Multicolored cable socks. Mom gave me the sock yarn, and afterward she noticed that it was hard to see the pattern when I knitted with it. She decided to give me some lighter colored yarn to work with, but hey, a new pair of socks is a new pair of socks, and I certainly wasn't complaining.

Excuse Her Majesty's paw. Everytime I pull out my phone to take a picture, she's sure I mean to get
one of her.

Dark Green 100% Wool Socks

Dark Green 100% wool socks. I used a seeded rib pattern. Been a while since I knitted these, and it was my first time working with 100% wool. I didn't realize that wool yarn isn't as stretchy as acrylic or even sock yarn, so these are actually a size too small. I can shove them on anyway, but it's not easy.

Oh well.

So.... I remembered this blog exists

I like the idea of having a blog mostly for creative crafty stuff, and it seems like this was it back in the day. So, if you can get past the godawful pinkness and the teenage whiny angst in the older posts, here it is. (Seriously, what the fuck was my teenage self THINKING?)

Here's a new pair of socks I knitted that I finished Christmas morning. I used  4 double pointed needles, size 0.

If I can figure out how to get a picture to load, that is.

Sophie Scholl and the Order of the White Rose

So, in order to cheer ourselves up after we had to have the cat put to sleep, my cousin and I decided to watch a nice uplifting movie. I say that in all sarcasm because, anyone who's familiar with Sophie Scholl knows that a movie about her life is not going to have a happy ending.

Those who are familiar with their history can skip this paragraph. Basically The Order of the White Rose was a non violent resistance movement. They fought the Nazis with words instead of bombs.  The Order wrote leaflets against the Nazi ideology and distributed them, mostly through the mail. One day, however, Hans, Sophie's brother, got the really stupid idea to scatter them on the campus of the University of Munich. Sophie decided she was going with him. To make a long story short, they got caught. They got interrogated. They got sentenced to death. They got their heads chopped off.

So, yes, very uplifting movie.

The movie --Sophie Scholl-Die Letzten Tage (The Final Days) is based on actual transcripts that, for a long time, remained unread in East Germany. I've read reviews stating that it is historically accurate.

What I found most interesting from the movie, and looked up online to see if it actually happened (and I did find at least one source) was Sophie's faith in God. In the movie, we get the impression that Sophie has been ignoring God and is now turning to him in desperation. However, from the wiki article, it states that Sophie's faith was one of, if not the, driving force(s) that motivated her. I need to get a book to see which account is correct. Anyway, When Sophie visits her parents for the last time... Well, here's the quote from the website:

.... Her mother spoke again: “Sophie,” she said softly, “Remember Jesus.” “Yes,” replied Sophie earnestly, almost commandingly, “but you, too.” She left them, her parents, Robert and Magdalene Scholl, with her face still lit by the smile they loved so well and would never see again....


Remember Jesus. Interesting. I have a friend who just recently graduated a missionary training program. Since I've seen a lot of people graduate this program, and I've also seen a lot of them lose their zeal and love for Jesus, I charged her before leaving: Remember three things: 
Remember who you are (God's child, a campus missionary) 
Remember where you come from (meaning basically don't forget your year in the program and the values/ideals you learned there
Remember who goes with you. (Matthew 28:20 "...and lo, I am with you always, even to the end of the world." Jesus is speaking.) 


Basically, I told her to remember Jesus. 


When watching the movie, I wanted to argue with her: "but Sophie!" I'd say in my broken grammarless German, "God is letting you get executed just for disagreeing with those in power! How can you even like God? I'd be hating him right now!"


Yet Sophie remembered Jesus. Not only that, she charged her parents to remember Him too. 


Sophie Scholl was BRAVE. She was only 21 when she died, yet she lived for something. She had a cause she was so passionate about she was willing to give her life for it rather than retract her statement in the hopes of a harsher sentence. 


There is a lot to learn from her life. For the sake of this post, I am only going to focus on one thing: Remember Jesus. 


When I charged my friend to Remember Him, she looked at me and said, "You too, Gem." (At least, I think she did. I honestly can't remember now. Either way, I know she said something similar, because her gifts were very similar to mine.) 


Remember Jesus.
You too. 




Sophie Scholl was brave. She was (in public, anyway) calm and collected in the face of imminent death. She remembered Jesus. And she was not afraid to die for a cause she believed in. 


If the time ever comes, I hope that I can be just as brave as she is. 


Maybe, if I remember Jesus, I will. 


Help Me

Last night, my room mate did something that I considered obnoxious. At 4am. In the middle of the day, I might've been more equipped to handle it. As it was, all I could do was cry out, "Lord, when I did that, I was NEVER that obnoxious!"

And the Lord didn't say anything. He didn't have to.

