It's Wednesday

and it's time for a knitting update. Here is the most recent charity scarf I finished:

It is a simple garter stitch scarf in Moda Dea Cheri. That takes care of almost all of the novelty yarn Shelly sent me. Good thing, too. I was getting kind of tired of garter stitch. Next I cast on a One Row Scarf:


The yarn is Plymouth Encore Colorspun in #7990. No color name, just a number. It's not a very good photo, but is shades of pinks. A better picture will be forthcoming, I promise.

Summer In Mississippi

It is hot. Miserably so. Not a breath of air stirs to offer scant relief. The heat clings to your face, an acid that cannot be washed away. Heat that makes you want to claw your own skin off in a vain attempt to rid yourself of its presence.

It is humid. Miserably so. Mugginess creeps over you. A thousand tiny slugs leave their damp trails on your body. Everything is sticky. Your skin. Your clothes. Even your hair. At the end of the day, your clothes must be peeled from your body. For now, you must endure their grasping, clutching, tugging at your every move.

It is only May. Summer is yet to come. It will get worse before it gets better. Much worse.

It will be a long, hot, miserable time until Fall. Many months must pass before November comes with it's cooler temperatures. Before winter finally arrives, bringing with it the all too brief respite from the misery that is

Summer In Mississippi.

What's In A Name?

CreateCraft is having a contest on her blog. She wants us all to tell how we came up with our blog titles. She's offering some really nice prizes, too. Head on over and check her out.

Most of you know how I came up with my blog title, but for my newer readers, I'll relate the story again.

I originally started blogging in November 2005. My purpose was to do a daily sketch and I thought posting it to a blog would help hold me accountable. As I was setting up my blog, I was required to come up with a title. Now, I'm terrible at such things, so I just threw Sketches And More up there as a working title. I would change it when I thought of something better.

Time went by, but my imagination was not inspired.

More time went by, and I became more and more dissatisfied with my blog title, but I still couldn't think of anything that gripped me. I briefly changed my title to Thank God For Rubbermaid, with the tag line A Phrase Often Uttered By My Sparring Partners. But it didn't quite fit.

I finally came up with an idea. I held a contest! I really did. I held a contest to get suggestions for a blog title. I got lots of good suggestions:


Playing With Sticks--Perpetual Beginner
Lethal Creativity--Scattered Gemini
Perfecting New Patterns--Sus
Fine Martial Fiber--also by Sus
Crafty Kicks--Frotoe
Way Of The Drunken Knitter--Gator
Enter The Knitting--Also Gator
Black Belt, Snake Wrangling, Knitter--Ruth
Karate Yarns--Lou

The winning title was Fine Martial Fiber, and was coined by Sus. It incorporates the three aspects of my arts--fine arts, martial arts, and fiber arts.

That's how I got my blog title.

For You Mothers Out There

Saturday Sky

The sky was a uniform dull grey for most of the day. This was the only interesting spot. It's interesting how this photo turned out. What looks like little white clouds is actually spots through which the sun is trying to peek.


The final tournament of the spring season, and I didn't compete because of my wrist. There was only one black belt lady out there. I told her that if I'd known she'd be all alone out there, I would have gone out there and at least gone through the motions. I did help judge, and that was fun, but it meant I didn't get any pictures.

Cody competed, but didn't place in anything. I was hoping that being out there with other boys his own age and seeing how controlled and disciplined their kata were would inspire him to care more about getting his own kata into shape. It seems to have worked. I didn't get to see his empty hand, but his bo kata looked better than I've ever seen it. He still has a lot of room for improvement, but at least he's making the effort. That's what I was hoping for.

The gym that they had the tournament was miserably hot. It was so hot that at one point, I told sensei that I felt like I was at work! It was so hot that I didn't even feel like knitting. I just wanted to sit there and melt. I got home and drank a couple of big glasses of water, and I feel much better now.

To all the mothers who read my blog, Happy Mother's Day!

The Scaly Ones In My Life

I've been meaning to post new pictures of the scaly ones ever since I got my new camera, but I just haven't. But I know that some of you might not wish to see pictures of them, or would appreciate some warning, so I'll blather on about nothing for a while before getting to them.

