To Everything, Turn, Turn, Turn.......

My aunt asked if I blog and I had to admit that I had fallen off the wagon and have gotten to the point where I hardly ever blog. Some of that has to do with the fact that I love to have a lot of pictures in my blog and the last several seem to be pictureless. I think it made me lose my excitement for my blog. I'm going to try and do better, but I can't promise that I will succeed. I have this habit of trying something just to learn how to do it or to say that I did it (my mini bucket lists) and then stopping once I've got it. I'm into the learning process. BUT, being out of school has meant that I've had a lot of time to try new things and I've got several new crafts that I've taken up and successfully completed that I would like to share. That brings me to the second reason why I really don't blog anymore, who reads this thing? Hardly anyone ever comments. Does anyone out there really care about what I'm putting on this little slice of WWW? Sigh. I guess that not blogging is a surefire way of never getting anyone interested in my blog, but I just don't think that anything I have to say or any of my talents are impressive to anyone. Regardless, I think that I'm going to keep plugging away at this thing and see what happens. Actual craft posts are returning and there will be pictures (provided I don't lose my camera like I always seem to do right when I want to load my pics to the blog). I'm going to do it this time and not procrastinate and once I stop laughing at myself for even posting this sentence I'll be back with another post....... real soon (that's a shout out to Mark Crilley, lol).

Son of a Biscuit Eater!!!!!

Resolutions. Rereading I've realized that I am not going to get any of those resolutions done before the year is out...... and I. DON'T. CARE. Hubs got a job in his field of study so that when he finishes school in the Spring he can just keep working.... with a slight promotion. The kids are taking swimming lessons again this year and are learning more. I think their fears are starting to leave them and allowing them to actually learn. Doesn't hurt that we spent a week with the family and they were in the pool almost the whole time (hey, that was how we learned how to swim). I won't be finishing up my degree this year, but have had to go on hiatus until the hubs gets done. He's going to be working and going to school full time so there won't be any time left for me to try to puzzle in a class schedule. I can get into a pottery studio when he's not working though so I'm hoping to do that and keep going with my throwing. I was getting really good at making mugs and bowls. I would like to expand my abilities though. Not much knitting was getting done while I was in school, but I'm getting back into it as I've had the summer semester off. I went really ambitious and am knitting a big cotton blanket for the hubs. He loves them but all the ones that I find in the stores snag too easily and I thought it would be a great item for him to have. I'm starting to wonder if it's going to be big enough though. I'm nowhere close to finished and it may take me several more months before I'm even halfway there. In other areas, I've taken up an interest in some other crafts. A few of which are making paper beads (now I just need some Judikins Diamond finish), viking knitting and making art journals. The art journals are a long term project, but I'm thinking about prepping books for other people and selling them or making some. I don't know if it would be legal for me to use an altered hardback book if I'm going to be selling them. I took two books that I got from a thrift store. Both are the children classic hardbacks, one is Anne of Green Gables and the other is Huck Finn. They are rewritten for a child, but I read the originals as a child and have no problem altering these books that don't have the whole of my beloved classics. I've started by ripping out pages here and there, gluing them together to make them two pages thick, and gessoing the pages to cover up the words and pictures with a white wash effect. I will be posting pictures. I know I'm going to be up all night working on these again. I almost have the Anne one done and the Huck halfway. I took the hubs old sociology book that he couldn't sell back and started altering it for myself (the other two are for my kids). I really like that it has a fold out in the front cover and can't wait to decorate it with all my favorite things. I've also been thinking about the Renaissance festival coming up and would love to get a sewing machine and take a crack at making my own (simple) costume. Then maybe I could go further and make a Molly Weasley outfit for Halloween this year and complete a small dream that I've had for the past three or four Halloweens.

Resolutions

Some of the things that I hope to get done this year:

1. Finish up my degree in fine arts
2. lose about 30 lbs. This should be doable in a year's time right....?.......Right?
3. Be more active and healthy (this includes what I eat and both of these should help me with #2).
4. Blog more. I've been neglectful.
5. take up photography again. I was always good at it, might as well add it back to my list of things that I do well.
6. stay more organized....... I realize this may be a pipe dream
7. Knit a little everyday


That's it. Any more and my head might explode.

