Vyxxan's Virtual Venture

Archive for the ‘Other stuff’ Category

January 24, 2009 is the date of my first post after switching to WordPress. I’ve only written 70 more blog entries since then (counting this one). Obviously I’m not a prolific blogger!

I never have redone my classes in blog format. Always meant to, still have all the html and photos, just never got to it. That was the main focus of all my other websites. And while it was pretty handy when I was teaching online classes… well, to change the format to fit into WordPress is a lot of work! I’d basically have to start over… and a lot of those photos were NOT very good. Plus… well, I don’t teach online classes any more. No one has ever asked me to redo the classes, either.

Some of my stuff is still available online, anyhow. Even though my user accounts have been deleted I still managed to download photos and such from old websites. Kind of weird, but as my sister said: the internet is forever! (what she really meant was “don’t post anything you will regret later” …heh!)

So, my year in review… what I remember most…. not always in chronological order…

First of all… We survived the ice storm that happened right after I started the new blog. A week of total ice and trees down and the power out for days. Then we took BuddyMack back from his owners abandoning him. Before we took him back, I fell down in the ice going to check on him and give him food and water and gave myself almost whiplash. Then I got let go from my job and was unemployed. Jasmine got pregnant from the Rottie next door and gave birth to 12 puppies, but we moved her to live with her owner just in time, before she had the pups… Whew.

I got to do some visiting with a friend I rarely see… twice I drove over to OKC for visiting. Had lots of fun. Learned new stuff, got to play with craft stuff and awesome dogs, not to mention my awesome friend. When I grow up I want to be like her. Jan is an inspiration to me always.

Then I started going to the local farmers market to sell my tie dye and didn’t do too badly. Never did have enough veggies to take, tho, because I got called back to work and had to quit doing the farmers market. Still, we froze massive amounts of blackberries and tomatoes and I even roasted a lot of peppers which then got sliced and frozen. I have a lot of jam making to do yet… tomato jam and blackberry jam! I prefer cooking jam in the winter… no one minds the house being heated up! And I seem to have more time for indoor stuff in winter, too… hmm.. :)

Bought another used boat, didn’t sell the first one, and after not catching anything while fishing in the day time we hooked up lights so that we could go night fishing in the little lake a mile away. Caught plenty of catfish to stock our pond and took the across-the-road neighbors teenager with us one night. That was fun! We gave him a lot of the fish from that night, but I guess none of his sibs like fish as he came back with most and we put those in our pond, too.

My daughter came to visit and her boyfriend, too. Sarah drove down from Chicago, Jamie flew down from his home. We had a good visit, Sarah and I dyed things and I cooked “real” barbeque for them. We went on a hike at the little lake… supposedly to go fishing, but we never found a good place to fish from so we turned back before I was totally wore out. My adventures with barbeque were funny… my old smoker was ready to be retired but I got one last use out of it and hiked back and forth between the barn and the house cooking slabs of ribs. The kids went hiking one day and I told them they would get rained on… they came home soaked, totally soaked. But they had fun while they were here. And so did I! :)

I bought veggies… green beans… from a farmers market to make vinegar beans for Ron. Not quite pickled beans, but they are a bit tart. He loved them as a child and I was trying to recreate an old time recipe. I only got 2 quart jars out of $10 worth of beans, so I expect I’d better grow my own this year. Lot of work, but for Ron of course I will do it. :)

Oh, and the neighbor next door (Brent) planted a garden big enough to feed a small town. I got a LOT of free produce from him, including buckets and buckets of cukes. Made lots of jars of pickles. Almost all in quart jars… except for a few pints of Sweet Lime Pickles. Sweet Lime Pickles are VERY good. People in other states beg them from me. :) Brent also shared some sweet corn with us and I have to say… that was the best sweet corn I’ve ever had in my life. It was perfect. Great neighbor to share his garden produce with us like that! I tried to share our blackberries with him and his folks, but no one came over to pick em… so I will probably just take over jars of jam for them when I make it.

I just asked Ron what his memorable thing was from the last year… and he said ICE STORM. He spent a lot of time cleaning up the debris with only some help from me. He did the chainsaw, I helped pick up and move the smaller stuff and stack the firewood sized stuff. We had a LOT of bonfires over the spring, summer and fall, until we finally burned the last of the giant piles of stuff too small to cut up for firewood. There is another pile building… what with wind storms and such more debris has fallen down. It’ll be a good start to the year when it gets warm enough to sit outside again! I think the last big bonfire was in September… my son showed up on his birthday and we were down below the barn burning the last of it. Kid almost left until he noticed the light from the fire.

In the late summer my son moved out of my mobile home to go live in OK with his girlfriend… she moved over there to teach school. That meant that I had to bring my little dog Rita over here to Ron’s house to live. I should have done it anyhow, but I was worried about her and that highway out there. Too close to the house. So far Rita has been fine but we did have a BAD scare when she went visiting across the road and didn’t come home until a car was coming. Augh! She was nearly hit but backed off just in time. I keep a closer eye on her since then. Hyper dog is still hyper… but she’s been diagnosed with CHF a few days ago.. on medication now. Considering how much she makes Ron smile… I hope she’s got quite a few years left. Rita is a fun dog, and I love her… but she just makes Ron’s face light up. It makes ME happy, too, that my little pest has won a place in Ron’s heart.

