The past few days have been cold, windy, icy and generally unpleasant. Luckily, I have pictures like this one of Kate to remind me that winter is not all that bad. This photo was taken by Todd a few years ago but Kate is still eager to help us shovel whenever there's a snowfall.
I can think of 21, maybe 22, things I'd rather do than go shopping in a mall. I do the majority of my shopping on-line these days, thus avoiding the Musak and aggressive sales clerks. However, Julia had been asking for a shopping trip to Toronto and the thought of going away for the weekend was rather appealing. 
This week's dare from Circle of Scrapping Friends is to use wallet-sized photos and at least three tags in a layout. This challenge inspired me to finally organize all the kids' leftover school photos and scan them into my computer. Julia is reluctant to have her photo taken or displayed these days but didn't seem totally horrified when I told her I was going to post this layout on my blog.
Kate participated in her string school's Autumn Recital on Sunday. She played very well the Lully Gavotte by Marin Marais, from Suzuki Book 2, and even added a tiny bit of vibrato!
I finally used up all the Gryffindor yarn. I made a hat and mittens for Kate, and a little sweater for her Webkinz. I had to do some reverse engineering based on a Webkinz sweater I saw at the mall, but there was no way I was going to pay $12.99 for something I can make with a dollar's worth of scrap yarn. (This mentality comes from living for two decades with a very practical engineer.) Actually, I do have a very little bit of red and gold yarn left, and Kate asked for a toque for her Webkinz. We'll see. I have to first figure out how to stuff the ears in.
I'm experimenting with creating my own digital papers and embellishments. Here's the first attempt, consisting of four papers, a striped ribbon and "frosted" snowflakes. Not quite as nice as the beautiful kits from www.designerdigitals.com, but I was able to match the papers to the girls' snowsuits. And I was even willing to admit how pathetic I am at skiing.
Last week's 30-minute challenge in Jessica Sprague's Photoshop course was to do a layout on some "geeky little secret". Since Scrabble has been on my mind lately, I did one on studying word lists. Well, this isn't really a secret, though it's not something I bring up in conversation with normal folk ... and I really don't study word lists much anymore ... but I should. (Speaking of Scrabble, Nigel Richards of New Zealand won the World Championship.)
St John Ambulance is holding their BIG Tea Cosy event and asking knitters to send donated tea cosies. They are hoping to collect 5000 by November 30. So I spent the last couple of weeks knitting three cosies using the free pattern from their Web site and I sent them off to England a few days ago. I used the yarns left over from Kate's Gryffindor hat-and-mittens set, which I'll show in a future blog post. The first cosy is in the Gryffindor colours. The other two each have a happy face on the front, and a grumpy or winking face on the back. Couples can choose the orientation of their teapot on the breakfast table depending on who is the grumpier person in the mornings.
This week's dare from Circle of Scrapping Friends is to create a layout of an unusual size, something different from the standard 12"x12" size that most scrapbookers use. I decided to do a 1280 pixels by 1050 pixels layout, as I thought it was time for a new background on my computer monitor. All materials are from Lynn Grieveson's "Silk Road" kit, available at www.designerdigitals.com.
So what is your Myers-Briggs type? You can do a self-test at this site. I won't vouch for its reliability, but there are worse ways to spend 10 minutes than answering 72 binary-valued questions about yourself.
It's my little brother's birthday today! Happy Birthday, Joe! I hope Joe won't curse me too loudly for posting this old photo from 35 years ago, in celebration of this special day. I decided to convert the photo to a nice warm sepia tone, to hide the fact that Joe was wearing a polyester burgundy suit that clashed terribly with my bright red tights.
Made lots of progress on all my knitting projects this week. Even worked on Todd's sweater, but instead of just uploading a progress pic, why not make a layout about it? I did this for a 30-minute challenge given in Jessica Sprague's Photoshop course. It actually took me 45 minutes from taking the first photo to saving the final version of the layout. Jessica posted the challenge on her blog, so you can try it for yourself if you like the idea of doing something totally frivolous under an insane amount of time pressure. For this layout, I used a freebie paper pack from Katie Pertiet at www.designerdigitals.com and a brush from the "Circle of Life Brush Set" by Mary Ann Wise, also from DesignerDigitals.
This week's dare at Circle of Scrapping Friends is to use a large picture in a layout. So I figured I'd go big and cover the entire layout. This is one thing I love about digital scrapbooking -- I can make the photos any size I like.
