Purling Sprite

Award Winner!

I would like to thank the academy for this wonderful award, hehehe. Seriously, I would like to thank my friend Cynthia for giving me this wonderful award. It means so much to me that others find my adventures inspiring.

To accept this award, here are the rules:

1. Thank the person who gave you the award.

2. Paste the award on your blog.

3. Link to the person who nominated you.

4. Tell 7 interesting things about yourself (see below)

5. Nominate 7 blogs and post links

6. Leave a comment on your nominated blogs to let them know

Seven things about me:

1. I learned to ride a bicycle at the age of 29

2. I got suspended from high school twice and finally the 3rd time around I got kicked out completely. Good times! LOL

3. I ran away from home when I was 6 to live with my Mom. After four attempts, I succeeded and I was granted permission to stay with my Mom.

4. At the age of 14, I ran away from home and lived with my friend for about a year.

5. My first concert was at Madison Square Garden and I saw Metallica!

6. On a college trip with an honor society, we had a super drunking party at our hotel room. During the super party a hole was punched in the wall. We moved one of the pictures in the room to cover the hole. 

7. I gave up coffee and drinking 10 years ago. I miss coffee but not the drinking, especially the day after effects. 

Well, now that you know some of my "secrets". I would like to nominate some of the blogs who inspire me all the time, some knitting blogs, some exercise blogs, some cooking blogs: Marisol, RBR :), Lynn, Middalia, Sonja, MyKitchenAddiction and PioneerWoman.

Wrap it Up!

It is a great day to look back at 2009 and reminisce about the wonderful times our family had in 2009,  following Margene's lead, I am posting the first sentence of the first post of the month, along with a picture (or 2) to go with that month (may or may not be related to the sentence). 

January: We spent the evening with my brother in law and his family, I made about 80 tamales while the kids went sledding when they came back we made donuts.

February: I want to say a huge thank you for all the donations that have been made to the MS Society.

March: It is finally coming up! Loom Knitting with the Sprite I.

April: Woosh! March went by so fast.

May: The end of the month arrived...way too soon.

June: May seemed to have been overtaken by the Ogden Half Marathon event.

July: I couldn't resist any longer.

August: Never been one to make plans too ahead of time, however, things may start changing soon.

 

September: My fourth half-marathon took place this last Saturday in the gorgeous area of Cache Valley.

October: The colors of this one make me happy! 

November: When the white fluffy stuff comes down from the sky it sends a subliminal message to my brain saying: it is time to knit some hats!

December: The coolest jersey is out, the Twin Six guys and Fatty did it again! Be sure to order yours today. 

Wishing you all a wonderful New Year. May you be blessed with health, love, and the companionship of loved ones.

Thankful Thoughts

Over on Facebook, a friend sent me the following:

Let's see how many people can do this. Every day this month until Thanksgiving, think of one thing that you are thankful for and post it as your status. "Today I am thankful for..." The longer you do it, the harder it gets! Now if you think you can do it then repost this message as your status to invite others to take the challenge, then post what YOU are thankful for today.

I started doing it and I thought it would be great to have it on my blog as a way to look back and remember what I was thankful for during this month. I will update this same post every day with my Thankful thought :)

It has to be one Thankful thought per day, so here we go

Day 1. My husband

Day 2. My children

Day 3. My job at the school

Day 4. My iPod and the Eclipse

Day 5. The mailman who brought me my great new running skirt

Day 6. Our friend Spencer who came over to hang out with us and our kids

Day 7. My friend Kela who invited me to hang out with her and go out around town to shop

Day 8. Tyson and his great talk at church

Day 9. Thankful that my hubby came with me to Provo for the Knifty Knitter project DVD

Day 10. That I am able to be home today with my children

Day 11. Is Thankful for all who serve and have served our country.

New Stuff!

In general Loom Knitting News...the latest issue of Loom Knitters Circle magazine is out. Go get a copy and get looming!

In other news, my bloggy has a new banner to celebrate the special holiday of Halloween! It is one of my favorite holidays as I get to dress up and be silly with my kiddos. They are both still little enough that they do not care that I dress up and go with them Trick or Treating. 

Hope you are all doing great and getting some knitting and exercising into your day!

Typepad ? of the Day

I clicked on my dashboard today and I saw on the right side bar the following question:

If you could travel back in time and meet yourself as a teenager, what three things would you tell yourself?

Hmm, it made me think for a bit but I knew exactly what I would like to tell myself.

1. Eat healthier, no 3 pots of coffee a day and eat more fruits and don't skip breakfast.

2. Go ahead and get braces, better get it over early.

3. Try out for Track!

So now, it is your turn, what three things would you tell yourself?

Bounce!

A weekend project is hard to come by around here, but lookie, I have a finished project! I present you Bounce by Wendy from Knit and Tonic. She released the pattern Thursday night and my fingers quickly pushed the mouse and I was set for the weekend. A quick trip to the stash room and I came up with 2 skeins of Katia Jamaica in number 4010.

I would have finished this cute thing by Friday night if it hadn't been for my lack of attention while watching the movie Deja Vu. I realized about two inches into the work that I twisted my stitches when joining in the round...instead of a nice circular skirt, I was knitting a mobious skirt! Not much damage was done to the yarn, just my ego...and I did get to watch a second movie so I was able to recoup the lost time (still, you would think that after knitting so many circular things that I would have paid more attention, but I had my eyes riveted on the movie-happenings).

Overall, the pattern was sensational! I had a blast knitting it and seeing the colors of the yarn develop. The pattern is an A+, well written, just like Wendy's other patterns. And most importanly, my little Benny loved it! She is looking forward to seeing our neighbors tomorrow to show it off!

Pattern Specs:

Pattern: Bounce by Knit&Tonic

Size: 2yr

Yarn: Katia Jamaica: 1 skein and a few yards of second skein

Pattern deviations: I didn't have any elastic, instead I crocheted a long chain and added two beads at each end. I then threaded the long crocheted chain through the ribbing area (around the 3rd row from cast on edge).

And here are some other shots of her wearing the little skirt, she tried bouncing a few times just for the camera :).

New Typepad Features

For a few months, I have been nagging Typepad to add a couple of new features to our services and yesterday, I was surprised to see that one of my requests was made a reality--it is not perfect yet, but it is getting there.

You see, I have been eyeing many of my bloggy friends WordPress blogs (some of which have recently made the jump to WordPress). They all have one thing in common: a clean homepage and all their "other" stuff on navigation links at the top of the page--just like it should be on a website.

Anyways, I nagged to typepad about the lack of this great feature and finally, we have our own Pages (of course, I know that they didn't do it just for me, but I want to trick my mind into believing that, hehehe). However, there is no capability yet to have them in little navigational buttons like on WordPress, so a little more waiting for that and probably more emails to the typepad center :).

Another feature that I would love to have is a pop-up menu for the Archives--it would clean up the page very nicely!

So, now, you will find a section on the sidebar called "My Pages" under that section, you will find the different pages that are part of this blog, such as: Tutorials (for loom knitting), My Patterns (for Loom knitting), Loomy Links (links to many places that talk about loom knitting) and more to come.

My goal is to try to clean up the homepage of the blog so it is easier to navigate and more pleasant. If any of you know any CSS and know how I can change the Archives into a drop down menu, please let me know :).

Now, if you are a Typepad user, go and type up some Pages for your blog, it is so much fun to have some new features to play with :)