Knitting Time

My little musings for the day.

I am getting no where at all with my knitting.  So, today I've decided to just get the sweater out and hold it for awhile.  Sometimes playing with beads and rock slabs ignites the desire to make things; maybe holding my knitting will work for this knitting slump.

Blogspot is misbehaving.  Hopefully it doesn't go down.  It's too bad about bloggers moving on, but maybe it's like anything else.  It has to fade out when the new rolls around.  Facebook is all the rage now, though I honestly don't understand why.  It's not very personal  and is shot full of security risks.  It put a comma on the end of privacy warnings, when what should be there is a period.

I hope holding the sweater and imagining it finished and being worn will do something for this "Ocean of Blahs" I'm in!  Dead in the Water!  Maybe this doldrums is because the biggest political fights are over, temporarily. 

Actually the "health care debate" was a human rights issue.  That, health care as a human right,  is HUGE compared to anything political.  Not couching the health care struggle as a human rights issue was the first mistake anyone made.  Only those who are truly wealthy are safely in harbors at nightfall.  Certainly this harbor is not available to people living in a house that is a million dollars on paper, and needing 500k worth of upgrades.  That sort of silly paper wealth doesn't  make most of us millionaires.  It makes us vulnerable to the vultures in life but doesn't make us  millionaires. 

The Responsibility project...

THIS is an interesting project that was started by Liberty Mutual.  I think it's a worthy project and also interesting from a human rather than a simply legal stand point. 

AP article from Yahoo about where those BIG ideas came from...

What fools mortals be.

This article   shows just how far to the right the Republicans have been moved by whatever forces they have been catering to in the last several years. 

I really think Palin should sit down and shut up,  frankly.  It's heady being the darling of something, apparently anything, but she should be paying more attention to the legacy of the Grand Old Party, and less to being Evita Peron.

If you have a very ill relative or child, you can thank sensible people on both sides of the aisles for their hard work over and above the rancorous and brutal big money puppets who disrupted what should have been a victory for our joining the civilized world and not letting little children die for lack of care.  Mothers and babies as well, I might add, are dying at a rate that puts us down a LONG way from the top nations in mother/child mortality.  Check it out for yourselves, Palin and McCain.

Wondermark

A friend from KR posted THIS SITE, and it's so wonderful that I'd like to share it with you all, some of whom I know are crazy about cartoons, and keep track of it myself! It will be in the side bar. Yay for fun!

My sister and I spent the day together yesterday, and we started getting my Stuff organized. MDS loves to organize things and frankly, I need the help. We are starting on the studio end of the big room, which doesn't have a door or even a wall (!), and is the logical place to organize first.

C.R.A.P. Discussions:

After moving things all over the place for the windows into my studio, and storing the kitchen goods there during remodeling, my poor studio is a junktumble pit full of what I call C.R.A.P. (Creative Rubble And Projects). My personal space there has loads of potential for being a great work area for sewing, quilt making,and a drapery manufacture, along with a set up for bead, metal and lapidary.

So SOOO boring, I know. But, enter C, looking for someone to boss around, and you have the beginnings of organization!

The "Before" picture follows below, or, because of "upsidedownness" of Blogger, leads below....

Before... After will take more time... few weeks-months- decades

The Dodd Financial Reform Package.

This is of utmost importance, and already off on the wrong foot.  You can't hear any more coherent discussion of why this is so than in this interview with the possible exception of Kai Wright's speaking style. I found that irritating.

We can't let this be another "Kabuki Theater" for the masses, while the foxes raid the hen houses again, and again.



Prepare to Speak out! Do something! Write!

Be ready for April First..

This is a fauxberry pie that looks like a dessert but is really a main dish, for all you pie lovers, and THIS is a dessert that looks like a chicken pot pie.

There are lots of interesting things on that whole web page.

Have fun and go ahead, play with your food!

The Blue Danube Waltz, a very fun YouTube

Didn't that look like lots of fun?

EDITED!!! ALERT!!!

Here's another down there yonder, that is wonderful, less improv going on, and that link from "Amazed" who thought a little more publicity would further the cause of young musicians, which is a very good thing in some ways, and in some ways, Ghastly! Mon Dieu!

Amazed has a hot link for us!...

And THIS of Mozart's "Sonata in D Major for two pianos".

I have to say, Great Theater!. Hurrah for the Video makers as well in this!

N/A InENEway to Roe VS ...er.. nm

New old bookshelf for the Cooks' Books.

DH now does all the day to day cooking. I'm hard to feed.