My first thought when the alarm went off this morning was, "I've got to remember to call in sick!" Then, as my mind cleared and I became awake and aware, I realized that I didn't have to call in sick because I'd scheduled a vacation day for today! Yippee!

Ok, so I didn't do anything, but I didn't go to work either. While doing nothing, I finished two more charity scarves.


Yes, there are two different scarves there. They are made from Moda Dia Cheri in Pink. Yeah, I know that's kind of obvious, but it is the official name of the color. I do have one more ball of this, so there'll be a third scarf coming soon!

I want to thank everyone for their kind well-wishes in yesterday's comments. I had a better day today, but I am still feeling very tired and weak. I think it's mostly from the sweats and sleeplessness I've been having. Tomorrow is the last day I have to take the stuff, thank goodness!

Now, if you don't want to see snake pictures, stop here. K?..
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If you're still here, I'm assuming you have no problems with snakes, or at least looking at pictures of them.

These are my babies.

First up, we have Sunset. He is an amelanistic corn snake--sometimes called a red albino. The term albino is somewhat misleading here, because he does have red and yellow pigment. He simply lacks melanin which in snakes is black pigment. Sunny will be 4 years old this summer. He has the sweetest temperament. He is my goodwill ambassador. He is the one I get out to introduce people to snakes.


Next up is Snow. She is a female snow morph corn snake. This type is the first color morph bred with a double recessive gene. Snow morphs lack both red and black pigments. She is an '04 hatchling, and is currently my longest snake--topping out right at 50". She is my other goodwill ambassador, and is the one I consider my baby.


This pretty little lady is miss Scarlett. She is a bloodred morph. As she ages, the lighter spots and black lines will fade even more until she is almost solid red. This is the baby I thought I was going to lose a year and a half ago because she could not hold her food down. After getting some solid advice from one of the top corn snake breeders in the U.S. (isn't the internet a wonderful thing?), she has recovered nicely and is doing better than I ever expected. She is still very small for her age, but is growing steadily and will soon need a bigger tank. She is an '05 hatchling, and will be 3 years old in August.


Here we have Blaze. He was a freebie. When I bought Scarlett, he was thrown into the deal at no extra charge. I guess that's why I haven't seemed to build as much of an attachment to him as I have to the others. He doesn't have much personality, but otherwise is a good snake. He is also an amelanistic, but he carries the recessive gene for lavender. If I were to breed him to another snake who carried the recessive gene for lavender, I might end up with some purple snakes. He is almost 3 years old.

That's all of my corn snakes. I also have a ball python. This was a rescue snake. His owner moved in with his sister who wouldn't allow him to keep the snake in her house. So he brought the snake to me--temporarily. It's been two years now, and I don't expect I'll give Slider back. Slider is 4 years old.

This one is Cody's snake. He'd been bugging me to get him a ball python for years, so when he turned 12, I bought him Monty as a combined Christmas and Birthday present. Monty is 3 years old now, and no, he was not named after Monty Python. Cody didn't even know who that was. He named the snake after Monty Montgomery, the herpetologist in the A Series Of Unfortunate Events books.

Finally, I present to you the king: Onyx. He is a banded California King snake and will be 4 years old July 24th. He is not the first snake I've ever had, but is the first one I got when I decided to get back into snake-keeping.

He is by far my favorite snake. He has personality in spades, and is totally unpredictable. He is definitely not a goodwill ambassador due to his quirky nature, and well, he just doesn't like strangers. He also carries the dubious honor of being the only snake I have who has bitten me!

So there you have them. I hope you've enjoyed getting to know my snakies as much as I've enjoyed introducing them to you.

If you've made it this far, you deserve a special commendation!

Side Effects

So I've been on the steroids for 4 days now. I mentioned that they do have side effects. Over the course of the 4 days, there have been Not So Bad Side Effect Days, and Bad Side Effect Days. Today has definitely been a Really Bad Side Effect Day.

