my crafty night

First of all, I hand dyed the most beautiful sock yarn ever!!! Well, at least I'm pretty proud of it. Of course I can't take a decent picture of it, but I think the colors come through. I dyed this yarn for my Secret Pal, but I may have to make another skein for myself! Second, I learned how to make balloon animals. We need people to make balloon animals and do face painting for the kids before the arthritis walk, and I recruited people to do so, but no one knows balloon animals, so I learned so I can teach them. That was the longest run on sentence ever. I made a sword, a dog (red) and an elephant (white) but the elephant's tail is long and dog like, and the angle isn't great to see the big elephant ears.

Arthritis Walk and contest

I just wanted to let everyone in the internet world know that I'm the honoree for the 2007 Norman Arthritis Walk. The walk is on May 19th. The walk is a fundraiser for the Arthritis Foundation. The Arthritis Foundation sponsors many programs, and funds research. The online message boards, which have been a huge help to me (I don't know any other people in their 20's with RA, so on the message boards I can talk to people who can relate) are sponsored by the Arthritis Foundation, as well as the arthritis swimming classes I take at my local YMCA. If you follow the link above, click on "Meet Laura" on the left side of the page. It's about me!

So many people think that arthritis just affects older people, but there are over 100 types of arthritis, including Lupus and Rheumatoid Arthritis, as well as Juvenile RA which can hit a child at any age. I hope that through our work with the Arthritis Foundation we can find a cure.

I don't know if this will work, but I've read about other bloggers doing this, so I'll give it a try. We would really appreciate any help you guys can provide. You can donate online here, my personal page for the walk. If you donate (any amount is appreciated) email me at lauranicole at ou dot edu and let me know. I'll put all the names in a bag and draw a winner! Since 95% of you are knitters, it will probably involve some wonderful yarn, unless you're a non knitter of course! Please pass this on to all your blogging friends!

Also, if you live in the Norman area and would like to participate in the walk, feel free to join my team, or create one of your own! Thank you guys, I'd really like to make a difference as honoree!

Great SP and afghan

I just have to say that I have an awesome Secret Pal! She sent me a beautiful card and some wonderful smelling soap from her recent trip to Arizona! Right now I have the soap in one of my drawers, making my clothes smell wonderful, until I'm ready to use it. Also, I got a lot of work done on my granny square afghan over Spring Break. It's not finished yet, I still need to knit the border. The pattern is from Knitting Loves Crochet.

Dad is home from Armenia!

Dad just got back from Armenia! He saw Sarah and gave her all the stuff we sent. I'm glad he's home, I always worry when he leaves the country. While he was there, he picked up some yarn for me! They have a market on the weekends, so they did some shopping. He also got my mom, sister, and me bags made of carpets! Apparently they take really old carpets and clean them up and turn them into other things.

Favorite knitting accessory

Well my SP10 hostess Robyn has encouraged us to post about our favorite knitting accessory. Mine has to be a combination, my ball winder and swift. I don't know what I did before I had them! Maybe I can take a picture next time I wind some yarn and put it on here. Speaking of accessories, I'm trying to either buy or make a niddy noddy.

Today was wonderful, I had a massage and facial for my birthday!

book meme

If you can't tell, I like my literature, and not so much pop fiction. Except children's pop fiction!!

Look at the list of (100) books below.
Bold the ones you’ve read.
Italicize the ones you own.
Movies don’t count.

