Molly Bee's Attic

Last night, I had another one of the amazing adventures the likes of which only I, Molly Bee, can get herself into.  I have a couple of spots on the tattoo that I got in November that I would like touched up, so I called the place where I had it done and asked for my Tattoo Guy, Jake. The reception lady said that Jake had moved to another parlor, was kind enough to tell me where, and said that I should contact him there. I called the new place and they told me to just stop by and Jake would take a look, so off I went. As I got closer to where Google Maps said the place was, I noticed that I was not in Kansas anymore. The neighborhood got dodgier  and dogier until I arrived at a sketchy-looking bldg with even sketchier looking clientele loitering around outside. It was getting dark and raining a pour which didn't help the ambiance a bit. But I parked the car and took a deep breath. I tried to remember how well it went with the 'gangstahs' I met in Target a few weeks back. ...

Still catching up a little on my blogging.We had a great WiTaC meeting a couple of Saturday's ago. Katie demonstrated Chameleon Markers which I'm still trying to wrap my mind around. They are alcohol based, start out light and go to dark as you use them so you don't need 12 different hues of each color marker to create shade and  depth. She gave us each a chance to play with them and they were amazing! If I used a lot of color, I'd definitely go for these.  Tess did a presentation on watermarking your artwork. I've never really done this but guess I should. Folks were talking about finding their artwork on Internet sites for sale as posters, tee-shirts and what not, without their permission. That is a risk of posting your work on the computer. Everyone has access and some people's motives are less than pure.  She gave us several tips for either manually or electronically watermarking that I definitely will play around with. Our tangle of the day...

It's been a while since I've been able to do the Diva challenge , but the stars aligned on this solstice to I tackled this week's. It was to include a splash of red in your black and white tile. So much fun to add a pop of color! Thanks again for a great challenge, Laura!!!

Earlier this year my workplace awarded me an opportunity to work at the charity of my choice for one week without using any vacation time. It's an amazing program that they offer each year to two applicants from the Operations group. I was thrilled with the award and immediately contacted Heartland to tell them that I was available for whatever project I could be most useful doing. I envisioned building sheds, repairing fences or stalls; things of that nature. It was a pretty big surprise to me that it all shook out for me to help out with one of the weeklong kid's camps!  I showed up on Monday and surveyed my 'office' for the week. The view from the boardroom was amazing. The meeting rooms were fantastically decorated. My coworkers were definitely adorable.   The only thing I was apprehensive about was the kids. You know me....Miss Worst Case Scenario. If I can envision the whole thing going up in flames, I will be prepared to do something abo...

While I was in Paris a couple of weekends ago, Sister Shiela asked me if I had seen the biggest knitting needles in the world. Me, being wise in all things knitting and stuff, was astonished to have to tell her' no'-never even heard of them. Seems they were just down the street from the campground so we jumped in the car and drove over to Casey, IL to see them. They were in a charming yarn shop on Main street. As a bonus, they also had the world's largest crochet hook! I would have paid to have been there the day they worked up the sample on them.And I complain about working on anything bigger than a size 7 needle! After we came out and got looking around, I realized that Texas has some 'splainin' to do!  They always bang their 'everything is bigger in Texas' drum, but I'm here to tell you, there is something in the water in Casey! Casey is home to: The world's largest wind chime. You can even ring it! It makes an awesome deep ...

On Friday, I drove 5 hours south to my brother's house in Paris. He and SIL Shiela had invited me to go camping with them in Martinsville near their home.  They have this beautiful camper permanently parked in a campground there. It was like camping in the Taj Mahal, two queen-sized beds, bathroom, shower, microwave, sink, stove and oven. Someone suggested that I wasn't so much 'camping' as 'staying with folks'. We really did rough it though. Shiela had mistakenly taken the satellite/cable box home so...no TV! (Which I LOVED!) This is the hideous view from the camper. Look at all that lake and green and freshness! And the essential part of camping...the fire pit. I love the smell of wood smoke.  They brought their three dogs down with them. Ellie is the wee Chihuahua/Dachshund mix. The little mop dog is Max. He's in constant motion and so you'll have to use your imagination on that blurry picture.  And this is my bestest ...