The beagles are doing just fine, and BuddyMack has been super even with all the horrid weather we’ve had that keeps me from walking them. He just doesn’t eat as much food as when he gets to run, and yesterday I went out and he’d buried his bowl with the previous nights food! Beagles do tend to bury stuff… but still! His dish was almost invisible under all the dirt and stuff. Silly dog. They are all silly, they won’t eat in the house except for treats and nummy bones, so no matter the weather I’m out there feeding them every evening.

This fall hasn’t been that interesting, but we did acquire a new cat for a while. We had a big rainstorm that flooded the river and the lake up over the roads. Lots of rain. And then when we went to walk the beagles right after that, Ron could hear a cat meowing in the woods. He stopped, called “Kitty Kitty”. And there is a strange orange kitten right there…. climbing up a tree to get away from the beagles. So we took him in, named him Garfield and the younger cats welcomed him to the family. Heck, all the cats came running down to see what was up… and then escorted the new cat back to the porch. But pretty soon our grown up cats started picking on him. He’s moved across the road now. Poor guy, still comes here to eat, but mostly what he wants is petting business. Poor homeless cat, I see him going to hide in the culvert a lot. He does hang out across the road, tho… sleeps with Cocoa Puff on their back deck in a little dog house. I can’t save every animal that gets dumped, we have more than we can really afford now.

2009 had it’s ups and downs… but it wasn’t a bad year. 2010 oughta be just as interesting. (or boring, the way I write it, lol!)

Gotta work on that… the boring writing, that is. Or not… I am who I am, and this is my blog. Happiness is all I ever resolve for… and I have that most of the time. :)

hugs,
Vyx

probably longest post ever, yikes!

I felted my new purse this afternoon. It’s laying on the dryer air drying now.

(glasses in photo for scale this time, lol!)

It’s QUITE sturdy, I’m sure knitting with 2 strands of wool and only adding the others helped that a lot.

My handle is quite lumpy… should have expected that, as the fancy yarn I got is quite varied in size. Oh, and just in case anyone is wondering: Nashua Handknits “Sitar” is the fancy yarn, in Deep Blue Seas color. It’s only 50% wool, but felted up quite nicely along with the regular wool.

Here is a shot of the top with a piece of unfelted i-cord using the same yarns.

And finally, a photo of the bottom so you can see how the knitting disappeared. It’s amazing! I’ve never felted anything before… and knowing how it’s supposed to work is a lot different than actually doing it and seeing for yourself.

Now I’m off on a hunt for a small coin purse to knit and felt… to use up the last of the yarns, of course. And then I think I’ll knit a hat. A hat should be almost as easy as this purse was, right? :)

hugs,
Vyx

(next up, learn continental knitting…it just looks so much easier)

P.S. All photos enlarge when you click on them… I forget to remind people about that.

Surprise, last night when I got home from work my son Richard was sitting in his car out in the yard. He came to visit me! No point in calling to warn me… I never have my cell phone on, and of course I was at work all day. (I forgot to ask him how long he’d been waiting… hope it wasn’t long) I asked him if he wanted to help make glitter ornaments and yep, he likes making stuff with me…

So, I had my son helping me today, we went through the whole box in no time at all. I was sorry I didn’t have more ornaments, could have made more of each of these colors. I have decided that these are going to be my handout at work this year. I always do something other than a card and candy cane like most people do. Usually it’s something like snowman soup or reindeer poop, lol! This year it’s ornaments in Easter Egg colors!

These would look awesome with their caps on again… and all mixed up in a clear glass straight sided bowl.

Didn’t like how the glitter “mists” came out, so those got washed and redone. Also found where I have another duplicate glitter… at one point I kept buying Lime Mist, and gave away the extra jars when I realized. Didn’t realize I also have 2 jars of Turquoise Magic until today.

Finished knitting the red and white scarf… and totally forgot to take a photo of it before I shipped it off to my daughter in Chicago. Sheesh. Sarah isn’t even IN Chicago, so she won’t get it until after New Years. I didn’t realize she wasn’t home or I would have sent it to where she is visiting… oh well!

I also made a card sized bookmark this afternoon for my son’s girlfriend. He said she’s always borrowing the one I made for him… so I made one just for her. All was well until I put it through the Xyron to laminate it. BIG wrinkles on the top side, and air bubbles on the back. Boy, I hate that machine. I bought it at a discount, new in box from someone who had never used it. First thing I did was BREAK it, and had to fix the handle/roller mechanism. Then it wanted to eat the stuff I fed into it, all while putting wrinkles in the laminate. Last time I used it I got about 1/2 of the stuff laminated well enough to share. You would think I would learn/remember… but no, I feed that beautiful layered card sized bookmark into it without sending a test piece through. Sigh. I sent the bookmark along with my son anyhow… I’ll make some more for Suzanne and hopefully won’t ruin them in the Xyron machine, lol! I need to print/stamp some specially for her, rather than just using stamped images I had on hand.

