Resurrecting the Crippler

Remember the Crippler, aka the Einstein.... the beginning of Tendenitus...Carpal Tunnel and Acid Reflux. Well it has sat on my loom, doing just that looming about and leering at me to do something with it. I decided I didn't want the sleeves on it, because I have short arms and the sleeves only made them look shorter. I opted for a long vest like look. My brother made the buttons out of deer antlers. He used the stump of the antler, which is nearest the head. They are gorgeous. Tomorrow, which is Thursday is Fiber Fanatiks. I need some creative conversation. Hey Lois your colors are coming up for April!!! Orange and Yellow!!!!

Happy 83rd Birthday Mom

Today is my mom's birthday!! I thought I would post a photo of her in her Native dress. just kidding mom!!! When I was a child, my dad, who is Native American Ojibwa and French, would tell us our mother is Indian. This did not sit well with my mom, due to the stigma that was attached to being Indian, it was shameful to be Indian. We never bought into it, being that cowboys and Indians was the thing to be...all our heros were Cowboys and we didn't know what "Stigma" even meant. Anyways, my mom would get really ticked off because he was the Indian not her...! While on a camping trip out west, we went shopping and I got Navajo moccasins and my brother got a Souvenier Indian knife...check this out I was probably 10-11, which would make my brother 5-6...and he had a switchblade knife. So we stayed at this Reservation campground and I met a girl from Alaska that was camping with her grandparents. There were horses in the field on the side of the campers, and I had my moccasins on, which gave me bragging rights about being Indian. I was filling this girls head with bull from beginning to end...oh yeah, if I could get into that pasture, I would ride those horses bareback..(never been on a horse at that timeframe, other than the nickle horse in front of Treasure Island). We lived on a reservation, in a Teepee and I showed her my knife...eh, my brothers knife that is. The great part about camping as a kid, you will never see those people again...you can live out any fantasy you want when you travel...unless of course you get caught. I was in the shower room with my new found sucker...I mean friend and in walks my mom, I say Hi Mom, and she says "Hi honey" and new found squeeler, I mean girl says, really loud..."is that your Indian mother?" I think I saw steam coming out of the toilet stall, as my mom said through clenched teeth "Jan, get to the car..." uuuhhhmm ...I go to the car, that was packed up and ready to go, dad in the driver seat, my brother seated behind him and me behind my mom's seat...here comes mommy!!!! Kicking up stones as she was flying into the front seat...Al..(that is my dad) she is telling everyone that I'm a damn Indian...I was cowering...dad was snickering and mom was having a hissy fit....She actually threatend to take away my moccasins...so I offered her uuuhhhmmm.......my knife....
I made this card for her, and she looked at it and said that the Indian actually looked like her and I had to tell her it is!!! How funny is that...the miracles of Photo shop!!! So Happy Birthday to my Indian mother!!!

Pink Bubble Gum

Wow, that is some bubble!!! This is from our Sunday morning bowling game. I am a terrible bowler, but it is fun to just throw the ball around and be a "tard"!! Obviously my son, has inherited the same sense of humor as his mom. Is anybody working on something for Project Spectrum...pink and red this month? I have the intestines done and I did some spinning but not either of those colors..(check previous post). I found out how I lost some brain cells...well one way at least. Today they are calling it "choking", it is a very dangerous game or hobby some kids are getting. They choke themselves till they pass out and when you come to, you get all tingly and woozy. Problem is when you tie something around your neck and you pass out...you die. It's a real buzz? When I was a kid, after spinning around in circles a zillion times, got boreing, I remember someone saying "Hey, if you breath really hard for 10 times and then hold your breath and cross your arms, you faint...oh boy doesn't that sound like fun. I think I tried it once and it didn't work very well, but I do remember the tingling. Being the smart child that I was, I decided to show my mom my new trick...hey mom watch this!!! I passed out all right, I think it was her hand or maybe her shoe that hit me. When I came too, I had a tingling feeling, I think it was numbness from Mommy Dearest demonstrating the choke hold on me, and telling me "How not to ever do that again!!" So...what is old, once again becomes new. I must have been about 11 or 12 when I did this, and my one time "fainting" demo and lecture on what this does to your brain, was enough to scare the crap out of me. I was a dumb kid, very gullible, we didn't have a "Family room" we played in the Living room, in front of our parents. We shared bedrooms, so limited privacy there. We ate dinner together, had one bathroom, a set bedtime. kids now are smarter and have the ability to hide more from working parents. Maybe that's why we didn't get away with this kind of stuff...not that we didn't try. Heck I even showed them what an idiot I was. Hey mom, here's living proof that I'm a dork!!! Talk to your kids, they are better at hiding things than we were. at least than I was....

