Beautiful Balboa Park

There is a cactus garden near Florida Canyon in Balboa Park. This is a tremendous garden.

One of the facades of the restored 1915 World's Fair buildings along the prado. This is a must see part of our city.

The Botanical Garden Pavilion and what used to be the lily pond. I'm not sure the lilies will ever be re-planted but it was magnificent when they were there. There are still lots of gorgeous Koi floating around in it, dashing through the shadows and chasing each other.

September has hit....UPDATED

We almost squeaked through the summer with a nice cool one, except for infernos here and there but today it was, in the nice coastal city I live in, 104 degrees on the shade patio at 1:30 pm.   The sun made it 111 degrees according to our  neighbor's garage thermometer.  That agrees with a LA area friend's report of 111, too.  It was horribly hot.  The little birds flew away to the lake and the river!

  September is the month we all fear.   

I'm not knitting the sweater until this is over.  Tonight a tiny cloud was in the North West sky.  Alas, it has now vanished into nothingness.  I wonder if one of those men who stare at goats got it?  Shame on them if they did!

I did want to give you a lovely picture so here it is.  Fern Canyon in the big bird aviary in San Diego Zoo, two Januarys ago.

A "river" runs through it.  It's a lovely place.

Add the Denim and some Zips..

Blue Denim

Some stick note pad love, and some Zips....

All bundled up.

Sorry this is partway bass akwards but I'm ending a rather long day here and not thinking so well. I need to get into the comfy chair with my book. Amelia Peabody and her hubby are excavating a new tomb. Woo hoo.. and just in time for Halloween- well, almost!

So, I hope you enjoyed the photos of making a Packet and were maybe inspired. This is the best I've felt, mentally, for a long, long time.

The IBOL Packet

I didn't have any suitable ribbon so I had to use sisal. I hope it comes in handy for something.

The packet contains pins, machine needles, handsewing needles, various colors of threads, and some needle threader/cutters. The bundle wrapping material is a sort of goemetric design 100% cotton material that was green, since the email from TheIBOLguy said that Iraqi's seemed to like greens. This I can understand so well, because green is my favorite color, besides Pink, that is!

I had no green outer wear weight fabric, so sent blue cord and blue denim. Wanted to send something different than a lot of cotton prints which it seems they will have plenty of.

The yarn is shades of greens and it was hard to give up. But I thought of someone in far off Northern Iraq knitting or crocheting it into something nice and warm for kids, so my little internal struggle was over. Yay!

The yarn is lovely shades of clear greens.  These piccies were all taken with the camera phone which seems to have a problem with greens.  They all look a lot more brownish then the clear sort of apple greens they are supposed to be

Iraqi Bundles of Love...Something to feel good about in Life- with the capital "L"

These three sites give you all the information you need for this year.


FAQs

BUILDING A BUNDLE how to's

WHAT TO SEND

Don't worry except that your bundle must be in the mail system by October 1st.  I'm sending mine on Monday and packing day is tomorrow.  I promise piccies...

Smile, this is a great thing to do, and this year is designated for Northern Iraq, for the Tikrit orphanage.   At least that is my understanding.  But you all know I'm a little kookie and can't read well.

A wonderful person who lives in Hawaii has organized this at least since 2009, probably longer than that.  Be sure to look at the pictures link HERE at the main page for IBOL.  Yes, it is a Zipped file but Windows explorer will open them after you down load them.

OMG! I ♥ IBOL!    On Facebook, if you are a fan...

Happy Cows Video making Contest

I know some of you out there are in the farm belt.  So, I'm letting you know there is a contest for making a "Happy Cows" song video.  The top prize is $1500  Woo hooo!

HERE is the link to the web page to hear the song, and to download it.   Go Francis Thicke!  Yay!!


Go on, have some fun and it's for a good cause.  Beware, the song might be just as brain-colonizing  as Grist, that Beacon in the Smog, says it is.

Salwar Kameez

Just try to find a pattern for one and you run into a Himalayan Mountain range of people selling the sets without any shame at all, using google for the search words "salwar kameez patterns".  I've come to the conclusion that Wikipedia has THE BEST PATTERN just laid out by my feet!  I'll make my own pattern and use the kameez sleeves and salwar leg fittings details that I find on the sellers' websites, since they scotch the search with the word PATTERN in Google.

I can't knit the sweater.  The twisting for the cables right now just hurts my wrist something fierce.  And I can't use the computer as much because of my eyes.  So, I'm WELL behind in reading all my treasured and belovéd blogs.  Sorry, my friends.  I will catch up little by little because Blogs are one of the most lovely (LOVELY I tell you!) features of the whole cyberspace phenom. 

