Cotton Spice Blog

And what a wonderful time we had!

Washington is such a beautiful place anyway, and getting to see Shannon and Josh and our little Jack was so fun!

We went to one of the beaches he likes to play at. Tide was up, so most of it was under water, but we had a good time.

Saturday night we  bought fresh local crabs for 3.99 a lb., and Mike and Josh cooked them up for dinner. Oh my gosh, are they good! That day we ate lunch at Mambo’s Italian Cafe and it has to be the best Italian food I’ve ever eaten. I ordered a Calzone filled with portobello’s, red peppers, ricotta cheese, tomato’s…. it came with fresh marinara sauce that was to die for. And so HUGE!!!! I ate the other half on Sunday. If you ever go to Bellingham, go there!!!! It’s right next to Haggen’s, a very cool grocery store where we found Green Tea ice cream, which I’ve been looking for, forever.

Friday night we watched the World Series! YEAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!! Cardinals WON the World Series!!!! Thank you April, for your congrats… even tho you’re a Tigers fan That was pretty fun!

Had to include this picture of me and Mike. He’s so handsome … and the best husband in the world.

But I’m back now, and I’ll be buried here in the sewing room/office for the next 2 weeks. Oh, probably longer than that. oh well!

We had a lovely little vacation, but it’s nice to be home and in our own bed. Oh comfy!

Karen

We are on our way to Washington to catch up on Jack snuggles, and visit with Shannon and Josh…

We’ll be back on Tuesday!

Karen

In the last many weeks I’ve taken many phone calls from subcribers. First of all, I have to say that the Cotton Spice subscribers are the NICEST people!!! I’ve been overwhelmed with their kindness and understanding of my lack of training in the magazine world, and more recently in the ‘getting the issue to the printer on time’ issue. I’ve had quite an education in the world of bulk mail and it’s particular realities. Realities such as - it was mailed on Sept. 15 and there are STILL people who have not received it.

Unbelievable. I think this is why the ‘big magazines’ have staffs. The work is divvied up according to their specialty and everything gets done and turned in by a deadline.

Here at Cotton Spice, it’s me and Shannon. She’s been moving into a new house this last week. Kind of hard to work at home while you’re betwixt them. Here in Joplin, we had tickets to a game we couldn’t pass up. Next week, we’re going to a concert in Springfield (the tickets were a birthday gift) and no way am I going to miss that. Then on Thursday we’re going to Washington to visit Shannon and get caught up on Jack snuggles. How can we miss that?

So, we are considering mailing the new issue ourselves, and leaving the world of bulk mail behind until we can get the issue finished and ready for the printer in a timely manner.

You subscribers have been kind and understanding, but I see no reason to push that patience to the limit with another late issue. So, the ‘mailing it ourselves’ issue is on the table. And one I think we can swing.

Knitting update: I did finish my blue sweater, but the sleeves were too long. Odd, since that’s the reason I want to make sweaters - I can never find sweaters with long enough sleeves, so I think I overdid it. I talked to several people and found out a way to shorten my sleeves without taking my sweater apart, and also how to obtain a more accurate sleeve lenth measurement. (which I need to write down somewhere before it disappears into the abyss)

I’m making a little sweater with a zipper for Ryland, the newest grandson. And some other various things, that shouldn’t get mentioned this time of year. I’m also determined to learn to knit socks. Everyone else is doing it, I can do it.

It’s Saturday, and I’m going to make myself a shirt, and knit, and stop by the grocery store, cause there’s no way I’m cooking tonight. We’ve got the World Series to watch!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Karen

What else is there to say?
Well, I should elaborate that WE (mike and i) are not going to the WS… the Cardinals are, our team is… not US personally. That’s ok, we get to watch it on TV and that’s exactly where we’ll be on Saturday night.

I’m sure a lot of you are bored with all the baseball blog here lately, and I’ll be done with it in a week and back to quilting and knitting and etc. I’m still working on the magazine, and knitting and etc, I’m just not talking about it. Tricky eh?

Karen

Oh so much better! They are big enough to see. They appear to download quickly. And the quality is good. Here comes the fountain picture, I was really bummed that one turned out so blekky. But I had no time to fiddle with it.

This is one of my favorite pictures from St. Louis. There was a lot of atmosphere that can’t be shared with the picture. There was a band to the right of us, quite loud! Hundreds of people, all wearing Cardinal red.

Most surprising to me was the scalpers. Are they still called scalpers? Isn’t that illegal? On just about every corner they were… “Got tickets?” and they’d hold up a handful. “Uh, no, we decided to come to St. Louis and stay at a hotel in the hopes we’d find last minute tickets to the playoff game.” Did we really look that stupid? But I guess people must buy them or they wouldn’t be there.

