers and ponchos anyone? ANyway, I do want this hat. Where could I wear it? I really can't say, but I like it.

Really, it was just fun to hang out, my mom and sister were here from Boise, Sara and Brianne came and as Sara likes to say, we were talking like relief society women. Just how I like it :)

Fall Knitscene

I love Knitscene! Apparently I'm not the only one either... There were only 2 copies left in Barnes & Noble when I left and it came out today! I have to admit that the Fall issues are my favorite. What! It's almost Fall? Ok, just went outside and it's 90 degrees, but a girl can dream can't she? Knitscene is so good though, they target younger knitters, but they are an Interweave magazine, so most of the patterns can be considered classics. Which is something most magazines in that genre cannot claim. I want to make everything, but here's the main choices:

It's hard to make this one out, but it's the lacy scarf. I've been looking for a simple lace scarf pattern to use my gray ghost mystical creations boucle yarn on and I think this might be it. Don't think I'll use the beads and it'll be multi-colored, but it's nice to have a jumping off point.
I love the scrunchy part on the back of this hat. I've been thinking of making a stripy Ravenclaw hat for myself and this would be a cute addition.

Ok, so I'm a sucker for anything that reminds me of Christmas. I really want to make this exactly like it is, maybe a bit larger, so it'll fit me, but I just love the colors, and can totally see a Christmas party coming from this sweater.

The rest of the designs are posted online on the Knitscene Projects link. And they put some bonus projects on there too. Can we ask for anything more? Well, that's all for now. Once I get my pictures together, there will be an Arts Festival Extravaganza going on here, so stay tuned.

Hello there!

Wow, it's been awhile. Not for naught, though. I've been in Moab, starting classes, and yes... knitting. I actually finished Todd's stripey socks before we left for Moab, which left my repetitive lacey socks for the road trip. Which was all I could handle because the drive is not my stomach's favorite thing in the world. But I did manage to get them halfway finished.

Moab was awesome. We did a lot of new hikes, Devils Garden and Delicate Arch. Devil's Garden is Arch central. Every where we looked there was another arch, it was really cool. The best one is Landscape Arch (above) which is a little over 300 feet long and only 10 feet thick at it's thinnest point. It's also the only arch we couldn't climb under because it spit out a boulder in the 90's and isn't very safe anymore. Delicate arch was totally awesome. It's just so weird to see something you see all over postcards and pictures, and it's 3 inches high. Then you climb over the ridge to the whirlpool of rock that surrounds it and it's massive and all alone. It's just amazing! That was really my favorite moment of the trip.

Since we've been back, I've been trying to catch up with my classes. I'm taking a music class, a computer class, and a Marriage & Family class. All seem interesting, oh yeah except the computer class, which seems incredibly boring, but it's a requirement, so lucky me. Todd's taking the same classes as me but also 2 Economics classes which he finds really interesting. It's great to because I get the filtered version of the class, so I find out a bit about it, but don't have to read economics books. Woohoo!

Besides that, I've gotten into some Round Robin Journal groups, which is basically collage and paper crafting. It's pretty inspiring to be working in someone else's book and be creating a group art project with people all over the world. You can see some links of my pages here.

Well, that's all for now folks.

ATCs

I'm actually surprised at how long I lasted! I received a couple Artist Trading Cards through some swaps and I thought, "what a cool idea... and I cannot start doing this, too." I set them aside and didn't think about it for about a month. Then I stumbled upon ATC Treasures and that was it. I spent every spare moment of this week going through all of my scraps that I've been hoarding over the years (yes, years!) and now they finally have a canvas to become art - the whole reason I have them in the first place! It's really wonderful because the canvas is 2.5 x 3.5 Inches - which is so not intimidating to someone like me who has finishing issues. I can sit down, make one, and be done. And I did. Here's a couple from this weekend:

Notice a theme? Yeah I know... it gives me an idea to work with, so I'm gonna stick with it for a while. Another really great place for ATC eye candy is: Art-e-zine & Teesha Moore

I'm on the home stretch

School is so close to being over that I can taste it (it's kinda tastes like cream puffs)! The French final is over, the English class is long gone and I just have a writing portfolio and zine piece to put together to call this semester good. Seems easy enough, aka: will probably be a lot of work. My biggest challenge is getting started. I actually like to write, but the build up to writing is what hurts. I stress and fret and finally start and realize how easy it was. One of these days I'll learn that stress never solved anything (someday).

Anyway, it's definitely easier to just pretend the reason for stress doesn't exist and go camping! That's exactly what we did last weekend. We went to Antelope Island for Simon's birthday. The boys played football, us girls talked about coming babies and I received several bug bites on my scalp. This turned out OK though, after the sun went down they all went and died or something and I gave a speech about married life and getting older, Shai described what kind of food everyone was, and Simon and Ann arm wrestled - All a part of a fun game they invented for the trip.



I got to forget about the stressful aspects of school and had a great chat with Ben about literature and all the good parts of school. This guy (Ben) can remember every thing that ever happened to him and quote from every book he's read. I'm impressed! I'm hard up to remember the story line of the last book I read, let alone quote from it!

Although, that's a lie, I just finished "The Lost Art of Keeping Secrets" by Eva Rice and I can clearly remember scenes from this book. Possibly because I read certain passages over and over again just to give myself butterflies in my stomach again and again. It's absolutely delicious! It's about life in post war England for the young kids, the parties and the wonderful weirdness and love. So it gets to me, I promise I don't read romances much, but this book is romantic in all aspects. The house, the culture, the music, and of course the people. It was one that I couldn't stand to end and have been kinda depressed about today because there's nothing left to read. I did see that a new book from Eva is coming next year in England, so I guess I'll just have to pine over the new Harry Potter for now.

