No Sew Fleece Blanket

I've recently been working on a lot of crafty projects. All of them are blankets. I think that means I like warm, cozy, easy crafts!

The first is a little no-sew fleece blankey I made for my niece's 2nd birthday. She LOVES Toy Story (no amount of caps can fully articulate the amount of love she has for this movie franchise) so when I found this fleece on sale at JoAnn's I had to get it for her. Google will tell you all kinds of complicated ways to turn an easy no-sew blanket into a complicated project, but here's how I did it in under an hour. Count the traffic time to get to the craft store and the wash/dry time for the laundry and it took me three hours.

0. Buy 1.5yards of awesome fleece fabric.
1. Trim the ends that's aren't cute. These are called salvage ends. Make it the whole piece kind of square or rectangle. Throw away scraps so you don't become that crafter.
2. Cut out 4inch ish squares from each corner. Keep the scraps because there's a lot you can do with 4inch squares! Become that crafter a tiny bit.
3. Cut 4 inch cuts about 1 inch apart. all the way around.
---Intermission--- Have a crafter's crisis. Decide RIGHT NOW whether you're going to be the kind of crafter who measures exactly and makes everything perfect and precise, or the kind who thinks the variance and imperfections will be "part of the art."
4. After you've cut your fringe, tie a knot at the base of each strand.
5. If you want to, tug on the edges, making a nice satisfying ripping sound.
6. Wash the blankey and make your spouse gift wrap it. Try not to steal it back from your niece.

Moving to Virginia: Myth Confirmed!

While I'm sure many of you have heard either directly or via rumor, it is true that Mark and I are moving to Blacksburg, Virginia! Mark has accepted a post doc research position at Virginia Tech and at the end of the semester we'll be moving from Los Angeles all the way to Blacksburg, Virginia. Here's some answers to the most common questions I've been getting.

When are you moving? 

We leave May 6th. We're road tripping with Steph and Julia and we can't wait! Yes, you can expect lots of posts/pictures about that adventure.

Is it a permanent move?

Nope. We'll likely be there more than one year but less than three years. Then who knows??? Life's an adventure. Roll with it. I threw the five year plan out the window five years ago.

Isn't Virginia... far?

Uh, yeah. It's about 2500 miles from Los Angeles and a three hour time difference. But we're still going to be just a phone call, video chat, IM, email, text, and a flight away. Just a longer and more expensive flight.

Are you going to go visit first? 


Yep! In a few weeks Mark and I are flying out to find a place to live, meet the new lab, explore the town, etc.

Is Kristen going to teach? 


Heck no. Forget about it. There's only so much subbing a person can take. I'm out. The end. Quilting sounds fun though.

Is Mark going to teach?


No. Mark's new position is a research position designed for people who have recently completed their Ph.D. He'll be working on research only for this job.

David A. Lingwood, April 18, 1941-February 17, 2011

Death is but crossing the world, as friends do the seas; they live in one another still. For they must needs be present, that love and live in that which is omnipresent. In this divine glass, they see face to face; and their converse is free, as well as pure. This is the comfort of friends, that though they may be said to die, yet their friendship and society are, in the best sense, ever present, because immortal. 


--William Penn, More Fruits of Solitude 


On February 17, 2011 Mark's father passed away.

I don't remember ever meeting Dave, and in fact sometimes it's hard to forget that Dave was not always my dad-in-law. In my memory, I've always had two dads: my dad, and Mark's dad. I used to hang out at the Lingwood's house in college, even before Mark and I started dating, and sometimes I accompanied the family to various Seattle events. One time I went to gasworks parks to celebrate the Fourth-of-July and watch the fireworks. Other times Dave and Toni would treat Mark and I to our favorite Teriyaki dinner on the Ave in the university district and when Dave and Toni would come see Mark at band performances, I felt like they were coming to see me too. One summer the whole family went to see a concert at a beer festival, but I hadn't yet turned 21 and it seemed like they weren't going to let me in. Dave just shrugged and told them I was his daughter. Then when I had to wear a special "underage" bracelet he teased the dickens out of me.

I remember Dave coming to football games, basketball games, volleyball games, opening day for crew, softball games, and parades. It was, of course, because he was an AVID Husky fan, but I also know it was because he was AVID Mark fan. Over the last month I've learned more and more stories about how Dave would go to track meets, sporting events--anything extra curricular that he could make it to, he was there. From the sounds of it, liking the Huskies meant that supporting his kids now had the added bonus of interesting sports, rather than the humor of watching pee wee basketball. He was there in every way for Mark and his sister Stephanie. In our third year of college the Husky Marching Band celebrated its 75th anniversary, and Dave got to march alongside his son, two generations of Husky Drummers. 

When Mark and I announced our engagement, I do remember Dave just saying "Well that's great!" and that was pretty much his only comment on the subject. He was happy for us, and he didn't have any other comments. He didn't tell us how to run our wedding, how to structure our marriage, or how to live our lives. He was just truly happy for us. When Mark and I did get married, there is one picture of him and my dad and you can see how very happy they are for both of us. Well, either that or they are glad the whole wedding is finally over and it was time to get to the champagne! (Yes I know they are hidden by our moms... but isn't that so fitting?)

In 2009 Mark finished his Ph.D. and Dave and Toni and Stephanie were able to fly down for the UCSB formal graduation ceremony. When Mark walked across the stage, Dave openly wept with pride at seeing his son achieve something so great. 

