I prepared the pattern this morning for the Small Knitted Gift Bag, and have posted it on my patterns page for anyone interested. On Monday I'll show you all a silly and fun scarf I am making for my daughter, and I will provide the pattern for it as well.
Today I will be doing some writing for a couple of clients, but I also need to bake the pumpkin pie I am entering in the agricultural fair competition. I will make two of them, one for us and one for the competition. My husband has not had any of my homemade pie before, so I am looking forward to his enjoyment. There are two pies in particular which are my specialties: pumpkin pie, and apple-cranberry pie. The apple cranberry pie is beautiful to make at the holidays and features a double crust with cut-out leaf and berry decorations on top. I love left-over pie for breakfast, and so I always make two pumpkin pies for that purpose ... although I usually only make pies at Thanksgiving and Christmas because I like to minimize caloric temptations as much as possible.
Somewhere on my blog these words used to appear: "I write. I paint. I knit." It must have been in the auto-formatted header before I replaced that with a graphic. The words are gone, but they are true. I do write, and I do paint, and I do knit ... among other things. From time to time I would like to share one of my paintings with you, and sometime I would like to share with you the story of how I came to paint. It was a little miracle, and miracles are on my mind today. This photo here is a self-portrait I did in watercolor back in late 2004, capturing a moment during a very difficult time in my life. It was a cross roads, and the forces playing out in my life at that moment in time eventually led me down a road where I met my husband and moved to this lovely farm. I wanted to share it with you, as a start point in sharing the painting side of my life.
Over the past few days I have heard news reports of a large fire burning in Southern California ... it reminds me of the terrible fires we had in California in late October of 2003. The photo you see here is one I shot from our house on the hill, when we lived in the foothills north of Los Angeles. This shot was taken early one morning as the smoke was beginning to fill the air everywhere. It seemed all of California was on fire. By the end of that day we could not see beyond the deck of our house, because the smoke was so thick from all of the fires. It was terribly hot, and our air conditioner was working very well but we had to run it round the clock so we wouldn't have to open the doors or windows. It was a very frightening and eerie time.
Something miraculous happened though. Someone started putting the word out via news programs for people to pray. I was amazed to hear the news media urging people to pray ... it is one thing for ordinary people to think of that, but for the news to broadcast it was something else. People all over California, and I am sure other places as well, did begin praying; I was one of them.
It was just before Halloween, and overnight the temperature dropped and it began to rain in the lower lands and it began to snow in the mountains. The rain and the snow put out the fires, mostly and brought the horrors of the days previous to an end. The skies turned a glorious blue, white puffy clouds were everywhere. It was a miracle and it happend literally overnight after the word went out for people everywhere to pray.
I notice these things, and I know that prayer worked. The beautiful thing about prayer is that it is a non-denomiational activity. There are no requirements as to faith or how you specifically define God and under what name you are praying. Prayer is accepted from anyone who engages in it, and people of all faiths or no faith may all join together and pray in unison and it still works.
It worked in California on October 29th of 2003 and the call for help was not a small one.
Those are my thoughts for today. I hope you enjoy the gift bag pattern and that someone gets a delightful knitted treat from you someday soon. Knitters, from my obversation, are very generous souls.
Have a beautiful day and weekend, and thank you so much for stopping by today.
~firefly
Today I will be doing some writing for a couple of clients, but I also need to bake the pumpkin pie I am entering in the agricultural fair competition. I will make two of them, one for us and one for the competition. My husband has not had any of my homemade pie before, so I am looking forward to his enjoyment. There are two pies in particular which are my specialties: pumpkin pie, and apple-cranberry pie. The apple cranberry pie is beautiful to make at the holidays and features a double crust with cut-out leaf and berry decorations on top. I love left-over pie for breakfast, and so I always make two pumpkin pies for that purpose ... although I usually only make pies at Thanksgiving and Christmas because I like to minimize caloric temptations as much as possible.
Somewhere on my blog these words used to appear: "I write. I paint. I knit." It must have been in the auto-formatted header before I replaced that with a graphic. The words are gone, but they are true. I do write, and I do paint, and I do knit ... among other things. From time to time I would like to share one of my paintings with you, and sometime I would like to share with you the story of how I came to paint. It was a little miracle, and miracles are on my mind today. This photo here is a self-portrait I did in watercolor back in late 2004, capturing a moment during a very difficult time in my life. It was a cross roads, and the forces playing out in my life at that moment in time eventually led me down a road where I met my husband and moved to this lovely farm. I wanted to share it with you, as a start point in sharing the painting side of my life.
Over the past few days I have heard news reports of a large fire burning in Southern California ... it reminds me of the terrible fires we had in California in late October of 2003. The photo you see here is one I shot from our house on the hill, when we lived in the foothills north of Los Angeles. This shot was taken early one morning as the smoke was beginning to fill the air everywhere. It seemed all of California was on fire. By the end of that day we could not see beyond the deck of our house, because the smoke was so thick from all of the fires. It was terribly hot, and our air conditioner was working very well but we had to run it round the clock so we wouldn't have to open the doors or windows. It was a very frightening and eerie time.
Something miraculous happened though. Someone started putting the word out via news programs for people to pray. I was amazed to hear the news media urging people to pray ... it is one thing for ordinary people to think of that, but for the news to broadcast it was something else. People all over California, and I am sure other places as well, did begin praying; I was one of them.
It was just before Halloween, and overnight the temperature dropped and it began to rain in the lower lands and it began to snow in the mountains. The rain and the snow put out the fires, mostly and brought the horrors of the days previous to an end. The skies turned a glorious blue, white puffy clouds were everywhere. It was a miracle and it happend literally overnight after the word went out for people everywhere to pray.
I notice these things, and I know that prayer worked. The beautiful thing about prayer is that it is a non-denomiational activity. There are no requirements as to faith or how you specifically define God and under what name you are praying. Prayer is accepted from anyone who engages in it, and people of all faiths or no faith may all join together and pray in unison and it still works.
It worked in California on October 29th of 2003 and the call for help was not a small one.
Those are my thoughts for today. I hope you enjoy the gift bag pattern and that someone gets a delightful knitted treat from you someday soon. Knitters, from my obversation, are very generous souls.
Have a beautiful day and weekend, and thank you so much for stopping by today.
~firefly