I will leave you with a beautiful Koi picture taken by my DD. 

 And one of the lovely Spanish Village Vistas.. through the arch to the Art Glass.....

All this goodness is in Balboa Park.  I love Balboa Park. 

Cthulhu ... Hallelujah Chorus

BUHAHAHAHAHAHA!

The crazies making these spoofy, spooky things are after mine own heart, I tell ya!

Thanks to B for letting me in on these myriad tributes out there!  Oh my dear friends, what WOULD we do without YouTube and LolCats?

A found photo ......

We just can't believe how far he has come since that day (October 28th 2009) when he came home to his Forever Home.

I was editing my Google albums and found this photo of Wolfie taken when he had just stepped out of the Jeep about a year ago. He is a wonderful little fellow.

The minute I saw his photo on the County shelter web page, I knew I wanted this little dog.  What a blessing he's been for us.




And for all you Mutts Comic strip lovers there is THIS comic strip.

Beautiful Balboa Park

The Buildings are all from the 1915 World Fair, and have been rebult to be solid and worthy of notice.

Come have a look around. You will be delighted. The Zoo and Spanish Village is very near by, too.
The koi pond is HUGE, and the Japanese Gardens are magnificent as is the Pavilion Green House.

A cheap cardboard Charka for Designer Yarns.

NOTE:  Never should I post at night after a certain time.  And yes Fuzzarelly, it is, indeed Charka.  Thank you! :o)

I was searching the web for a wooden box-type of  Chakra spinner that I could make, and this is what I did find. I'm pretty impressed with it, and just might use some boxes from around here, and the engineering know how of DH, to make one of these things. It looks like a very fun thing to do.

Charka Yarn Spinning Wheel

The only problem I can see is that DH will blow a gasket if I ask him to help with this, since he assembled  me a Loet wheel a few years ago that I've hardly touched.

That's a strange sort of Ex Hippy thing to do, you say?  But, think about it.  This sort of Ghetto Technology is hard to resist!

Last time we visited Santa Cruz, my DH said that IF that WHEEL went with us and I did NOT USE  IT, he would LEAVE it there as there was NO way he was carting it BACK with us.  I looked into his baby blue eyes and ascertained that he was telling the absolute truth of the matter.  It stayed home.

Completely unrelated to the topic but very cool also..

Papasan Chair Solar Cooker

Very very cool, man..

True Knitting Content

At last, some knitting content. And it isn't even winter here!

The spunky pink/blue lavendar striped TrekkingXXL socks are done.

The purple Hempathy fingerless mitts are done. Yay! No more purple,navy blue or black for me, ever. Gah! These were knit on "0" DPNs which is a lot better fabric than the size "1"s. Just from comparing the two sets of glove/mitts I've made so far, the thickness of these is better than the green ones made earlier. I think these will be warmer. Also, this mitt got pulled down on my hand a little, and it looks too short; it's actually longer than this picture suggests.

The Manly/Beastly Aran Sweater is the only BIG COMPLICATED project I'm going to work on this winter, the main squeeze. Then, when I'm tired of that, probably PDQ (translation- "When my head contains no more hair to pull out") there will be a couple of chicken shaped tea cozies with swirly orange or pink designs in their mid-sections - no more black! - for change of pace knitting.

I wish you all the best for all your knitting. It's a wonderful craft. I've also been making some necklaces like all the Jillaroos wore in "McCload's Daughters". They are simple and, to me, really beautiful. Just a large bead and a black leather slipknots tie off. The beads were on sale at Michaels and JoAnn's. I'm in bead heaven when there are sales. Yahooo!

September 11 2001

Lest we forget...

I lit a candle for all the innocent lives lost on that day, as well as for all the innocent victims of violence around the World as well.

Someday, before this "little ball of rotting rock", thank you Robert Frost for the image, turns to a cinder in a Super Nova, I hope we, if we are still here, have learned to treat each other with such compassion and generosity that all wars have ceased.

May you walk with Beauty all around you.

Found November 10th 2009

Right after he was found we weighed Button in.

Here he is next to a penny. Still very tiny, this little fellow who was hard to feed. He wanted to be outside in his glorious world.

This is the box we found for him, and his "wet" foods.. dried grass with dew, we reckoned would smell best, as well as some blossoms we knew all tortoises love to eat.