Anyway, only three books aren't on this. Otherwise it is all the cookbooks and even the binders and shoe box-on the shelf with the little snowman Hershey's Kiss container. Pretty pathetic for someone who has cooked, and loved it, for so many years. That black shoe box has tons of recipes clipped from here and there, and tomorrow I'll put Mother's recipe box on the shelf and get rid of that re-cycled binder from AT&T!

Update of giant Echie take over of Tulip pot.

The buds were set, so surgery was not advised. Bloom on little harbingers of Spring!

The other turkey platter sized succulent posted earlier HERE is an Aeonium called "Cyclops". This one is almost as big around. In drought times, you have to love these plants. They are beautiful things!

PS. I've learned how to backtrack here to post links. This could very dangerous for readers so beware! I could go wild with it!!

My Mother's Recipe Book

Sometimes I thumb through this book to find favorites from my childhood. Mother notes that she made "See's Candy Fudge" first in 1952 at the approximate cost of $1.64, and the recipe made around 5 pounds. By 1972, when she made another note, the cost had risen to $2.78, and by December of 1980, when she made a new note, the cost was $4.58.

Mother loved to make cakes, but time and energy ran out on her. I remember that she made "box cakes" after my little sister was born, except for one Red Velvet Cake for my birthday when I was, maybe, 15.

When the DDs were here in January, we went to a neighbor's garage sale. I bought a couple of book cases so that there would be more room for cook books. My collection is so SMALL! It hardly fills two shelves of that tall bookcase. Is it time to by more books? I get them used so as to have less "marital discord" over all my books.

Ok Ok, something really cute. It's a bakery for Dogs.

After that last post, I owe you!

I just was poking around the internet, looking at whatever there was out there about dogs and came across this page.

It's probably the best BAKERY for dog treats I've ever seen, and it's really just terrific eye candy of a site for humans who are baking obsessed; in other words, me!

The Pooch Barkery. WOOF!

Happy First Day of Spring....edited

This season, if it stays cool enough, is one of the sweetest ones in the year this far south in California. I know everyone on the east coast and in the northern tier of states is looking forward to it as well.

Now the knife...hehe sorry!

Easter is always my favorite holiday, and I'm looking forward to it. My mother always made me a new dress for Easter when I was very small. It's one of the happiest memories of mine from childhood, which ended about when I was 7 or 8. My childhood was over by then.

I never thought about it until recently, but childhood is quite often a victim of brutality. In my case, I realized that something was terribly wrong with one of my parental units by that age, and it wasn't anything I did or didn't do; it was my Psycho Dad.

You also know that there's not a whole heck of a lot you can do about it but just stay out of the way, be happy in school if it's possible, and try to become more invisible if it's not. In some convergence of terror, by the time I was 9 years old I had a fifth grade teacher who made me the class goat, and with all that was happening in this freak show stuff going on at school and at home, I grew up overnight.

There is sometimes help, Thanks to God, in the form of kind people, that is if they get the time to act. There were a few kind people who took me into their hearts. So, I guess I think of them at Easter. Having had the blessing of Kind people, like Jesus, who cared enough to help a little kid, my life was spared even more trauma. Color me Grateful, for Easter, for many reasons.

Beautiful Little Earrings

 

These were made by an artist in Santa Cruz and are a sweet surprise, a gift I received recently. I have been trying to get a very good picture of them ever since! I've got a lot to learn about shiney things and taking photos of them with this camera! I need a soft backlit whitetable, but can't find the proper glass to make the table. The old one has vanished..Poof!

Interview of Senator Kucinich and Ralph Nadar on Healthcare and the war. Democracy Now!

This is amazing. I think, after listening to it three times, that I finally get what Dennis Kucinich is saying.

In my opinion, both this interview, and he, are deserving of a hearing.



We need to do something on our own, because the Congress is paralyzed. Here's a web page I don't want to lose track of. Single Payer Action

Ralph Nadar's scathing remarks on the two wars are worth hearing, too. He and Kucinich draw together the threads of these wars into a fabric that shows we, the people, have to really hear and understand the costs of continuing them. And we have to do something. Nadar really makes some harsh points of the reasons for the demoralizing collapse of the anti war movement. Instructive, insightful, and incisive.

Wolfie's Day Out

His coat will be trimmed for summer in a week, but he is so gorgeous it's almost a shame to do that. But he's too hot already!





This is his happy, happy little smile from being out and about and from receiving TWO little bones for being such a good boy at lunch. My sister, DH, and I went to Shelter Island after we had fish and chips at Mrs. Kelley's, aka Point Loma Fish Co., and if you are in the area, come eat there! Delicious food.

