January 14, 2014 by Stephanie

Crochet Infinity Scarf: Back Post Stitch

As promised, here is the scarf that matches the boot cuffs I showed on Sunday.

I did this more than 6 months ago, so I don’t have specifics of how many stitches it took and the like.

I do know that I learned how to do the back post stitch! A friend of mine showed it to me, but here is a pretty good video of how to do it.

The only thing I did different is that I did not do a regular double crochet stitch in between each back post. So every stitch across the row was a back post double crochet.

I really like the ripple effect that it gives.

Then I used a needle to sew the two ends together so it became an infinity scarf.

Fairly easy, and it was super warm too because the back post makes it pretty thick.

I am not sure how this stitch would look on a blanket, but on scarves and hats it looks great!

January 13, 2014 by Stephanie

Quirks of Clarksville

I have been in Clarksville for about 8 months and there are a few quirks I have noticed about the roads here.

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1. Businesses in the area love sign spinning. Even in this cooler weather, I still see this happening. I would say that they are more than a distraction than they are an attraction for a business.

2. School Buses have pick up/drop offs on main thoroughfares. Who does this? Also I was not aware that when you are on a highway the opposite direction still has to stop for an unloading bus. I am fine stopping, but kids should not be crossing a 4-6 lane highway!

3. Hand washing cars is a mighty big thing in this area. On my way to work I see probably a dozen car washes offering the “best hand washed service” in town. From what I have seen they are fairly competitive rates with a machine wash. I feel that it rains too much here to warrant paying for a car wash. Maybe when I get a new car that will be something I am more invested in….but probably not.

4. Not only are kids walking across 4 or 6 lane highways, but people not associated with school buses just cross the street with traffic buzzing buy, and I mean not on a crosswalk or with the help of streetlights. It has been absurd to watch people just mosey on across the street like it is a sidewalk and will dart between cars like we are New York City or something. People do it in the rain, sunshine, night, day, with groups, by themselves, in suits, in pajamas…apparently it is a thing. The craziest sight is seeing people drag strollers and kids who can barely walk across the highway in full traffic! I have seen people standing in the middle turn lane for several minutes waiting for the cars (who are going around 45-50 mph) just whiz on by. Walking seems to be a way of transportation here, but they could at least find an appropriate crosswalk. Also if they are going to be doing this, they need to learn to wear reflective gear or bright clothing, maybe a PT belt. I am just saying reflective pieces of clothing are helpful for you and the drivers so we DON’T HIT YOU! (In case you were wondering, I have never hit someone, but it has come very close to this by my accord and others around me.)

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This is an example of the road where people walk across. Just imagine lots of traffic and pedestrians intermingling (and no flood).

5. One road can go by several names. It can be ridiculous trying to find a new place or give directions because one road has 4 different names. The main strip in town has the following titles: Fort Campbell Blvd, 41A, 79, Providence Blvd, and 2nd Street. Now I understand how they correlate, but when I first got here, you can see how it may be difficult to keep things straight. There also isn’t the greatest signage depicting the changing titles. And depending on who you talk to will change how they refer to it. For example, I refer to it as Ft. Campbell Blvd, and Tom calls it 41A. It can get silly…I also still haven’t found the CiCis we were looking for back in August when our family was in town.

The things I probably would never know if I didn’t commute…

Have you noticed any quirks of your town?

January 12, 2014 by Stephanie

Crochet Boot Cuffs

I really tried pushing myself with my crochet abilities for Christmas gifts. It is about time too. There areso many things beyond blankets that I want to do, but I have some big blanket projects I need to finish first before the semester is over.

This project was fairly simple. I wanted to make boot cuffs for my sister in law since she wears boots all the time. This pattern was a good one to follow.

My one recommendation is to make sure you don’t make it too tight. Measure your leg with jeans on to make sure they will go over your pants.

I crocheted the bodies first like this.

Then I used a needle to sew the ends smoothly.

There you can see the ruffle.

I didn’t get a final picture of them. Apparently in my haste to get all the gifts done, I took this one above and forgot a nice finish photo. Whoops.

