prom

last weekend was my senior prom. the dj was by far the worst dj i have ever heard. but i had a good time before prom and after. after work i went home to go get ready. i put my hair in hot rollers and then i did my friend's hair while mine cooled off. her hair turned out really pretty. then i finished my hair, did my make-up, and went to dinner. i went with my boyfriend to a nice place in the town north of where i live. most everyone that ate out went there i think, but i made reservations early and there were only two of us so we got our food fast which was nice. i went to the same place for homecoming but with a group and the service was really slow and my waiter sucked. this time was much better.

my boyfriend and myself before dinner

one of my good friends at the restaurant, she was prom queen

then after dinner i met up with some of my friends at prom. prom itself was pretty boring. like i said the dj sucked and i only danced one slow song with a good friend of mine that will also be going to uf. but i did get quite a good amount of pictures at prom because we were all just standing around and talking most of the time.

waiting for my friends to get to prom

my girl friend, these are the girls i stayed with except for the second from the left and she's the one that i did her hair for her

two of my best friends, they're going to uf as well


after prom a huge group of people met a one of my friend's house. i went there with the three other girls that i was staying the night with. there was LOTS of junk food. home made rice crispy treats, dirt cake, cheese cake, brownies, cupcakes, cookie, chips, candy, goldfish, and more. we played games like twister and cards. lately my friends and i have been on a card kick. we like spoons and spades the most. we stayed there until 3ish then went to allison's house where the four girls slept. it was a lot of fun. i've gotten to be a lot better friends with two of the girls that i stayed with and the other one i have been good friends with for a while. it's nice to have good girl friends, especially now towards the end of my senior year; it's made things more fun.

Piece of cake

last saturday was one hectic day. after work at 2 o'clock, i had to finish the wedding cake for my friend. our kitchen was crazy between my mom cooking for guest and me finishing a cake and running into some unexpected, unpleasant surprises. the icing i was using had to much moisture and the more it came to room temperature, the more it melted off the cake. i had to strip the cake of the buttercream and beat some more powdered sugar into the frosting to make it more firm. after the frustration was over, then i got to put the flowers on the cake. it turned out beautiful.

turned out pretty good for my first major cake.

here is the cake at the wedding.

the wedding was very pretty for a small scale wedding. it was held at a lady's house on a lake from my friend's church. her backyard was a lovely spot for a wedding.

a couple of my friends from school at the wedding.

here's me cutting the rest of the cake after the bride and groom had the first piece.

here it is as it is beginning to be demolished.

so their ya go, my one and only. i have had friends tell me that i will be doing there cake when they eventually have their wedding. and i decided that this was a one time thing. but ya never know.

cows and flowers

well i haven't posted in sooo long. i've been a bad girl. i have been uber busy with school. i had multiple tests in every class before spring break because the teachers were all wrapping up chapters and what-not before the end of the marking period. that means that i only have one more quarter before my senior year is over!!!!


we have eight new additions to the family. they are sooooo cute.

CALVES!!!!

isn't he cute!!!

there's another one.

they are mostly grey, there are a couple white, one cream, and one that looks like an oreo mcflurry. they are in the curious stage and aren't afraid of me yet. they have been getting pretty close to me. soon they won't do that anymore :(.

so last friday was the first day of spring break!!! and it didn't come soon enough let me tell you. it has been wonderful to actually have time to do stuff including knitting and spinning. after work on saturday, i went down south but i was so preoccupied with loading everything in the truck, getting the dogs ready, and going to feed to cows that i forgot all my knitting and spinning stuff! bad bad bad!!! but fortunately that meant that my mom and i went and bought more!! one can never have too much stash, and i'm starting to develop one for myself.

we went to a place called penelopes that closed down but we found out that she opened the shop in her house. i got a bag of various wool in lots of different colors. it's turning out very nicely. i wish i knew what some of the wools were because they are heavenly to spin with.

i spun two bobbins and now i just need to ply them. the outside colors look boring compared to the pile of wool, but the other colors in the center of the bobbin are more fun.

also i got some sock yarn. it is made with aloe and is supposed to be great for your hands when you are knitting. so far i think it is one of the most enjoyable yarns that i have ever knit with. i am loving it.