Hot Pink Tootsies

Remember Ice skating? Remember tieing your ice skates really tight to help support your ankles.....soooo tight that your feet fell asleep, but you didn't notice because they were froze? Then came the fun part....when you untied your skates and the blood rushed into your toes and burned like fire....well in fond memory of that wonderful event in my life, I relived it today. I bought new work shoes, tied them nice and tight...and they actually felt really comfortable. I should mention that I am on my feet all day, on concrete...standing. So in lay terms this means that my feet swell, I have in terms of endearment "Cankles", by the end of the day..(Cankles for those of you unfamiliar with swelling feet are Ankles that are as fat as your calves) Ok back to the story...so by 1:00, my feet are starting to pinch, just a little, so I will walk on them for another two hours before I can open the gates of hell. I actually couldn't "feel" my feet, it was the tingling in my toes that I noticed, as if they fell asleep...I think they did. So I am walking with these concrete blocks, I used to call feet, that have begun burning, the only reason I know they are burning is I can smell the rubber from my new shoes. I can do this...It's almost time to go home and I can untie these corsets from my sleeping, tingling feet. Now comes the locker room, I sit down on the bench and I try to untie my shoes, there is so much stress behind those laces, that I am now looking at my knife to cut the laces to let my toes breath...I will win this battle and with one swift pull of the gray striped lace, the shoe opened up like Pillsbury cresent rolls on a hot day!! Without a breath, the blood is rushing past the cholestral infested veins at top speed to my tippy toes, I was sure my toenails were going to pop up like the trunk on a car. I can't begin to explain the pain, so I rubbed them and talked them down...something like...ahhh poor babies, please stop burning and hurting. I only have to walk 4 blks to the parking lot, I know my old shoes will soothe the pain, but when I stepped into them I think I felt blisters on the soles of my feet. I took little baby steps to my truck..people were passing me ...where the heck is a ride when you need one...Oh I can hardly wait till tomorrow, for more torture. My poor little Hot Pink tootsies!!!

I'm not in the Pink :(

I have lost my favorite jammies, my ducky's are done, gone...thread bare and holey. We are old friends...my security blanket. First thing I look for in the laundry basket, is my duckies, it's like putting on old shoes, they are soft, they have lost all of their flannel, and I bet I didn't have them a week and I got one of those ell rips in them. I wear them while I am dying, and never got any dye on them...that I know of! I was kind of noticing they were getting pretty thin...a few pin holes here and there and then last night...I went to sit down and low and behold my knee came through the duckies. I almost cried...Hey there are two things I do the minute I walk in the door from work....put on my jammie bottoms and a cup of "Joe"!!! Don't come over and expect to see me dressed up and waiting for that knock...uh uh, home is flannel bottoms in winter and cotton in summer. I must admit that duckies were so thin they did double duty...summer and winter. I have had them for about 8 years, we are old friends..I still don't have the courage to destroy them completely...maybe I could make...something? Just look at that cute little smile...and don't look at that white chicken skin busting through the rip.

Intestinal Fortitude?

Guess who isn't too happy, wearing the guts around her neck? Suddenly Joey got shy? Check out those ears pinned back to her head.....This has been a busy week, for me. I had the Sport show Tuesday, and making dinners to cook at a dinner to go, place on Wed. and tonight vegging out tonight, and shoveling the 24" of snow we didn't get!!! Oh by the way, you are all joking about my intestinal tract, but I don't see anybody else baring their guts!!! I think unlike the Harlot with her photos of socks all over the world, I may take up baring my guts all over the world??? hhhhmmmm I may be on to something.

Remember this Pink?

Can you remember the flowers? the green grass? color? I thought you may want a shot of color. I am done working on the pink intestine. I can always rely on fellow bloggers to set me straight on what it "Really" looks like!! I am not a pink fan to begin with and this looked kind of cute to me...until now, all I can see is my guts swirling around my neck. Or maybe Piggy Pink guts!!! eeeewwww!!! I am still winding warp of tencel for the yardage I want to weave. I do not like to wind warp...I don't mind dressing the loom but I don't care to wind the warp. I have to keep saying to myself...it is part of the process. I am going to the Sport show tonight with my brother. I have not been there in years and it is really close to my house. It's one of those things that you go to once every 10 years because they have the same gimmick fishing lures, which of course you HAVE to have. It's the kind that when you pull the line it goes deeper into the waters, enticing the trained fish to circle it and it dances and swirls and the fish gather around it in multitudes like it is an alien ship invading their waters. Oh the fish don't bite on it, but they look at it!!! Then there is the defogger, that keeps your glasses fog free...once!! The Nada chair that everyone had at least one of....this was a contraption that you strapped around your waist ( it took 3 hours to figure out how to get it right) then put these straps over your knees and it took the pressure off of your back while sitting on a bleacher... yeah....!! So between my brother and I, we have bought our share of gimmicks from this event and truthfully I can't wait to go again!!! Hey Sport show "Barkers" Hawkers....whatever....We're coming!!!!

Warm pink and fuzzy....eeeww?