Ps. The mark on his tongue is from when he wrestled with the lime tree limb in his effort to impress his Arch Enemy, "The Dog on the Other Side of the Wall". A lime thorn got Wolfie, so his protector cut off all the lower limbs he could reach. Such a rascally little dog. I wish there was a video of Wolfie VS the Lime Tree, but alas, there is not.

Happy St. Patrick's Day all you Irish Hooligans!

I'm only a slice o' the feather as far as being Irish, as two maternal GG parents were from there.   But the DH had a full on Irish Grandma.  I remember her well as the gentle, kind lady whom I loved to bits.  

With such a deep Irish heritage, my kids can kick up their heels today and celebrate with that green beer and the wearin'o'the green.

And since Easter is trotting along PDQ, here's a pretty page from King Arthur Flour's Blog about making Easter Egg Cookies.

Tom Tomorrow Tells it like it is....

This is his public option story, from start to finish, in six easy to read frames.

And "The Terrorists" is going to be a cult film someday...  It's a Spoof, and this is the page to go see!  It's hilarious unless you really believe in Orange and Puce as terror levels and that every dark haired Greek is in a terror cell. 

It's for the fun factor, which everyone needs to raise "in these dark and dangerous times".  If you want a fun hit, just put that in your search engine bar and see how many times the trite phrase rolls up.

Knitting?  Well someone has to do it so a shadowy group in West Cape May has just cheered me up no end.  They are keeping the tree and other pole like structures warm in the transition time between Winter and Spring.  My daughter has a sharp eye for knitting stories!  Yay !!

Sylvia Plath

I hope you know who this is. She is hard to explain to anyone, outside of her poetry, something with which she blazed a trail like a meteor in the pantheon of modern poets, she lead a semi-secluded emotional life. Hidden lives are hard to plumb.

No one could use words the way she did. I hope that somewhere, in the Goodness of the Universe, she still exists and creates her pictures with the living Word.

"Let there be light, and there was light!"

13 cents from the Good Will in Michigan. I am so lucky sometimes. Sylvia Plath

Oh, here's another one, Neurotic Poets, well, who isn't neurotic, when life has so damn many BIG ? marks?

 

The Well

It's a Salon.com space, and you are supposed to use a "real" name, though I'm sure that a "stage" name is used by Poets and other people who are normally classified as "Artists" with a capital "A".

Any way, I'll put it here if anyone is interested in looking more deeply into it.

The Well

PS. haha.. looking deeply, that is purely an accidental pun, as are a lot of things both pleasant and unpleasant in "Life" with a capital "L".

My sister and I are navigating some storm waters in our little boat named, of all things, "Stalwart". This is a journey that has no promised shore but there are lots of things to see along the way. Hokule'a, Star of Gladness, shall lead us.



Listen to the beautiful voice of Iz.....

Garn Studio Easter Calendar is up!

Here's a little Peace Offering.

Some knit and some crochet.....

Drops Easter Calender 2010

It is like an Advent Calender

Noam Chomsky on Obama's Foreign Policy, His Own History of Activism, and the Importance of Speaking Out

Yes, I'm a Peacenik, and long time Peace activist, so this little gadfly thing will pop up from time to time. But this is an enlightening and important talk, partly about the peace movement over time, so I'm hoping you will give it a look in.

Noam Chomsky on Obama's Foreign Policy, His Own History of Activism, and the Importance of Speaking Out

Guardian UK Article on American Congress

It's hard to get an American Press Corps, other than MSNBC, to tell things the way they are, particularly how the Democrats are committing suicide and taking us with them. So it's up to the papers in the UK.

Socialism is not what this is about. It's about corruption, political weenies, and an industry running scared, so sacred they will spend millions of dollars in buying influence and on TV time to muddy minds and obfuscate issues, so that their gravy train does not get derailed.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/cifamerica/2010/mar/11/disgrace-democrats-sabotage-health-bill

God Bless the British Free Press! And thank you DH!

PS. And there is THIS Piece , more about feelings but that's mainly what we run on these days, what with the BIG EGOS in Washington running all the way to save big banks with all our road building money..and the school building money,and, dare we say, the health care money? These aren't Brits talking here, this is an American.

Spring Forward!!

Remember! Change the clocks tonight! Spring Forward!

Tiny Begonia Blossoms.

Unidentified Volunteer Bulbs in the Back Forty. They have taken over and it would be OK with me if the foliage didn't die back so fast!

The perennial tulips...

The little unfortunates find themselves contending with a largish upstairs neighbor. The maintenance crew (me) responsible for building buddy plants in containers thought that the dirt in this one was, "unoccupied". Time for a little wine before the surgery, wouldn't you say?

This just In: New Candidate for public office not even human!