School started for me on Tuesday and I'm looking forward to this semester. It may all get cut short if the hubs gets that job in Boone and that would be okay too. A job is key in these times. Things don't look like they're getting any better any time soon and we're running out of resources.
Tuesday I found out that I most likely made it into the Raleigh art show. They pick four pieces from each school to showcase in their gallery. I'll know more next week. I would have known more today, but an infection has me crawling to the doctor. Same skin infection that I had a few weeks ago has come back and it hurts like a motha'! I'm hoping it's just a general staph infection and not MRSA. I'm on this medicine that lowers my immune system and I'm starting to seriously think about coming off of it. Problem is that all the meds that control my disease lower the immune system so it might not be an option, but I don't want to get something that could kill me either. So far it's been limited to my skin which is fairly harmless and hopefully it'll just be another round of antibiotics and I won't hear from this stupid thing again (cause it REALLY hurts).

Rough Times, but there's ALWAYS a light to be seen

With a new year comes hope that this year may be better than the last. Hubby's job in Mississippi got recended. I didn't even know that they could do something like that. At least they told us before we packed up and moved everything out or we would have been really in a bind. So we finished out the year in the same place. Not so bad except now the unemployment has run out and it doesn't look as if the job market is getting any better. I've been looking, he's been looking and nothing. I've been looking locally for the past 6 months and he's been looking everywhere for the past 3 years. Nada. This is crap. How are people supposed to make it? I have a dream about a plot of land, a cob house, chickens and a garden so that we could be more self sufficient and not so needful of the crappy green paper with dead men on it. It seems so absurd that we put so much value on colored paper, but we do and for most necessities you have to, that's the saddest thing of all. There was a time when people didn't need it at all and they got along on their ability to grow crops, raise animals and trading with their community. I'm hoping that my family can get back to a more basic living, but I need to have everyone onboard cause I can't run a homestead on my own. Regardless we need jobs before we can even begin to think in that direction anyways. I hope everyone that can would start trying their hand at growing their own crops a little at a time. There is satisfaction in doing for yourself.
My health seems to also be on a downswing. My resolution is to drop some weight to help with my arthritis. There's not much that I can do to stop the psoriasis that is slowly taking over my skin again especially when my doctors keep telling me everything is okay. I'm pretty sure the resurgence of my arthritis (more painful than it was before) and my skin breaking out is signaling that my medicine is no longer effective, but I can't get my doctor to see it. Maybe I need to be more forceful. I saw a rheumatologist who told me that I don't have arthritis and possibly that I didn't have psoriasis (until he saw my scalp). The first time I broke out I was told that it was a fungal infection or a reaction to something until it wouldn't go away so this is nothing new to me. Sometimes doctor's take some convincing. The rheumatologist couldn't explain what it was that I have that's causing my joints to hurt, but he was sure it wasn't arthritis. I have to disagree because the pain is the same that I had before I was put on the Humira and once I started taking it I stopped having the joint pain. It's been slowly coming back along with the breakouts and here lately it's becoming difficult to do things with my hands. He said that because I didn't have pitting in my nails and swollen fingers that it couldn't be psoratic arthritis. I have searched all over the internet and I can find no where that says that you have to have the pitting of the nails (which seems to actually be more of a symptom of the psoriasis, but only if you break out on your hands) and my fingers may not have been swollen right then, but that doesn't mean that they never are. There is a list of symptoms that all the sites give and it says that you have to have at least two of them to be considered for psoratic arthritis. I have five. I have another appointment in February and if I get the same from him then I'll get a second opinion. Hopefully we'll just move and I can see a new rheumatologist.
I'm keeping my swollen fingers together (can't cross them cause they hurt) that my hubby will get this job in the mountains. This is the third time he's gone there for an interview and they like him. There are only two other people in the running for it this time so it's looking like the odds are in our favor, but we're not really getting up hope until we find out for sure. We'll know before the end of the month so that's good. In the meantime I'm going back to school for another semester and I'm one more step towards getting my degree. I only have one more semester after this and I'll have it. I'm feeling a great sense of accomplishment as I get closer and closer.
All this school has left little time for knitting, but I tried to make up for it over the break. I finished a pair of socks for my Grandma (an urgent project cause I never know how much time is left in life). I don't have a picture of them, but I'm working on a red pair now for myself (that I'm very happy with and can't wait to have on my feet) for your viewing pleasure.

