Mood-Setting Monday

     This Monday, I'm thinking about rain. The smell of rain is renewing, refreshing, soothing, and healing. The air smells clean and moist, with undertones of green, growing life, and rich, damp earth. Having always associated rain with renewal and growth, I have come to cherish listening to rain drum on my roof, flinging open the windows to fill the house with freshly washed air, and even taking long, soaking wet walks without an umbrella.  Luckily for me, I live in Washington, which averages over 27  inches of rain annually. This is an average, because my city gets over 50 inches a year, and the peninsula can get over a hundred!
      Granted, not all of my experiences in the rain have been amazing. I remember as a child, spending the autumn frantically hauling and stacking loads of firewood to keep our cozy little farmhouse, well, cozy. Usually half of that work was in the rain, and we would be moving loads of wood all day, with our leather gloves becoming sodden and muddy,the wood seeming to double in weight from the waterlogged moss still clinging to the rough bark, and the frantic ants, centipedes and spiders frantically seeking shelter from the wet. We spent the days soggy, cold, grumpy, and in terror that an earwig or spider would run up our sleeve. (They never did)
     At the same times in my life, however, rain has been a comfort, a blessing, a release. I remember the comforting rattle of rain on the roof, lulling me to sleep. Then, there's long walks through the woods, listening to the patter of rain on leaves, watching for frogs and salamanders and newts to play with.   I remember building little dams, bridges, and making leaf boats for the hundreds of little rills that would spring up on rainy days. For those of you who didn't amuse themselves by reading the dictionary cover to cover, a rill is a very tiny seasonal stream.
      I've never really used an umbrella, mostly because the summer after I watched Mary Poppins, I jumped off our roof several times, smashing beyond repair a succession of umbrellas until my dad threw up his hands in disgust and swore that he would never buy an umbrella again. Given that this was twenty years ago, he may have changed his mind, but I not only still wistfully look to the sky and wonder how to float off into it, I walk in the rain with no protection from it's sodden charms. While I might not ever use umbrellas, I do like them, especially this cool black steampunk umbrella, this awesome retro umbrella, and this amazing wrought iron decorated umbrella, on Etsy.
     While I love being in and listening to the rain, I can certainly understand why lots of people don't see the same attraction in being either trapped inside, or soaking wet and cold. Well, for the rest of you, here's a cute, fluffy little cloud that nobody could object to. For we rain-lovers, here's a sampling of amazing rain images and ideas that I yanked from my Pinterest.

Well, enjoy the rain, let it cleanse your spirit and leave you refreshed. Also, I'd love to hear your stories about rain, rain-related accessories and crafts, ect. Please comment and join the conversation! 

  

Tea-spiration Tuesday

              Today, I'm drinking Earl Grey. It's piping hot, rich, sweet, and flavorful, with half-n-half and four sugar cubes, in a silly Pemco NW Profile cup.

I found it in Seattle, and yes, my coffee order is always ridiculous. Baristas would hate me if I wasn't a good tipper. On a side note taking this picture prompted me to figure out the ISO settings on my camera. Bam! One hundred percent better photos. I feel like a technology god.

          Anyway, I like Earl grey because it has a complex flavor. I have two boxes, one by Twinings, which is my favorite tea brand EVER, and some decaf by The Republic of Tea, which is excellent, especially when I'm supposed to be in bed soon but want another cuppa. Traditionally, Earl Grey is a black tea, with bergamot oil added to enhance the flavor. Bergamot has a rich, bitter, piney-citrusy taste, and accents the dark earthiness of black tea beautifully. I like to add cream to it sometimes, to offset some of the earthier notes, but I have been informed that cream in tea is tea heresy. Oops.

           While I prefer to buy my tea from Twinings, there are lots of interesting handmade blends on Etsy, including ones with rose petals, lavender, lemon and even mint added! I happen to like this cute rubber stamp of a happy tea bag, and the nerd in me adores the quote on this mug. I've never mentioned this before, but I have a fascination with French macarons, and the Earl Grey macarons here make my mouth water.

            I have a whole Pinterest board dedicated to tea. To me, every tea has a different effect and mood. Earl Grey  and its flavorful cousin, Lady Grey, speak to me of richness, the earthy taste speaking of nourishing, of the farms where the leaves are grown. The bergamot adds higher flavor notes that inspire thoughts of wealth and grandeur, of English women in satin and velvet drinking from bone white china. Its a powerful, intense tea that is an acquired taste.

           Well! What teas are you drinking today? What are they inspiring in you? What mug are they in? Please comment and join the conversation!