1. The Da Vinci Code (Dan Brown)
2. Pride and Prejudice (Jane Austen)
3. To Kill A Mockingbird (Harper Lee)
4. Gone With The Wind (Margaret Mitchell)
5. The Lord of the Rings: Return of the King (Tolkien)
6. The Lord of the Rings: Fellowship of the Ring (Tolkien)
7. The Lord of the Rings: Two Towers (Tolkien)
8. Anne of Green Gables (L.M. Montgomery)
9. Outlander (Diana Gabaldon)
10. A Fine Balance (Rohinton Mistry)
11. Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire (Rowling)
12. Angels and Demons (Dan Brown)
13. Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix (Rowling)
14. A Prayer for Owen Meany (John Irving)
15. Memoirs of a Geisha (Arthur Golden)
16. Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone (Rowling)
17. Fall on Your Knees (Ann-Marie MacDonald)
18. The Stand (Stephen King)
19. Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban(Rowling)
20. Jane Eyre (Charlotte Bronte)
21. The Hobbit (Tolkien)
22. The Catcher in the Rye (J.D. Salinger)
23. Little Women (Louisa May Alcott)
24. The Lovely Bones (Alice Sebold)
25. Life of Pi (Yann Martel)
26. The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy (Douglas Adams)
27. Wuthering Heights (Emily Bronte)
28. The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe (C. S. Lewis)
29. East of Eden (John Steinbeck)
30. Tuesdays with Morrie(Mitch Albom)
31. Dune (Frank Herbert)
32. The Notebook (Nicholas Sparks)
33. Atlas Shrugged (Ayn Rand)
34. 1984 (Orwell)
35. The Mists of Avalon (Marion Zimmer Bradley)
36. The Pillars of the Earth (Ken Follett)
37. The Power of One (Bryce Courtenay)
38. I Know This Much is True (Wally Lamb)
39. The Red Tent (Anita Diamant)
40. The Alchemist (Paulo Coelho)
41. The Clan of the Cave Bear (Jean M. Auel)
42. The Kite Runner (Khaled Hosseini)
43. Confessions of a Shopaholic (Sophie Kinsella)
44. The Five People You Meet In Heaven (Mitch Albom)
45. Bible
46. Anna Karenina (Tolstoy)
47. The Count of Monte Cristo (Alexandre Dumas)
48. Angela’s Ashes (Frank McCourt)
49. The Grapes of Wrath (John Steinbeck)
50. She’s Come Undone (Wally Lamb)
51. The Poisonwood Bible (Barbara Kingsolver)
52. A Tale of Two Cities (Dickens)
53. Ender’s Game (Orson Scott Card)
54. Great Expectations (Dickens)
55. The Great Gatsby (Fitzgerald)
56. The Stone Angel (Margaret Laurence)
57. Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets (Rowling)
58. The Thorn Birds (Colleen McCullough)
59. The Handmaid’s Tale (Margaret Atwood)
60. The Time Traveller’s Wife (Audrey Niffenegger)
61. Crime and Punishment (Fyodor Dostoyevsky)
62. The Fountainhead (Ayn Rand)
63. War and Peace (Tolstoy)
64. Interview With The Vampire (Anne Rice)
65. Fifth Business (Robertson Davis)
66. One Hundred Years Of Solitude (Gabriel Garcia Marquez)
67. The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants (Ann Brashares)
68. Catch-22 (Joseph Heller)
69. Les Miserables (Hugo)
70. The Little Prince (Antoine de Saint-Exupery)
71. Bridget Jones’ Diary (Fielding)
72. Love in the Time of Cholera (Marquez)
73. Shogun (James Clavell)
74. The English Patient (Michael Ondaatje)
75. The Secret Garden (Frances Hodgson Burnett)
76. The Summer Tree (Guy Gavriel Kay)
77. A Tree Grows in Brooklyn (Betty Smith)
78. The World According To Garp (John Irving)
79. The Diviners (Margaret Laurence)
80. Charlotte’s Web (E.B. White)
81. Not Wanted On The Voyage (Timothy Findley)
82. Of Mice And Men (Steinbeck)
83. Rebecca (Daphne DuMaurier)
84. Wizard’s First Rule (Terry Goodkind)
85. Emma (Jane Austen)
86. Watership Down(Richard Adams)
87. Brave New World (Aldous Huxley)
88. The Stone Diaries (Carol Shields)
89. Blindness (Jose Saramago)
90. Kane and Abel (Jeffrey Archer)
91. In The Skin Of A Lion (Ondaatje)
92. Lord of the Flies (Golding)
93. The Good Earth (Pearl S. Buck)
94. The Secret Life of Bees (Sue Monk Kidd)
95. The Bourne Identity (Robert Ludlum)
96. The Outsiders (S.E. Hinton)
97. White Oleander (Janet Fitch)
98. A Woman of Substance (Barbara Taylor Bradford)
99. The Celestine Prophecy (James Redfield)
100. Ulysses (James Joyce)

Zoo day!

Here's a picture of my mom, sister and me. We asked a random passerby to take the picture, which is why it isn't centered.
The alligators and bears were part of the new Oklahoma Trails exhibit. I think it just opened a week ago, and it was pretty cool. The zoo was very busy today, but we decided to go anyway because it's supposed to rain all next week. I got some good pictures, and we sent some to Dad in Armenia. We didn't get to see some of my favorite parts, like the aquatics, turtles, and apes because they were too crowded.

Happy St. Patrick's Day

I was almost a St. Patrick's Day baby, I overshot it by a little over an hour! Spring break is here and I'm very excited. I'm going to watch lots of old James Bond movies, knit and crochet, read, and hang out with my mom and sister. My dad is in Armenia right now, I got an email from him this morning! He's helping to plan a mission trip there. Sarah S. (my friend in the peacecorps) was in the capital Yerevan (where Dad is) for a peacecorps meeting so he got to see her today.

I started wearing my contacts for a few hours at a time. I haven't worn them in a couple of years because my eyes are so dry, but my ophthalmologist put plugs in my tear ducts to keep my tears from draining off my eyes. Well I'm off to the St. Patrick's Day sale at my LYS!!! (40% off everything with green in it!)

Life

Well this week should be an easy one. My Eastern Orthodox class is canceled all week as compensation for attending an Eastern Orthodox Easter service next month. They start their services around 10:30 p.m. and go until anywhere from 2:00-6:00 a.m. Since this will be hard on those of us who spend Easter with our families, our professor is giving us this week off, kind of like a long spring break. I'm hoping to finish my granny square afghan from Knitting Loves Crochet. I'll post pictures when I finish it.

One final note, my birthday is a week from today!