I'm not afraid to admit it

I am a terrible blogger. There. I said it.

Yesterday was my 24th birthday, and it was pretty great. I got tons of birthday well-wishes on Facebook, wonderful birthday cards from my family members, and a special dinner out with my favorite person ever (Tyler, in case you were confused about that, haha). We went out to the Abbey Inn, which is a British/Irish pub. There was even a British 'folk' band playing and singing while we were there, which was pretty cool. The food was great, too.

Not much else is going on around here. I started a new job at Massage Envy, which has been pretty cool so far (I've been there 2 weeks tomorrow). And we're mentoring a group of Team in Training people for the winter season, as well as fund raising and training ourselves. So far, so good!

I've been neglecting the blog again, sorry about that!

Here's some bullet points about what's been going on lately:

1) my last day of work was last Friday
2) Tyler's parents visited this weekend!
3) Tyler and Gary put in our flagstone patio!! It looks great, picture to come.
4) We visited my grandmother in the hospital yesterday. She's 1 week post-op on a heart valve replacement, and should be discharged today or tomorrow.
5) we celebrated our 4th wedding anniversary last week. Plus this past weekend we stayed in downtown Ft. Worth to celebrate, and visited the Ft. Worth Zoo on Memorial Day. Fun times!

Scientist Creates Life. That's a Good Thing, Right?

Scientist Creates Life. That's a Good Thing, Right?

This is a very interesting article about the emerging field of synthetic biology.

Slacking off!

Sorry I've been a bit absent from the blog lately. There's a lot of stuff going on around here that is kind of stressful - Tyler's grandma passed away last week, so we were busy this past weekend with the memorial service (as well as wedding, which was a nice counterpoint to the sad occasion), and I've decided to quit my job and focus on stuff at home for a while, as well as working on making my relationship with God my #1 priority. It should be an interesting summer, to say the least.

In other news, we have some squash fruits growing on our plants! We may try and eat one tomorrow, or let it grow a few more days and enjoy it this weekend. We also need to get our guest room set up this weekend, because Tyler's parents are probably coming to stay with us the first weekend in June.

I've also been busy knitting and reading instead of blogging lately. I have an awesome sock on the needles right now! I'm also planning on doing a knit-a-long with my friend biomaj5 and a few other people - we're going to be knitting a cardigan! I'm pretty excited about taking on a big project, especially since I get to use custom-dyed yarn for it. :)

That's all the update I have for now. I will try to post pictures of my various projects soon, if I don't get too sidetracked.

Soooo, I kinda slacked on the last half of Knitting and Crochet Blog week. :-/ Sorry about that, some issues at work have me stressed and distracted.

Instead of catching up, I'd rather you enjoyed a picture of how our patio will look once we get all the flagstone put in. We laid out the stones today to see how they would be arranged, now we just have to dig it out and layer some sand underneath the stones.


The section of grass to the right of the grill will get filled in with some kind of bushes (hopefully lavender). That's our new patio furniture, which also got delivered today. Besides the patio project, the other big project we have planned is adding gutters to the house, which will drain into rain collection barrels which we can use to water our gardens. :)

Skillz

Today's blogging topic is all about what skills you want to learn to enhance your crafting. I'm just going to leave you with a short list of things I'd like to try, plain and simple.

-toe-up socks (I will be starting my first pair this weekend, hopefully!) I hear they are "better" than cuff-down, so we shall see!
-colorwork (this rocking pattern has inspired me to learn someday)
-cables (I just haven't gotten around to them yet)
-completing a sweater, and all that goes with that (seaming, blocking, buttonholes, etc.)


These are my ambitions for now. I'd better get crackin'!

One Great Knitter

OK, OK, I couldn't narrow it down to just 1 great knitter whom I admire. I will focus on 2: Stephanie Pearl-McPhee (AKA the Yarn Harlot) and Jared Flood (of Brooklyn Tweed).

The Yarn Harlot is one of the best bloggers I follow. She is humorous, light-hearted, and above all, dedicated to her craft. She is the most prolific knitter I know about, and her love for other knitters is obvious in her enthusiasm for her readers as well as those she interacts with at her various speaking/knitting engagements. And, I love the way she doesn't *just* write about knitting. She puts a fair bit in there about her family and friends, which helps the reader get to "know" her on a little more personal letter. I strive to do something similar with my blog, but I don't pull it off nearly as well.

Another knitting blogger I greatly admire is Jared Flood. Mostly I love his photographs. They capture the beauty of knitted objects so perfectly, and the projects seem to just grab me and say "knit me!". His designs are just gorgeous. Here is some eye candy from his blog for you to enjoy: