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I am SO far behind! I feel like I'll never catch up!

Little Miss Unicorn's birthday is next week, and she informed me last weekend she'd changed her mind and wants an arctic fox instead of a unicorn. I don't mind at all, but the fox still isn't done yet, and oh, my goodness, the weekend is coming up way too fast! (I am planning to give it to her on Sunday...)

The newest WIP is no longer a WIP! Except it is... I finished it... YAY!!!!!!!!!! But the triangular shawwl is about six inches too short in the shoulders. I'm trying to figure out if I want to add one row on each side to give it a tad more wrapping power or if I should extend two columns on the top with a sort of V-neck because the back is already plenty long enough. Dilemma, dilemma, dilemma. I didn't want it to be a WIP, but WIP it will be until I can figure out what to do next.

I also need to finish a new snowflake (and pattern) for next Monday. I really need to do one for the following Monday, too, because I doubt I will have time next week. I need to finish a western-themed baby quilt for the bundle of joy who will be arriving across the street in about six weeks. And I need to finish my mother-in-law's quilt because I don't know how much longer she will be able to appreciate it. I cut out two dresses so I'd have something different to wear to church; I already had one in progress I haven't touched since the last update. Now I have three unfinished dresses screaming to be finished so they can be worn. The garden is beginning to call. The laundry never stops calling.

I want to make more homemade bread. I made my first dough in years, and it wound up as fry bread because the yeast didn't rise. (Great Navajo tacos!!!) I made sure my second attempt had good yeast by proofing it first, and we had two loaves of the most delicious fresh homemade bread. I think we finished the bread in less time than it took to make it. I didn't use eggs, as I did decades ago when I made bread all the time, because all the YouTube videos say you need just flour, salt, sugar (I use honey) and water. (I watched YouTube videos because it has been so long since I'd made bread, I wanted to make sure I knew what I was doing.) My homemade bread had much better structure when I used eggs. So next batch will include eggs. But where on earth will I find four more hours???

Oh, and I want to shoot the eclipse tonight, but we're expecting a blizzard. Of course. Maybe I can shoot snowflakes instead...

lunar eclipses from 2011, 2014, 2015 and 2019

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Headbangers

(my greeting cards and affiliate links)

Snowbow is helping me send birthday wishes to my family and friends this year. I snapped photos of Snowbow with each of the grands (I thought) back in February, fully intending to make each grandkid a Snowbow birthday card. (Most of the kids would rather have an actual Snowbow instead of a photo, though!!! They loved that little bear!!!)


I have so many grandkids, I can't keep track! Three of them escaped the photo shoot, and I didn't figure that out until I began making the cards.

Initially, I thought I could just Photoshop my little bear into other photos I'd snapped of the three missing kiddos, but after the first paste-up, I decided I'll try again next year, maybe, and do something different this year.

Last year, it was a struggle to send each paper card because I didn't initially keep track of who got what. My bad. I didn't want to send the same card twice to one family.

When I turned 6, I got identical greeting cards from both of my grandmothers, who lived more than 800 miles apart. It was really cool, and I still have those ballerina cards today. But both cards were personally addressed to me, not to me and someone else in my family, and I knew both my grandmas remembered how much I loved ballet. They both looked for something special to send me.

I've always thought if my sister and I had received identical cards (which NEVER happened), someone must have bought a stack of identical cards on sale and didn't care if what they sent was special or meaningful. I don't want to be "that grandparent." I want each of my grands to know they are unique to me. I don't ever want them to think I rushed through a gift- or card-shopping trip.

I decided to create all 16 (which now has become 19!!!) individual cards at one time, then all I have to do is mail them before each birthday. The whole year is done, no duplicates, and all I have to do sign them, put a stamp on them and remember to stick them in the mail!

I have so many bighorn photos, I decided sheep would be the best starting point. One family lives on a farm. Plus, it's really fun for me to write captions for some of the photos. Unless I am trying to write 16 (or 19) different rhyming verses!


Some of the photos almost write their own laugh lines. After about the tenth card, though, writing verses grew a little more challenging. Ever start feeling like your brain is scrambled??? That's how I felt!

Once done, however, I felt as if I'd climbed a 14er! The first few cards have already been sent and enjoyed now, and the remainder are labeled and ready to be mailed when the time is right.


Hearing from the kids how much they love their cards (and spinning some really good tall tales when they ask how I got so close) is one of my favorite experiences in life. (I always confess I have a really good telephoto lens after making their eyes pop out of their heads with stories of being sniffed by a bighorn.) (I did have a bighorn poke its head in my car window once when I stopped to shoot a roadside photo without getting out of the car...) (Oh, and then there was the time one came up behind me and really did sniff me - and scare the daylights out of me - while I was preoccupied shooting one of its kin...) (Well, and they really love the smell of my sweat on my bicycle handlebars...)






Every once in a while, I wonder what I'll use next year, or the year after that. I'm worried I will run out of themed photos as well as humored rhyme.