This is what they look like with boots from the site.

ravelry.com

I made a scarf that matched, and I will be showing that later this week.

I hope that you had a great weekend.

The Whitener household definitely is ready to put this last week behind us. (We are lovingly referring to it as the week we would like to forget.)

It is a new week though, and honestly it can only go up.

Have a wonderful Sunday!

January 10, 2014 by Stephanie

Friday Filter: Book “The Worn Out Woman”

Upon the move to KY, I was anxious about making a new friend base. And I knew that church hunting may take awhile due to traveling and Tom and I’s various tastes in church services.

Not wanting to leave the connections I had made in Iowa behind, I reached out to two girlfriends of mine with the idea of doing a women’s devotional virtually. The three of us share a lot of philosophies and beliefs, and made it to church together on a few occasions. I knew they would be good women to “meet” with regularly. One for my sanity, and two for spiritual growth.

Now we all live in 3 different states: Iowa, Indiana, and Kentucky. Bummer.

After kicking the idea around with several different book titles and how we wanted to actually enact this plan, we finally settled on this book.

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Being in a highly demanding field and with our roles at home, we felt like this would be a great read full of discussions about how we can simplify our life and wake up our spirit.

The way that the book is structured makes it really easy to do a group devotional. There are 18 chapters which are fairly short, and make for a pretty quick read. In the back there are suggestions of discussion questions. There is also a note section for each chapter as well, which I found interesting to find corresponding Bible verses.

We video chatted once a week when our schedules permitted about a chapter or two (sometimes three). It took us most of the fall semester to finish the book even doing several chapters at a time because of our “full lives.” I don’t think we met for most of November…

We would spend about half the time chatting about the chapters, and then the rest of the time was catching up and being a support for one another.

I will admit, that this would not be a book that I would recommend readily. Most of the things are pretty self-explanatory and ideas we had heard before (especially for us 3 coming from a helping profession and with Master’s degrees heavily inundated with counseling skills).

I think we were all disappointed as well on the lack of scripture throughout the chapters as well since we had set out to do a Bible devotion. Like I said it does have some references in the notes section in the back to the Bible, but not every chapter had it.

However, it does serve as a great pick-me-up and a good reminder on the little things we do every day that wear us out. All three of us were starting some new things in our life that were a tad stressful to our loads. One was starting her PhD, the other going through the Dave Ramsey financial class plus moving houses (again), and I was just all kinds of new down here. So in that retrospect, we did have a lot to talk about with each chapter, but it became more of a release than a life changer. The chapters just became a starting point for our discussion on how things were going. The book did helped us realize we weren’t alone and was a reminder about attitude adjustment.

My favorite chapter was the “Yellow Umbrellas.” This portion discussed random acts of kindness and encouragement. Everyone wants to feel special and needed, so even little things can make a person’s day. There is a wonderful story about a man who randomly bought an elderly woman flowers while in line at the store. She said that she had not gotten flowers since her husband passed. These flowers meant the world to her in her time of loneliness. This is really the only chapter that resonated with me past finishing the book. It was just so touching and endearing to think about the small things we can do for one another, and how in turn that can lift our own spirits.

Favorite Passage: “On days when you are feeling negative and irritable or just plain worn out, let the simple pleasure of doing random acts of kindness lift your spirit. It’s like giving yellow umbrellas to cover the rainy days of life.”

(I had thought about making Yellow Umbrella my blog domain for a bit. I was so inspired by this chapter, but with How I met Your Mother being all about the mystery woman with the yellow umbrella, unfortunately most variations of that title have already been taken.)

I even had it planned out that this would be my header before I decided to nix the idea and have plans for a different direction. I just love this photo though.

This does specifically gear towards women, however I think the concepts are universal. As I said, most of them are pretty obvious concepts. This book will repeat what any self-help/distressing book is going to say. This just had the undertones of a devotional.

All in all, though, we had some great discussions. This chat was something I know that I looked forward to each week. It was a great way to stay in touch and gab about life.

Thanks to technology and Google Plus, we can all video chat at the same time which is awesome!

