Sophie's Story

   We are on our annual pilgrimage to the south. Right now we are in the lovely city of Greenville (not Greensville) South Carolina. We have spent the last three days enjoying Myrtle Beach with a day trip to my favourite city, Charleston.    We try to eat in places we have never been before. This trip we found two really good places.     The first place is Vicini's in Myrtle Beach. If you are looking for some good Italian food, that is the place to go. It's small and quiet. The decor is bright and cheerful. There is an ample selection of wine bottle on one wall if you are so inclined.     They have something on the menu that I've only seen at one other restaurant in my life. The serve cavatelli. It's hard to explain cavatelli. It's a small rolled noodle. According to the menu the dough has ricotta cheese in it.   Cavatelli is something I've grown up with. The only restaurant I've ever seen it served at was the one in the town my grandparents lived in.

   Now that I'm working part-time I've discovered that I like to make things. I've also discovered that I want to try to make things I've never made before.    This all started when my friend, Dana, gave me a dishcloth she had made. She crocheted it and crocheted a patch made of scrubby yarn into the dishcloth. I liked that idea of combining a scrubby into a dishcloth. That way if you are washing dishes and need to scrub something, you don't have to hunt for a scrub pad. It's part of the dishcloth. I used my favourite pattern and made part of it with scrubby yarn and the rest with normal yarn. I gave it to Dana to test out for me to see if it works.    Dishcloths aren't the only things I'm working on. I like to make washcloths for infants out of a soft cotton yarn that I like. Lately, I've been experimenting with putting crocheted edgings on these washcloths. I made two washcloths for a set of twin boys. One washcloth is white with a blue edge, t

   Hi, This is Skamp! I like spelling my name with a "k" because it looks cool. I like exclamation points too! Sophie says it's not good to end all your sentences with exclamation points!  I told her I was going to end all my sentences with exclamation points! She told me that she would edit them all out if I did! I asked if I may use exclamation points in the first paragraph! She said I could! Today I want to write about things I don't understand!    One thing I don't understand is why Sophie doesn't like exclamation points. They are so cool looking. They stand out. That little dot at the end of a sentence is too easy to miss. If you put an exclamation point at the end of a sentence you can't miss it.   I don't understand why there is snow outside. Christmas, New Year's, Valentine's Day, my birthday and Easter have all passed. That means it's time for the grass to show and be green. Instead, there is snow on the ground. I'm pretty

   I took an inadvertent walk down memory lane a few weeks ago. I was rummaging around in my collection of cookbooks when I found one from an Italian restaurant. It was old and obviously unused. I knew the restaurant. It was the one my grandmother worked at when I stayed with her.   There were a group of eight women or so that cooked once a week at the restaurant. They were either Italian immigrants or the children of immigrants. The restaurant was only open in the evenings for dinner. The women cooked in the morning and afternoon. Sometimes I sat on a stool and watched. Sometimes I helped. Sometimes I played with my dolls on the floor of the dining room.   I paged through the book to see why I had it. There on page 35 was my answer. There was a recipe for scatzel, an Italian Easter cheese cake. It was one of my favourite things. It has raisins in it, the only time you will catch me voluntarily eating raisins in a baked item.My grandma used to make it for me. When I was in college

   This past weekend was the annual General Conference of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. The conference originates in the Conference Center in Salt Lake City. Chruch leaders gather to give talks on various subjects. Church members can attend the conference or watch on television, satellite or the internet as well as radio.    Members awaited this conference with great expectation. Since the last conference in October of 2017 two major church leaders passed away. Elder Robert D. Hales died in October. Thomas S. Monson who had served in church leadership for over 50 years and was president of the church died in January.    The two highest governing bodies in the LDS church are the First Presidency and the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles. According to the procedure governing succession in the church presidency, Russell M. Nelson became the president of the church. This meant that he would leave the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles. That left two vacancies in the Quorum.

   While looking at my "On This Day" feature on Facebook yesterday, I ran into a cryptic post from about seven years ago. It said, "RIP Doug". The only other additional information I had was that I posted it a 10:37 AM.  There were no comments and no reactions.    I made a few deductions from this post. Doug had obviously passed away and was someone I knew well enough to remember him. The lack of comments or reactions meant that he was not a public figure or someone known to any of my social media contacts.   Who was he? I tried to remember who I knew named Doug. No one came to mind.    It was a little sad. The situation reminded me of some pictures that I found once at my parents' house. Someone has thought enough to take the picture. No one wrote the names of the people on the back. I had no idea who they were. They are sort of lost in eternity.    I wrote a Facebook post about Doug and being unable to remember who he was. I mentioned that I felt bad abo