Your Monster Profile

Creepy Fiend You Feast On: M&Ms You Lurk Around In: Shopping Malls You Especially Like to Torment: Pop Stars

What's" Your Monster Name?

I had to post my monster name in celebration of seeing the double feature GRINDHOUSE last night. The 1st feature, Planet Terror has so much over the top gore that even I could handle it. And the 2nd feature, Death Proof is just way too cool for words. I think if anybody else had made this double feature, I wouldn't be able to stomach it, but Rodriguez and Tarantino are awesome! And the missing reels were genius!

Just in time for Easter

I usually don't dye eggs for Easter. At my house, they will just look pretty and then spoil, unless I really, really want a huge batch of potato salad all to myself. But this year I have found some really pretty natural dying techniques that are actually tempting me to dye eggs just for the fun of it.

These are sooo gorgeous! I love the leaf designs. I'm a bit put off by the blowing out part, but maybe as long as I'm not planning on eating the onion eggs, I won't have to blow them out.

This is a list of natural household dyes, surprisingly the colors turn out really bright and pretty.

Week-end cake

I haven't been able to post for a while, so I thought a big update would be good and it's been a week, OK, not quite a week, but enough for me since I'm usually a anti-social homebodier. But this weekend was really great, actually. On Friday Todd and I went out to Red Rock with my brother and his girlfriend. I haven't quite gotten used to calling her "his girlfriend" again, but it's a long story, so I'll leave that at that. The food was awesome! And I think we scared our table neighbors because we talked about guns all night. I think that was my fault, Todd and I are doing a community writing campaign about violence in America and I got carried away about my research. It was fun though, Eric's taking off to New Mexico to live with our cousin Joey and it was a good farewell.

Saturday, we spent the afternoon at the Beehive Tea Room, for a family Stitch n chess organized by Tan (hopefully she will have pictures, hint hint). They had lots of yummy little sandwiches and other treats for their afternoon tea. And I got some much needed sock knitting in. I finished my duck stitch (Nicky Epstein) sock in between playing Fluxx with Cherry and Todd and going out to Indian food later at Royal India in Bountiful. Oh so good... My life is now complete, I have Indian food and a finished sock.

On Sunday I went to The Last Mimzy with Sara and Brianne. It was so good! I originally heard about it at Sundance, but wasn't able to make it to a screening, but I'm so glad we saw it in the theater because there were some really cool scenes and special effects. It also presents a really interesting viewpoint about what the future will be like and why some things are the way they are in the present.

So it was a good weekend and it preoccupied me enough to keep me from doing homework, so when I went in to French class on Monday, I had no idea what was going on. Even more disappointing was the phone call with my landlord, when he told me I can't have Haze, the dog we were going to adopt from my Mom. Never mind that my neighbor has 2 big dogs, and we want a really small one. And his wife already said I could have a dog. He says it's because she's has some pit bull in her, but I don't believe him. I do understand not wanting 3 dogs in that tri-plex, but make a policy then, don't say you can have dogs - but you can't. Anyway, that still stings a bit and I can't stand him right now. I really was ready to take care of Haze, so even though I didn't have her yet - I still feel like she's been torn from my arms. Those jerks!!

how can they say no to this?

So, the icing on my cake turned out to be a little sour, I know deep deep (really deep) down it's really for the best, but I guess I just don't like being told what I can and can't do- I'm sure there's plenty of people out there that can vouch for that :)

So yah... oh yah, so for my happiness and yours, those who are here for a little bit o' yarn porn, I would hate to disappoint. Merry Tuesday:

Cherry Tree Hills Serengeti that I picked up for my lunch treat at Hemstitched Heirlooms

Mountain Gold Rush from Francis Patrick on eBay

The end of mesh

I think I have finally cured my obsession with knitting mesh. And this is the sock that did it. The mesh hats were easy and I didn't have to worry about them staying up without ribbing, but this sock... I just have absolutely no desire to knit another one of these and I don't think I ever will...

But I do think I will take Tan's advise and turn it into a Christmas stocking. Viola! OK, so maybe I have some more work to do before it is a Christmas stocking, but I'll worry about that in December.


So, to curb my disappointment in the mesh sock, I started on a green striped sock for Todd at my very first Stitch n Bitch on Tuesday. I really like how it's turning out and it went so fast, this is less than one week's progress (which is really really fast for me). Then I held it up to Todd's foot and remembered he has size 13 feet and I have a long way to go...

He actually requested this sock, that I was knitting during the long hours in the car for our Canadian road trip last summer, but after finishing the second sock, I realized I had sized these for me, so he'll get the other striped ones and we can kinda be twins, cute.

You may notice that this post is heavily laden with socks... At Tan's recommendation I have started listening to Lime & Violet, which is hilarious and fuels an obsession with all things that are socky. So now I think my entire family is getting socks for birthdays, Christmas, and other holidays that I may or may not celebrate. Actually, now that I think about it, it is St Patrick's Day, yeah actually, I'm making Todd's socks as a St Patty's Day present... Oooo, I hope my Mountain Gold Rush sock yarn comes today. OK, that's it for me, time to go knit more socks.