We paid the remaining balance for the cruise - which included extra excursions and train trips and stuff. It hurt a little financially. But I keep reminding myself how much fun we’re going to have.

And Cody’s passport is even in the mail. Now we just have to wait for mine, which might take a tad longer since I reported my old one lost (technically it is..somewhere in our house, it was expired anyway) and had a name change with the marriage stuff. It was more than a little unnerving sending original documents like our marriage license but I figure (in my naive way) that the guv’ment would pay for a replacement if they lose it. Haha right. But we paid a small freakin fortune to get these processed and mailed faster so I’m not worried about it.

So now all we have to worry about is getting the pets’ shots and into the fancy pet hotel, which is always shockingly expensive, but hey they take good care of the babies so it’s worth it.

Speaking of worrying about the babies, just in case you’re wondering: yes I have checked their food about the food recall. The kitties do eat Iams wet food so I checked the codes on the bottom of the can and while some cans did come from the same factory where there have been problems the dates were not in the bad range. My biggest concern is the 18 year old, Kurry, since her immune system would be the weakest but I’ve kept a close eye on her and she’s doing fine. In fact they’ve been a bit feistier than usual. Phunq was busy chasing his tail in the bathtub this morning and Kurry climbed up onto the windowsill in the office. Not bad for elderly kitties.

I put some stuff up in the etsy shop this weekend and had some good sales. It won’t sell unless you put it up there, I keep forgetting that part. haha no I just keep putting off taking photos. I love love that lightbox I can take photos any time day or night now.

Painted Desert
I had just finished navajo plying this one when I took some photos on Friday night and it’s already in the mail today. This is from spunky eclectic’s fiber of the month club. I can never remember what her colors are called so I just make my own names up.

Beachy Keen
This one’s already sold too. I dyed the roving a few months ago and spun it up a few weeks back. It has 400 plus yards.

Spring Rain
Another Spunky Eclectic club selection, this one hasn’t sold yet. It’s so soft. So so so soft.

I’ve been spinning such traditional stuff lately. I spun some thick and thin this morning with the latest Spunky roving. I think I’m going to ply it with some contrasting dark blue thread. Then I can be back in practice for the crazy spun stuff again - so I can make the milagro yarn I’ve been wanting to spin. Yes, Ramona, that milagro yarn!

Oh, and today is our 8th wedding anniversary but he has to work tonight so we won’t really celebrate it until the weekend. Really, we’re considering the cruise and the extra days in Vancouver and Seattle both of our anniversary and birthday presents this year. It’s the first (non-family oriented) vacation we’ve had together since our honeymoon in New Orleans so we’re really looking forward to it.

For the folks who have seen me knitting those Lorna’s Laces socks and asked where I got that special pink and brown striping colorway.. I found it!

Ashley and I are going to Camp Pluckyfluff in Taos in the fall! Woot! (We’re getting a hotel room though, gotta have my own bathroom.)

We saw Zodiac last night. Here were my exact thoughts as I watched it:

Ooh! Fun music
Hey, this is actually pretty good.
Damn, Mark Ruffalo is doing an excellent job.
Look! It’s that guy! (That happened a lot)
Ouch, we still have another hour to go.
What? Why is Jake Gyllenhaal not aging like everyone else?
Woowoo! Mark Ruffalo in his underpants!
Ew, that ending was a bummer.

Yep that was pretty much it.

After a bit of tinkering today Cody got the plugin working for me that reads the rss feed from my Etsy shop and displays what’s for sale on a sidebar on my page. Scroll down a bit and you’ll see the list on my sidebar on the right in the Noelle’s Noodles box. Pretty cool.

He didn’t think the What I’m knitting plugin he made for the site had clean enough code to really share with the public but he made sure that this one was because we thought some people would be interested in this one.

It’s really a neat setup for people who are used to editing their wordpress blogs: install, activate, edit, add to the code. In the Options section you can specify how many items from your shop you want to show and how they’ll be displayed in the sidebar.

Disclaimer: We’re going to assume that you know how to go upload a plugin to your server and are pretty used to going in and editing your presentation code. There are a lot of places on the web that are better at teaching people how to do that kind of thing. One major piece of advice for everyone of any skill level: BACKUP your files before you change anything!

This is for the 2.1.2 version of WordPress - today’s most current public version as far as I know.

