It's the Busiest Time of the Year!

And no....it's not Christmas!

With garden work, keeping up with my fast-growing herbs (harvesting, drying, and crushing), helping out with the welcome bags for the CHEF conference, and preparing for the booth that I will have at the said conference in addition to all of the normal duties of life....the last month and a half or so have been pretty full. Oh, and hockey playoffs...we mustn't forget that! :) I knit during games...further down, I'll post some pictures of what I've been making!

On May 7, I set up a booth at Houston, Missouri's Spring Festival. Here are some pictures:

I should have taken pictures before I started selling. Several things are gone, especially the necklaces...so my display is half empty! I love my new earring display! A friend of mine bought that for me. :) Also, notice that I now have a really nice hand mirror on my table! A nice lady from church bought that for me when she found out that this very essential item in the activity of trying on jewelry was missing from my display at last year's CHEF conference. How sweet! :)

Speaking of the CHEF conference, Jewelry By Jaime will be at this year's conference! It's only 17 days away! Wow...has it been a whole year already? *time flies*

I've been trying to make a variety of new things to sell. To the right are stitch markers for knitting.

To the left is a new necklace using the diamond stitch pattern that I've used several times before and an interesting idea I had for the center dangle. Click on that one to see a bigger picture.

I'm really trying not to get stuck in the same situation that I always seem to....that is, waiting until the last minute to do everything and then end up staying up all night before the morning that we leave. Over the past few days I've completely reorganized my bead boxes (with Ahnnah's help). I didn't plan on doing this, but you know how it goes...you move one thing and then end up moving them all! Also, we're going to be very busy the week before the conference....filling 1200+ bags with 15+ different items that will be handed out to all of the conference attendees. Wow. That's a lot of bags! We don't have a final count on the number of bags yet, or the number of things being put in them. I think that we added another item to the list this morning, though. I'm glad that it has turned out so well! Anything that helps CHEF out with paying for this conference that blesses us so much is time well spent! :)

At the end of April, we had a lot of rain here. We visited a really neat waterfall nearby on the 18th, and then again on the 26th after a whole week of rain. Here are two pictures that I took, one from each visit:

Amazing, isn't it?

Here are some more pictures. You can click on them to see larger images.

Here are some knitting projects that I've finished recently. Click on the images to go to their corresponding Ravelry project pages, where you can see more information and pictures. :)

I actually just finished a second penguin. He's more rotund. :P I think I like him better, too. I don't have a picture of him yet, though.


This is one of my current projects. I love these socks!




I have several more things that I don't have pictures or pages for yet, including lots of baby booties.

I just remembered that in an older post from nearly a year ago, I mentioned a project I was working on that I would post about....and never did. Oops. Here it is. :)

Here's a link to the project page of a second one that Ahnnah and I made together.

I've recently started teaching sign language to a young girl that I know. Tuesday was my first class with her, and I was surprised to see how well she already knew the alphabet. She also learned how to do the song "I Love You Lord" very quickly. It was fun to finally be able to teach sign language to someone. I need to figure out what I'm going to teach her this coming Tuesday. I'm not the type who plans ahead very well...LOL. Lesson plans....what are those?? :P

Ahnnah also now has her very own drawing student. Yay! Speaking of which, here is her latest masterpiece.....I'm amazed. The scan doesn't do it justice....it's simply awesome.
That's Ben Barnes, a.k.a. Prince Caspian.


Ok, I think that's all I've got. Quite enough to last for a while, right? :) It's more than I planned on posting, anyway.

Artwork & Updates

Ok, this is going to be a really long post....

I think everyone knows by now that I'm one of the world's greatest procrastinators. :P How long ago did I promise this post? And now it has much more in it than I originally intended...:P

First off, I had a wonderful birthday. Thank you to everyone who wished me a happy one. :) I have a few good pictures...those who want them can talk to me, as I'll be uploading them soon.

Lately, I've been acquiring lots of music from David Arkenstone, all of which is very good. How can you not like a guy who named one of his kids Valinor? :P

I've been reading the autobiography of Richard "Little Bear" Wheeler for the past week. It's an awesome book! I highly recommend it to everyone. ;)

The recipe blog that I mentioned starting up a while back has been started. :) I'm sorry that I haven't mentioned it before now...

Slowly, but surely, I will get recipes on there....and little pokes from friends don't hurt a bit. ;)

Knitting is something that I've been doing a lot of...hats, scarves, shawls, blankets...I'm addicted. :P I'm determined to learn how too knit socks and sweaters soon... Until then, I just need to find more people that I can clothe in hats and scarves. :P

Now for the main focus of this post...some artwork from my sister and I. These are all Pendragon themed. Those of you who have not seen The Burns Family's movie Pendragon: Sword of His Father definitely should. It was made by a Christian home-schooling family. The "Southern" Burns family is a part of our home-school group. :)

We went to my grandma's house yesterday to celebrate birthdays (hers, my brother's, and mine) and I helped her place an order for her copy of the DVD (why she waited until I was there rather than having me help over the phone if she needed me to is beyond me! :P) and she made us all laugh by saying "I have to pay for shipping and wait 3 to 5 days for it to get here when I live about 15 minutes from their house? Isn't there a way that I can ask them if I can just drive over there and pick it up?" LOL!

Also, for those of you who love movie soundtracks, the Pendragon soundtrack is one if the best - if not the best - that you can get. ;)

Now, for the artwork...

First up are some drawings. These were done by my younger sister. She was inspired to begin drawing people after seeing some pictures that I showed her of my dear friend Lizzy's wonderful drawings. :) With much encouragement and help from Lizzy, she has become very good over the past couple of years. (Thank you, Lizzy, we love you dearly!)

As usual, click them all for full size. :)

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Artos Pendragon

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Wenneveria

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Cadeyrn

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Next are some desktop wallpapers that I have made using screenshots from the movie and photos that the Burns family have posted on their site and on Facebook. :) Some of them also have quotes from the movie on them, and one has a poem that I wrote that was inspired by the movie. :)

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Artos Pendragon

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Wenneveria

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Cadeyrn

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The Vision of Artos

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The Strength to Accomplish

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A Purpose For Your Life

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There Is No One On Your Side

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"Who Follows the Pendragon Back to Badon?"

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"A Very Intense Camp Personality"

I have to comment on this one...

Let me just say that I nearly died laughing when this picture came up on Facebook. I had been searching for the right picture to use with this quote, too...it was perfect!

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Brotus

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Well, I hope that you all enjoyed these...

Now, my birthday is officially over and I stayed up way later than I meant to! :P