The post I was going to write today will have to wait. I'm going to bed.

A Postfull Of Pictures

Let's start with the scarf I finished last night:

followed by the scarf I finished today:

These scarves were knit from Sullivans Sereno yarn. Frankly, I was very disappointed in this yarn. Shelley sent me 4 balls of it, and every last one had at least one knot in it. Two of them had more than one. And I'm not talking about the kind of knots in which the yarn simply gets wrapped around itself. No, these were knots joining two separate bits of yarn. Well, that's the last of it, and I'm glad of that.

I've already cast on another scarf. This time I'm using the Mode Dea Cheri--which is the light pink yarn in the middle of this pile:

Speaking of pink, here is another picture of these tiny flowers.

Yeah, I know. They're not pink. They're purple. But a yard full of them, shimmering there against the green of the grass, the magic of the sunlight transforms them all into a radiant blanket of neon pink.

I'll bet most of you didn't know that I sometimes dabble in writing poetry. Some of my longtime readers may remember that I'd posted a poem I've written shortly before I started blogging. I'd had all of my poetry saved on my computer, and when my hard drive tried to get a bit too chummy with a bolt of lightning last year, I thought I'd lost it all. Thank goodness I'd printed them all out and saved hard copies in a notebook. Yes, I found it.

I'd like to share with you one of my more lighthearted verses, complete with illustration:

Date With A Nerd

We sat together on the sand
You told me all about the land
The scientific mysteries
Of the skies and of the seas.

You told me of the waves and tides
And how the clouds go drifting by.
You spoke of why the sun glows red
As it sinks into its bed
And if I did not stop you soon
You'd've told me all about the moon!

I bid you hush, the day is done
Let's just watch the setting sun.
And as the daylight died I knew
That with it died my love for you.

(This poem is copyrighted. You can read it, laugh at it, link it, but ya can't copy it.)

You've Got Mail, Too!

In the form of a beautiful postcard from the lovely and talented Ashley who is vacationing in Hawaii.



I would love the pictures, and I would love to be there, too! But alas, a trip to Hawaii doesn't seem to be in the cards for this lifetime. I'll just have to keep watching Magnum.


Professional athletes. I don't see how they do it. I strained a tendon in my wrist at work last week. By yesterday, it still wasn't any better, so they sent me on to the doctor. He took some x-rays to confirm that no bones had been broken, and they weren't. He told me to wear my wrist brace, which I already had from a previous injury, ice my wrist down two or three times a day. And he prescribed an anti-inflammatory medication. Since I can't take normal anti-inflammatory medications, my doctor put me on --guess what?--steroids. Let me tell you, professional athletes must want it real bad because these things have some kick-*** side effects. I wanted to stay home from work today, but since that's not financially feasible, I went anyway. But once I got home, I haven't done anything but lay around and moan. And finish a charity scarf, but don't tell anyone. Well, no one from work anyway.

On the bright side, they work. Twenty four hours ago, I could barely move my hand. Now, I have to keep reminding myself that I'm still injured and not to overdo. I have almost full range of motion, with pain only at the extremes of said motion.

I the comments to a previous post, Buck and I have been having a bit of a conversation about my Navy days. He commented that he didn't really know much about my Navy days. That's my fault. I don't talk much about my past. Oh, I used to. It seemed for a while that every other sentence out of my mouth was, "I remember..." or "when I was..." It got so bad that I was even annoying myself. I said to my self one day, "Self," I said, "Do you have a life now,or do you only live in the past?"

That was a wake up call. I wondered what my friends thought of me. I didn't want to end up a Higgins. For those of you not familiar with the Magnum P.I series, one of the characters in the show is Jonathan Quayle Higgins, a short and rather tubby retired British army Sargent Major. Higgins is one of those who drones on and on about his life in the British Army while those around him are bored senseless, rolling their eyes, and sneaking off when his back is turned. I didn't want to be like that. I guess I went to the other extreme.

It's not that I mean to be secretive. I just don't want to bore people with the mundane details of my past.

So what do you think, Gentle Readers? Do you want to hear my reminiscing? Or will you be falling asleep at your computers?