They're the Dead Simple Lace Socks from Wendy D. Johnson's Socks from the Toe Up
I love this book and I'm hoping to do a pair from each pattern in it. My Grandma's socks were the On Hold Socks and I'm hoping to start another pair in the Lacy Ribs Socks pattern out of some variegated Malabrigo that I have.
One really good thing that happened for me this year was this........

and this.......

Know what those are????? My art pieces in a GALLERY!!!!!!!!!! It was a student show, but I was still excited to have my work shown. My kids were mighty proud too and my daughter kept telling everyone that came in that her momma made those. I think she was more excited to tell people than I was.

I'm Freaking out on the Inside

Just found out today that my hubby got a job in Mississippi. Okay. We have to be there by October 11th. I need to throw up.

There are pros and cons to this. We'll be further away from family, we have to quickly pack and move with two kids and I'm not going to be able to finish my classes for this semester. Those are the cons. The pros are that my DH will finally have a job after 3 years of searching, medical benefits should we lose our military when he goes for his disability review, we get to see new places AND we'll only be one hour away from New Orleans (a place I've always wanted to go, but have never had the chance). But first there's moving. There's that urge to puke again.

Summer break! Two weeks of..... nothing. Summer semester is starting on Monday and I'm excited. I'm only taking two classes, English (literature based research) and Painting 1. It'll be a quick semester (only eight weeks) and then the real summer break begins. I'm excited about the painting class. I've have paintings that I've made, but I'm wanting to learn more about color theory and how to blend so that I can have shadows and realism in my paintings (all my other paintings are of the surreal type). I'm excited about the English class too, but you can only get so excited when you know that there are essays and research papers involved. Still haven't gotten into knitting anything. I pick up something every once and awhile, but the urge really isn't there. GASP! I know. I feel hurt by the thought that I may never want to knit again and then reality hits and I laugh hysterically knowing that addictions always come back to bite you in the bum (it's my only addiction and a healthy one at that so I can't complain).
For my next summer break I want a vacation of Phineas and Ferb proportions. Building a rocket, fighting a mummy, or climbing up the Effiel Tower. Discovering something that doesn't exist, or giving a monkey a shower (yep, it had to be done). You know, THAT kind of summer. The kind I used to have as a kid. I'm looking into getting some camping gear and taking the kids out into nature and the look on their face when I tell them that they need to dig a hole before they DOO that (ha ha ha!).
Someone needs to come up with a snoring cure. BEFORE I beat my husband to a pulp in an attempt to get him to stop. Just sayin'

Future's lookin' so Bright!!!!!!

First sunburn of the season. It hurts so good. It's been too hot to knit and I'm back to school as well so the knitting seems to be going on hiatus. I have to rip back and make the skinny clapotis longer as soon as I finish making a small bag from the same yarn. I needed to make sure that I have enough yarn for the bag, but now I'm thinking I might look for something different to make the little bag out of. I have been more inspired to draw lately and I think that I'm going to try to get in a few art classes stating Fall semester and build up a portfolio that I can have on hand. I'm still toying with the tattoo artist idea. If I can get my foot in the door it would so be worth it, but it's finding someone to train you that becomes the problem. That and I need a little more training in the art department (I think) before I start putting permanent ink on people's skin. I'm trying really hard to find my niche and I'm starting to think that learning to work on cars wouldn't be such a bad idea if my whole "life as an artist" doesn't pan out. I don't know what to do with myself. Time to find some new knitting projects to project the CALM again.