Yearly Goals

The girls in my knitting/crochet group have come up with the idea that we should have some group goals as well as some individual goals for the next year, with the fact that we'll have each other as motivators to get things done.

Looks like the group goal is going to be something to do with socks. I'm not going to make any promises for 12 pairs of socks (that's one sock every 2 weeks), but I think I can manage 12 socks in a year. Half as many pairs, but still more than I've done before. As for my personal goals, I have a couple of ideas, but I'm not 100% sure on them all yet. So far, though, I have

1) Enter something in the State Fair. I planned on doing this last year, but missed the date and didn't have the money for the entry fee. Hopefully having the others around will help me remember at the very least. This might not be crochet related.

I have a picture or two I've got my eye on for entering. This one, most likely. Will have to dig through my computer and find the original and a quality place to get the print made. 








I would also like to enter in a cross-stitch piece that I'm working on. Unfortunately, those don't lend themselves to traveling projects or anything that requires more concentration to audio books, so I'm not sure it will get done for this year.

2) Make a nice sweater for both Dustin and I. Depending on how that goes and when it gets done, that might go towards #1 as well*.  These are the two that I'm currently planning on. The one I have planned for me is a Doris Chan design and I can't say enough how much I love her.

3) Get rid of all these works in progresses that I have floating around. This will be sort of a year long goal, but I want to finish the year with only one WIP per craft (this includes one project plus a pair of socks on the hook for crochet). If I'm going to finish things, I need to do so, and if not I need to get them frogged and decide if the yarn is worth keeping. Obviously, long term things like my scrap blanket don't count towards that.

*Jessica and I are going yarn shopping on Thursday and if the book the pattern is in has come into the library by then, I will try to find the yarn I want then.

Wedding Pictures

Almost two months later, we finally got the disks with our wedding pictures on Friday. (As an aside, I love our mail guy. He gets lunch at my work everyday and hands me anything that looks important there. Must bake him cookies or something for a tip.)

Part of thing for the photographer we chose (the lovely and wonderful Erin Hession) is the fact that we get a copy of every picture they take complete with digital rights. All 2500 of them. A lot of those are repeats, but that's still a lot of pictures. Here's a small selection* of my favorites.

Both the ceremony and the reception were held and Oak Hill Mansion in Carmel. The reception in was in the ballroom and the ceremony was in the gazebo out back. We had amazing luck with the weather, too. We were hoping for the outdoor ceremony, though we had a rain plan. 70's and sunny. The very next day it dropped to the 50's and rain and didn't stop for almost a week.

My garter, which I made myself and am very proud of. I wasn't going to have one, but Dustin said he wanted to do the toss, so I said ok, promptly decided that the ones for sale were both too uncomfortable and too expensive, and made my own.

 The staircase was perfect for pictures. Looking down is always a better angle than straight on.

He looked damn fine in that tux

and the photographer caught the ring bearer being bored with the whole thing. Apparently Sarah wound up having to bribe him to be good.

Meghann had some awesome shoes

and Quintin didn't really want to have his picture taken. His girlfriend, Celena, (who you can't really see in the picture) did my hair and did an amazing job. I need to come up with some sort of thank you gift before I see her again on Wednesday.

Any race fans out there should recognize the officiant. He's a sweet old man and he reminded me a lot of my grandfather.

Erin caught it, we have proof, he's playing with bubbles.

I'm leaning towards this one being our official formal photo. I don't know which one he wants yet.

Random door on the side of the building. In odd disrepair compared to the rest of it, but it made for a nice picture.

Cake!

Dancing with Mama

There's a lot more, but right now my brain is pretty fried from looking at them. 

*ok, so it turned out to be not such a small selection once I got done. 

Enough Already

Yet another story of a teen killing themselves after being tormented by their classmates- this time a 14 year old girl who was bullied by her classmates because she dared to report that another student had raped her.

It's got to stop. Bullying is not a normal part of growing up. It leaves permanent scars, even if they're not visible. Parents and educators have got to stand up and say "no more."  If a student bullies another student, kick their horrible little butts out of the school. Make their parents, who couldn't be bothered to teach them to be decent people, pay to educate them privately and send them to corrective therapy.

Every single child who tormented this girl is morally, if not legally, her killer. And they should be forced to live with that fact for the rest of their lives.

Especially in this case. Rape is not a joke, and it is not the victim's fault. It is a crime, arguably the worst crime; something that school administrators need to remember  Specifically administrators in Detroit, where this young woman lived; and Muncie, Indiana, where the school thought rape allegations would be better handled in an internal investigation than by the police; and Silsbee, Texas, where a girl was kicked off the cheer squad when she refused to cheer for her rapist; and who knows how many other schools that haven't made the news.

How many more people are going to have to die, or have their lives destroyed, before the country as a whole realizes that there is a problem.

And, of course, a plug for the It Gets Better project.

The trip that can't happen

The (rather long) backstory.
I have a license to teach high school history. For a variety of reasons that I'll not get into (makes me sound bitter, which I'll admit to being... a little) I'm not doing so. Since that didn't happen, I finally got talked into decided to go back to school. Thinking only of the resume and job prospects, I decided to add on an English as a Second Language licensure. Turns out, since it's not a full degree, no financial aid was available, so I wound up adding on an elementary education program as well.

That's how I wound up being in a place to hear about the fun and interesting summer programs that are available.

The first one was a program through a university in Liverpool. Take classes and have the opportunity to actually work in a British school. Sounds awesome, but the truth of the matter is that it wasn't the program that sounds that appealing; it was the being back in England. But it was very expensive and not really worth leaving my husband behind for 8 weeks over.


And then Tony Kline came in to talk about his program. And this time it was the program, and not the location, that made me want to go. It would be working with students and teachers to create/improve a literacy program at an orphanage in the country of Malawi. 6 weeks, working hands on with these kids and really truly making a difference. I can't put into words how much I want to do this. It won't happen though. In passing, I mentioned the idea of taking some time off over the summer and was left with no doubt that I wouldn't have a job when I came back. It's expensive; I don't know the full cost but summer tuition alone is somewhere around $3,000 with travel expenses on top. Last, but certainly not least, Dustin doesn't care for the location. Intellectually, he knows better, but on an emotional level any place in Africa still equals Somalia 1993 (Black Hawk Down, for those who know their history from movies). We're working on it.

Someday, maybe. I'm certainly going to try. Perhaps the summer after graduating (again) I'll have a job lined up and will be able to take two months to do something like this.

The beginning

I'm not sure how often this will be updated. Rarely, I suspect, as it was created mainly to make it easier to follow the blogs of others. Regardless, I might occasionally get the urge to go on about something.