Sneak Peek Saturday

I'm posting this a bit early, because I plan to sleep late. (lol) Later than usual, anyway. Here's something I'm working on as a fun needlefelting project.

And, of course, here's Coraline wishing you all a wonderful weekend! See you on Monday! 

Foodie Friday

I was going to post a BIT more this week, but I succumbed to the flu. Argh.

       Anyway, I wanted to discuss food today. I was rather bad and made chocolate chip pancakes: pancakes from a mix with a handful of chips sprinkled onto each one as I poured it into the pan. Mmmmmmm. I had to fry them in butter, too, because I couldn't find the vegetable oil. Unfortunately for me, I couldn't eat them all. Well, that means I get some for lunch!
        Chocolate chip pancakes are particularly special to me because my mother used to make them for special occasions. My mother is an amazing cook, and used to make all kinds of amazing food when we were growing up on the farm. I don't know if I've mentioned this, but I grew up on a remote, self-sufficient farm in the Cascade Mountains. We made our own electricity, grew our own food, and were home schooled by my mother, who had an excellent college education and drilled us ruthlessly. We spent summers exploring the mountains, hunting, gathering wild berries, nuts, tasty greens, stocking up on hay, and learning advanced survival skills. In the fall, we would gather in all of our garden and orchard goodies, dig up bushels of potatoes to store in bins in the root cellar, harvest dozens of massive winter squash like Acorn squash and Hubbards, gather cords and cords of firewood, finish canning hundreds of jars of vegetables, fruit, meat, jams, jellies, and apple sauce, and hunt deer in their season. Winter was spent mending tools that had been broken, studying, playing in the two feet of perpetual winter snow, playing on the frozen pond and ice fishing, and planning for spring. Spring was a frenzy of planting the garden repairing the fences, gathering the first delicious greens, watching chickens hatch broods, calving milk cows, picking out the perfect suckling pigs to raise, and watching the streams and rivers carefully for flooding.
        It was a pretty awesome way to grow up, but everything was from scratch. Want a cherry pie? Stand guard over the tree all spring and part of summer, then, to make sure the birds don't steal the cherries. When they are finally ripe, pick what ones the birds haven't stolen, pit each one by hand with a hairpin, put in fridge.   (fridge is powered by propane, because the nearest power lines are five miles away) Whip up some piecrust from Crisco, butter, flour and salt. (the flour is storebought, but the butter is home-made from our grouchy Jersey cow's rich cream) Preheat stove, (also propane, unless you're feeling adventurous and want to use the woodstove) place crust in pie plate, put in cherries and sugar, bake. Fend off horde of hungry siblings with a stick. Serve pie hot from the over with a pitcher of fresh cream.
     Despite the extra time involved in making everything from scratch, it's extra delicious that way. Our cow gave four to six gallons of milk EVERY DAY. A third of each gallon was a thick, heavy cream so rich that you could pour it into a sieve and it wouldn't flow out.  It was slightly more viscous than sweetened condensed milk. You could cut it with a knife. Sorry, I tend to wax eloquent on the subject of cream, but it was one of my favorite things about the farm. Breakfast? Big bowl of fresh blackberries and peaches with cream. Lunch? Thick pile of ham or chicken sandwiches on homemade bread , tall glasses of milk, with homemade tapioca pudding- made with cream. Dinner? Grilled or steamed zuchinni, roasted chicken or chicken pot pie rich with big chunks of potato and carrot and spring peas, baked squash with brown sugar, butter and nuts, green beans with butter, onions and bacon. More tall glasses of milk. Lots of wild green salads, venison, and ham. Thick bean soup with ten kinds of beans, salt pork, and bacon. Cornbread with rabbit enchiladas. Her sourdough biscuits- oh, don't get me started on them. Amazing  mile high, crunchy crust with a flaky inside, amazing with pork or rabbit gravy or with jam. Rich, buttery rolls, and her plate-sized cinnamon rolls, studded with walnuts and raisins, with a secret caramel sauce.
           Ever heard of Creme Bulgare? It's a sort of whipped heavy cream with a yogurt starter, and DELICIOUS. My mom would make crepes and serve them with fresh berries and creme bulgare in summer, and berry jam and creme bulgare in winter. Lots of easy, soft cheeses. Lots of egg custard. In fact, she made me an egg custard just this past week, with wild rice and duck eggs. YUM.
      Ok, I have to stop now. I'm too hungry. : D

