Show and Tell: Owl Edition

One of my coworkers is expecting a baby in April. Secretly, I've been knitting a little surprise for her:



Look closely at the cables... do you see the owls hiding there?

A matching hat to keep baby's head nice and toasty.

Meat-tastic

Did you wake up this morning thinking, "I would just love to see an example of effective labeling today"? Well, you're in luck.

Girls' Weekend 2012: Nashville!

Over the weekend, I met up with five of my college housemates in Nashville. None of us actually lives in Nashville; we just thought it would be a fun place to visit. And it was! The combination of tons of great music, good food, and the company of my very best friends was perfect.


We were there during Whitney Houston's funeral/homegoing. Here we are roaming the streets, talking about it.

Keller brought her niece's Flat Laura doll and took pictures of it around Nashville. Here's Flat Laura at the birthplace of bluegrass music!

We went to the Grand Ole Opry. As we were waiting before the show, a woman came up to us and asked if we would take a picture with her and her granddaughter's Flat Emily doll! Is that a coincidence or what? We got some photos of Flat Emily and Flat Laura together. The were instant friends. Don't they look so happy together?

Jenny and I before the Grand Ole Opry

The Opry is a live broadcast radio show. There are a bunch of performers each night, each doing one or two songs. Some of them were pretty cheesy (think names rhinestoned on guitar straps). But it was so so so much fun! I would go again in a heartbeat.

Don't worry, we also toured the Jack Daniels distillery.

The tour included a couple of videos. Instead of watching the videos, I took pictures of my friends watching them. I can watch videos any day. But I can only take pictures of this crew once in a great while.

Caitrin, Stacey and Lindsay outside the distillery, taking a break to rock and look at iDevices
We may have spent a little time at the Honky Tonks (that's really what they call them!).

We're already planning Girls' Weekend 2013. Or at least I am. Quebec? Colombia? Only time will tell. xo

Ten on Ten, Eleven, and Twelve: February

Headed to work for a half day, then to Chicago for a knitting weekend!
1. Husband-friendly snacks on the kitchen counter
2. Valentines for our niece and nephew
3. World's most boring calendar, on its way to the staff lounge giveaway area
4. Waiting for the bus at noon
5. In the car, on our way to...
6. A surprise lunch date!!!
7. Bus ride to Chicago
8. Cinnamon dolce latte
9. Exploring a humongous Walgreen's
10. Knitting and noshing

This was really lucky.

A few years ago, my friend Lia (who I wish had a blog I could link to-- it would be hilarous) gave me a CD of cat and dog sounds. I haven't been able to find it for the longest time, so I assumed that I left it at my old job, which I left over three years ago. Digging in the basement this week, I uncovered it!
The best is that it's next to a DVD of season 2 of Dallas Cowboys Cheerleaders: Making the Team that I bought from some random lady on the internet. Hip, hip, hooray for cats, dogs, and (most of all) cheerleaders!

Sew Happy

After making the zippered dop kit last week, I couldn't wait to try another project on my own. Here it is-- a pencil case! I'm planning to make another bag out of the print material. They can be a matching set!
I'm so in love with this project, I just want to make zippered bags all day long.

A Scene from My 35th Birthday

This post was supposed to be called "Scenes from My 35th Birthday," but I only took one picture. I went to a writing workshop during the day, and I was so happy to come home to this:

I live in the coolest town.

Madison is so darn cool.

The main library is going to be completely rebuilt, but before the old building was demolished, people took advantage of the huge empty building and held an event called Bookless last weekend. Tons of artists had installations-- I even got to help a friend build hers, out of catalog cards and microfiche. Karl and I went to check out the event during the day. It was basically the most awesome thing ever in the world.

At the Ask the Oracle station, we wrote questions on catalog cards...

sent the cards through the pneumatic tube system...

and someone downstairs wrote an answer and sent it back up! I won't tell you what my question was, but the answer was, "How much?" which was the perfect answer. Thank goodness those tubes got a last hurrah!

Lots of the art involved library items like Kik-Steps:

Kik-Step peek-a-boo!

This one is made of shelves:

And then at night they turned the whole thing into a dance party. We're never moving.