What I've been up to

Okay, so many of you have asked what I've been up to while Dave is doing his internship that I thought I'd let you know. I am working for the park about 12 hours a week, usually 3 hours an afternoon Monday thru Thursday. I am working on updating the parks' bird list right now, and when (if) I finish that, I'll start digitizing their herbarium--a fancy term for taking digital pictures of each herbarium specimen and putting them online where the general public can access them.

At home I've been experimenting with my bread, both wheat, white and flavors--I am trying to perfect a cranberry-orange number that's giving me trouble. I usually bake about 3 loaves a week because we don't buy store bread. So far I'm great at the white, the wheat is a little too wheat-ish and the cranberry-0range is a bit gooey but good for toast, and it has great flavor!

I've also been crocheting quite a bit. I started working on a baby blanket when I was a freshman in college and just would work on it when I was between projects. But moving inspired me to either finish things or pass them along to someone who would, and I loved the baby blanket project, so I brought it along and finished it Thursday night. Yay! So, here it is: This is the whole blanket. It's about three feet long by two feet wide.

I decided that to finish it off, I would just do one row of each color, so on the green side it goes yellow, white, green, and on the yellow side it goes green, white, yellow. I really had fun with this blanket. I think I am going to donate it to a hospital for their preemie unit or something like that. Anyone with info on doing that, let me know.

I've also been embroidering a whole bunch to finish a wedding present for my friend Tara, who got married January 3rd. Congratulations Tara and Dustin! Here are the dish towels--I thought they turned out really well:

The carrots were definitely the hardest, because of the leaves. I had so much fun doing them! Embroidery really is my favorite thing to do, but I try not to do it too much--I don't want to cover every space in our home with embroidery, like some people do with doilies. Anyway, if you ever have an embroidery project that needs done but you don't want to do it, you know who to call!