Well, I had my "GwtW" moment the other night.

I was watching Finding your Roots on PBS.  I won't go into the details of exactly what the episode was about but suddenly I found myself mad, crying. upset, and saying out loud - WHY NOW !!!

Coincidently my sister texted to see how I was doing, which as you can tell wasn't great, so she called and we had a great chat.  Somewhere during this Boots came into the room and settled on my lap so that also gave me comfort.

I know this will go on for a while but now I feel like I can start to move forward and take care of business.

Enjoy these pictures of the Shop Elf that were taken through the years during various trips we took

Someone recently asked how The Shop Elf and I met; again sit back and read on.

Back in 1987 a friend (Gylver) invited me over to their place in Orange County, for a bicycle ride, along with some other friends from when we all lived in Santa Barbara as well as some of their newer friends who also rode. It was late September.
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On the appointed day, I and my 21 gear bicycle arrived at the Gyl's home. Art, a mutual friend also from Santa Barbara, was there as well as this guy named Erich. No one else showed up during the hour we waited so all 4 of us took off and an hour or so later it started to rain so we headed back to Gyl's to have early dinner, conversation and eventually I headed home.   The next day I received a call from Erich and we spent quite a few hours talking on the phone and we decided to meet for dinner during the weekend. 

For our "date" we met at a restaurant that was equidistant as he lived in Tustin and I was in Temecula which is  60+ miles apart; it went well. When he asked about us meeting again in a few days, I had to say no, only weekends as I just started graduate schools and was very busy between work and classes; he understood.

One thing led to another and about a month later, in October he asked me to move in with him but I said no because of grad school, work and that I had lived with my last boyfriend for several months and that had not ended well. Again he understood. We would see each other almost every weekend and would talk for hours on the phone during the week.

At the start of November he proposed saying he "knew"; I also knew and so I said yes. We discussed many things and decided to elope over the Thanksgiving weekend as it was soonest for me to have a break in school and the best time to sneak off. 

We found a Rabbi and with Gylver as best man we got married exactly 2 months after we met; the rest is history.

Here he is during a road trip to the Arizona in 2010

I can't watch this movie at the moment and  no women in our family can watch it without tissues being at hand. 

Why, well sit back and I will reveal the reason.

Back in my early teen years Gone with the Wind (GwtW) was going to be shown at the local movie theatre with a 2 hour intermission for lunch. It was on a weekday any my mom said I would not be going to school that day so she could take me to see it. Note 1: I like going to school but when your mom says it's a girl day why argue. My sister had done this with my mother several years earlier and before we left she said " make sure mom has tissue"; was confused as to why and this statement went in one ear and out the other. 

The day arrives and we head into town and we get popcorn and settle into our seats and soon the lights go down the curtain was raised, the opening music starts and the intro credits start to scroll. Within minutes I hear my mom sniff and as the movie went on she was sniffling more and eventually she got up and then came back with a wad of toilet paper. Note 2: It was that thin Soviet Union type of TP. Intermission soon arrived and over lunch she did not explain, when I asked about what was going on but said she would explain on the way home and that I should just enjoy the movie. During the second half the sniffling changed to actual crying. I can and do acknowledge there are sad and emotional sections I still could not comprehend what was going on with my mother. By the time the movie was over and we headed to the car her eyes were very red and her nose was raw from that toilet paper in lieu of tissues.

On the way home, I again asked what was going on and she said something like "You might not understand now, but you will when I am gone!" - WTF MOM??!! Note 3: Being a young girl in the 60's I did not actually think that but you get get it. Then she proceeded to explain that HER mom had passed away when she was 12-ish and that she had seen the movie (released in 1939) around then; I do not know if she saw it with her mother or she saw it after her mother passed but every time she watches the movie all the grief and pain wells up and she can't NOT cry. Oh, and that is how I learned that my grandmother was her step-mom making her my step-grandmother and that my uncle was her half brother; it was a very strange day.

Years later, when GwtW was released to TV (1976) my sister and I made sure she had an entire box of tissue ready.

Then my father passed in 1988 and my mother passed in 1992 and NOW I understand; I was watching a movie yesterday, it was NOT GwtW, and someone died in the movie and I started to cry and changed the channel. 

I will NOT be watching GwtW any time soon.

Picture of Carol Burnett in the curtain dress from the the famous Went with the Wind parody (1976).

While cleaning - purging and re-organizing a hall closet that holds quilt fabric and other odd crafts I found a plastic shoe box with my pin looms. Note: All other fiber such as knitting yarn, warp and weft yarns is in a closet in the family room. I am still organizing the quilt fabric and have not finished the closet because I became distracted by playing with those little looms. 

I pulled the left over skeins from knitting projects out and have started to weave up squares for a couch throw.

BUT wait there is more!!

I joined 2 pin loom groups on Facebook. The first is just a general support group and the other is for making a Temperature Blanket. In a nutshell it is Data Visualization as Art - there are all sorts of projects like this; Google it and get lost on the web.

Well, being an engineer who loves data AND being a weather dork who likes to track rain fall I was instantly in.

I spent almost a week selecting my yarn and setting up the temperature ranges. I wanted a single color way that had 15+ colors so I could do high and low temps with most temperature bands being 5 degrees.  I went with Knit Picks City Tweed DK. Next, I had to select colors for the temperature bands and based upon historical data estimate yardage for each color; then I placed my order for it and it will be here next week. I am going to weave squares with the warp and weft being the high and low temps for the day and rain or snow I will insert a white warp thread for each inch and a weft thread for each 0.1 inch of precipitation. The last task was to figure out the layout and I settled on a modified linear calendar and I will use triangles around the outside.
Here are pictures of the yarn colorway, the temperature bands and assigned color(s), and the blanket layout.