2:00 p.m. - Saturday, Aug. 23, 2003
Mile-a-Minute
As I type this entry today I'm listenin' to Matt Damon singing a jazz tune, "Funny Valentine", the sound track from his movie, "The Talented Mr. Ripley". He has a great voice. I don't know if he changed his voice in any way for the movie since I've never heard him sing before, but I have read articles about Matt which attest to the fact that he can sing well. Matt is so talented. He's amazing!
Yesterday I was browsing the web searchin' for more information about my favorite actor and I ran across the sound track. What luck! The link is from New Radio Star.com and I know that all of Matt's fans appreciate them putting this on the web for us. It's an MP3 so it's the full version of the song just as it's done in the movie.
I received a nice email from my friend, H, in Finland. She's visiting with a girlfriend in the country. She's returned from her vacation trip a few weeks ago. This is something else. H told me that at the time of the writing she was steaming currants to prepare some currant juice later for herself and M, her friend. They had found the currants and some blueberries as well where they are staying in the countryside in Finland. Readin' her description of the fruit made me hungry for some. The juice sounds lovely. I love both currants and blueberries.
I have a juice maker. It looks like a large blender, but it will make a huge amount of fruit smoothies that can then be poured up into a container and stored in the refrigerator. I love a good fruit smoothie now and then, especially in the summer, made with bananas, apples and some cantaloupe or strawberries. Begin with a small amount of orange juice, add in the sliced fruit and pour in just a tiny dasb of honey. Finally throw in some ice cubes and blend...Yummmmm! Makes my mouth water to describe it. It's the best tastin' when enjoyed immediately after preparin'. I usually make smoothies when I have company so it will not go to waste. And it's very nice to have on hand for sippin' while sittin' on the porch swing enjoyin' the view of the local utility guy workin' on the electricity transformer down the street. I can hold the glass of chilled fruit smoothie in one hand and the high-powered binoculars with the other hand. Keeps the temperature from risin' both outside and on my insides too, hahahaha!
We had a bad thunder storm last night around 8pm. It was so bad I turned the power completely off on the computer. But the electricity never went out. Whew! The lightnin' was really heavy and scary for about an hour. I'm very amazed that the power didn't go off. I hope they haven't done somethin' to make the transformer hold up better. I will miss my cute guys in their tight little cut-offs if they have. The guy drivin' the popsicle truck in the afternoons about 4pm doesn't effect me in the same way a guy in a bucket-lift does. It must be the hard hat or the hard body....*Belle breaks out in light sweat just thinkin' about it*
Ok! On to other things for the present moment.
This mornin' about 7am, a little past the hour, while I was still deeply asleep, someone nearby began hammerin' on somethin', maybe their house that might have been damaged by the high winds last night. But still it was terribly annoying to be awakened by the bam!bam! of a hammer that early in the mornin'. I lay there tryin' to sleep through it, but never could quite get back to sleep again. By the time I finally decided to get up a little after 8am, whoever it was had stopped hammerin' and I never did find out who the person was that has absolutely no respect for his neighbors who might just happen to still be sound asleep at that unbelievable hour of the mornin'. He should count his blessin's.
My friend, LD, is expectin' her first baby in December right around Christmas. I love winter babies. I love to crochet when the weather turns cooler. So this is great. For some reason LD doesn't like the color pink even though she now knows the baby will be a girl. Hmmm...kind of strange that a woman doesn't like the color pink. But there are other pretty colors to use, yellow, lilac, melon (a very pale orange, almost the color of ripe cantalope on the inside). Melon is a pretty color.
I have some aunts who crochet and a friend who began learnin' to crochet a few years ago just as something to do at the time. I began learnin' as Karen learned. Karen soon became tired of it, but since crochetin' is in my blood, so to speak, I didn't lose interest. I learned more about crocheting from my aunts and I also learned more than ever from followin' the instructions. None of my aunts uses the written instructions for crochetin'. They look at things like pictures of crocheted items or have someone tell them what kind of stitches to use for a pattern. But I made up my mind to surpass them by learnin' to decipher the code that is involved in crochet instructions. It's a little like lookin' at the scribbles that make up shorthand. But I was determined that I would learn to read them. And now I can.