First Crushes

We've all had crushes in our lives. Every one of us.

My first crush was on a boy that lived down the street from me. There was only one other girl on my street and her mother kept her inside doing housework all day, so I seldom got to play with her. There were some older girls--but they were too old to want to play with a little pest like me. Whatever the reason, there just weren't any girls around for me to play with. I know some women will say, "Well, I just got out and played with the boys." That's all well and good for them, but the boys on my street didn't want me playing with them. A few of them ignored me completely, but most were downright mean to me.

All except Glen.

Glen was the only one who was nice to me. That's just the kind of boy he was. He was polite and kind, and a good kid. As a result, I gravitated toward him. I followed him everywhere. When the boys would play baseball, I would cheer for Glen. When they played football, I cheered for Glen.

When the boys went fishing in the gully across from my house, they usually went down to Pop-eye's Store and bought a box of bait shrimp. I would dig through the box, picking out the biggest and best shrimp for Glen to fish with. To this day, I have a soft spot in my heart for dead shrimp. Come to think of it, that may be where my affinity for brown eyes comes from.

Glen had brown eyes.

My first celebrity crush came when I was about 13, though I didn't dare admit it to anyone. Not in the South in the seventies. But times have changed enough that for the first time, I feel like I can admit this.

My first celebrity crush was not Shaun Cassidy, or Parker Stevenson, or Scott Baio, or any of the young men all the girls were going silly over. I never saw the point in that. Screaming and jumping just because someone was on TV. I thought that mess was all nonsense. Still do.

So, no. I tended not to have crushes on actors or musicians. Other girls did that. Not me. My first celebrity crush was on--are you ready for this?

Tony Dorsett.

I guess I showed pretty early on which way my life would be headed. After all, what could those other guys do besides sit there and look pretty? Tony Dorsett could look pretty AND play football. To this day, I still swoon over his 99 yard run from scrimmage against the Minnesota Vikings--a record that can never be broken. Tied, but never broken.

And ya know what? Tony Dorsett has brown eyes.

So there you have it. My first two crushes. As for my current crush...well, that's the subject of a post unto itself.

Photography Course Lesson 3

I ran into a bit of a snag on the first assignment of Lesson 3 in the photography course I'm doing. The lesson covered different types of lenses, and what can be accomplished by using them. The first assignment was to take the same picture using both a wide angle lens and a telephoto lens. Since I only have one lens at the moment, I skipped it and went to assignment 2.

This assignment was to take two photographs of the same thing--one with a shallow depth of field, and the other with a much larger depth of field. So I got my little Dr. Pepper cans out and set them up. The first picture went well,

When I set up to take the second, I didn't get it quite focused.

But before I could refocus and take a second shot, the wind kicked up and sent my cans tumbling to the ground.

Undaunted, I found some rocks and pressed on. The first photo: F 5.6 Shutter speed 1/50


and the second: f-36 Shutter speed 1 second:

That was about the extent of my meaningful activity for the day.

After The Storm

We weathered the storms just fine. There was a lot of wind damage in the area, but I haven't heard of any deaths--at least not locally. I know that there were some in Arkansas. Things got really bad around 1 AM, with lightning coming so fast and furious that it looked like daytime in the middle of the night. It just doesn't seem right, somehow, that this morning should bring a sky so clear and blue.


On such a beautiful day, I couldn't stay inside, so I went on a brief photo safari. I think this is my favorite photo of the day:

I spent the rest of the afternoon catching up on the Carrier episodes I missed, and knitting this scarf out of some of the yarn I got the other day.


This is Sullivans Sereno in Butter Cream colorway. There isn't a lot of yardage in these particular balls of yarn, so this scarf turned out kind of short. I've got three more balls of it, and so I cast on another that is a little wider. I'll use two balls on this scarf and make it longer. The third ball, I'll either pick out the bind off on the first scarf and add it to it, or maybe I'll make a keyhole scarf. I don't know yet.

I also spent a little more time working on these socks. I've gotten past the heel turn and into the leg.