Murray Hill  INC that is, testing the waters for what it believes is an unstoppable force, once it catches on with other non human "individuals".

And no, this is not the Onion!  


"Until now, corporate interests had to rely on campaign contributions and influence-peddling to achieve their goals in Washington," the candidate, who was unavailable for an interview, said in a statement. "But thanks to an enlightened Supreme Court, now we can eliminate the middle-man and run for office ourselves."

William Klein, a "hired gun" who has been enlisted as Murray Hill's campaign manager, said the firm appears to be the first "corporate person" to run for office and is promising a spirited campaign that "puts people second, or even third."

And you thought it would never come to this.  Muhahahahaha!  LMAO!!

Thank you L! 

Keith Olbermann about his father's experience.. Very moving.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KOe1LJ2y0iA&feature=digest

then this:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VLlqZ2_sANo&NR=1

 

Our baby Button, so tiny and fragile.

Another Button, a gift from afar

Baby Button, Today

She's still very tiny but she is eating from time to time.

New Header

That's WAS Saint Michael, my personal FAV of an Angel, killing the devil. I want so much for this to happen. But..... the reality is that you live life with joy to the end and to the fullest for all the people who didn't get the chance to do so. It's a way of honoring them.

(I recently edited it to the Torrey Pines Beach header.)





Housework rave warning!!! Please avert your eyes if you are severely allergic to housework, which I fully understand. I'm still not sure it's actually GOOD for you, other than keeping the dust, to which I AM allergic, to a minimum amount.

Got a Swiffer, it is so much fun to use! It's like getting a Christmas present in March! I'm loving that little invention. I use covers for it, some micro cloths that are thin, and I will knit some micro fiber yarn covers, too. Yesterday, in some revolutionary shopping news, I finally found the right and proper storage for 5 minute artisan bread dough. Tomorrow, if all goes well, will be dough making day. I'll be joining the ranks of the 5 minute bread fanatics!

Yesterday's Bulletin- edited when wits returned..

My knees are in therapy, so that part is good. I get them "back" in one more week, all polished and shined up and ready to roll.

My sister is adjusting to new realities of life. So her life is going to be even harder. But she once reminded me, when things got rocky for her before, that we spring from the soil - all of our grandparents owned small farms. Our strength and resilience comes from them, well, three of them. One lit out and was seldom seen again. heehee. This new adventure will just take more time and a lot more effort, but no one is in a quitting mood! Needs must..

Yesterday started out bad, for me and my best laid plans, sounds sort of like I laid an egg doesn't it? Anyway, the day ended just about like we thought it would, so that is fine.

When we started out on this Medical Marathon, DH driving across half the county from one clinic back and forth for the two of us, I had grabbed my knitting, the purple Hempathy mitts. I was so ready to get the one finished and cast on the other. Anyway, they are stored in a small, zippered lunch pack, and the last thing I did wrong was to try to hastily zip it shut, in the dark and without my specs, after moving things around in it. A loop of dark purple yarn was sticking out if the teeth of the zipper. Mon Dieu!

Unfortunately, as I had shifted things around inside the bag to check that the tool pouch still was intact -I always need that measuring tape - a small ball of yarn, unhappily the one attached to the knitting, slipped out and skipped away, rolling under the knitting stand. Formulas may be written for a lot of other reasons but here was one for knitting drama. Dark room + dark purple + dim wits + hurry = disaster. I closed the zipper right over the yarn.

THEN and only then did I turn on the light, put on my glasses, and try to get that unforgiving Hempathy out of the the treads of death. It broke, of course. With tears in my now more useful eyes, and fighting back a real meltdown, I tossed the bag into the corner so the dog wouldn't get to it, lest he find it a tasty snack while we were gone past his dinner time. The bag was a used lunch pack,after all. In his "travels" he may have seen one, and his razor-like food intelligence wouldn't easily forget it! Anyway, I dashed into the bedroom, grabbed my current book and ran for the car.

At least plenty of adrenaline was coursing through my veins, and I guarantee I was fully 110% awake by the time we left!

Next time, with plenty of light and not at the last minute, the take along project will be put together and stored - closed- well before the time to leave hurls around the corner on two wheels. I have no idea how to fix this yarn break, spit splice doesn't work on Hemp, as far as I know.

The Estonians are at it again!

They have a web cam up. it might already be on rav but I did this the hard way, lol!

You have to go HERE first, then change the page to English if you need to, there is a tiny British flag in the side bar.

Then choose "White Tailed Eagle Cam" link.

Then choose what app you want to see it in (I chose the Windows Media player) and, "Bob's your uncle". :+)

Wow, there's a lot more cams,too, fun fun!! It's a kid's paradise.