So here are the instructions for installing and activating:

- Download and extract bEtsy files

- Upload file ‘betsy.php’ to www.yoursite.com/wordpress/wp-content/plugins or wherever your wp installation is /wp-content/plugins

- Login to your wordpress dashboard and navigate to the “plugins page”

- Locate the bEtsy plugin in the list and click the “Activate” link

- Navigate to the “Options” menu and on to the “bEtsy” submenu

- Enter your Etsy shop feed URL (you should be able to find this link on your shop at the bottom of the right hand menu where the image “rss this shop” is.

- Specify any other html you want to come before and after the item lists.

- Navigate to “Presentation” and “Theme Editor” submenu.

- Place this link in your sidebar in whatever layout works for you.

- Check your links!

- Rss feed will update and change as items are sold!

In case you missed it, here’s the link to the plugin file again.

If you really like this plugin, please go tell Cody about it! He does a lot of cool stuff like this and I don’t think he realizes just how special his talents really are.

I bought Ashley’s lightbox Friday night. She didn’t want it anymore because it really didn’t give her any better photographic light than what she can get in her bedroom anyway. My house, on the other hand, tends to be dark and cavelike. Which is good for Mr. Daysleeper / Nightworker but a bitch for taking photos of pretty crafty things. Now that my usual photo spot on the back porch has been besmirched I decided the best course of action was to finally break down and make or buy a lightbox.

Quite handy Ms. Ashley’s didn’t work out for her, no? So I’ve been taking photos like a crazy woman all weekend and putting stuff up for sale in my etsy shop. Some of this stuff goes back to leftovers from the Zia show just to give you a good idea of how lazy with the photography I’ve really been. I’ve also got Cody working on a cool way to show the rss feed from my Etsy listings on my sidebar. He’s becoming an xml genius at work these days donchaknow.

I’m only going to post one photo of each thing but there are many many more on Flickr.

Yarn

Exploradora - 182 yds superbulky handpainted yarn

Franny - 182 yds superbulky handpainted yarn

Blue w/ Suede too Gypsy Scarf Kit

Babykins Gypsy Scarf Kit

I’ve been making spindles for spinning kits too

Handknits

Felted Sparkly Stripes Handbag

Purple Felted Handspun Bag

Red Pencil Roving Neckwarmer w/ Custom Pin

Jewelry Stuff

Glass beads w/ Silver Bracelet

Handpainted Ceramic Pendant on Silk Cord

Adjustable Vaguely Ethnic Necklace

Spiral Stitchmarkers - fit up to US 15 needles

Ceramics

I’ve been painting ceramic eggs with a sort of, um ‘fertile’ theme. Sort of a Georgia O’Keefe Ostara kind of thing.

I wanted a sort of Lady of Guadalupe feel to this one

These are more abstract ones my four year-old friend, Zoe, helped me paint.

Purple

Pink

I painted a few other eggs on Friday and I’ve been making some more jewelry and stitchmarkers over the weekend. I have several skeins of sock yarn from the last few months and I have some handspun too. Now just to go get photos of those.

I mentioned in my last post that the wind picked up the porch roof, blew it over our house (clearing the yucca tree, most of the chimney, and the Direct TV dish) and dropped it in the street in front last Friday. Didn’t even hit the mailbox.

Cody slept through the whole thing. But the neighbors across the street rang the bell to let him know what had happened. They all dragged it into the front yard until the insurance guy could get here.

He finally came yesterday so I took some photos since I was standing around in the front yard staring at it anyway.

The porch roof flew a long way in that wind. Our house is a lot deeper than it looks from the front. We have about 1600 square feet of heated space and a two car garage, not a mansion but a good size for two people. But it looks like a tiny cottage from the street and people are usually surprised by the size when they come inside.

When the roof took off it bent the exhaust pipe for the water heater a bit, knocked the cap off the chimney which hit edge of the roof a bit but no damage to the yucca tree or the satellite dish. Amazingly, I had a glass water jug sitting on my big worktable on the back porch that never even moved.

So the porch used to look like this:

Now we feel kind of naked and exposed when we look out the kitchen windows and the den glass doors during the day. Some of my chimes actually survived. I found the copper bird feeder in the street gutter the other day too.

My absolute favorite part of our porch was (and will be) the birds’ nests in the spring.

Some holes had gotten punched in the skylights a few years ago during all those hailstorms so we were going to replace it anyway. This saves us a little demolition trouble. I just keep wondering if anyone saw it take off into the sky.