the second half of my spring break i have been working on the decorations for my friend's wedding cake that i am baking for her. i took on the job thinking that it was just going to be a small backyard wedding but it has turned into over 100 people. i think i'm just going to make an extra sheet cake for actual eating instead of making the cake gigantic. the cake itself will probably be somewhat larger though as well. but for the last three days i have been making fondant roses for the cake.

first i took the fondant, i made a marshmallow fondant, and flattened tiny balls into a petal shape unto plastic wrap. then i took a complementing color in watered-down food coloring and painted it on the petals for dimension.

then i popped the sheet into the freezer to make them easier to work with. next i took the petals starting with the smallest ones and wrapped them around shorts skewers that were about twice the size of a tooth pick.

here's a couple of the colors. i made a variety of pinks, oranges, and yellows. overall i made around 150 of these roses. hopefully they will look really nice of the cake. she wants a marble cake. i think i'll make regular butter cream for the outside and chocolate butter cream for the layers.

i'm going back to my socks now!!! tootles.

speeches and papers

not too much is new. i suppose i live a relatively boring life, or a blur. i just got out of class a couple hours ago. wednesdays are definitely long days for me. i go to school from 8-3, then from 3-6 i have my speech class at the college, then from 6-9 i have english 1102. i had my rough draft for my first term paper due tonight for english. i had to write a research paper on one of the aspects of william faulker's "barn burning." i chose to write about critical reviews that talk about an omniscient narrator in the thoughts of sarty from the past, present, and future. that was a hard paper to write because there was a very limited resource of critics that had valid information. everything i googled all came up essays that i could buy so i could only use a source through the community colleges called linccweb. it turned out ok. not my favorite paper to say the least. the short story was pretty good though.

on the other hand, i am working on a series of speeches for my communications class. we all had to pick a broad topic that would be the basis for all of our speeches throughout the semester. i chose fiber arts. i am very excited about this class. i like the professor a lot and even though i had a full schedule as it was, i'm glad i picked up the class at the last minute. the only thing is the professor can be a little boring and very repetitive. our first speeches are informative. we have to have two main points so i'm gonna do spinning and knitting and talk about different aspects of the two. then in a couple weeks from that speech we are doing a demonstrative speech. i'm really looking forward to that one. i think i'm gonna bring in a wheel and show the whole process from roving to yarn. the first speech only has to be five minutes. i think if i had to do a spontaneous speech on knitting and spinning i could do it in over ten. it should be a breeze and fun. plus, most of the people in my class don't even know what fiber arts are. how naive can you get. but maybe i can educate them on the joys of working with fibers and creating something by hand.

a couple days ago i sent in the deposit for my tuition at the university of florida. so i am officially a florida gator now. then on monday i filled out the housing information and signed the contract which i sent off with a check for that deposit. i'm getting very excited. now i need to start really working on scholarships and filling out my fasfa forms and stuff.

this is my first choice for a dorm. it's murphree. it's in the historic part of campus. also while it's pretty like the others, it was renovated in 2005 which is nice. my friend who lives there now said it doesn't make that big of a difference, but what my thoughts were if i'm sharing a bathroom with a floor of other girls, i would want new pipes for the plumbing as opposed to one with old plumbing.

i have the next two days off of school which is really nice. the county fair has been going on. we basically have school off because all the students who are showing cattle are given the two days to get them ready and over to the fair. so they put two different teacher work days for the next two days. i haven't stayed at my dad's house since i started working on saturdays so i'm gonna go spend the night there then with my mom on friday morning. it works out well cause now my mom will have company coming back home.

i haven't had any time to do any knitting or spinning lately. maybe over the weekend i will be completely caught up with all my classes start working ahead some so i'll have time for the joys in life.

it's great to be a florida gator!!!

well lots has happened since i last posted. i will start with the oldest and end with the newest.

i spun up the first batch of the fluff from the dye-spin-knit.

raja is such a lover kitty. and he even appreciates the art of spinning. i finished that color.

didn't it turn out just b-e-a-utiful!

here is my senior night photo. from left to right it's tiffany, me, maria (pili), and my good friend kaylee (kaywang). we got flowers and a pan of chocolate chip cookies with our number on it.

for my physics class, my partner and i had to create a car from a limited list of materials. then, after christmas break all of the teams competed in a competition called king of the hill. two cars start at the end of a two sided ramp and the object was to get your car over the middle of the ramp more than the other.

