More of Joanna's Reminders

A few days ago I gave you a couple of quotes from my dear friend, Joanna Fritz-Reed, who passed May 19, 2007 of breast cancer. Today I would like to share another one of the quotes on the bookmark handed out at her two memorial services.

"enjoy every second of the lifetime which you are being blessed with"

Now at first glance you don't think too much of that. But then remembering that it was a quote from a woman who was battling breast cancer you may grasp it with different significance.

Go forth today and every day, remembering the blessing that is YOUR life. :)

hugs
denise/deBRAT in too hot for December Florida

what color is your brain?

well while reading my Bag-A-Holic yahoo group posts today, I clicked on a link to something, which took me to somewhere else and you know how the rabbit trail happens. next thing I know I'm looking at a wonderful sunrise picture! I decided to leave a comment, because a picture that beautiful certainly deserves a comment and next thing I know I'm reading portions of her blog further down... and have to find out what color is my brain.

my brain is purple by the way, same as hers was.

Your Brain is Purple
Of all the brain types, yours is the most idealistic. You tend to think wild, amazing thoughts. Your dreams and fantasies are intense.Your thoughts are creative, inventive, and without boundaries.You tend to spend a lot of time thinking of fictional people and places - or a very different life for yourself.

here is the attempt at putting the link to the quiz in here
http://www.blogthings.com/whatcolorisyourbrainquiz/

and this is the blog I was at for the sunrise picture!
go down to wednesday, december 5th, 2007
http://craftycarole.blogspot.com/

so now i have posted again and wish i could post pics of the finished skulls cap for the exiting director at work, or the neon lime green face cloths i gave her to go with the joke skulls cap... or pics of the modular to-be-felted tote bag that is to match the Modern Quilt Wrap I made for my sister in law for Christmas this year... but alas, the laptop is at home and work does not provide me with any media slots for downloading pics. the nerve of them, not giving me a media slot!

have agrand and glorious day all,
denise/deBRAT in too dang hot for December (84 today!) Florida

Panera Bread and mountain sunrise in Florida

Heading to work today I stopped at the new Panera Bread that opened 1 mile from my house. I had clipped a buy 3 bagels get 3 free coupon and did not have time to pack a lunch today so I thought I'd fill my belly with bagels. Well as I drive into the parking lot what do I see during the very foggy sunrise but "mountains" in Florida. now the highest elevation anywhere near where I live in the Tampa Bay area is an On-Ramp to any highway. And as I just returned from Hawaii you can imagine my only 2 1/2 hours sleep surprised eyes! I had the camera with me and snapped a couple of pics. The first is just set at auto, the second taken on the sunset setting(no sunrise setting guess it is suppose to do double duty) and this is what I got.
On closer inspection (read as: blown up onto 19" monitor screen) i can clearly see that those are not mounds of dirt for the "developing" that is going on there, but actually the housing development behind this new Plaza. The mound in the foreground near the pitiful looking scrubby oak tree IS a mound of elevation raising/leveling dirt for the continued construction.

I almost wish I had not looked at the full sized photos so I could still think there were mountains of developing dirt piles in my site. If I had taken the pictures before I went into Panera they would have been less distinct and thus, no unveiling of the realistic truth that indeed, my quiet quiet neighborhood is becoming the new suburb to the suburb to the suburb of Tampa. sigh, in time, all things must change.

Have a blessing filled day and do a random acts of Kindness today in memory of my dear friend Joanna who passed of breast cancer in May '07. On the bookmark made for her memorial were several quotes. but two I will remind you of today:

Kindness Matters

monthly self-exams can save lives, but a cure would be nice too

teary eyed hugs,
denise/deBRAT

RAK contest at another blogger's site

Hi all

Ruth (on a laceknitters yahoo group) posted today that she is having a RAK contest. So hop on over to her blog and leave a post with your RAK today! She is giving away some nice prizes and two others jumped on in and offered up a couple of prizes too! People can be so nice :)

http://pencraftco.wordpress.com/2007/12/05/another-rak-contest/

now if you came from my post on Ruth's blog you saw my discretionary income. the amount is correct. Yes, I went to hawaii this year. dh had a business trip there so no flight or hotel cost for him. He had enough free mileage to purchase me a ticket (read as free) I gave up my chiropractor appointments, my massage therapist appointments, worked through every stinking lunch for months at work so I could pay for the time off and have some money to spend while there. And my birthday was 5 days before that. more incoming money. And our 22nd wedding anniversary was the day we flew back from hawaii. So no, I did not do it on the $5.67 a week I can spend how I please, but I found a way to "do" this trip-of-a-lifetime as I doubt the chance will EVER occur again! Oh, and my dear quilting friend put me up at her condo in maui and drove me absolutely everywhere on Maui so I had some me-and-my quilting friend time too!

I did not want anyone to think I was talking out of the wrong side of my mouth when I posted on the RAK contest.