Web cam of sitting hummingbird

You'll like this... courtesy of Rho.. ty Rho!

Pheobe Allen's Web cam

You can toggle it full screen to get rid of the side bar.

I'd been wanting to do this with the blue jays in the back garden but they don't come back anymore after some incidents with the ignorant neighbor.

Got to dash so you are spared a Royal Blue RANT against that sort of ignorance.

This just in..hang onto your wallets..

The Second Life web page started it off by declaring our money to be virtual, and this started the financial markets rocking. Obviously it is not good to know the truth, but they did it anyway. Talk about financial terrorism!

Read all about it here!

Chandra and the black hole in Sagittarius

I've been looking for something to explain the disappearance of my knitting mojo, and I found THIS: a black hole that eats things in the universe, mostly energy, but it is a poor eater.

However, my bet is that if the scientists at Harvard who work with Chandra, could see the stream of knitting bits that fly up at night toward the moon and get caught in the Hole's influence, it might explain why this particular Black Hole seems to eat so little energy.

Due to the yet unknown characteristics of the recently discovered "yarn theory" - closely related to "sting theory"- socks and other disappearing garments made from yarn rather than string, we are talking here about UFOs for instance, all of these missing objects now can be attributed to the Sagittarian Black Hole eating them, rather than the energy which it should be ingesting from surrounding stars.

In this way,we have two problems neatly solved:
The first is, why does the Sagittarian black hole eats so little energy?
And, secondly, the un-academic but ever interesting "lost sock" Mystery, with UFO's and lost knitting mojo thrown in as a neat little side equation.

Fun stuff

Go HERE and click on Strange Vehicles. Very fun! It will cheer you up, I promise.

Well, that one motorcycle is x rated. sorry.. don't look.

Outcasts United

You will not want to put this book down. It's an amazing true story about Life, and how it will bring together people in a dance of Miracles in the midst of "Man's Inhumanity to Man" that are so beautiful you will never forget having read about it. Stellar!

Pickles..... heehee

She knows when you are sleeping, 

She knows when you're awake. 

She knows if you've been bad or good, hehe

thank you Pogonip!

The Most Dangerous Cake in the world

Go to Tati's Blog, September 16th, 2008, and copy it out, make it, and enjoy!

I'm too easily confused by Facebook - Heck, I'm easily confused about the date lately!- and I still don't tweet, no phone that can do that you see, so I've started being more faithful to the blogisphere. I had neglected my lists for too long, sadly, and really missed reading them.

I will really try to get out of this knitting funk. But Spring is coming, all the fruit trees and ornamental trees are blooming. I want to be out with the camera, too. There's a huge tulip tree in a small park near here that you must see. It's going to rain this weekend so I'll try to get there before then. We are on call for my sister, but maybe the tree will outlast the rain drops.

Yes my brain's in hyperdrive....

I don't profess to understand even half of this, but I know you will all be entertained.

Futility Closet

And I promise to be quiet now. Good night!

This is really cool, no really REALLY cool..

Kalandia Camp, Palestine Woman's Handicraft Co-operative.  Could be East L.A. if I didn't know better.

This is a humdinger of a python.

First this Beautiful little bird, In the big new Aviary, have no idea what it is.

As they say....

Life is what happens while we are busy making plans.

I have a very sick sister.  And this will take awhile, but it will be Ok pretty soon, so meanwhile I will show you some Zoo pictures of snakes, the beautiful and deadly, for which I have no names whatsoever, little birds and some other pictures of deadly places, as it turns out.  Beauty amidst the rubble, one of them. 

There may be a string of snakes to come, and they are even more beautiful in person, AS long as there is a thick piece of bullet proof glass between you and them.  Let's see, that is an object there.. ok we are good to publish...

Hope is the thing with feathers..... Thank you, Patrick! I love you!

Merino Tomato Fleece

This was one bad AWFUL tomato in the basket. hehe

Following String of Racist Incidents, UC San Diego Students Occupy Chancellor's Office

Following String of Racist Incidents, UC San Diego Students Occupy Chancellor's Office

I told you so. There is always an undertone of institutionalized prejudice and racism here in this city, and is NOT an anomaly. I would like to see this change but, in truth, with the polarization that accelerated when Bush took office, all these things have just gotten worse here. I'm really sick and tired of such racist ways in what should be a friendly, open and beautiful city.

All this could have been different here if more effort were just being put forth by people who think it's OK to have these attitudes and who don't care enough to change it to make our city really shine. I've known well educated bank presidents who were racists. This isn't just among the White Supremacists. And, it's not ok. It's wrong and it's deadly. This is California for crying out loud!