The truth about autism

This is an amazing story that made me realize with crystal clarity the assumptions I make about people that can be way off target. You know what they say about assuming....it makes an "ass" of "u" and "me".

I cannot help but admire women like Amanda Baggs and Michelle Dawson. My hat is off to both, my heart goes out to them and I applaud their willingness to help educate the rest of the world about autism. We are all different and different is not bad...its just different. I think this lesson can be applied to many walks of life.

Gourd painting weekend

My mom and I had a gourd painting weekend. The weather was awful, raining non-stop most of Saturday and so gushy wet that you couldn't get outside without boots on Sunday. She is painting her kitchen and wanted to put a couple of painted gourds on top of her cabinets. She wanted bright colors, polka dots and stars. We grew the gourds in our garden last year and they have been curing in the tool shed. I planted them around my dog kennel and let them grow up over it for shade.

It was a fun weekend, kind of a mini-vacation. We plan to do it again!

My first afghan

I made my very first afghan ever as a gift for my sweetie for Valentine's Day. The pattern is from Lion Brand and can be downloaded for free from their site. It is the Vanna's Choice Squared Afghan. I did make some changes to the pattern, however. I used the Vanna's Choice yarn in brick, taupe, beige and linen and added a fifth color, black. However, I only used the black as a border for each completed square and then in the border around the completed afghan. The original pattern is in shades of gold, green, purple and rose, but since this afghan was for a man, I thought I needed a more masculine color scheme.


The pattern was easy to stitch and it took me about a week, but I was putting in quite a bit of time on it to get it out by Valentine's Day. I ordered the yarn so I could get the colors, but it took longer to get here than I had anticipated. I was working on it every evening and put in one full day on a weekend, late into the night, to get it finished. It makes a nice lap afghan, but if I make this pattern again, I will add another row of squares to make it longer. It comes out about 4 ft. x 4 ft., but that is not quite long enough to cover the adults in my family from toe to chin for good snuggling.