Wild Card Wednesday

   Today, I'm going to talk about felt. I loooove felt. It's a fabulous media for crafting, because it's soft, relatively non-messy, colorful, and you can cut whatever shapes you want without worrying about it unraveling like other fabrics. It's also affordable and easy to find, as it's available in every craft store as well as online. I purchase my felt exclusively from an amazing Etsy seller called sweetemmajean, who has wonderful colors, high-quality material, and a very good deal.
     Felt is a fabric unlike anything that has been woven, because it isn't woven. It is created by taking advantage of a natural property of wool. Wool, you see, is covered in microscopic hooks, and when jostled together, they grab onto each other and pull tighter and tighter together, especially if they get wet and are agitated, which means they swished or scrubbed with a lot of force. This is how wool sweaters shrink in the wash- the fibers have essentially pulled much tighter together, making a dense, warm fabric. If treated properly, wool felt can even be waterproof, and the Mongols who still live a nomadic lifestyle on the steppe often use the traditional wool yurt as their home.
      Now, most of the felt that you see in the craft store isn't wool, or doesn't have much wool in it. Its a blend, usually spun polyester or rayon that has been treated with heat and chemicals and pressed into sheets.  That's why I buy the felt that I do- because sweetemmajean's felt is merino wool blended with rayon, and merino wool is very, very soft.
        There are a lot of talented Etsy sellers out there who are making fun things with felt. This adorable Sherlock doll caught my eye, as well as these amazing dala horses. I really want to own a pair of these amazing slippers, and these coasters are on my list of things to make.
       I set up a fun Pinterest board with some fun ideas of what can be made with felt. Currently, I'm making some fun teacups, cupcakes, and birds. Here's a few pictures of what I have right now.

      So, what are all of you crafting with felt? Show me your projects! Please comment and join the conversation! 

Current Events

Well, I'm in Virginia Mason hospital in Seattle, sitting on the windowsill, looking out at Lake Union and trying to remember what day of the week it is. Don't worry, it's not another suicide attempt. Remember Hawk's spinal tumor? Well, it started smoothing the spine too much, and had to come out a little sooner than expected. Actually, the neurosurgeon took one look at his xrays, cancelled all his morning appointments for the next day, and rushed us in to the hospital to prep for surgery. This was on the 31st, when a dedicated group of friends were moving our stuff from our old house to our new apartment. I had to rush home in the middle of the night, after settling Hawk in, so that I could grab my "go bag" of crafting stuff and some clean clothes- except that my clothes were all packed and I couldn't find them. So I had to run to WalMart, the one place I swore never to shop. *sigh*

On the bright side, I found an electric teakettle there, and that little device is what is holding my sanity right now. Anyway, the surgery was successful, but now they can't get his pain under control. It's been six days of him screaming in agony while doctors fuss around and do nothing, until today, when I stepped in, made the doctor pull up his med chart, and fixed it all. They had fucked it up pretty badly, taken him COMPLETELY off his main anxiety med and replaced it with a useless sleeping pill, removed most of his spasm meds, and done a bunch of other stupid stuff. So I shouted at people until it was fixed.

As for me, I've set up shop on the nice wide windowsill. It's eighteen inches wide, so I've made myself a cozy little mattress out of layered pillows wrapped tightly in a blanket, and set up my teakettle and crafting stuff too. The nurses keep asking me if I want a cot, but a) the cots are incredibly uncomfortable and the bed I've made is very nice, b) there isn't room in this tiny closet of a room for a cot, and c) I LIKE the windowsill. We have an AMAZING view, and I can perch up here in my little crafting nest. Well, when Hawk isn't hysterical and needing me to tend to him, that is.

Anyway, I, going to sign off and take a nap while I have a chance- I am getting about three hours of sleep a night.

One Step Forward...

Well, life is still merrily kicking my arse. Hawk hurt his back again last night, and lost some sensation, so we had to go to the ER to get a CAT scan to make sure that there wasn't any damage to his spinal cord. There wasn't, thank goodness, but it only reinforced the imperative that we get the tumor removed ASAP. We have the pre-op scheduled on the 31st, and the surgery is on the 8th of next month. Hawk and I are terrified.

In other news, the beading is going well. I took some beads with me to the ER last night, and since we were there for almost eight hours, got almost a bracelet done. I updated my shop day before yesterday, but all the bracelets sold before I could post them here! Still, I have some lovely hair clips left. :)

In The Saddle

Well, I'm working on getting my Etsy shop's inventory built up before our big move. We are only moving across town, but as luck would have it, the only day we can move is ALSO the ONLY day that the doctor and his surgical team can meet to do the pre-surgery checklist. Augh. My life.

