If you haven’t guessed already, I’m making it in the same way as my other collages. There’s not a whole lot to it, yet, but I’m so proud of myself for actually getting the ball rolling.

You wouldn’t think a collage would take so much effort, but I guess my process is a little more involved. I have to first come up with the idea, spend inordinate amounts of time using google images to find the right pictures, convert them all to grayscale, print them out, cut them out and then decide that most of them are all wrong and go back to the beginning.

This idea centers on a ferris wheel. I think this is the one but it could change. I really hope not as it took me about 2 hours to cut out all those teeny triangles.

I can’t wait to share the whole thing with you… but don’t hold your breath, I probably won’t finish it before he goes off to Kindergarten.

Anyway, we spent the weekend at my aunt’s house. My grandmother (and her twin, of course!) is turning ninety – YES.. 90! – this week, so there was a big family party over the weekend. It is always nice to see family that you often only see once per year. In fact, some of them (grandma’s twin sister) I haven’t seen in at least a couple of years. Anyway, what all of this means is that yesterday, while I was waiting for Chris to come pick us up after his drill weekend, I had lots of spare time to knit. You know, cuz I couldn’t do any housework, cuz I wasn’t at home, which means…

The Butterfly Dress is nearly off the needles. She’s beautiful, and I hope blocks up nicely. But this project has been a major pain in the butt! I think I ripped out everything after the hem about 4 times before I got a good start. And lace is a bitch to frog. How in the hell do you pick the stitches back up? So everything I had to frog after I finally got a good start had to be de-knitted and picked out one stitch at a time. Thankfully, the longest stretch I frogged was only about 9 rows. But it was worth it. There are not too many noticeable mistakes, which just shocks the hell outta me. Pictures coming soon…

Now I need to get a pattern for a slip dress, and material to make it. Right, in my spare time. I still need to finish a commission for a wool blanket from last spring, quilt the new baby quilt, finish the tee-shirts I’m making for vacation (more on those in another post), and finish printing a bunch of stuff for vacation. All of this while playing single parent, trying to get the A/C fixed,  and finishing up a release at work. Yeah, I have lots of time on my hands. Would someone please call Mary Poppins for me?

Friday night Chris and I finished cleaning out our flower bed out front. The prime reason for this was the two cacti that were blocking everyone’s view around the corner.  We spent all week trying to wage war on one big ass Texas Sotol. I’m telling you, when the website says “not pedestrian friendly”, it’s no joke. This thing is pure evil. It was probably 5 feet tall, and as big around. The entire plant is made up of long grass-like blades that have barbs running about every inch on either side. About 50% of the time those barbs break off when they catch on something. And about 50% of the time they were catching in my arms. My BARE arms. OUCH!

Anyway, we were down to the base of this thing on Friday, and Chris was hacking away at this huge donut shaped ring of whatever the hell this plant is, while I picked up the remains. Some time in the middle of all this, I pulled my glove off to dump out the dirt, and threw out a few rocks, too. The ones in my wedding band. The ones in my replacement wedding band from when I lost my original ring 2 years ago.

Saturday morning while I was hurriedly showering to get to ceramics class, I noticed my ring wasn’t on my finger, and I didn’t remember taking it off. I checked the two places that I usually leave it. Not there, or there. Now I’m panicking, I absolutely HATE not having my ring. I even wore it (well, the original) during  all 9 months of pregnancy, despite it being so tight as to cut off circulation in my finger (OK, so maybe that’s a slight exaggeration, but you get the idea…).  At this point I’m openly crying and screaming for Chris. He probably thought I had chopped off a hand (which I tried to do later in the weekend), or burned myself, or saw a bug the way I was carrying on.

Forty five minutes later, still no dice (or diamonds). Chris sends me off to class in tears. I cried the whole way there, then scraped up my hand really badly while trying to put the splash pan on my wheel, and started crying again. After that bit of drama, my instructor, who has to be one of the nicest men on the planet, offered a hug. He’s a really good hugger and I started to feel better immediately. I dove into the work I had left on last weeks pots, and started some new ones.  And as grumpy as I was, class went really well. I had a really huge breakthrough and actually threw a few pots that were taller than a coffee mug. But I digress…

On the way home I started bawling again. But at the same time had this feeling that Chris had found the dumb thing. I tried to talk myself out of that feeling because I really thought it was hopeless. The night before we had gone out to eat, and I had washed my hands in the restroom. I figured the ring was either in one of ten bags filled with cactus, or in the ladies room at Red Robin.

As soon as I pulled into the driveway I was accosted by Alexis, who was telling me to go look on my keyboard. Chris came out of nowhere to watch me, too. Sure enough, there was my ring in an envelope on my desk. Sweet, sweet Chris dug through CACTUS to find my ring for me. (Now that’s love!) Smart guy went and bought a metal detector after I left and scanned each bag. He only got one hit (in the last available bag, of course) and dumped that bag onto the driveway. I still can’t believe he found the damn thing.

It’s interesting how a day can start off so bad, and end up so good – and the day was only half over. The rest of the weekend was nearly as eventful, but a completely different story…