here is our car in the making.

and here i am with our finished car. the rubber bands that propelled it didn't sit on top like that. we altered that and got new rubber bands, BIG ones, and the wrapped around the axles and connected them to the bottom of that big bolt sticking out of it. i think ours was definitely the heaviest.

here's our car with some of the others. we lost but it was the most retarded loss. there is no doubt that we wouldn't have won. on the last day of eliminations, we had to go three times in a row and that left us with limited to no time for repairs. for optimal use, we needed to change our rubber bands after each competitor we went against. well we couldn't, and by the last one of the day, the round that decided who would be in the final two, we went against one of the harder people to beat. at the start of the race, one of our bands was completely broken and the other three with shredded and on their way to being completely broken as well. it was not a fair race. it makes me very pissed off. obviously we lost and i knew we would before the round even begun.

then a couple weeks ago something very, very sad occurred. the soccer team was meeting at the school. varsity girls and boys had a double header game, and we were waiting for the bus to get to the school. we could hear sirens in town but did not know what was going on. then we got the news that my coach's husband, a florida highway patrol officer, was shot. we didn't know all the details. the two teams took a vote and decided to play the games for mrs. sottile, my coach. by the middle of warm up we learned that he had passed. on the way home, we passed through the crime scene. i have never seen such a sight in all my life. there were over 300 police cars in the middle of highway 27 along with a sheriff's tank, sheriff semi-tractor trailers with special ops, airboats, four wheelers, and dozens of news vans. the search for the suspects was still on. police found both suspects by the next morning.

sergeant nicholas g. sottile

on january 16, the day of our soccer districts, the girls' soccer team left school early to attend the funeral service. i have never seen as much community support as i did that day. thousands of people, including officers from all over the country, came to support the fallen troop and his family that day. the governor, charlie crist, spoke along with the head of fhp. reverend cameron, who was best friends with mr. sottile, gave the sermon. it is a memory that will never leave me.

here is our soccer team. hundreds of people drove their cars and came out of the neighborhoods lining us27 to show support. we wrote signs, each of us holding one, that said "we miss you coach" and "we love you mrs. sottile." she followed her husband and gave us a thumbs up as she passed us.

they started a scholarship fund in honor of sgt. sottile for young people attempting to become a fhp trooper. in march the soccer team, along with many other volunteers, is sponsoring a mini children's carnival. proceeds are going towards the scholarship.

on a happier note, i made a catnip mouse for raja. i knit the little thing, stuffed it with catnip and sewed it together.

he loves it. but the first one was not thick enough or sticky enough yarn because he got all the catnip out fast. so i made him another one.

the tail is on the wrong end but raja didn't seem to mind. this one lasted longer.

my doggies are so sweet. look how much they love each other. sadly, sometime, more than sometimes, at least one of them will lay on all my pillows, i will sneak one pillow out, and lay on them very similar to this.

last week mom went to madrona. while she was off having fun without me, i took over with the cooking and made dinner for tom and greg. when they got home from the thirsty camel at the bowling alley, aka "the club", i had a nice home cooked meal ready for them.

homemade salsa, hot enough for tom but just the right amount, the trick was the scotch bonnet pepper.

and here is the dinner. frijoles negros (black beans) and rice, zuccini, homemade tortillas, pork marinaded in mojo and lime sauce with some spicy seasonings, and toppings including my salsa, fat free sour cream, lettuce, and fresh mangoes. yum yum yum.

i have been working on my pink fluff. i haven't had as much time, especially since i picked up an extra class at the college on wednesday nights, so now i have 9 classes. but here is what i have so far.

the color is so vibrant. like being stuck in a pink sunset. i love it.

yesterday was an awesome day. my best friend, monica, moved to virginia almost 2 years ago. i still talk to her a few times a week. i miss her a lot. unfortunately her grandfather passed away this week, so she has been down in west palm beach. but yesterday she was allowed to come up here and visit for a couple hours. it was wonderful but bitter-sweet because it seemed like she was gone faster than she arrived.

the two of us at beef's. monica misses the sweet tea. she says sweet tea is not sweet tea up north. notice the nancy chase whale necklace. i love it.