So the link again is

http://pencraftco.wordpress.com/2007/12/

and after yo upost your RAK to Ruth's blog, be sure to go back to the link she gives to Sheri, at The Loopy Ewe's blog to enter "her" RAK contest that inspired Ruth's.

have a grand day everyone, mine is warmer and looking up!

denise/deBRAT-jane in cool today, bound to be warmer tomorrow Tampa Bay Florida

Florida-meets-Alaska-Norwegian-Thang

A quick pic of my most recent knitting project for my friend in Alaska who I will finally get to meet in Maui in just 31 days!

this was a week ago, now it is done down to the bottom and waiting on sleeves and my edging decision. i finally ordered two skeins of www.knitpicks.com donegal fingering weight superwash yarn. if it is white enough it will be a large portion of the sleeves. if not i will have to koolaid dye it and then it will be a large portion of the sleeves.

it is meant to be an oversized, very cuddly wrap. i hope it fits her as such. i just found out she is about a medium, as she says she has put on a lot of weight. and she stands only 5'2' !!! it will be down below her butt at the length I made it. and it will certainly go OVER other clothing as she is much smaller than me. it fits me perfectly as a cardigan in length and width and i'm a tight medium sweatshirt and 5'6" tall. oh well, she DOES live in Alaska, as my hubby says, it will be perfect!

Gauge, Gauge, GAUGE!

Yuck! I hate gauge.

First off I have to think every stinkin' time I type it so I get the u and the a in the proper order. Always wrong the first time too.

Second, I find that my gauge from a year ago is so much different than it is today. Why you might ask (and please do ask!) Well, because after pondering this for the past 39 rounds of this "second" sock, I realise why it is off. Let's start at the beginning... a very good place to start. (hear the do re mi?)

I am on a no spending diet. It sucks but it has to be done. So in an effort to have something to do "any" thing to do, I have pulled out my old knitting projects that are already started. You know, those otherwise known as UFO's UnFinished Objects! So in the past few weeks I have finished a very plain shrug in very bargain-in-my-stash-sale yarn. Jo Sharp DK Wool in seashell
pattern here
http://www.caron.com/projects/shadows/sss_shrug.html
yarn here
http://www.josharp.com.au/Yarn/Yarn.html

I have finished one pair of socks which needed only the decreasing for the toe on the second sock... shameful I know.

I have finished a shell top in tagliatelli merino tape raphael colorway
pattern booklet but not the pattern showing here, and yarn shown
http://www.threadbearfiberarts.com/yarn/colinette/tagliatelli.php

I have finished another pair of socks, well no I have finished ONE sock with size two dpns and cast on for the "mate" sock twice in two different sized needles until I realised that I must have used size ONE dpns to make the sock. The bottom part of the first sock (after all the decreasing was done) does not matter that much that it is in 2's vs 1's but I have a tiny ridge where I first tried the size 3's LOL

Well anyway, on to the "mate" sock. The size 2's were too large when I cast on so I had to wait until I went home (I knit at work remember?) and then I had to dig and dig and dig until I found the pair of socks that DID have the size 1's dpns IN them (the original one had stitch holders when I picked it back up) and so now

EEEK ! the rest of my clever post disappeared!

Rainy Days and Mondays always get me down

Some how I just can't get the picture of Sally and her brother sitting before the window staring at the rain out of my mind! It is gloomy here. It is rainy here. It is dismal here. It is cold looking here. It has looked this way since early December some time! What is WITH this weather? I swear most days it looks like it could snow!

I am not knitting today at work. Why not? because in my haste to get out the door and get to work while a parking slot near my building was still available, I forgot to grab the bag with the Tagliatelli project in it! So I do have the dayflower scarf project but no needle to thread the lace pattern place marker thread with through the row. As I ahve not yet switched over to Super dental floss, I need the needle to mark where I am. I do NOT relish the thought of starting all the way form the beginning if I mess it up without the lace pattern place marker in sight. I have three repeats done already! 16 rows to a repeat. whoooopeeeee

So to do something sort of knitty I am reading two blogs from gals in my knitting group. I even clicked on the link to one of their husband's blogs to read his even-shorter-than-her-blog blog. sigh.... here i sit... just staring out the window watching the grey grey grey grey go by.

Oh I did do something technical today. I set up my phone to be able to send and receive the occassional text message. now DON"T go sending my text messages as they cost me ten cents a piece! but today more tornados rippe through Florida and 14 people died and I was all concerned about my son away at college (Daytona Beach Embryy-Riddle Campus) as his campus was the one hit Christmas Day last year. So I called the cell phone company... 611... and then chose a million different numbers to finally get to a "live" person to see if I could indeed set up my phone to be able to send and receive txt msgs with a per msg charge. yupper roonies! so she set that up for me. Then embarrassingly enough, i had to ask her "HOW" do I do that? Send a text message that is. So she looked up my phone and gave me step-by-step instructions to send a message and Bless her heart, how to READ one too.

THEN I sent one to my son (thinking he was in class at that hour) explaining WHY I was txting him (tornados near him) after an agonising 5 minutes I have it ready to send and presto in less than 10 seconds I have a lengthy reply from him! geeesh I can type for this blog MUCH faster than I can txt msg. And I used abbreviations too. So, as you can tell from the fact that he replied, he is okay and was sleeping!

He has an interview tonight for Resident Advisor and I hope he does well at it. It would be a nice savings next year on the "room" part of college. And the privacy factor (he would not share the room, but would the bathroom) would be a nice plus for an only child. Don't you think?

well off to stare out the window some more
have a grand and glorious day
denise/deBRAT text messager novice!