Odyssey of the Mind

I just realized this morning that I haven't posted anything this week -- life's been a little hectic! Our OM competition was Saturday. We got our picture in the paper (the reporter told everyone to make funny faces):

There was just one other team doing our problem in our division. The weather was horrible that day, so the other team cancelled. I knew that morning that we were going to win by default, but I didn't tell the kids. Even during the awards ceremony, they had no clue. They were so excited, especially when they were called up to get their trophy for first place.

Now we are headed to the University of Binghamton for the State Competition on March 29th. The kids are thrilled, and I'm excited, too, but the next couple weeks are going to be difficult. We are having team meetings, practices, and work days just when Bryan is staring his lacrosse season. Yesterday Bryan had a lacrosse team meeting from 2:30 to 4:00, I had an OM team meeting from 3:30 to 5:30, then I had a meeting at the school with the parents and school superintendent from 6:00-7:00. At least it's only for a couple of weeks!

Full Moon

The night of February 20th, there was a lunar eclipse. Carter was up late for some reason that night, and he and Bryan saw some of the eclipse. I was too tired to get out of bed to look, so I missed it. The next morning a little after six I saw the full moon setting just as it was getting light. It made for a nice picture:

Hand-dyed Yarn

Remember how I'm making a bunch of felted scrapbooking bags for a convention in May? Well, it usually costs money to rent to booths, but the woman running them (who is the mother of my new daycare boy) said if I donated something to their raffle she would waive the fee. I looked through my handy dandy "One Skein Wonders" book that Kelley gave me for Christmas and found a cute little felted purse, and I just happened to have one skein of a wool that would work. (Since I, unlike Annie, pay attention to gauge!). The wool was plain white, though, so I decided to try dyeing my own.

I used plain tea and berry tea, which produced a beautiful soft brown and a dark burgundy color. In the empty pot in the back is the mustard I used for yellow. The yellow was like a flourescent color (totally ruining the colorway) so I tried redying it with blue food coloring, which helped make it green. The green was still the color of a bright Easter egg, not compatible with the soft calm brown and purple. Following Annie's suggestion, I redyed the green again with berry tea. Now I have soft brown, deep burgundy, and a deep dark teal color which I think is lovely. I'll get started on the purse soon and post pictures of the finished product. You'll either see a wonderful hand-dyed, hand-knit, and hand-felted purse, or an artistic vision gone wrong.

New Photo Editing Software

I've been getting into digital scrapbooking lately, and I got some new photo editing software for it. I love the possiblities of this software, although it's taking me a while to get used to using it.
I was trying to get a picture of the kids to send to a friend, and as usual, I wished I could combine the faces from different pictures into one. Well, with my new software, I can!

I took Carter from this one...

... and Myles from this one...

...and Merlyn and Berkleigh from this one...

...and ended up with this picture.

Four kids looking good!

The color is off because I had to adjust it for the printer, but the printed picture looks great. I'll post more creations when I have time to create them.