Perhaps I'll have to make another trip to South Dakota and hit all those dinosaur museums. Kids LOVE dinosaurs!


Or, I could just go back to bears...

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No! More! T-shirts!

Because my dear, sweet Lizard husband has been working weekends for about three months now, I have tons of Saturday time to work on quilts, work on snowflakes, work on the garden (weather accommodating, of course), or do that most beloved task of all... clean!

On this particular Saturday, I had decided it was time to clean up the snowflake work station, also known as The Office. It's where the computers are set up. Too small for a bedroom, too small for bookcases, and too small for bikes.

The Office was home to three stacks of pizza boxes converted into snowflake stiffening stations, plus eight stacking sealable plastic containers of snowflakes and probably enough for a whole bookshelf full of rust-proof pins, paintbrushes, beads, jewelry parts, googly eyes, glitter, fingernail polish and various stiffening agents. I started working on this project when one of the relocation trips took me to a stack of T-shirts in the main bedroom that had not been able to fit into the guest bathroom closet, which is where I've been keeping an unbelievably large stack of T-shirts, as well as towels, dish towels and hot pads.

Beneath the stack of T-shirts in the bedroom was the stack of joined but unfinished snowflake motif projects. I had found three in the snowflake work station that needed to join the stack. The stack bothered me, but so did the stack of T-shirts. This was going to be another of those days when I moved from cleaning project to cleaning project because so many cleaning projects lurk in every single space in the house.

I decided I should go ahead and find a real place for both the unfinished motif projects as well as the T-shirts. I went to the guest bathroom closet to begin sorting T-shirts. The Office wasn't done yet, and the bedroom stacks were not done yet, but the closet was more important, in my mind.

I've long had a collection of T-shirts and jerseys from bike rides I've wanted to one day convert into a quilt. Well, in reality, it's now going to be something like ten quilts, but you get the idea. It has been way too many years (at least five) since I weeded through the T-shirts in the closet, so it was time.

For the record, I'm keeping 16 T-shirts in the closet for wearing when T-shirt weather returns. I'm also keeping five long-sleeved T-shirts because you can almost always wear long-sleeved T-shirts in Colorado. Too bad more rides don't give long-sleeved T-shirts instead of short-sleeved T-shirts. I'm also keeping five tank tops for workouts and riding the trainer.

Before I get to the point of this entire blog post, I have to share a favorite of each, because, well, you know, memories. Some T-shirts never die, no matter what, because of the memories they hold.

First, the very best tank top in the whole world. It's from my very first Ride the Rockies. I guess you could say it's my first official purchased Ride the Rockies souvenir. I wore it to run when I could still run. I've worn it on my trainer more times than I can count. I don't wear tank tops too much anymore, except on the trainer. And it's likely this one won't be making an appearance there anymore because I want it to stay the crisp white it's managed to stay even though I sweat like crazy. This top is 14 years old this year. It's still one of my favorite shirts of all time because of the logo on the front. And because of the most memorable Ride the Rockies logo of the ride's 37-year history. I love this shirt.


My favorite long-sleeved T-shirt also is Ride the Rockies, same year, same emotions. I still proudly wear this to work on casual Fridays when the weather is cool. It's a great shirt to wear the day before the new year's route is announced, too. (Which means I'll be wearing it this Friday!)


Now come the T-shirts. Quite a bit more difficult to pick a favorite. Too many!!! (And that's pretty much why I'm writing this blog post anyway...)

You'll notice there is a bit of a theme. I probably don't have to explain three of these are Ride the Rockies T-shirts.

In addition to my Sleepless in Seattle T-shirt and my Eagles concert T-shirt are my first Ride the Rockies T-shirt with that incredible logo, my last Ride the Rockies T-shirt, which celebrated my fifth tour with my husband as well as the tour's 30th anniversary, and my favorite T-shirt of all time, the Ride the Rockies T-shirt I won on the top of Independence Pass (not for singing the national anthem as I'd hoped, but for having the right digit on the end of my credit card).


Good times! I can hardly wait for the next Ride the Rockies route announcement!

But this brings me back to the reason I'm writing this. I finally got done cleaning out that closet, and I couldn't believe the number of T-shirts from rides, donating blood, volunteering for charities, Race for the Cure, Snowshoe for the Cure, The Lion King, Super Bowls and Stanley Cups! My heavens, I could clothe a village.

Down in the basement lurks a big plastic bin of Race for the Cure T-shirts I've collected from friends and co-workers for the last decade. They will be made into quilts at some point.

This day of organizing and trying to make the house more presentable while my beloved is working away resulted in the donation of 58 more T-shirts to the pre-quilt collection!!! Along with six long-sleeved T-shirts and seven tank tops. Heavens to Betsy! I can't even get them all to fit!!!

We are signed up for one more ride this year, and we hope to be participants in Ride the Rockies, if the stars align. But I'm putting these rides on notice right here and right now.

We don't need any more T-shirts!!!

Please, do not give us any more T-shirts!

And now, I can get back to organizing The Office, which was the original day's goal...

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