The Year in Review -- The Year 2017, That Is!

Happy September 2018! 

Yeah, I haven’t exactly been blowing up either of the blogs for a long while. I was actually shocked to realize how few postings I’ve made in the last couple years. I guess I think about writing here far more than I actually do write here. Even my personal (handwritten) journal has received short shrift since the middle of this year; I happened upon it under a pile of junk on my dining table last weekend and was horrified to realize how long it had been MIA. No wonder people keep sending texts and/or emails asking if I’m still alive. Yikes!

So – here I am, welcoming myself back to my own blog! In celebration of what is, I hope, the end of my writing hibernation, let me catch you up on what’s been going on in LOL-Land. 

[I am going to throw out one tiny little bit of excuse for my laxity, which is that time seems to go by ever-more-quickly with every passing day. I am constantly shaking my head and thinking, “How can it already be January/summer /my birthday/Christmas/a new year/(name any event or season)?” For a while, I had begun to wonder if I had reached the point where the world around me actually blurred from the rapid spinning of the planet. However, it turns out that blurring was just cataracts. Ha!]

Anyway, here is 2017 in review. 

Oh, but before 2017, here’s one fun thing from 2016.

One of my sister’s Christmas gifts was a handmade (by me) representation of her favorite word. As she told our dad once (when he objected to her use of the word), it’s the perfect word – it can be a noun, a verb, an adjective, or an adverb. (He didn’t buy it. She didn’t stop using the word.)

It’s a paperweight! I saw a very nice pewter f-bomb paperweight in a catalogue and knew she would love it, but it cost $40. I am way too cheap to pay $40 for a paperweight, so I started thinking of ways to make one. I found plenty of patterns to knit or crochet, but none of them hit me just right. Finally, I remembered my old friend Sculpey™ clay! This bomb has a rock as its core to make it heavy-ish and a ball of aluminum foil is wrapped around the rock to keep from using so much clay that it wouldn’t bake and harden properly. It took me quite a while to sculpt this as I am no kind of artist, but I don’t know when I’ve had so much fun or laughed so hard making a clay project. 

Back to 2017 – I bought Cashmire a flying saucer heated cat bed. She apparently used it behind my back (hair all over the pad, pad all ruffled up), but spurned it to my face. Finally, I caught her in there! Don’t you love how snarky cats can be?!

Carolyn and I went to a craft fair. One vendor had items hand-made from all kinds of natural elements. I was trying to decide between two autumn wreaths, but just could not make up my mind. I told Carolyn my dilemma and we discussed the merits of each wreath. She also liked them both and told me whichever one I didn’t get, she was going to buy. After more discussion, she asked, “Which one?” I pointed at the sweet little wreath made out of wood rounds, with a cute burlap owl on it. Carolyn immediately snatched it off the display and told the vendor, “I’ll take this one.” I could not believe she was buying my wreath right out from under me! I was shocked speechless. When the vendor took the wreath to look at the price, Carolyn turned to me and said, “Merry Christmas!” Then she laughed and laughed. She said the look on my face was priceless. 

I went to Wichita Falls several times to visit Cindy, and we painted that town pink (Cindy’s favorite color)! Cindy took me to cute boutiques, fun antique stores, a craft fair, and twice we saw a play at the community theater. Every trip was so much fun! On one of my visits, Cindy fell in love with the switch plate in the women’s restroom at one of the shops. She found the owner of the shop, and ended up buying the plate right off the wall. Now it’s in her restroom!

I cannot remember every single place I went with Cindy, but I know I've eaten at Casa Mañana twice. It's the home of the famous Wichita Falls red tacos! The tortillas are soaked in a red wine sauce before frying. Yummy!

We ate breakfast one morning at the TGS Cupcakery. They are open all day and serve wonderful homey meals. I loved their signature cups so much that I bought one!

Some of the other places we went:

At one of the little shops, I bought a hilarious little tin. Here's the front:

The back:

The front edge:

I adore that the snarky little thing looks hand-embroidered. It's proudly displayed in my dining room so I can giggle every time I walk by the secretary. 

Marlene and I went to Iola, Kansas, to attend a Buster Keaton celebration. It was my second time to attend and her fourth time, so we already had the lay of the land and knew just what ancillary sightseeing and shopping we wanted to do before, after, and between sessions. We had a blast for four days! We each made a few purchases (not least, we each left the Russell Stover candy outlet with a heavy shopping bag and a light pocketbook), but my favorite purchase is my monster handbag. It has a nice long cross-body strap and it will hold everything I need for a quick dash to the grocery store. I seriously dislike grocery shopping, but this little bag adds a jolt of entertainment. Not everyone has a bag wearing a tiara!

Naturally, we found fun on the road as well as in and around Iola. We decided to eat lunch in Tulsa on the way up. Since neither of us have a clue about that city, I asked Siri for some options. Marlene and I chose a barbeque place that sounded local, and followed Siri to the food. 

  

The onion and jalapeno rings were divine. I had a delicious pulled pork sandwich, but it was completely overshadowed by the awesomeness of the rings. 