Oh, and I hold my crochet hook (needle) differently than most people so it makes it difficult for anyone else to learn from me sometimes. People generally hold the crochet hook like they would hold a pencil.
I hold a pen or pencil differently for some reason. To me my way of holdin' a pen is more relaxed. The way most people hold a pen or pencil looks strained to me. I know that most people hold a pencil as they were trained to do in elementary school. But my finger and thumb are not squinched up at the end of the pen as most hold theirs. I hold the pen up higher away from the writin' end and my finger and thumb are not all squinched up. My thumb lies lightly across the pen and against the middle edge of the finger. The pen actually rests more on the edge of the third finger curled below it. It's hard to describe. Most people will say they don't know how I can even write holdin' a pen that way. But I do and I have been commended for my writin'. I have a distinctive writin' style that is clear and very attractive, if I do say so myself. I consider writin' long-hand to be like paintin' a picture. It's more of an art form to me.
One lady who works at a bank once told me that my writin' style would be very difficult for a forger to copy. I do have my moments of writin' really sloppy if I'm in a big rush to jot somethin' down on the spur of the moment rather quickly. But if I write a letter to someone in long-hand or if I write out a check, it's done in my own neat style. I'm proud of my style. But with the handiness of the computer and printer I am findin' the need to write anything out in long-hand less and less necessary. So whenever I write out one of the few checks I now write out I take my time and do it in the way I love...like drawin' a fine, artistic sketch.
My crochetin' is the same way. I make my stitches a little differently than most would do, so that when one of my aunts looks at somethin' I've made she sometimes has to ask me what kind of stitch I was usin' because it's slightly off from the way most crochet stitches look.
I think I will get some white baby afghan thread and some lilac. The Red Heart thread from Walmart has a silver strand woven through it. So that when the baby afghan is completed it has a glimmer to it from the small silver threads which gives it a very rich look, I think. I make a somewhat unique baby afghan that is reversible that eveyone loves. So the one I will make for LD will be white on one side and lilac on the other. The way it is done is to work with two colors of thread at the same time, so it takes a system of switchin' the thread and afghan over at the completion of each row which is quite a trick. It not only involves turnin' the afghan but it means switchin' the attached threads to the opposite sides as well so that they won't become entangled. The threads are never cut while the afghan is being made. The afghan is done in a simple pattern of shell stitches and chain stitches. When the afghan is finished one side will appear as lilac with a white background and the other side will appear as lilac with a white background. The afghan will have a wide solid white corcheted ruffle border around it with a final single row of the lilac along the edge of the ruffled white border which really sets it all off.
Finally I will fold it and put it into a specially bought white box lined with thin white gift tissue wrapping. I will fold the completed afghan so that the lilac against white side is facing up. Then I will turn down one edge of the afghan so that just a corner of the white against lilac will show to display the reversed side. I will attach a lilac ribbon to the turned down solid white border and tie the ribbon into a small baby bow. I will then fold the tissue and close the box and finish wrappin' the box in decorative baby design wrappin' paper and ribbons with maybe a baby rattle tucked into a bow on the box front. I love boxin' up the afghan almost as much as I do seein' the finished afghan.
One cannot find this kind of baby afghan in a store. It's beautiful to look at and I get lots and lots of requests to purchase the afghans I make. I haven't made any last year since there were so many things goin' on. But this year I'm very much in the mood to crochet. And now I have a real reason to get busy. I also make regular size afghans from thicker thread, but I really enjoy the elegance of the baby afghans.
I also do another afghan in either baby or regular called "Mile-a-Minute". It's made up of crocheted long strips of chain stitches. Then a border is added to each strip. When the strips are joined together they make up the afghan. Finally when all of the strips are crocheted together an edge around the joined strips is added so that they don't pull apart. This afghan is beautiful too.
Ahhhhh....I am lookin' forward to the Fall season. It's a great time to crochet.
