Sophie's Story

     This week I sorted through my yarn stash looking for thinner weight yarns that I could use with another thin weight yarn in my 10 stitch blanket. One of the yarns I found was called "Starry Night". The colour of the yarn varies from twilight blue to the almost black of the night sky. Twined with the yarn is a little silver glitter hence the name. It's a beautiful yarn that I thought would make a nice scarf. However, I have a lot of scarves and  thought it might add some bling to my blanket.    With some help from my mother, I found an nice grey yarn to pair with it, The grey gives more thickness and highlights the colour picking up on the silver glitter.    I thought it would be a good idea to go ahead and wind the hank of yarn into a ball so it could be used. I untwisted the hank. My Mom held it while I started to wind the ball. When Mom had to go do something, I put the hank of the back of a chair and continued to wind. Then I got interrupted.    Instead of leaving

     Some of you may remember that I started knitting a 10 stitch blanket in an effort to use up some chunky yarn from my stash. Along the way I learned a couple of new skills and things were going well.    Now I have developed a new problem. I'm become addicted to knitting the blanket. Now that I have mastered the skills, I don't have to think about what I'm doing. It's very restful and I like the feel of the yarn in my hands.     My plan was top stop knitting when I got to the end of the yarn that I have. Unfortunately, I have only a couple skeins of yarn left and I want to keep knitting. I want to make the blanket bigger. In fact I want to make it big enough to wrap around myself.    This means I'm going to have to buy more yarn, which kind of defeats the purpose of this project. I started this project to reduce my yarn stash, not add to it. I could justify the purchase of extra yarn by telling myself that I'm buying it for the project and it will not increas

     The Table Topics master played a fun game at a Toastmaster meeting a few months ago. The game was called Two Truths and a Lie. When called upon, you had to make three statements about yourself. Two of them would be true and one of them would be false. The rest of the club would have to decide which statement was false. Then you would tell the club if the statement they picked was the correct one.    When my turn came I said that I was the first person to license a consulting only pharmacy, I passed my pharmacy board exams on the first try and that I had been married twice. I waited to see which statement my club members would think was false.    The one they chose was the last one. Then I told them that I had pulled a trick on them. All of the statements were true. I was married twice to C. The first time we were married in Lutheran ceremony. The second time was a Temple sealing which is a ceremony in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.    Today is the eighth annivers

     Hi !    This is Skamp! Sophie said that I could write the column today.     Sophie showed me something really cool on You Tube a few weeks ago. C likes to watch it to learn how to do things. I remember that I wanted to learn how to roar, so I watched lions roaring on You Tube. Turns out that they don't show how lions roar. Later I found out that as a cat of smaller size, I can't roar. (But lions can't purr) (Purring is much more valuable skill for a Chief Therapy Cat like me.)    She showed me Cat TV. This is a channel that shows many videos of birds, squirrels and other animals feeding in various places. I love it. My favorite animal is the red squirrels. They are much more interesting than the grey squirrels around here. I'm not a fan of the videos with fish swimming.     One thing I like about the video is that I can watch them on the couch. It's much warmer and more comfortable sitting or laying on the couch. It can get kind of cold next to the window. I al

        Sometimes the beginning of a significant event in your life starts out very small. Twenty years ago I was bored. It was a warm January day. Since warm and January don't happen often, I decided to drive to Stillwater. It's a cute little town not too far away from where I was living at the time. The downtown area is nice to walk through. There are a lot of little shops and antique stores lining the main street of town. Restaurants and coffee shops took their places between the stores. It's a good place to walk.     I found a place to park and started walking around. I probably went into a few shops that I liked. I don't remember if I bought anything. The last shop I went into was advertising a coffee shop at the edge of the downtown area. That part of downtown Stillwater had caves and this shop was located in one of them. It looked interesting so I thought I'd stop by and get a drink.    The shop was small, one main room where the cash register was and another

     C and I have a dinner of southern style food on New Year's Day. Having a New Year's Day dinner is something that my family has done for as long as I can remember. C and I started having southern food as a bow to his heritage several years ago.    Normally if it is just the two of us I don't make dessert. There is plenty of sweets from Christmas to eat. This year we had some friends eat with us so I felt like I needed to have a dessert. I wanted to make something that would be served in the south. It also had to be something on the light side to balance out the heavier meal we were eating. After looking through several lists, I found the perfect thing. Hummingbird cake.    The first and only time I had hummingbird cake was in a restaurant in Charleston. It was wonderful. It is a banana cake with pineapple and pecans in it frosted with cream cheese icing. It was one of the best desserts I had ever had and a perfect ending to the meal.    I looked at several recipes some