I want to get both pair of socks done, because it is once again time to sign up for --yes


I want to start with a clean slate this year. Last year, I had several pair of socks already OTN, so even though I worked on them, they didn't count for SOS. Now I know a little more about what SOS is and how better to plan my knitting for it. Click the image to find out more.

Well, I know you are all anxious to find out who won the contest, so here goes:

The names were put into my Dallas Cowboy sideline cap:

and my gnarly hand drew one out:

And the winner is:
Kimothy Jones! Congratulations, Kim, you have been PMed.

This concludes the 2008 second quarter contest. The next one will probably be closer to fall, and will most likely have--you got it--a football theme. I'd better get to planning...

Bad Stuff

We've got some bad stuff headed our way.

We've been under a tornado watch all day long. The writing muse must be watching the skies, too because she's been unusually quiet today.

I wonder if there's a picture muse.



Blueberry blossoms, March 27, 2008

The storms are getting ever closer. I'm going into lockdown mode now.

Contest

Don't forget my contest. It ends Friday May 2 at midnight CST.

It's Thursday

I woke up this morning not quite sure if it were Friday or Saturday. I lay in bed a moment and realized that it must be Friday because the alarm wouldn't be going off on Saturday. I lay there a moment more and slowly the sickening realization dawned on me:

It was only Thursday.

And the day went downhill from there...

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Last week, Buck wrote a post about writing abilities. It was a very good post, and you should check it out, if you're not already one of Buck's regular readers. In the comments to that post, I lamented that I sometimes wished the writing muse would whisper in my ear. Steeljaw Scribe, in a very kind response wrote:

Becky:

You'd be surprised how much the muse is already talking to you. ( and IIRC from my *ahem* public school education...;) that would be Calliope - the chief of the muses and the muse of epic or heroic poetry)

Each of us has a certain time of the day that our conscious provides the seeds for creative work. For me, early riser that I am, it is in the pre-dawn hours when all is still quiet and the day's chaos lies in coiled wait. When I was on active duty and deployed it was my favorite time of the day to fly or step out on the bridge of the ship and quietly contemplate. The fact that it also coincided with a final chance to shoot the stars for a navigational fix before sunrise always added a nice metaphorical allegory to that time of day.

Others prefer the late night hours as the embers of the day slowly fade - revealing new thoughts, new ideas in their receding glow.

Find one that works best for you, tune back the ambient noise and you will be astonished at the whispered jewels that appear.

- SJS

He is right. The writing muse does whisper to me, but it would seem that she most often whispers while I'm at work. Yeah, I've known this for a while. My best posts are mentally composed while I am at work. The bad news is, by the time I get home, they've completely vanished from my head.

I thought to combat this by buying myself a little notebook to carry with me and jot down ideas as they occur. It should be working. I get an idea for a post, write a rough draft, rewrite it when I get home and voila! Beautifully written post that inspires awe in my readers.

And now, back to reality. The problem I have with this is that as soon as I get out my little notebook and begin to write-----the boss man cometh. Seriously. It may be that I had not even seen him for hours, but the notebook acts like some type of mystic portal, instantly producing him from where ever he may be. It makes writing kind of difficult.

Now I admit that if I sat at a desk in a cubicle and writing was normally a part of my job, it would be a lot easier to get away with t his. But my job is to run a machine on a factory floor.

Makes writing kind of obvious.

And I know some of you are wondering who in the world I can even hear the writing muse's whispers over all the noise of a manufacturing facility. Earplugs, baby. Earplugs. They are like magic. They are a gateway to a world that is all my own.

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Poor Cody has been having a day of nosebleeds. We're up to 4 so far. I have taken him to a doctor about them before, and after doing an MRI on him just to be sure there wasn't anything seriously wrong, he said they are a symptom of Cody's allergies. The hardheaded, er darling child refuses to take any kind of medicine for his allergies. Well, he was trying to complain about his nose bleed, and I said, "I got no sympathy for you. You refuse to take any medicine that will help, so I don't want to hear you complain. "

He is now taking Claritin and NasacortCQ. And without complaint.