Baby Shower

Today was Marie's baby shower, held at Scott's mother's house in Sherman Oaks. We had cake from the BreadBasket (super yummm!), wonderful food prepared by Marcella, great friends, sweet gifts for Leanne, including this from Meg's son William -

so perfect for Marie's lady bug baby theme

and played my very favorite game of pass the baby. This is Celedonio, my 5-month old grand-nephew. Such a sweetie! And such a good sport about becoming a human football. Marie's due Feb. 15 so I'll soon have lots of pictures of a brand new baby!

Belly Shots

On our recent trip, Rachel complained about the lack of belly shots for Marie. With Rachel in Colorado and Marie in California, it's hard for her to see how Leanne Elizabeth is progressing. So for Rach - with Marie's permission - here's the belly: and new ultrasound pics of Leanne, who's still scheduled to make her appearance February 15. Such a little cutie, especially when she's trying to get her fingers and toes in her mouth at the same time.

Rei-Rei Day

We've had the littlest baby grand all week, so I'm a bit behind in posting. Last Sunday was Marie's 25th (!!) birthday. We took her to dinner at Buca di Beppo's and had a chance to meet her new boyfriend, Scott. He didn't run screaming from the restaurant when confronted by 3 rowdy little kids, so we're calling it a success. (Actually, the kids didn't faze him, and neither did meeting the 'rents. Yay, Scott!)

Miles is hiding under the table between Chris and Scott.

Marie, Scott and some friends had gone to Medieval Times the night before, also to celebrate the big b-day, and Marie brought along her new hat - which Naia promptly confiscated. It may not be her birthday, but Naia has the princess smile down pat. It was a nice evening, even though Leia was a cranky-pants (she's teething and miserable). Hey Marie, maybe we should do this again next year!

Hippo Birdies To Ewe!

Today is Marie's 23rd birthday. We started celebrating on Wednesday with Birthday, Part 1 - tickets to see Wicked at the Pantages Theatre in Hollywood. It was an incredible production, definitely a 'must see' if you're in the L.A. area. Today was Birthday, Part 2 - celebrating at Macaroni Grill with (most of) the family.

Birthday, Part 3 is a trip to Vegas with best-friend Jen to see Stomp. Happy birthday week, Marie!

Ceramic Painting

Marie and I took Naia pottery painting today. I had so much fun painting in Colorado, I wanted to do more. Firefly Ceramics is in Ventura, close to where I used to work (no website that I could find).

Naia started with an Easter bunny (named Bunny Bear), then moved on to a small monkey. She also painted a plate for Marie. We told Naia she could paint it anyway she wanted and she really got into it, as you can see from her concentration. Marie chose this witch, the most intricate project of the day. It took her a full 3 hours to finish but it really looked nice when she was done. I forgot to take a picture of my gecko soap dish; this is my second project, a grandbaby plate. We won't get the finished pieces back for at least a week, which disappointed Naia. I can't wait to see how they all turned out.

Doesn't Naia wear her paint well? You should see her jeans . . .

Graduation Time

Marie graduated from Ventura College today with High Honors (3.8+ GPA). She decided just two weeks ago that she wanted to 'walk', so her name wasn't in the program, but that didn't stop us from celebrating her accomplishment.
Graduation was held in the gym (excuse me, the "Event Center"). The acoustics were terrible - it was very hard to hear the speakers - but being indoors, out of the chilly "June gloom" was nice. I'm guessing that about 200 of the 950 graduates participated in the ceremony.
Marie said she didn't hear when her name was read; she was too busy trying not to trip going up and down the podium stairs. In addition to keeping up with her studies - you don't get that high a GPA without a lot of sleepless nights - Marie's worked from two to five jobs at a time for the past few years. High on her list of planned summer activities? "Sleep".

In the fall, Marie plans to attend Cal State University, Channel Islands, working toward her elementary school teaching credential. Congratulations, Marie!

Freeway Fun

Marie was afraid I wouldn't have anything to blog today, so look what she did, just for me. . . Kidding aside, she's not seriously hurt - just a golf ball-sized knot on her knee and a going-to-be-spectacular-tomorrow bruise from the seat belt.

She was the last car in what looked to be an eight to ten car pile-up on the 101 freeway. It looks like her front fender slid under the SUV in front of her. Their back bumper missed her bumper entirely and slammed into Marie's engine compartment, causing considerable damage. Her poor car had to be pushed out of traffic lanes by the CHP; it's definitely not driveable. Nobody was seriously injured - thank heavens - and Marie's car looked like it sustained the worst damage. Want to place bets on whether or not the car is totaled? I say yes, but Dick says maybe not. We'll see what the insurance adjuster has to say next week.

Lots To Talk About

So let's get started. I have an FO* - a cotton scarf made with Schaefer Yarn's 'Laurel' (100% Pima cotton) in the most gorgeous colorway - but I forgot to take a picture of it before handing it over for the Guild's conference booth. I'm happy with how the scarf turned out (the pattern is an EP original) and really bummed that I forgot the photo.

Yesterday's Wonders of Wool workshop with Gwen Powell was a "wow". We started with fleece - both well skirted and 'yucky' non-skirted. Gwen talked about how to separate the sections, what to look for in a good fleece (and when to cut your losses and toss a fleece in the compost pile), how to wash wool - including a great demo of lock-by-lock washing with hand soap (beautiful results!) - and on to prepping with handcarders, the differences in spinning woolen and worsted - and when to use each method - and how to figure out what a 'mystery fleece' might be. The volume of information was almost overwhelming. Gwen lives about 45 minutes from me (or 2 hours, depending on how the 405 is feeling that day) and offers classes in her home. Including how to design crocheted sweaters that fit. I want that class!

The very best part of the day was the woodturning ideas I came home with for Dick. Gwen is a woodturner (among her many, many talents) and had some thoughts on what Dick could make for our new business. One idea (I'm not telling the others. I'll show you though when they're done . . .) is an orifice extender for the new Victoria wheel. The opening in the 'stock' orifice is too small for the type of yarn Gwen makes and teaches in her workshop. She's sending me the dimensions and we're going to see if Dick can make more. This one was made by Gwen with tulipwood. I also took the prototype crochet hooks Dick made to get some feedback from Gwen, Susie and others; feedback was positive! In fact, if I'd had a dozen hooks I probably could have sold all of them to my classmates. Very positive reception to Dick's beautiful work.

Remember the fiber I spun in Saturday's workshop? The fuzzy parts are 'boufles', pieces of dyed mohair Navajo-plied into the yarn. I made it into a skein tonight and it's soaking right now. Hopefully, it will dry overnight because I'm itching to make it into something - like a 12" crocheted block. I'm planning to use my past and future class/experiment spinning to make individual squares that I'll sew together in an afghan. It should be really, really colorful.

Marie has condensed her jobs from three to just one. She's working full-time as manager of my favorite scrapbooking store, Scrapbookers Villa in Ventura. She decided to go with that job because she can set her own hours and work around her college classes. One of the benefits is that she got to go to Anaheim for CHA - the "World's Fair" for the craft and hobby industry! 3,500 booths... 20,000 visitors... 46 nations... one shared passion. Can you tell I'm envious? Marie and Debra took lots of classes and looked at tons of new products. Most of which will arrive over the next 3 months. The good news about Marie working there? I get to hear about and see all the new products first! The bad news? I want to BUY all the new products first!

This is one of the classes Marie took. Marie is a talented artist; this class taught her some great new techniques. Isn't it gorgeous? This is the Bob Ross Wet-On-Wet painting technique. Pretty cool, huh?

*Finished Object