We have picked out our next devotional and will be starting back up this weekend!

Have you ever done a group devotional? Do you have book suggestions for us in the future?

January 9, 2014 by Stephanie

Brother Birthday!

Today is my little brother’s 26th birthday.

While I know there were almost 3 years I survived before him, I cannot remember my life without him.

Being only three years apart, Randall was around for most of my life.

We definitely had our troubles as brother and sister. There were many years that I loathed him. Especially those days that he would steal my things or he would beat me at Chinese Checkers. I thought he was a pest for a time there. On many occasions I wondered how we were even related…

Oh yes. This is how.

I honestly didn’t find many pictures that we didn’t have a funny face. The left-hand corner is the most normal picture I could find.

Although we had our ups and downs in our relationship, we managed to be there when the other needed it. With nothing really consistent in our childhood, we were the only thing that remained constant for each other. We shuffled each week together from house to house. Rarely did we go somewhere without the other.

We have been there for every major life event. Granted I didn’t exactly see his daughter be born, and he didn’t see my first walking steps, but you get what I mean.

Our dad took us on an impromptu fishing trip. So naturally since we didn’t have swimming suits my brother and I dived in fully clothed.
This is one of my favorite childhood memories.
I think I was around 8, which would make my brother 5.

I wasn’t always the nicest sister. Once, I convinced him to give himself a swirly for a quarter, and to this day I still owe him that quarter. Somewhere I have a picture of this…

Randall wasn’t always the nicest brother. On numerous occasions we found ourselves in screaming matches with slamming door action.

Typical Glinn Grin

We managed to pull each other up and make each other smile when it counted. We were often the only kids at family and social events, so we had to find ways to entertain each other. And so maybe every day wasn’t great, but most days we fueled each other’s imagination with play school, games, and legos.

Lots of legos, crayons, and micro machines.

Randall was terrified of Batman, who is actually being played by a close family friend of ours. He cried for the longest time.
(Also check out my troll shirt!)

We would pretend that we were Michael Jordan and Muggsy Bogues for hours in the driveway. Even when we played tennis or baseball in the back field, we still were Michael and Muggsy, we felt empowered by them I guess. We accidently broke things in the house from playing too hard. Like the time we played volleyball in the house and it broke a window. Or the time that we were playing circus, and I was the ring leader standing on a flipped over trashcan, and then proceeded to fall through the wicker trashcan. We would dance for hours to Space Jam music, and secretly wish we could be part of the Mighty Ducks team. We watched countless hours of Saturday morning cartoons, which oddly enough Cowboys of Moo Mesa is one of the shows the 90s forgot. All the times that we would sneak into the loft to watch Dad’s TV long after our bedtimes. We had our own band for awhile, me on keyboard and Randall on drums. We would record ourselves on our sweet tape decks, but the recordings I really want to get my hands on are all the news reports we made.

We would play ourselves to sleep.

I was always envious of my brother. He is so smart. He always had/still has better math skills than I do. It used to frustrate me so much when I was working on my time tables quizzes, and he could run laps around me with how fast he would say them before I could even comprehend the problem. He was one of those kids that never had to study but could still ace the test.

Who doesn’t love Easter best? And aren’t his saddle shoes the cutest thing?

He was never scared to do anything. He had bravery like a superhero and had fear for nothing. (Maybe it is from all those times he ran into walls when he was in preschool.) Randall never seemed to care what people thought about him, and lived full out and full on. He could strike up a conversation so easily, and you clearly knew where you stood with him. Even though he was younger, he often stood by me so I could be stronger and less shy. Seriously, he would have to escort me to go get ketchup packets…

We were only in the same school for two school years: my fifth grade/his 2nd grade and for my senior year/his freshmen year. (Our kindergarten and first grade were in a separate building in case you were wondering.) We were in high school band together which was such a neat experience for me in my last year, but maybe not so much for him in his first. We also worked at Worlds of Fun for a couple years together, and it was the start of both of us becoming adults.

So even though a lot of things have changed over the years like our hairstyles and our names (seriously you go by Paul now?), you have always been my bubba.