weird

Andrea tagged me to name six weird things about myself.

Wow.

I feel so normal and rational. Weird? Naw, that's everyone ELSE...... :-)

But then, if "everyone else" is different, I guess that does make me weird. In a good way.

Ok.

Let's see.

1. I am a good speller, generally, but I can never remember how to spell "weird." Well, that was pretty light-weight. Let's see if I can go for something stranger.

2. Broccoli is my favorite vegetable. Another thing that seems normal to me, but.... I also love lima beans, another one that a lot of people don't like.

3. I hate debt. The only thing I've ever bought "on time" is a house. Otherwise, if I can't afford it, I don't buy it.

4. I do what I say I will do, when I say I will do it. (I surely wish that this were a normal trait in the population, rather something relatively odd!)

5. When they played "Satisfaction" (the original, not muzak!) in the grocery this afternoon, I danced along. Again -- seems normal to me, but my daughter is really really glad she wasn't there to be humiliated by her very weird mother. I wonder what on earth they will be playing in the grocery store in 30 or 40 years.... "Satisfaction" doesn't really seem like an encouragement to the Buy! Buy! Buy! atmosphere I'd expect them to prefer, in the grocery store business. But maybe no one listens to the words??? "I can't get no ...[dumdumdum] no! no! no!"

6. Finishing off with another lightweight -- my DH says there are exactly 20 minutes in the life-cycle of a banana during which I consider it edible. He's probably right. Too green -- nope. Did you know that a seriously too-green banana crunches like celery? It does. I'm not crazy about the texture of a too-ripe banana, either, but it's the smell that really grosses me out. I can make banana bread out of the old yucky ones, but I'm not eating them raw........


I'm now supposed to tag six people, but I'm worn out. If you would like to play along, do, by all means.

blogiversary

In January, lots of people marked the new year by showing something they'd posted each month of last year.

I decided to celebrate my first blogiversary by looking back in that way.

I started blogging in response to the Yarn Harlot's invitation to us all to participate in the Knitting Olympics. The Knitting Olympics sounded like a fine idea to me, and I decided to be a part of it.

The first thing I did was make some cute side-bar buttons, for Team Michigan and Team DPN, and then, obviously, I had to share them..............

So I started a blog.

I knitted, and blogged, through February.

Here are my Olympic Socks, my First Socks Ever, started as the opening ceremonies began in Torino (watched live on Canadian tv -- thank you CBC!!!), and finished before the Olympic flame was extinguished 16 days later.


















Thank you, Stephanie, for getting me started down this path. I am glad to be part of the blogosphere!


March found me still knitting away. Here is the first half of my second pair of socks, with evidence of my faithful companion.





















In April, I continued knitting, and started branching out. I started taking pics of vignettes in my house. Here's the first such image I shared with you.


















May continued in the same vein.



















In June, we went to the Toledo Zoo.



















July found us in Chicago.






















In August, I took an ATC-a-day challenge, and worked in the 2.5"x3.5" format. I did some work in hard-copy media, but mostly it was photographs. Here is my very first digital collage.






















The Michigan State Fair is in late August and early September.



















In October, I blogged a lot of 'shrooms, and we went to Maryland. I did my very first food-blogging in October (see the World Bread Day button in the sidebar).

















November featured the beach (Ocean City, Maryland).






















December saw some more food, some more road trips, and a few poinsettias.






















In January we had an ice storm.























Which brings us full circle.

I have been babbling about the wonders of the www/'net for a very long time. I am thoroughly enjoying the possibilities of blogging my own work, and enjoyed looking back over my last year's output.

My creative motto is "What I lack in talent, I make up in volume!" -- I am pleased that the whole of what I have posted seems to me to be greater than the sum of its parts.

I am surely enjoying my ability to see what others are doing via their blogs. It is wonderful to see what so many people are doing, in so many different media. I read blogs on fiber art of all kinds (including, of course!, the knitting that brought me to the blogosphere in the first place), photography, collage (digital and hardcopy), sketching, painting, food, raising sheep, gardening....

And that's today; who knows what I'll branch out to read tomorrow?

Ok, enough preaching to the choir.