Because yes, I did the exact same thing she did before, and I WAS that obnoxious. I just didn't realize it at the time. The only reason I no longer do those things is because Jesus is in my life now.

This made me realize two things:

1. I never did this particular obnoxious thing around PEOPLE, but I did it around God. All the time, God was there, putting up with this. And yet, he wasn't like me when my room mate first walked in. He wasn't like, oh my gosh why does she do this? When is she going to STOP! No. God was right there the whole time, reassuring me that he still loved me. And he had to do that a lot. He was still pleading for me to stop, but patiently, ever patiently, loving me through. I thought about that this morning, and I looked at God in awe and wonder. How can he treat me that way? How did he patiently stick with me? For the first time in a long time, I looked at God with awe, wonder, and love.

2. How dare I treat my room mate, even in my thoughts, with any less patience than God has shown me? How dare I look down on anyone who does these things when, if I didn't have Jesus, I would absolutely be doing the same things, and perhaps worse things?

I pray that God will grant me patience. And love. 1 corinthians 13 says that love is "long suffering." I like that better than the word "patient," because long suffering implies what it actually is: suffering for a long time with someone/for something.

The fruit of the spirit is love, joy, peace, and long suffering. Love suffers long. Long suffering. I pray for these gifts. And to keep my eyes ever fixed on Jesus, the one who loves me enough to suffer long with me.

Help Me

April 6, 2012

So, for some reason, I have been going through a lot of old entries lately. I don't always intend to, but, I needed files cleared off my hard drive, I wanted to show my friend some old entries...etc. Perhaps this is God's way of saying that it is time to go through the written record again. Reflect on where I was then and where I am now. Spot the patterns of behavior that need to be knocked down. Yes, I think this might be what God wants. Maybe.

My computer is having issues, which is why I will not now post pictures.

So, how many people actually read this?

Help Me

On second thought I'd like to not broadcast this to the whole world...

This year it feels like Christmas came so early that thanksgiving got a little forgotten. So I'm going to take a moment to remember all I'm thankful for.

I am grateful for my family. I am. Even with all the nuts I wish I could shake off, I think I would rather have those than, well, nobody.

I have the best friends ever. Hands down. Even when they drive me absolutely bonkers, even when they yell at me to the point I burst into tears. Even when we're fighting and angry. Even when I feel like they left me out, I am still so grateful to have them. These people know how rotten at the core I am. Mental illness, issues #1-3, candyland, broccoliland, splitting, coping mechanisms. And they still love me. And these few have stuck with me, in the hopes that I would want to get better some day. And now that I do, they are here(with one exception). I feel like I can tell them almost anything. Many people apparently don't have friends as good as these.

I am thankful for my mom. She's not the perfect mom I kept dreaming of, but, I do know she does love me.

I am thankful that I have a grandma who bakes me cookies. I feel so bad for all the poor people who don't have grandmas to make them cookies. They are missing out on a valuable part of life.

I am thankful that I own a computer, and even more thankful that I have a new battery. The old one was getting swollen. My dad said that could potentially explode and destroy my computer. So I'm glad that didn't happen.

I am happy for whoever invented tofurkey. Someone could probably tell me who that was, if they felt like it. I really don't care who did it, unless they're still alive for me to send them a christmas card.

I am thankful that I can read. I don't think I could've survived without it.

I am thankful that I am bilingual. I might not speak Spanish as well as I like, but I can speak it almost fluently. Being Bilingual is truly an advantage, and soon I hope to be trilingual.

I'm thankful for my doll collection/hobby. It has opened up so many doors. My grandma doesn't collect the same type of dolls I do, but it still gives us something to talk about: an added blessing to the other knowledge I gain from it.

I'm so thankful to be at eastern. I'm praying I get to continue staying there, but even if I do not, just for one semester, it was worth it. It was so worth it.

I am thankful for CAMPUS. Probably no one on this earth will ever know how much the organization as a whole has helped me, not to mention the individual people who are a part of that. Thank you.

I wasn't going to mention this, but, what the heck, I'm on a roll. I am thankful for this year's missionaries.

I'm thankful that I can knit. And crochet. And soon I will hopefully even learn to sew something decent.

And, oh yeah, I think about this one often so I feel like I should mention it: I am eternally grateful that I live in a country where I have clean water and food. I don't like a lot of the things my country does. In fact, I've been downright ashamed of it a lot in the past few years. But at least America has food and water. Even though at times it has TOO MUCH food, it's my choice how I handle the overabundance. Not well, most times I'm afraid, but still.