It's been a rough few weeks without my buddy. His toys are still around so it's easy to pretend he's just snoozing in the other room until I drop food on the floor in the kitchen and yell, 'Clean Up!' and no one comes running. Or when I need a big old hug and sloppy kiss....let's just say Cooper is a poor substitute. I have discovered a way to relieve a little of my Doggy-Less Life Blues recently though.  You wouldn't know it to look at me, but I've been walking three miles a night and 5 on the weekend days forever now. I've always stopped to greet the dogs I've met along the way; a head scritch here, a kiss there. I don't care if you're running, or in a bad mood and don't care to stop and talk, thank you. If you have your canine companion with you, I'm going to wreck your timed run and possibly enhance your bad mood, because your pup and I?  We got bid'ness to attend to! After all, all dogs on the planet belong to me....I j...

OK, so sometimes fraternizing with your fellow humans will bite you in the butt; not often, but sometimes.  Case in point, at the gas station today, I saw a young man wearing a green 'I (heart) VT' t-shirt ( exactly like the one above ), so I say to him, "I love Vermont...it's so green...well all of New England is really....so pretty." He looks at me like I have a hole in the head and then looks behind him to see if I am maybe talking to someone else. Nope. It's just you and me. Bucko! I try again.  "I was born and raised up in Northern Maine but live out here now. I sure miss the Atlantic." Again, he gave me an ' OK, who's in charge of the the crazy lady' look and finally said, in a clearly irritated, haughty, voice, "I've never been out East .". I say, " Oh, I just saw your 'I (heart) Vermont' shirt and assumed. Sorry!'. He looks down at his shirt and said (and I quote), "VT doesn'...

 I walk three miles or so  every night. I have a designated route around the 'hood. Three laps around-flat and paved.  It is so beautiful tonight that I decided to go a different way around a big field. I stumbled onto a segment of the Ice Age Trail that I didn't know was there. I do so loves me a path in the woods! The woods was chock-a-block full and covered with wonderful purple flowers.   I think it's called 'Mallow', but feel free to correct me in the comments if I'm wrong.  I heard something crashing around in the woods and thought for sure that after 25+ years of searching the prairie lands, I was finally going to find a moose here. Since I spent the first 25 in Maine, it is an unkillable instinct to search every swamp, field and woods for them. I KNOW we don't have them here, but I STILL have to talk myself out of looking once my brain kicks in! Turns out, here as in Maine, nothing sounds like more a full grown bull moose on ...

I love when three totally different planets end up in the same airspace and are forced to deal with each other. I was in Target today. All of the lines had a gazillion people except for one, so I made a beeline for it since I was on my lunch hour and time was limited. The only people in line were what folks around these parts refer to as 'gangsta'; a Latino couple, completely covered with tattoos, piercings, heavy gold jewelry, sun glasses and 'tough' clothes. He had the obligatory hat on backwards...over a bandanna. She was a little, bitty thing so pregnant that she looked like she had taken out the 14 month plan, chewing a huge wad of gum and looking bored. As I walked up behind them, it was clear he was having problems with the credit card machine and was getting  frustrated by it. The young woman cashier looked antsy as he inserted his Target card over and over only to have it beep and decline. Finally she said, 'Let me try something different', and took t...

This week's Diva Challenge is to use a bit of black in your tangle. This is probably more than the bit she was talking about.... but I never was one to follow instructions.I also run with scissors, don't play well with others and cry heartily over spilled milk-that's just how I roll.  It was good to do a challenge again. Haven't felt much like joining anything in any sense of the word as of late, but I'm sure it will pass. My success rate for surviving sucky things is 100% so far. I'm sure I'll survive the hole in my heart and house that Ben left too.  I did take a Zentangle class with friend-Janice last week. It was one of Katie Butler's that I had taken before on the use of 'Whimsical' patterns. Left to my own devices I tend to veer towards geometrical, symmetric patterns, but whimsical is right up Janice's alley! She hasn't been tangling long but has a distinct, flow-y, flowery flair and she totally rocked the class. She ...

 Big Ben ran joyfully over the Rainbow Bridge in the early morning hours of May 4th. It's only been a little over a week, but the hole he left in my heart and in this house hasn't filled in one bit. I know it was time. I promised that I would never let him suffer and I didn't. I made the most difficult decision    one has to make regarding a best fur buddy. I still think I see him out of the corner of my eye. I long to hug him again and feel his big, goofy, head on my shoulder; his soft, sloppy kisses. I would give anything for one more chance to scratch his soft, floppy, ears. My Sweet Boy, I hope you are in a place now where you don't hurt anymore; no knee pain, no tumors, no fatigue. I wish you endless fields to run and chase in, all the yummiest treats and all the toys you can destroy. I hope that the next time I see you, you are waiting at the doorway for me with that dopey grin and waggy tail, just like you did every time I came home the last 11 years. Un...

