tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-157606392009-03-01T00:57:46.983-05:00Marshahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07072542599525094904noreply@blogger.comBlogger248125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15760639.post-61147000429222183782007-07-30T19:01:00.000-04:002007-07-30T19:03:25.627-04:00

Well, I went out and got my own domain. Now I feel all official-like. You can now find me at First things first (www.first-things-first.net). Please update your links and stop by to say hello!

Marshahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07072542599525094904noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15760639.post-71702490915939483222007-07-20T23:59:00.000-04:002007-12-04T13:29:31.548-05:00

I went out and got my very own domain. Yippee! You can find me here now. Please stop by and say hello!

Marshahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07072542599525094904noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15760639.post-73160409405956911002007-06-11T12:25:00.001-04:002007-06-11T12:59:36.595-04:00

After nearly two years at Blogger, I've decided to move my blog to Wordpress. Why? Lots of reasons. But the big ones are these: I'm excited about the amazing functionality of Wordpress.Blogger has pissed me off too many times, especially with uploading and managing pictures. (I'm a huge fan of Google but very disappointed with their [lack of] support for this product. Grrrr.)I originally started

Marshahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07072542599525094904noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15760639.post-9707998506249493582007-06-04T15:44:00.000-04:002007-06-04T16:25:50.409-04:00

Last Sunday afternoon I decided I really wanted to knit a child-sized pinwheel sweater using the free pattern from Elann. I'd never made one of these before (though I'd seen a similar one, based on a Vogue Knitting pattern, worn by an adult friend), but I'd come across the pattern the day before and found myself possessed by an insane desire to knit one of these things immediately. The pattern

Marshahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07072542599525094904noreply@blogger.com7tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15760639.post-1168377353837875982007-06-01T16:13:00.000-04:002007-06-04T15:36:33.497-04:00

Thanks to my SP10, I finally have a super-cool case for my circular needles. Those of you who aren't so fortunate to count her among your pals might want to take a look at this tutorial for making a circular-needle case out of an old hardcover book. Very, very cool!

Marshahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07072542599525094904noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15760639.post-31185095788523989032007-05-31T15:27:00.000-04:002007-05-31T15:42:10.660-04:00

I came across this website a while back but completely forgot about it until reading Arianna's post about it. There's a list of countries in the world, and you tick the boxes next to the ones you've visited. My tally is fifteen countries--about six percent of the world. Note that there's nothing in the Southern Hemisphere yet. I ought to do something about that one day. It looks a little more

Marshahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07072542599525094904noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15760639.post-36186893283431337142007-05-29T16:26:00.000-04:002007-05-29T16:35:15.740-04:00

My SP10 hostess, Kerry, has asked everyone in her group to post a stash photo. Here's mine, arrayed on the futon in our guest room. It's not huge (certainly not compared to some people's stashes...ahem!), but there's more yarn here than I remember owning. Well, that's no entirely accurate: as I unpacked the giant plastic box where I store this stuff, I remembered each ball of yarn as I

Marshahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07072542599525094904noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15760639.post-67120381064504575352007-05-28T15:17:00.000-04:002007-05-29T14:48:45.369-04:00

I did it! Earlier this month, I finished my first pair of socks! I used Simple Stripes from KnitPicks--a yarn that they've discontinued, which is unfortunate because I think it has a beautiful pattern. These were done in the toe-up pattern that my friend Pat taught me. (She is blogless but really ought to get blogging, because she knows a lot about knitting and is a a great photographer. She's

Marshahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07072542599525094904noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15760639.post-64240037581649559072007-05-26T16:03:00.000-04:002007-05-29T14:47:36.464-04:00

The mid-spring flowers are all gone now, with just a few azalea blooms holding on. The dogwoods are fully leafed out, and the last of the lily-of-the-valley--a charming, fragrant flower that appears for only a week or so--said farewell a few days ago. Now we're surrounded by rhododendrons, for which I have a soft spot after living in coastal Oregon, where the "rhodies" grow wild in the mountains

Marshahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07072542599525094904noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15760639.post-2870755092971325782007-05-25T14:55:00.000-04:002007-05-25T15:08:37.044-04:00

Last year, my friend Gina knit a market bag from a free pattern she found online. (She even used the yarn called for in the pattern!) It turned out great, and she has since knit a few more. At the beginning of this month, I got the market-bag itch myself and proceeded to crank out three of these suckers in quick succession, making some slight modifications to the original pattern. The first one,

Marshahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07072542599525094904noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15760639.post-46805253406180635752007-05-24T13:55:00.000-04:002007-05-24T14:08:20.814-04:00

Here's a fun commentary piece just published on the Wired website: nearly thirty years to the day after Star Wars was first released, this guy finally saw it. He points out up front that he didn't go into the viewing totally clueless. It's impossible to have lived in our society for the past three decades without being exposed (heavily!) to what he calls "the fallout from this pop-culture

Marshahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07072542599525094904noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15760639.post-37166889106998436132007-05-22T15:09:00.000-04:002007-05-22T15:54:46.917-04:00

My friend Gina (a.k.a. "she of the jaw-dropping stash") just posted to her blog a meme about knitting projects. She's got a pretty impressive list of accomplishments--my own pales in comparison. The list of possibilities is interesting, though I object to "Teaching a man to knit" because it seems to assume that all the knitters who participate in this meme are women. So I've balanced this out by

Marshahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07072542599525094904noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15760639.post-24500017129948702652007-05-19T15:05:00.000-04:002007-05-19T15:14:36.122-04:00

The "official" start of summer, Memorial Day weekend, is just a week away. So it's only fitting that I just came across a contest about summer knitting. Ali at Skeins Her Way has asked people to post a list of their summer knitting projects by the end of this month. The winner gets a copy of her new pattern (for an awfully cute-looking tank) and the yarn for it. My own list is fairly modest:

Marshahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07072542599525094904noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15760639.post-41878233356079453782007-05-15T14:39:00.000-04:002007-05-16T14:45:51.335-04:00

This is a real trip down memory lane. Jan sent this link to me recently, and as soon as I heard "Ed Gruberman" I was back in high school, listening to the Dr. Demento Show on the radio. "Boot to the head!" indeed. He also sent me a link to a short film called Balance that won the 1989 Academy Award for Best Animated Short and was shown in art-house theaters in the early 90s (that's where I first

Marshahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07072542599525094904noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15760639.post-62285631057753424182007-05-10T21:07:00.000-04:002007-05-11T21:18:37.417-04:00

A couple of weeks ago, I stumbled across the Knitting Gnome Swap. It's a one-time swap: someone sends you a box in the mail that contains, well, a gnome and some knitting-related goodies. You keep the goodies, give the gnome a tour of your town, write about your adventures (with pictures, ideally!) in your blog, then send the gnome (with knitting-related goodies) to the next person on the list.

Marshahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07072542599525094904noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15760639.post-56298213239786097202007-05-09T22:02:00.000-04:002007-05-11T16:07:18.567-04:00

First, she sent me (and Sylvia) a beautiful birthday card by snail-mail. And then today I received another terrific package from her. Until now, I've been using plastic rings and bits of leftover yarn tied into circles to mark the beginning of a round. But now my knitting is going to be even more glamorous, with these beautiful stitch markers. (This means, of course, that I need to start a big

Marshahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07072542599525094904noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15760639.post-18943818926782604112007-05-08T22:10:00.000-04:002007-05-10T16:37:48.464-04:00

Yupper, today is my birthday--just two days after Sylvia's. Two years ago, when we were anxiously waiting for her to hurry up and get born already, Jan and I were worried that she'd end up sharing my birthday, which also happened to land on Mother's Day that year. Talk about a triple whammy. Fortunately, she arrived two days earlier (one week after her due date), thus ensuring that she gets her

Marshahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07072542599525094904noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15760639.post-67511672229512407432007-05-06T15:10:00.000-04:002007-05-10T16:08:12.346-04:00

It's been a busy week here, with preparations for Sylvia's second birthday underway. Her Opa (Jan's father) arrived from the Netherlands a little over a week ago, and my parents arrived from Illinois two days ago, so we have a full house. The festivities began two days ago, on Friday, when Sylvia's playgroup gathered here. We meet weekly, rotation among our homes and local parks, and this

Marshahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07072542599525094904noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15760639.post-86856586992781894492007-05-03T15:37:00.000-04:002007-05-04T15:51:43.284-04:00

Every spring, when the forsythias, dogwoods, magnolias, lilacs, azaleas, daffodils, and tulips put on their annual show, I'm reminded of these words penned by Emerson. Of course, this phrase is part of a longer passage about humanity's inability to escape death, but I still like it in the context of thinking about spring and nature and renewal. My SP10 hostess, Kerry, has asked everyone in her

Marshahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07072542599525094904noreply@blogger.com7tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15760639.post-55174962299897749802007-05-01T22:29:00.000-04:002007-05-01T22:31:23.849-04:00

Happy May Day (Labour Day), everyone!

Marshahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07072542599525094904noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15760639.post-9844541857739259152007-04-27T09:23:00.000-04:002007-04-27T21:31:46.381-04:00

Whenever I go for a walk in the woods in the spring after (or during) a rain, I'm always struck by the contrast between the water-dark wood of tree bark and the tiny new fresh-green leaves. The contrast is especially strong with dogwoods, whose just-opened new flowers are a pale green. It's easier to get a sense of this ethereal quality when in an actual forest and not in the suburbs, surrounded

Marshahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07072542599525094904noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15760639.post-73909764029128118282007-04-26T20:47:00.000-04:002007-04-27T21:22:57.299-04:00

The living room is finished. The living room is finished. Whew! As promised, here is a photo of it. We got our paint from Sherwin-Williams. For other painting projects, we'd used Behr, but this time we decided to throw down for some really good stuff (this is, technically, the "showpiece" room of the house) and get some much-needed advice from People Who Do Know Squat About Paint. Yes, it cost a

Marshahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07072542599525094904noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15760639.post-37613450655028484712007-04-25T16:09:00.000-04:002007-04-25T16:12:05.958-04:00

A few days ago, I reached into a bookcase to pull out a cookbook and received a nasty paper cut right under the fingernail of my index finger. (Ouch ouch ouch...) The culprit? A small piece of paper sort-of-glued (it pulls off easily to reveal a wad of glue that looks like a booger) to the outside cover of the adjacent phone book. The piece of paper? An ad for a local personal-injury lawyer.

Marshahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07072542599525094904noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15760639.post-69780915898163390592007-04-24T22:16:00.000-04:002007-04-24T22:32:43.955-04:00

(I wonder how many Google hits on that title will bring people here...) In Making Light I came across this letter, written by a Little Rock lawyer and published in the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette on 16 April: You may have noticed that March of this year was particularly hot. As a matter of fact, I understand that it was the hottest March since the beginning of the last century. All of the

Marshahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07072542599525094904noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15760639.post-89098228928859948232007-04-22T21:42:00.000-04:002007-04-22T22:16:22.663-04:00

Ever since SP9 ended, my spoiler, Lynnette, and I have kept in touch. One thing we discovered is that we're both new to lace knitting--"new" as in "haven't done it before but would really like to." We also discovered that we both have a fondness for dragons. "Hey," we thought, "wouldn't it be fun to do a lace project together?" After a few e-mails back and forth to discuss several possible

Marshahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07072542599525094904noreply@blogger.com4