And, I know this is generally more of a christmas thing, but, I am so thankful that Jesus came into our world to die for us. I've been reading the bible lately, particularly the gospels and The Desire of Ages. Really trying to learn to love God. I know we all know it, but it would be good to pause and reflect: Jesus came into this world to become like us and to DIE for us, when we were the ones who made that necessary. Even though we (well, most of us, anyway, and at one point we probably all have) live our lives like we don't care.

So, let's take a moment to thank Jesus for what He's done for us.

Because, think about it. Without Him, we wouldn't have a thanksgiving. We wouldn't have anything to be thankful for.

Help Me

Creative Writing --poems

So, I'm finally getting around to typing this one, which is really the only poem I actually did any work on.

It was based on a news story about this boy who shot his parents. The father was known for being strictly religious, and had actually shot someone before but the charges were dropped. Because the father was religious (note I'm saying religious rather than a christian) he believed in "physical discipline" and we are only now hearing how extensive that "discipline" might have been."

In this case, I think the child shouldn't go to jail, but that's beside the point.

So, that's what I've based this off of. Or, I just wanted to write a really disturbing poem. I'll add my teacher's comments at the end.

A Tribute To The Unnamed Minor

Sitting on the bedpsread
life is full of dread
gives himself the go ahead
life hangs by a thread

not sure what to do instead
wouldn't help to call a fed
nothing's wrong, they all said
they had been misled

In the woodhsed
the boy pled
as blood gushed out his head
and angry words were said
all in the name of the godhead

bullets made of led
find the parents abed
crying, they pled
skin is shred
by bullets of led

blood flows from the parents head
the color is red
the boy's parents are dead
and this is so widespread
because no one would listen to what was said


Teacher's comments: wow! all lines rhyme and yet the ubject matter is so dark--nice juxtaposition. nice imagery.

turns out my teacher really likes disturbing poetry, who knew?

Pictures coming soon...

When I think about it. So far I have done:

1. Made a pot scrubbie out of onion bags.

you cut the bag into strips and sew them together, then crochet it into a circle. My mom actually says she likes it better than the store bought ones, and my friend Jacq thinks it's an awesome way to recycle.

2. Wove my first strip of cloth. I have no idea what I'm going to do with it but my friends think it's kinda cool. Speaking of which, I need to give one of them links for instructions..

3. entered a giveaway for a free Kanani at http://www.raveandreview.com/2011/07/american-girl-seattle-grand-opening-review-doll-giveaway.html#comment-6a0105362badb1970b0153908d2a0b970b and hoping I win, because I actually really like Kanani's stories. Not sure how I feel about the doll form though.

Toni's birthday present.....

A sympathy doll. Not sure why one arm turned out to be so much LONGER than the other....Toni said, "it's reaching out." So there I guess is me reaching out to Toni for support. Um, happy birthday?

I'm still learning how to do this so it looks nicer....

But this is another old box of chewing tobacco that I've covered with fabric. These containers are actually really handy. I use one of them for earrings, one for safety pins, and I think I'm currently using another one for beads.

Photostory --Easter Egg Hunt

https://picasaweb.google.com/strawberriesgeteaten/EasterSunday2011?authkey=Gv1sRgCNvTmeub1KfHAw#5599282288889051970

Ruffle skirt

I got the pattern online. I sewed it by myself without any help. I like the way it turned out. Modeling it for us today is Josefina.

I will mention also that the fancy camisa was made by my mother and given to me as a christmas gift.

Mod podge, box of chewing tobacco, fabric.

It didn't occur to me till now that I could've taken a better picture, but I am really lazy and tired at the moment.

It's also the first one I've done, so it looks a little....not perfect.


This one holds my safety pins.

Some doll pics

I Haven't written the photostory yet, but I took some pictures of other things. Note that my skills are still improving.



The Easter Bunny

Eleni Almond

Knit in the round on the skirt, my own pattern. The torso and sleeves are adapted from a larger pattern just to give me an idea on what to do. Still my own design, either way.

Made with sport weight/DK yarn, size zero needles.






















The doll, Eleni Almond, who is also handmade, in the dress:

































Then I decided the dress needed a sash. I also knit her a hair ribbon, but I'm not sure if you can see it in the pics.

So. Alanna actually suggested I start a blog...

We'll see how many people end up actually reading it, but I think she's sort of right. She suggested it be a way to share my writing...

Yes and no.

I think I will just make this an outlet for whatever creative thing I do, be it drawing/painting, photography, writing, knitting, etc.

So, to start out with, I took mini pm Felicity the other day for a photoshoot. Only problem: my camera threw a tantrum and the batteries died. So I only got like, one good picture.

And, as I was awoken this morning by a freakin's now plow, I won't be going out again for a while.

Right. The picture.

Gail Karen

is...

is anybody out there reading this? or am i just blabbing random crap into cyberspace?