Oh Nuts

Back in January, during one of the many snow storms that we had, I was sitting on the couch scrolling through my phone when the name Sybil popped into my head. Besides the name, the only other information that this character gave me is that she is an orphan/in foster care. Photo by  Álvaro Serrano  on  Unsplash While I haven't done much with this character yet, I plan on figuring out the details so that I can begin writing the story. One thing that I had started doing, shortly after the character idea came to me, was to start writing down the names to instrumental songs that I was listening to on Spotify. The idea that I had for that was to incorporate the titles as the names of the chapters and then base the scenes, etc. off of that. Whether it will work or not I don't know since I want to do research into different settings and such before I begin writing the story. And I may save this idea for November and NaNoWriMo so that I can have time to prepare and gather ...

Since I really haven't shared any knitting project updates in a while I figured today was a good day to do so. Especially since I just finished making four projects, one of which I have been working on for just over a year and a half. Dishcloth I apologize for the not so great quality of the above picture (^). Especially since it is a little hard to see the pattern. But it is a dishcloth that I made using a pattern that I found on Ravelry last year. The ten-stitch blanket ^^^ I started making in July of 2017 and didn't do a whole lot of work on,  until recently when I decided to work on it more. Before I finished it my sister had suggested that I take another coordinating color and crochet a border around the edge of it to give it a more finished look. As you can see I took her up on the suggestion and just did a simple single crochet border around it. The pattern is on Ravelry, The shawl/wrap is another pattern that I found on Ravelry and the yarn I used ...

This may seem like a strange fairy tale to have as a favorite, but one of my favorite fairy tales is called "The Robber Bridegroom." I first learned of this particular fairy tale, along with many others, in the book "Grimm's Complete Fairy Tales," which I had purchased at Barnes and Noble several years ago. Since you may be wondering why this is one of my favorite fairy tales let me tell you that I don't really know why it is a favorite either, especially since it is a rather morbid story. Photo by  Olivier Guillard  on  Unsplash When you first look at the title of the tale, it doesn't look like it will be too much of a dark and depressing fairy tale. But once you actually read it, then it becomes a bit morbid. What I mean by that is that the bridegroom and his gang, spoiler alert, are cannibals. That is why I still don't understand how I consider it to be a favorite fairy tale of mine, but whatever. So the bridegroom and his gang are cannibal...

As of right now, we are three weeks into the new year and in that time I have ended one job and started another. The nice think about ending and starting two jobs is that I had a week in between ending my job at Kohl's and then starting my new job and during the in-between week I just had the nanny job that I do. Of course, I had to get sick with the stomach flu in between jobs which wasn't that fun, especially since I got the rest of the family sick. Enough about being sick and work and on to other more pleasant sounding topics of conversation. Washington D.C., May 12, 2018 For Christmas, I received a book called Writing Your Novel From Start To Finish: A Guidebook For the Journey by Joseph Bates. And I started reading it the other night and in the second chapter there were two sentences that jumped out at me. While the author is specifically talking about character development I believe that the two sentences still apply to real life as well as the page. "Our h...

As it was said in the shared posts on Facebook posts, it's that time of year again to chose a new Patron Saint and Word for 2019. This year when I did the generators for my new patron saint and word, I received St. Aloysius Gonzaga as my patron saint and Unplug as my word. Photo by  Chris Karidis  on  Unsplash While I didn't know a whole lot about St. Aloysius Gonzaga when I first received him as my saint, I did learn that he is the patron of AIDS caregivers, AIDS patients, against sore eyes, Jesuit students, teenagers, and young adults and his feast day is June 21. As for my word Unplug, it is something that I needed to get since I am on my phone a lot to play games and scroll through social media because I am bored and don't ever feel like doing something else. For New Year's Eve my family and I spent the evening with a bunch of friends and as people left before/after midnight our friends had all of the guests pick a small slip of paper out of a box. On...

Whenever possible I try to include a knit item in with the Christmas present that I give to the sibling that I have for that year. Two years ago I made a scarf for my sister to take with her to school, and last year I gave my other sister a pair of hand warmers that I made. This year my sister's friend T from school joined us for Christmas and was included in the sibling secret Santa and I picked her name. Since T is still in college I wanted to make sure that the presents that I gave her were light and easily transportable. So I decided to make her a hat using pretty yarn that I had found on sale at Jo-ann Fabrics earlier in the year. After finishing the hat, and including a pom-pom on top since my mom and sisters said it finished off the hat, I used the rest of the yarn to make a coordinating ear-warmer/headband. The pattern that I used for the hat is called "Horizontal Rib Hat" and I found it in a knitting book called 'Sock Yarn One-Skein Wonders.' For the ...

A couple of months ago three of my siblings re-painted and re-arranged their rooms. Since I have my own room now, the only changes that I have made so far have been to get rid of the bunk bed that was there and replaced it with two single beds, one is for guests or if my sister comes home to visit. I also moved a tall shelf-thing from where it had been at the end of the bunk beds to the corner next to my bed and moving a canvas picture from in between the windows to a different wall. During all of the re-painting and re-arranging of rooms, I had the idea to get a stencil and paint it in between the windows in my room. It took me a while to figure out what type of stencil I wanted to get and what size. The stencil that I ended up with is a set of 3 small-ish size stencils with an owl and flowers on them. After I had bought the stencils they sat in my room because I didn't know if I wanted to paint them all white and then go over them with another color so that they didn't bl...