And I’m not really superstitious, but I’m not saying anything about the current playoff games. No point in disturbing the atmosphere.

So, I don’t like the picture all smushed up to the top and the text all smushed up to the picture. Right now, writing this, it doesn’t appear to be so, but it didn’t last time either. So, again, this is 72 and I’m going to put extra spaces between the picture and top/text.

Today I’m going to do some learning and practicing to make my pictures here look better. Right now they look like…. uh… well, my mother always told me what her mother said about this word. “I wouldn’t say that word if I had a mouth full of it.” So, I’ll carry on the tradition and say “My pictures look just awful!” What will follow is lots of - what happens when I do this? You might want to skip it all…

Karen

Have you ever noticed that some sentences just seem to stick out like a sore thumb?

Monica (from Friends) once said, “Santa, the armadillo and I have to go talk in the kitchen. …..pause….. Now there’s a sentence I never thought I’d say.”

Every once in a while, you either hear or say something that is so wierd, you just have to write it down. Since the memory ain’t what it used to be.

Today, I have TLC on. It’s just background noise. But I keep hearing a commercial about some monks. He says, “I may have to break up a fight between Alex and one of the monks.”  I have no idea what this show is about, but what a wierd and seemingly incongruous sentence. I’m sure it has a context, but it’s not in the commercial for the show!

In my mind, it conjures up a picture of brown robed monks in a brawl. Remember Whoopi Goldberg in Sister Act? When she was posing as a nun and went across the street to the bar. She said something to the effect of, “Don’t worry, we’re not making this a nun bar…” Again, totally incongruous. But that’s what makes it funny. Instantly your mind again conjures up a picture of a bar, with nuns sitting up at the bar, playing pool, shooting darts, and holding a … mug of beer?… hmmm, can’t quite picture that one. Diet Pepsi with Vanilla maybe
Words are what you make them. They exist to help us communicate. We can use them sparingly or profusely. There are problems with both - the profuse word users are usually not that interesting. Half the fun of using words is the back and forth. The spare word users are usually not that interesting. Again… no back and forth. There isn’t much response to - “ok” or “fine”.

If you want to be a great word user, vocabulary is important. Vocabulary is your collection of words. We have a tendency to think we’ve probably heard about all the words there are to hear. Excluding words specific to science or other complicated slices of life.

If you have some time, check out The Phrontistery - it’s in my list of links to the left. If you’re a ‘word person’ you can have fun here. If you’re not, you’ll probably roll your eyes and think, ‘what’s the big deal?’ That’s ok.

Words aren’t fun to everyone, but I like ‘em!

We had such a good time in St. Louis, and to put really good frosting on our piece of cake, the Cardinals won!

I got to visit my first ever Krispy Kreme. I’ve had Krispy Kreme, the boxes you can buy in the store, but they simply don’t compare. I’m really really glad we don’t have one nearby.

We have a great hotel in downtown St. Louis, our favorite hotel here. It’s very nice, but if you book your room right, you can get a great deal! It’s one block from the stadium, so we have no hassle with parking. We leave the hotel on foot, go eat dinner at T.G.I. Fridays… another favorite place. We got a great table in the bar, right where we could watch the K.C. Chiefs game. It was more interesting to Mike and Chris, than to me and Blair. But I got a margarita and some yummies to eat before dinner, so I was happy.

St. Louis is such an interesting place to be when the Cardinals are in town, and to make it even more intense, it was a playoff game. Everywhere we looked, people in red Cardinal shirts of every kind. If you were downtown… you were going to the game. The restarant is just about a block from the stadium. You walk through this little park to get there. They have a really cool fountain in the middle that is beautiful. On Sunday, the water was pink. Our first thought was - it’s for the Cardinals!!!!! (after all, really red water would have looked disgusting) But later we thought it might be for Breast Cancer Awareness month. So we decided it was for both.

Since it was the new stadium and we hadn’t been there before, we wanted some pictures of the stadium. This picture was after the ticket taker, as we were looking for our section. I happened to get a picture of the ONLY guy who isn’t wearing a Cardinals shirt. I’m serious. 99.999% of the people there were wearing Cardinals shirt and at the very least, a red shirt.

We had nosebleed seats, on the top level. You can see where I marked ‘our seats’. That’s not entirely truthful… since I was sitting in my seat when I took the picture. It’s the equivalent of our seat… just on the other side. Even so, we could see just fine. In a picture, it appears farther away than it really is, we could see just fine.

Another view from our seats We did go early to watch batting practice. Unfortunately, we arrived in our seats just as the Cardinals finished batting practice, so this is a wonderful picture of the Padres batting practice.

It was a really REALLY good time. It was a good game. I’m looking forward to the game tomorrow night. But I am glad to be home, sleeping in my own bed. I’ll get back to work tomorrow.

Karen