No this is not a porn site. I am trying to keep with the pink/red theme. I am knitting/crocheting this moebius with handspun yarn and some pink mohair I bought somewhere...I am stash busting. I didn't like the plain old moebius and thought I would crochet a ruffle on the edge, that was too pink so I am edging that with the handspun and now I like it. Like I always do it starts out as one thing and ends up being something else. It is raining again, it's a mixed bag of weather this month in Wisconsin. Cold, hot, warm, cool, rain, fog and let us not forget snow...a good saying in Milwaukee is, "If you don't like the weather stick around for 15 minutes it will change." I have another epiphany, I need to find the photos of "Wooly". I think we need to bring him out for a good laugh. Wooly for those of you not introduced is the very first handspun sweater I knit. I was just learning to spin and I was left pretty much on my own to spin and knit this amazing sweater... I will find the photo and then share it with you!!!

PINK flamingo

Last night, was spinning guild night at my house. Searching for something pink to put on my blog, Karen had the best knit flamingo...it doesn't get much pinker than that!!! It is a Fiber trends pattern that you knit and felt...Isn't she cute...the flamingo I mean!!!!! hahaha So I am done with the parties for now (I breathe a sigh of relief)....I have a story about the old lady at the grocery store yesterday. I was picking up cakes for the evening and some old lady was looking in my cart with some disgust..either she thought that I took all the cakes and she wanted one, or she thought I didn't look like I needed any more cake? Either way it was none of her business, so after I passed her I looked at the front of my cart thinking maybe someone wrote something dirty on it?? no ..so I keep shopping only to encounter her once again, blocking the row I was going to go down, Behind her is a frustrated young man throwing his hands up in the air as she is perusing the jello shelves, with her cart strategically placed in the center of the aisle so no one can go anywhere. I am aimed right at her as she gives me another dirty look and I decide there is too much drama in that row, I can go to another aisle. So with shopping over, I am walking to the checkout line when here comes the old bag doing a sprint that would make a relay runner look handicapped. I was going to go into that lane, but she beat me too it, and too bad for her it was closed!!! Spared me the embarrassment of diving for the revolving belt. In a last minute gesture to save face she decided she forgot milk...hhhhmmmmm so as her husband was attending her cart...gazing at some chick four rows down, I was filling her cart with whatever the end cap had on it...batteries, air freshner and cereal. Lucky for her we were too far from the gift of the month stainless steel pans. so I left the store with a smile on my face and a bag full of cakes and sweet revenge.......note to self...never leave my cart unattended and don't be a crabby old lady, do drugs instead!!!!

Think Pink, and Red!!

Here's the scoop on Project Spectrum, whilst creating in Pink and Red, think of a snack to bring in Pink and Red also. Somewhere towards the end of March we can get together, or maybe we can do it all on the last Thursday of the month at Johnny V's, with the Fiber Fanatiks. That way my "Precious" won't be tempted to taste some of you....more than others!!! She just wants to be one of the "girls". Precious, for those of you who have not had the joy of meeting her, is my dog Joey! Wild, mental and very short attention span best describes her...hey that describes me too!!! No wonder I love her so much!!! Anyway, life's lesson would be if you want something to come to you, don't like it or be allergic!!!!

That's Joey with Auntie Lois and Auntie Sue, she likes them because they bring her treats. She is showing you how she can lick her own nose...let me tell you, her talent doesn't stop there!!!!!

Project Spectrum

Seeing as though I have some extra time on my bacteria infected fingers. I finally have the link done for the Project Spectrum. Oh yes knitters, spinners and whoevers, we have a new project and thus can have a new party!!! If you click on the sidebar Project Spectrum it will take you to Lolly girls blog, the creater and originator of color of the month. March's color is Red or Pink. This is a fun idea, which makes (provokes ) us to use different colors for each months projects. Little does Lollygirl know that within 10 foot radius I can put my hands on about 12 unfinished projects of varying colors as we speak. But in following the rules of the game, I am going on a search for either Red or Pink to make something??? So to get onboard, check Lollygirls site to see the color of the month club!!!
March - Red and Pink
April - Orange and Yellow
May - Green
June - Blue
July - Violet / Purple
August - Neutrals / Black & White

Let the games begin....again!!!!

I dodged the bullet...I thought?

The kleenix is for my nose and the tea is for my cold/flu, and don't look at that Nutritional fact thing? Whatever the heck I have? I sound like I just smoked 3 packs of smokes and watched a Packer game. It came on quickly, so beware. It started with sneezing, itchy eyes and runny nose. I know it has been going on around me, I know lots of people have had this...why I didn't get it sooner is beyond me. I know to wash my hands frequently...and I do this, but only after I have touched every germ bearing source around me (hand rails, come to mind?) and then shoved my finger down my throat to insure the planting of any rampant germs way down in the pie hole so they can't get back out. I rub my eyes and press the bacteria into the little triangle inside of the eye so it can travel into my system faster, and how about that nose...oh yeah poke not one, but all of those fingers in the nostrils....what is with that? Part of me wants to believe I am building up an immunity and the other part of me says it's because someone said "Don't touch your eyes, nose or mouth with germy hands!!" So now I suffer the consequences..? So for those of you out there...like me...."Shove those fingers in all of your head orfices to insure proper plantation of germs." Then go buy some extra soft kleenix, Airborne, and Tea, and read blogs all day!!!