Tort Report

Today, taken this morning

Taken in February

Little Button and his same clutch brother, Mosquito. The Quarter next to Button shows that he has grown a little but not very much. The next test is look at his back bottom plate. If it's dividing or has divided that means he's getting bigger. Of course we could weigh him but I didn't record the "found" weight on anything we kept. duh!

Little Button doesn't eat a lot but he is growing. Button is the baby we found a long time after we found his three brothers and so he was out there, "feral", for a good long time, eating dried grass and staying out of the way of beaks and claws, and apparently, human hands. Had he wandered to the front yard under the gate, he could have ended up like one of his other sibs, dead at the edge of the road.

Added a smashing Vegan Blog under Foodie Pink Day lily

R sent me the link to this blog, and it's fabulous.   My daughters are very good vegan cooks, so they always have an eye out for interesting things. 

I've never seen anything like this for vegan food restaurant fare, except a little Hillcrest Restaurant where they served butternut squash soup with a tiny pinch of nutmeg on top years and years ago.

Have a look at Chloe's Blog

And this link for cupcakes.. wow wow wow!

This came at just the right time for me.  I'm so bored with my food because I can't have this and can't have that.  I know, it's whining to complain about food when the only thing wrong is that you can't eat certain things.  There are at least a billion people in the world who would trade places with me.  *slinks off to the dungeon to FLING self on the rack*

Copyrights, et al, Begorra..

About the side bar changes...

So, say you are a friend of mine,  I will not mind if you keep a photo, no worries.

But it's rather odd that news agencies from various places, who should know better, should ignore common courtesy and snag photos, or someone else be willing to take flower photos to sell to card companies and ignore my first copyright notice.  Therefore, I must protest.   Be kind.  Ask my permission.  I'm sure that I would be flattered and grant it, but you must ask me.

I'm finished with the Hempathy mitts.  Next small project is going to be a chicken tea cozy.  And the big project is the Blessed Aran sweater.  That is, when my wrist is fully healed.

The saga of the wrist began when a small doggie slipped up behind me in the hallway next to the linen closet.  At that time my attention was thoroughly engaged with poking down a McCostco sized Kleenex  box, from the tip top shelf, with my cane, a very handy tool for many other things.  Just as the box began to fall at the normal velocity of 32 feet per second per second, the dog started scratching his ear, distracting me enough to stand dumbly still as the box corner crashed into my wrist and bounced to the floor.

After hopping around for awhile both in pain and to avoid tripping over the dog who then fled, I realized that something unspeakable had just happened.  The titanium in my wrist was the main worry.  Had I broken it away from the bone?  Had the box just mashed the skin and nerves and ligaments underneath, or was this going to be a  really big problem, one involving large needles, scalpels, blood and surgical gowns?  After awhile I sat down and peeked at the wrist, and saw a point of contact, the size of a needle prick, slowly going puffy.  It was three days before the next knee thinga, this hadn't made me pass out, and so far so good. 

When I did show the injury to my rheumatologist three days later, it still wouldn't support any weigh.  She called for x-rays.  Two days later I'd stuck the wrist in a brace left over from the reaaally bad thing a few years ago, and waited for a call.   Three days  out word got to me that the doctor wanted me to see a hand specialist.  FREK!

So, 13 days after the injury, the diagnosis was for bone bruise .  I took a VERY big breath and smiled back at my surgeon.  There will be NO cortisone shot in a joint the size of a home made biscuit, and no surgery to repair anything.  I'm one lucky puppy.  Of course, I AM banned from poking things off the top shelves of the house storage places but still good-to- go for knitting.  Yay!  After that visit we were in the neighborhood of my favorite LYS, so I stopped in to look for Odd Balls for hats, no joy,  and another set of bamboo DPNs in"0"  for mitts and the soles of socks.  I almost typed in "souls".  Socks do have those, too, yes?  I'm sure I hear them talking to me as they come to life on the needles.

Back to accidents.  I'd make  a YouTube for the proper way to do this maneuver, this poking down of things from top shelves, but it could not possibly be as entertaining as one on how NOT to do this, especially with a small and sneaky little doggie in the house!  

We are watching the first installment of "Black Books" which is the best comedy I've seen since Hot Fuzz and Monty Python.  Brilliant stuff!  Yesterday my sis and I went shopping for jewelry bits and pieces, and today we are putting them together.  A Very Dangerous Establishment has been found within  blocks of one of our houses, a REAL Bead Store.  OMG!  Beads on all the walls!

Food Fights, International

This story is not new, but now it is international.  A land grab such as this is not limited to something the size of, say, Britain VS India, which was bad enough, but is now going to cause people on basically a whole continent to die fighting to get enough food for themselves and their children. 