On the way home, we stopped in Coffeyville, Kansas, to tour the Dalton Defenders Museum. They have lots of interesting memorabilia from the era, plus a fascinating documentary about the Daltons and the foiled bank robberies. (The Dalton Gang planned to rob both of the town’s banks at the same time, but it didn’t work out the way they planned.) Coffeyville was the first town whose citizens banded together to try to prevent a bank robbery, then chased the robbers to their horses while they were trying to get out of town. There’s a walking tour that follows the paths the bank robbers and the townspeople took during the event. The buildings that housed the two banks in question are still there, and you can trace everyone’s footsteps. (The city has even painted footprints on the pavement to help you out with that.) When we paid admission, the older-than-we-are gentleman volunteering at the museum that day gave us each back two dollars more than we were expecting, explaining that there is a special price for people who visit on Sunday. Later, we saw a little sign advertising the senior discount – two dollars less than regular admission. We loved that he gave us a “Sunday price” rather than tell us we were eligible for the senior discount! Now, that’s a kind and tactful man! 

In October, I went to Bentonville, Arkansas, to attend the annual Fall Craft Fair hoopla with Lynzee and her friend Heather. Heather invited us over for a fabulous home-cooked breakfast feast to keep us strong for the shopping. We had limited time, so we decided to hit the Fair at War Eagle Mill first. (Check it out at https://wareaglemill.com/fall-craft-fair/. There’s more to War Eagle than just the annual craft fair.) We stayed there so long – the Fair was HUGE – that we didn’t have time to go anywhere else!! It was crazy how many booths there were! Someone had fresh, hot kettle corn, so we munched on that while we shopped. We limited our purchasing to only what we absolutely could not live without (who wants to either carry it all around or make a bunch of trips back to the car??), but we saw a ton of cool stuff we wanted. In the end, I bought just enough things to make me feel extravagant without totally loading me down, including three little handmade (of fabric) pumpkins, three flavors of handmade pasta, and a jar of Hatch green chile seasoning. 

After the Fair, we met Heather’s husband, Nathan, at a local Mexican food place, where I ordered a margarita and Nathan had a beer. It looks kind of normal in this photo . . . . 

. . . . but, good heavens, look at the size of that margarita glass next to Lynzee and me!!

I’m pretty sure we also ate food, but I don’t remember that part . . . . . (just kidding!!)

The next day, Lynzee and I went to Fayetteville. We visited the Savoy Tea Company, where I purchased an herbal tea named Prince Charming; a kind of bohemian bead-jewelry-clothing shop called Dark Star Visuals whose owner was delightful and helped me figure out which beads I should use for a knitting project and where I could order them online; and some other fun stores where my only purchase was a cake pan. As soon as I got home, I made blueberry bread in it:

It looks perfectly disgusting, doesn’t it?! SCORE!!!! I love it, and made several yucky-looking breads throughout October. I may create a sugar-skull cake one of these days to try my hand at cake decorating, but nothing’s going to beat blueberry batter in there!

I got on a handmade (and sometimes weird) roll at Christmas. It began when the women at the office decided we would each decorate one of the inner windows. All sorts of grandiose plans were flying around, so I hatched one of my own. Behold the hanging advent calendar window:

Carolyn taught me about the candy canes. They are cheap plastic six-to-a-package ones from the Dollar Store, wrapped with strips of colorful fabric. I taped various kinds of Lindt Lindor truffles to the bottoms of the canes as the daily treat. The numbers were cut from vintage-holiday scrapbooking paper. It looked pretty nice when I put it up. Sadly, the candies were too heavy. I tried everything I could find except duct tape and permanent glue to hold the canes up, but every morning I had to re-hang at least half of them. 

Wrapping the canes was totally addictive; I made way more than the 24 I needed for the window. I put a bunch on my tree, and every package I wrapped had at least one attached. 

After Christmas, I went back and bought all the leftover canes I could find so I can make more this year. I’ll find a use for them . . . . . maybe a bunting on my mantle?

The candy canes got me rolling and next thing I knew I was making other crazy stuff! I knitted a few striped tree-shaped ornaments based on a free pattern from Lily Sugar ‘n Cream and Love Knitting magazine. My favorite color combo was teal/lime! Then I knitted this triangular tree and sewed a pocket on the back to hold a gift card. 

Lynzee likes pandas, so I stitched this ornament for her. The frame is an embroidery hoop wrapped with ribbon and felt. In retrospect, I probably should have just painted it. Oh, well!

In honor of Lynzee’s cats, Elaine and Tina, who love sparkly pom-poms, this:

I felted a couple polka-dotted Christmas ornaments, but forgot to photograph the finished balls before giving them away. This one had small dots

 and the other one had big dots. I made them by felting red roving onto a round Styrofoam ball, then felting white dots made with white roving or wool yarn onto the red. I made hangers by felting the ends of a loop of the white yarn on the top. I want to make some more felted balls this year in other colors, and keep one for myself this time!

So, that’s 2017 reduced to one blog post! There was more to the year than that – I do have a few tales to tell – but that’s enough to get the ball rolling for now. I’ll be back soon, I promise!