Happy Blogiversary to me!

five things

Rebsie tagged me to tell five things you don't know about me from reading my blog.

1) I used to do ceramics. When you see bread dough rising in a tan speckled ceramic bowl, here on the blog, I made the bowl. A long time ago, in the late '70s.

2) I went to high school in Kansas. For my international readers, I'll note that Kansas is a very conservative state. Moving there from liberal Ann Arbor, Michigan, in 1967, was like taking a time warp back to 1951. I did forge lifelong friendships with a few of my fellow travelers, but aside from that one shining benefit (which was serendipitous rather than guaranteed, I'm sure), I wouldn't recommend the experience.

3) I make my living programming computers, but my BA is in psychology, with a minor in history of art.

4) I can't draw, but am tempted to learn how.

5) I have been lifting weights for 8.5 years. The gym I've been using for the last several years has closed (so rude, what about MY needs?????), and I need to find an alternative. I do it to maintain muscle mass and for bone strength. I want to put my own suitcase in the overhead bin, and drag my own fallen-during-the-ice-storm branches out to the curb.















In the interest of Truth, I will say that is not my own personal pile of fallen branches. I was too lazy to go downstairs, get dressed for winter, go out, and take a pic of my very own branches without a tree between me and them. It is the next-door neighbor's branches (no tree between me and them, when I look out the study window), but my own pile is very similar in size and quantity.

Also in the interest of Truth, I'll admit to cravenly allowing a nice young man to get my suitcase down from the overhead shelf thingie on the train when I got back to Ann Arbor at 1:00 am from Chicago last summer. I could have done it, and was in the process of doing it, when he offered..... It had a elderly leaden laptop in it, and was very heavy...... I did put it up there by myself.


Now I'm supposed to tag five people. I think I'll just tag E, and -- anyone else, if you want to play, consider yourself tagged.

Studio Friday -- Connected

Studio Friday's theme this week is I AM (INTER-) CONNECTED!

As one of the 'net/web's dinosaurs, I've been communicating with people online since the '70s. I certainly feel thoroughly electronically connected to distant friends, family, and people whose interests I share but have never met. I am on the board of CorgiAid, a charity that supports rescue of Corgi dogs. CorgiAid is a corporation that couldn't exist without the 'net/web -- it was organized, incorporated, and has always been run online; most of the board members and other staff have never met in person.....

For the "studio" portion of this discourse, I have been talking with people online about art and craft for years and years (I learned A LOT about how to write in the course of arguing online about What is Art?).

The thing that's new to me is being able to put up images of my work so easily, and having other people able to see what I'm doing, and to comment. This is a huge extension of the art-work talking I've done for so many years.

I started thinking about what that looks like, and didn't have any ideas until I was looking at my blog hits.

What clearer way to show one side of my interconnectedness than to show the way the hits on my blog go up when I post to Studio Friday?










I don't have an image that shows the blogs I read, but I have found dozens of blogs with interesting content that inform, intrigue, and inspire my days, and extend my work in new directions. Thank you, Studio Friday, for being such a positive part of all this!

Postcard from the Philippines!

My beautiful postcard arrived today from Macky in the Philippines! Macky took this gorgeous picture in a nature sanctuary. The butterfly stamps are the perfect addition.

Thank you!!!

And thank you, Meeta, for organizing the swap. I have enjoyed it very much!

foodie postcard swap

Ok, I'm not really a foodie, but I have aspirations.....

I joined Meeta's Blogger Postcards from Around the World swap.

Thanks for organizing this, Meeta! I'm enjoying seeing all the cards on people's blogs!

Here is the postcard I mailed today. We have lots of aspens and birches growing in the sandy soil of the upper part of Michigan's lower peninsula.

(If you look at a map of the USA, Michigan's lower peninsula is the mitten shape, surrounded by enormous lakes, at the northern edge of the country. If you ask a Michigander where something in Michigan is located, she will hold up her flat hand and point to part of it -- "Torch Lake is over here, by the tip of the little finger" for example.)

I'm giving my hands a rest from knitting. I'm almost ready to make the heel on sock 1. Team DPN needed a button, so I did that. Now I'll see if I can get all my team buttons into the sidebar......