Hiring Ron’s son to come help me clean some more this weekend. It’s time to tackle the kitchen. I want to reorganize the cupboards and haul all the appliances and such off the counter and give it all a good scrubbing. Plus… I think I’m going to have him vacuum some more. Like especially in here around my craft table to pick up all that glitter mess I made! LOL!

Next up on the crafting around here… “binding” my alphabet swap books. I went with binder rings and punched holes as the best way to deal with the pages… some are quite bulky. I do plan on laminating the cover and making a back cover with the list of players and a piece of cardstock. I’ll send test pieces through the dang Xyron… or maybe just go with cold laminate sheets that I have and that I never have problems with. I do like the Xyron laminate better, tho, it’s a lot thicker.

All for now…
hugs,
Vyx

I said I’d post something crafty as soon as I could… so here it is…

Glitter ornaments! Aren’t they pretty? The photo doesn’t do them justice, really.

Along with the freshly done ornaments you can see my tools… a funnel I made out of paper, a measuring spoon (1/2 teaspoon), some glitter, a jar to drain excess Future out of, and of course the bottle of Future (also known as Future Floor Finish, I believe it’s made by Pledge now).

I also had a wet rag and paper towels handy, plus cut up plastic bag to cover the ornaments while shaking. (thanks for the tip, Jennifer!)

I’ve only used four glitters so far… I had intended to make each a different glitter color when I started, but that would be a lot of jar shuffling.

Got the idea from a message someone posted with a video. I didn’t watch the video… can’t hear well enough for those things usually. So I asked on the list for directions and Tyra of Cloud Nine sent me detailed instructions… along with a bunch more ideas!

The glitter is from Evolving Images, alas, they no longer sell glitter. I’m sure any good glitter would work, tho. I just love Evo’s mixes… like the Midnight and Roses Magic, or the Midnight and Eggplant Magic (both of which are pictured above. Those are in the middle… the one on the right is Winter Medley and the pink on the left is actually Copper Rose Magic.

So, basic instructions:

Remove hanger from ornament. Pour in a small amount of Future, cover opening with a piece of plastic and hold with a finger while you swish and shake to coat the inside completely. Tip excess liquid into another ornament, and then set it to drain over a small jar.

After it’s drained for a minute or so, set it right side up again and use a funnel to pour in about 1/2 a teaspoon of glitter. Cover opening again with plastic and a finger, and shake until all of the inside is coated with glitter. You may need to add more glitter… 1/2 teaspoon seemed to be enough for me, tho.

Set aside to dry. That’s it! Easy! I’d only done a couple the other night when one got broken, if I’d known how nice some of these glitter colors look I would have bought more ornaments today while I was in town.

Hugs,
Vyx

27 years ago I was having my first child. My tummy hurt all day, not bad, but annoying.

My best friend who’d already had two babies was sure I was in labor. I knew my due date was close, but just days before… the ultrasound people had said I wasn’t due until January. I told them they were nuts, that I was going to have my baby within 2 weeks. Before the ultrasound my due date had been Dec 2.

So I’ve got a tummy ache. My friend has me shower, do this do that, see if it goes away. Nope. I don’t want to go to the hospital for a false alarm, so I won’t go anywhere to be checked out.

We don’t have a phone, so my friend goes next door without me and calls to see what they advise. She comes back and says, “They think you should come in.” (she lied, btw… but I didn’t know that at the time or I would never have gone in)

It’s about Midnight at that point. I don’t really remember the drive there, my tummy hurt. I do remember that the hospital had pre-registration so I didn’t have to hang out somewhere filling out forms. I went right up to maternity to be checked out.

Then a doctor looks at my chart and sees my new due date of January. He starts setting me up to give me some experiemental drug to stop my labor. I was like, what? No way. I’m not that early, only a week or so, the ultrasound due date is WRONG.

So instead they gave me pitocin to hurry my labor up. And at 2:54 am on Nov. 24, 1982, with a lot of hard work on my part… I gave birth to a tiny petite strawberry blonde baby girl.

There are no hospital photos of Sarah… being up all night having her I was asleep when they came by to take orders for those hospital newborn photos. I was running a fever and Sarah was in NICU as a preemie, altho I still think she was NOT early, just small. 5 lbs 1 oz. They sent me home, and kept Sarah an extra day… and yes, I basically missed the turkey dinner that year. :) Sarah was fine, not a thing wrong with her except a little jaundice that went away rapidly.

And now she’s grown up to be a lovely, no, Beautiful! young lady who is also super intelligent, and smart… and everything I could hope for in a daughter. More, even.

Happy Birthday sweet Sarah! I love you!