and now the news that makes yesterday an even more awesome day. i heard back from fsu a couple of months ago. i was accepted but i have been waiting to hear back from uf. it's been torture. then i had the countdown starting thursday night. it had been posted all week friday at 2 pm the notification would be available online. all day i was telling my friends "7 hours 34 minutes", "6 hours 57 minutes", "4 hours 14 minutes", etc. then i find out that the website changed because i am obsessive and look at it daily. it then read that it would be available sometime during the weekend of feb 3-4. i was not a happy camper. i got home and waited, compulsively checking it every few minutes. so getting tired of logging on and off, i began to play backgammon to pass the time, every few minutes refreshing the page. then it wouldn't refresh and i got very excited. so i logged off then back on. the page wasn't available, it was going up. so i checked again and i am now officially a student for the fall of 2007 at the university of florida!!!!!!! i am extremely excited. hopefully today i will go and buy a t-shirt and a hat and stuff. i wouldn't let anyone, including my boyfriend who didn't like this rule, buy anything with a gator emblem on it until i found out so i wouldn't jinx it. but i'm in and i cannot tell you how excited i am.

hope that you enjoy the blog because this post is packed to the brim!!! tootles!

dye-spin-knit

well the dye-spin-knit it off with a grand stride. first yesterday afternoon we let the roving soak all day. then, yesterday evening my mom and i set up the whole shabang outside on the picnic table to experiment with lots of colors. we started off with 14 and added three more when we found more water bottles.

pretty in pink

the dying process was lots of fun. i went very colorful going a little wild with just squirting colors all over the roving, while my mom was a little more of the conservative side. overall we are both greatly pleased with the results.

then we wrapped them up like little sausages in cling wrap then popped into the microwave to seal in the colors.

then hung to dry.

then just for you hopelope, fluff, fluff, fluff.

now off to the wheel to spin, spin, spin my little heart out. i think i'm going to do all of mine (which are the fluffed top ones) thin and only double ply so it's about lace weight, maybe a little thicker. i know how to do thick and chunky. now i want to do thin and even.

finally i have my own blog!!

well after years of only being dd, now that i have entered adulthood i am entering the world of blogging. oh the excitement!!! my mom, vanessa, will have to help me with maneuvering blogspot.

well that being said, i cannot wait to talk about my projects. while in jacksonville for christmas at my brother's house, sil, my mother, and i tootled our way over to the local yarn store. my mother and i were as giddy as little kids in a candy store we gathered wonderful fibers to fix our addiction; while sil reluctantly left her traveler in the car to join us. last christmas sil and mom went to the shop w/o me because i was recovering from sleep withdrawal and extreme post crankiness from wrapping presents until 4 a.m. the previous morning then traveling from fort lauderdale to jacksonville with no room to move in the packed cadidilac. mom got plenty of goodies. i got some peace fleece, jagger spun zephyr silk/wool, seasilk, and kid merino. i have already made my first pair of mittens from the two colors of peace fleece and i am starting to make a lace scarf from the seasilk. the store is wonderful!!! and the lady who owns the shop is lovely. she even balls the yarn for you.

here are my peace fleece mittens.

i am seriously enjoying winter break from school!! if only it was longer. now that i have less than a week left it seems to be going by rather quickly. i have had time to relax, knit, read, and do the dye, spin, knit-along with mom. i haven't had this much time on my hands since the summer. i look forward to school in knowing that the weeks will fly by in the last five months of my senior year. senioritis is definitely kicking in now, and the anxiety of not hearing back for university of florida is getting very intense now that it's getting down to the wire. cross your fingers, cross your toes, and even cross your knitting needles that the letter will say CONGRATULATIONS!

speaking of christmas and college, i must have been a good dd cause santa mom was very nice to me this year. i got LOTS of stuff for college next fall including the start to my very own knitting supplies. i got a knit picks knitting needle set, some bamboo dpn in size 0, 1, and 2 for socks to keep my toesies warm, i got scarf styles, and i got lots of b-e-a-utiful knit goodies from my mom including two scarfs, one with matching mittens, a nice shawl pin for my sweater she made, and socks! also i got the bedsheets for my dorm next year that i really like in twin extra long, i laptop case in the vera bradly print that matches my luggage, tons of tip book for going into your freshman year, and lots of fun stuff.

you can see all the things she made better here.

raja even likes my goodies.

i am so excited to be involved in the blogging world myself and not just using my mom's.

tootles!!