Wednesday, December 31, 2008

A Haiku a Day

I decided I wanted to try to write a Haiku a day. It's more complicated than three phrases of 5, 7, and 5 syllables, as some people assume.

From Wikipedia: In contrast to English verse which is typically characterized by meter, Japanese verse counts sound units (morae), known as "on". The word on is often translated as "syllable", but there are subtle differences between an "on" and an English-language "syllable". Traditional haiku consist of 17 on, in three metrical phrases of 5, 7, and 5 on respectively.

The word onji (音字; "sound symbol") is sometimes used in referring to Japanese sound units in English[5] although this word is archaic and no longer current in Japanese.[6] In Japanese, the onkana character count (closely enough that moji (or "character symbol") is also sometimes used[6] as the count unit). corresponds very closely to the

One on is counted for a short syllable, an additional one for an elongated vowel, diphthong, or doubled consonant, and one for an "n" at the end of a syllable. Thus, the word "haibun", though two syllables in English, is counted as four on in Japanese (ha-i-bu-n).

Most writers of literary haiku in English use about ten to fourteen syllables, with no formal pattern.

I have been reading in a book about Haiku and they suggest that English language Haiku can mimic the Japanese Haiku by having an accented pattern of 2, 3, 2.

So......... here goes.

Squinting eyes
Six toothed grin
We laugh

Wednesday, December 24, 2008

On Santa's Lap


Here are Alexandra and Madeline on Christmas day. I will have to get us all together for a photograph because I made us matching hats.

Clayton sure liked the soap from my mom to me. I unwrapped it completely and found teeth marks.
Clayton went to see Santa today. He finally made it on his lap after a 1 1/2 hour wait.

Friday, December 19, 2008

Rascal kid and project



Ab0ve, is one of my latest projects, a tiny sweater. I've made a few more,too.

Oh, no, Clayton! I was putting away dishes and Clayton crawled off. I called his name and then found him in the bathroom. He loves to pull out toilet paper and dingbat, Mom, left the toilet cover up. He enjoyed splashing around! Yech.

Sunday, December 14, 2008

Projects

So, along with setting up the house after our move, I am working on projects, as usual.
I got most of the Christmas cards filled out and ready to mail. I managed to get a couple of pretty good pics of Clayton and an okay one of the three of us. I am cataloging my jewelry and slowly adding it the my Etsy site. (see bulletin on the right and see what's for sale) I'm going to hang curtains and I hung a lot of paintings today. I am getting together some paper projects to do on Christmas eve in Denver. I want to make some crocheted mini sweater in the Christmas theme as ornaments something like these and the one pictured here by Marci Senders. I think I could make something cuter with some accents such as lace, ribbon, buttons...I will post pictures if I get to them. I have started Clayton's stocking:
I would love to make some baby booties and shoes for Clayton and Sarah's twins. I have several patterns and they don't look too difficult. I planned to make some glass slide Christmas ornaments, too. Here are some examples from http://www.artchixstudio.com/mall/x027.asp
I was thinking about embellishing a boring coat with felt that I'll make, beads, buttons... Here is a nice dressy coat from Vintage Threads, but I want to be more colorful and crazy. I have a drab gray base for the coat, so I'm sure I will include white, magenta and pink, at least.
Another task I must do is work on my blog labels and eliminate some. Notice the list to the right. It's a little to long and some of the labels are strange and aren't general enough to connect posts.

Clayton, The Cute

Clay is doing the cutest things:
lays down for naps and bedtime, hugs his teddy and rolls over on his belly, sticks up his butt, and snooze
pulls on the toilet paper roll, unraveling yards of it and he likes to chew on it, too
hands you things like toys, food and his pacifer (puts it in your mouth, too)
points to the ceiling fan and lights above
waves to people, the cat, and stuffed animals, more like squeezing his hand
turns the pages to books and catalogs and doesn't eat them
still eats papers and magazines
has fun looking at his reflection in the dishwasher
giggles like crazy
dances when music comes on

Holidays




He're a pic of the apple pie I made for Thanksgiving. Yummy!
We put up our tree last weekend and it's a beautiful Fraser Fir. This is the first time I ever used one color of lights.

Monday, December 8, 2008

Photo Session



Today, I attempted a photo session to make Christmas cards. There were lots of rejects mainly because Clayton wouldn't sit still. He's quite a cutie in the sweater from Grandma Hallock. Clay has a new front tooth that popped out a couple of days ago. I don't think you can see it in this picture.

'Tis the Season



We went to Old Colorado City to see a tree lighting which wasn't at all spectacular; quite disappointing actually. We put up our tree on the weekend, after the craft show.

Rockrimmon Elementary Craft Show



I changed my set up a bit by putting the earrings on white cards.
I made a bunch more monster t-shirts and onesies. I wasn't successful at this fair and I am trying to keep up my hopes. I have added some shirts to my Etsy.com site and will put some of my jewelry up soon, too.