I joined a Sunday afternoon Dream Bird Shawl knit-along a couple of weeks back. There are 4 of us in the group and we all sat down the first afternoon and tried to decipher the multi-page pattern.  This involved counting (and counting and counting) stitches, a funky cast on, and placing a ridiculous amount of stitch markers. I got really frustrated, and when it got to the step where you 'don't place markers here because there are already  imaginary markers', I gave up all together. I got home and ripped the entire thing up and considered not starting again.  I have an amazing inability to not  anticipate spacial relationship in knitting. I can't 'see' how it should go or adapt to 'make it work'. I have to have definitive instructions and follow them to the letter. I had the same problem with Eliz. Zimmerman's Baby Surprise Jacket where you essentially knit an amoeba-shaped blob and they when you fold it up-TA DA-it's a little jacket. Or i...

I went to Pet Smart on Saturday to get Cooper new dishes.  I got there right when they opened so there wasn't really anyone around. I was headed to the cat department when I passed a cart with a big bin of live crickets in it. Depending on their size, they were .12-.15 cents each. 'What an economical pet', I thought. [On  my planet, crickets are friends not food. We take them home, hand feed them yummy, cricket treats, paint their little toe nails and walk them in fields of clover.] I noticed that one of the lids on the bin was open and crickets were escaping; all over the cart and the floor. Afraid they'd get stepped on, I started picking them up to put back in the cricket bucket. The were easy to catch, they weren't really jumping-just crawling, but the more I caught, the more there were. Then I realized I hadn't shut the lid yet and the little buggers were still escaping. (Sigh.) I tried to put the crickets I had in my hand back in the bin and then shut it,...

One of the highlights of my week arrives on Friday afternoon. That's when Genevieve Crabbe over at 'Zentangle Harmony' posts her Weekly Round Up . She gathers all of the challenges, tutorials, new pattern step-outs and other yummy doodley things from that week's  blog posts from the art community and puts them all in one fabulous list. As soon as the bell rings at four PM, I end my work day and start perusing the new patterns. I don't take the time to check out everyone's blogs during the week so this service she provides is invaluable to me. I get a bunch of new step-outs that I probably would have missed otherwise.  Every once in a while, a new pattern catches my fancy and I obsess on it. Remember my Narwal period?  Or Breakers? Last week is was Knightstar created by teenage tangler, Daniel Lemothe  and it so totally ROCKS ! It's a gridded pattern and every square is exactly the same; two opposing parabolic curves. Simple, but when put together by...

I don't like to be pigeon-holed. I don't think anyone does. I know it's human nature to think that you know all about someone but you don't so... stop it . For instance, I wear purple shirts..a  lot. But just when you think to yourself, 'Hey Self, there goes Molly. She wears purple shirts', I'll turn right around and wear a green one. Just to mess with your mind (ECHO, Echo, echo). That's right. No one puts Baby in a corner! You don't know all about me. I could be Batman! Preposterous? Maybe, but have you ever seen us in the same room together? With that in mind, I love to run into other folks who don't let society (or you could insert the word 'reality' here) define them. This morning, on the way to work, I encountered their king. He was ahead of me at the stop sign on Nesbitt Road. He was driving a silver Chevy Cruz and it was decked out ! It had small tires so it barely cleared the ground,  colored hubcaps,  custom dual exhaust, dec...

Things have been relatively busy at Chez Bee these days. The weather is getting a little warmer and the winter blues are scampering away. There have been garden seedling to plant and garages to sweep and spring cleaning in general. I have discovered that I can knit on my evening walks now that my fingers don't freeze off. I knit about an inch a mile. Tuesday night I walked 3.5 miles and last night I walked 2.5 and that (plus the little head start I got at Knit Night last Friday night) gave me a sock leg in record time. Tonight we find out if I can knit the flap and turn the heel at 3.5 m.p.h.! Accomplishing it, and accomplishing it without puncture wounds to my protective outer coating are two different things. The struggle is real.                       I drug out 'Tribal Narwal' from the closet where it has been sitting in time out 'thinking about what it's done' and commenced work on it with the hopes of getting it...