Anyway, I'm hard at work. My workspace currently looks like this:

But in the new house, I'll get a whole room for my studio and office. Yay! I have a billionty other things I have to do as well, its overwhelming. For right now, however, I'm going to focus on having a cup of tea, and doing a bit of beading, and take control of an itty bitty corner of the world while Hawk is asleep. 

See you soon! *waves*

BACK!

OMG GUYS I"M BAAACK

Whew. Its been two years, hasn't it? I apologize about that. It's been a hell of a year, with Little Hawk getting really, really really sick, me having a mental breakdown and dealing with depression, us moving, and now moving again, and a lot of shit. Let me catch you up.

After I last posted, I had to quit school to take care of Little Hawk, who is known as Husbandface to my Ravelry friends. *waves* His Post Concussive Disorder never actually got better. It got so, so much worse.
It got so bad that we moved to Olympia, in order to be closer to his doctors. The doc we got, ended up managing to control the spasms, (thank you, whichever deity cares) but the mental stuff got worse. Now, he has Amnestic episodes. He will just randomly shut off, and be, mentally, in another time period in his life. Sometimes he is a child, or even a baby. Sometimes he's a few years ago. Sometimes he knows me, sometimes he thinks I'm his mom, and sometimes, he doesn't know me, and he thinks I've kidnapped him. That can be dangerous.

While this was going on, I was working full time, graveyard shift. Which meant he was alone at night, and, as I was sleeping during the day, also kind of alone. And bad things would happen. He would suddenly not recognize our house and go rolling off into the street, or have a panic attack, (which would trigger a spasm attack) or decide he was dreaming, and go to extreme lengths to wake himself up, like trying to cut off a finger with scissors or something. Awesome, I know.

So we went through a series of part-time caregivers, who would come in for a few hours to keep an eye on him so I wouldn't have to sleep on a folded blanket in front of the door. They were..less than stellar. There was the guy who wore so much Axe that it set off Hawk's asthma, and called in sick three days out of four. There was the girl who would nap on the couch and text. There was the older man, who was very nice, but always reeked of cigarette smoke, which I am severely allergic to, and he let Hawk run off in a panic while he was folding laundry with headphones on. Finally, we appealed to Manbear, who has not only had lots of experience with caregiving, but has a para-education degree AND a psych degree, AND is one of Hawk's oldest and dearest friend. Perfect. He has been a LIFESAVER.

In the meantime, Hawk has had lots more trouble with falling, in one case nearly fracturing his hip and ending up in the hospital for 30 days. During that time, I had to quit working, partially because I needed to spend more time with Hawk, and partially because my employer was being a dick about me spending more time with Hawk. This bird doesn't lie down and let employers walk over her.

I got another, awesomer job, and we sort of stayed in stasis, with Hawk not getting better or worse, Manbear, his awesome wife Foxy, and our other friend Bean, tried to hold down the fort at home, since I was working twelves. BECAUSE I'M CRAZY.

I know what you guys are thinking. First a year of working full time and going to school full time, then a year of working part time, taking care of Hawk, and going to school full time, then a year and a half of working full time and taking care of Hawk full time (with help). Youre thinking, "This bird is CRAZY. She's going to have a mental breakdown. The only question is WHEN."

And you're absolutely right. I started struggling with depression this summer, started seeing a therapist in November, and despite that, had a complete breakdown, complete with suicide attempt, in early December. It sucked. Don't try to kill yourself, guys. People take away your knitting and won't let you make your own sandwiches.

Anyway, I got better medicated, and started feeling better, and then Hawk had a bad fall, and two weeks later ended up BACK in the hospital with pneumonia  (Glorious. Just what we needed for Christmas) They had said Hawk needed to see a neurosurgeon after the fall, because they had seen something weird on his MRI, (lovely) and so we trekked off to Harborview, two weeks ago.

And holy shit. He has a TUMOR. In his SPINE.

It's a bone tumor that is pressing against his spinal cord, just a hair from cutting it completely. They have to operate right away. They also have to extend the spinal fusion he already has, which means MAJOR surgery, and at least a year's recovery. Hawk is postponing it until after the Super Bowl, and in the meantime we have to move closer to the hospital, in case he has complications, and I have to quit my job, because there is no way I will be able to work and take care of him. I'd been thinking about quitting anyway, because I had come to the realization that I can't work and take care of Hawk at the same time. Because I'll have a mental breakdown. And that's not good.

So what I'm saying, if I'm saying anything at all, is that I MISSED YOU. And my life is INSANE. And I am quitting my job to take care of my husband, and plan to turn my beading and stuff into a full time business.