This is evil.  We can look right into the face of this and see it to be so.  I, for one, will not support in any way a company who takes part in this, nor any company that profits from it,  and I will protest to any company that does either because it is so very, VERY wrong.  It is a heinous crime to support these sorts of things. 

Goldman Sachs, Monsanto, you guys are IT!

How we learn

DH sent me something very interesting today.  So I am putting it up to see if it's useful to my dear 6 readers.   It's an article from the New York Times on how we actually learn.  This is an excerpt from that article, and the link within it goes to a PDF of the research paper:

"These findings extend well beyond math, even to aesthetic intuitive learning. In an experiment published last month in the journal Psychology and Aging, researchers found that college students and adults of retirement age were better able to distinguish the painting styles of 12 unfamiliar artists after viewing mixed collections (assortments, including works from all 12) than after viewing a dozen works from one artist, all together, then moving on to the next painter. "

So, the game at the Rice Site, of Famous Paintings, is good for your brain!  There's a button down in the side bar so please go grab a link for your favorites.  You will love testing your brain there. 


The complete article  is HERE  , at the New York Times.

A Peaceful run into dock

 

The mast looks like it has captured the sun.

A cooling trend looks like this in San Diego

 

We have nice cool weather back, yay! See the Fog bank?

And, that big, blue and white ship is a NOAH research vessel or maybe not. Scripps Institute of Oceanography, right up the coast, might own her.

Apparently I can't spell that late at night!

Skooner in the Channel

This ship is from the Festival of Sail that ran until today.  There are others like it but this is the only one I've seen so far.  We are infrequent visitors to the Channel.

It's always exciting to see an old wooden boat on the bay, fully set, and full of people having fun. We think this one does Dinner Cruises.. Not sure.  Just joking!

Talk like a Pirate day is just around the corner! Avast ye scurvy dogs!

My Formal Goodbye to FaceBook

This, from DemocracyNow! is why:

"And an environmentalist with a long rap sheet for various radical actions has been sentenced to another four months in prison for having an online interaction with another activist. A US district judge in Michigan ruled that Rod Coronado had violated the terms of his parole after he accepted a Facebook friend request from fellow radical activist Mike Roselle. In accepting Roselle’s friend request, Coronado’s action amounted to one click of his computer’s mouse. Coronado was also using what his parole officer called an "unauthorized" computer. "

My question is, "Does it matter about the computer unless it was one that belonged to NSA or the CIA or the FBI?"   As things stand nowadays, don't all computers now belong to them anyway? 


Do you know who you are talking to at any given time in any web based game, or in facebook?  Or who is watching?  Look at ALL the money that is being spent and you can see that it's not possible to have very much privacy.

This from Wikipedia:

"In 2006, while imprisoned for felony conspiracy and awaiting trial on further charges, Coronado expressed a change in his personal philosophy inspired by fatherhood. In an open letter, he wrote, 'Don't ask me how to burn down a building. Ask me how to grow watermelons or how to explain nature to a child," explaining that he wants to be remembered, not as a "man of destruction but [as] a human believer in peace and love for all.' "


People do change over time and experience.

I've never liked Facebook.

And, when Twitter, the little evil twin, was convinced by the government here to not do a scheduled maintenance during the Iranian Protests, Twitter went along with it.  When staging a protest here, activists were arrested for using Twitter.  So,  exactly who is it that is free?

Pumpkin and Santa Tea sets

The unfortunate pumpkin tea set suffered the "new formula" of Orange Fizz glaze substituted for the poisonous "Orange Fizz" of yore, and it came out unshiney and streaky. The good news is that there is no Cadmium in the glaze. The bad news is self evident. DH says that we can be happy, at least, that it isn't poisonous. I concur. It is nice to know that our set will not poison the kids and would pass the FDA tests with flying colors.

Always the optimist, DH also remarked that pumpkins in the fields are streaky and dull, before they are waxed with orange wax and set out - in their glowing orange glory- for the unsuspecting grocery shoppers. I know this to be true, having grown a few pumpkin vines in the compost pile from year to year when we were young, as well as having taken the kidlets to the fields of "Pick UR Own". So, in his view, the set looks more real.

The Santa tea set came out gloriously red and perfect except for Santa's top knot which can't be seen - it stuck to the shelf above it and must, therefore, be re-glazed and re-fired. The gray beard came out a lot (a LOT) darker than I expected it to, and I'll just have to say that Santa is in his younger years, rather than his jolly dotage.

I think I'll change the table cloth, too. It looks like it's been trampled by herds of toy buffalo.