Most recently, Dave and Toni made a trip down to LA and Palm Springs. Dave got to see LMU where Mark works as "Dr. Lingwood" and we took Dave to bask in the 80degree sun. He was admitted to the ICU when he returned and eleven days later, passed away in his sleep. 

For his funeral service, I had the privilege of helping to assemble a slide show of pictures. Many of these pictures were emailed to me by family and a lot were taken right from Dave's computer. Over a week, I started to slowly put together some family stories. 

Before Dave and Toni were engaged, Dave would write letters to Toni. Sometimes his letters would be as long as ten pages and supposedly they would profess his love for her! Wouldn't you just love to get your hands on one of those letters? I found some of their wedding pictures and they are fantastic. Dave and Toni spent 45 Valentine's Days together, and were married for nearly 45 years. Through the pictures and stories, there can only be one conclusion: they lived an amazing lifetime together.

Eventually Dave and Toni ended up in Seattle, where they raised both kids, teaching them to love the water, the forest, the Earth. Dave raised the man I love, and he did a really good job. As for me, I will always remember Dave this way, as his best, off camping somewhere with a good book, a lake filled with fish, and his family nearby.

Both Mark and Stephanie spoke at Dave's service. Everyone who was there saw what a fantastic job they did. They truly honored him with their words, their memories, and their hearts. Mark said one thing in particular regarding his father that I think sums it all up. 


"He was a good man."






Dave's obituary can be read here but I'm not sure how much longer the link will be active so you can read the text below. 



David A. Lingwood was born April 18, 1941, in Seattle to parents Thomas J. Lingwood and Elizabeth R. (Watkinson) Lingwood. An outdoorsman from the beginning, he spent his early days playing in the woods, listening to baseball on the radio, and tending to the tomatoes and corn on the family's Normandy Park farm. He became pals with his grandfather, John Edwood Watkinson, as a teen, and the two of them shared many adventures together: fishing, hunting, learning to drive, and his only somewhat disastrous first crew cut.

After he graduated from Highline High School, he attended the University of Washington. There he joined Acacia Fraternity, met his wife-to-be, Toni, and became a proud member of the Husky Marching Band; years later, he stood on the field with his son, Mark, as they both played in the drumline for the Band's 75th anniversary. His post-college years took him to Colombia with the Peace Corps and to Stanford University, where he earned his Ph.D in Communications and discovered his love of computers and data.

After a series of communications research jobs that took him to the University of Michigan and then back to Seattle, he settled down at Fircrest School, a DSHS facility where he spent the final 20 years of his career. He and Toni also raised their daughter, Stephanie and son, Mark in Seattle. The close proximity to both mountains and sound meant that the family spent countless hours camping, fishing, and sailing; he was also a fixture at Stephanie and Mark's various sports events, and could boom a "Go, Steph/Mark!" across a full-sized track.


David passed away on February 17, 2011 and is survived by his wife, Toni, kids Stephanie and Mark, daughters-in-law Julia and Kristen, and various other relatives and friends. Their lives have been forever touched by his caring, wit, and ability to wordsmith a well-turned phrase or pun. A memorial service will be held Friday, February 25, 2011 at Washington Memorial Park: 16445 International Blvd., SeaTac, WA 98188. In lieu of flowers, donations may be made in Dave's memory to the University of Washington Husky Marching Band.

A little bit on "home"

Typically I like to share about our adventures in the great land of "away". Mark and I love to travel and with family and friends living far and farther, it seems we are always on the go somewhere. However, we have lived in Seattle, Santa Barbara/Goleta, and now we live in Los Angeles, CA and soon we're going to live somewhere else. Right now we're living in a part of LA that's nestled in right by LAX. I thought today I would share a little bit about what it's like living in the land of ten million and what our lives are like in between our great adventures.

We live in a Costco-sized apartment complex, but our unit is more like those fun-sized candy bars. Very tiny! A few weeks ago we had a very clear day after a bunch of rain and Mark took some pictures from the roof of our six story parking garage.

Mark actually parks in garage B (we have two six story parking garages) and I park out on the street. So you can just think about that for a minute. Our apartment complex has two six story parking garages and I still have to park on the street. Here is the street where I park, with a view of the snowy mountains. We lived here for five months before the smog cleared enough for us to see the mountains, and then we almost crashed our cars out of shock. 

What, you can't see the snow? Ok, here's another picture of it. 

As you know, Mark as been working at LMU this year. The campus is beautiful and has some of the best views we've been able to find of LA. I should note that all of these pictures were taken on the clearest day we've had so far since moving here in August.

Living in our part of LA means we also shop at what we are told is the busiest and highest grossing Trader Joe's in the country. It is airport-themed (right down the street from LAX) and though the lines are always long and the aisles crowded, we find it a fun place to shop. They are always fully staffed, the people shopping there are used to it being crowded and don't do dumb things, and just like at all TJs you might find yourself discussing the merits of cooking with wine you would drink vs. cooking sherry with the person next you in line. But shopping anywhere in LA always means shopping with a rent-a-cop. For some reason the prevalence of store security guards is completely standard here. We have slowly gotten used to seeing these underpaid uniformed people with flashlights who text instead of watch for shoplifters, but nothing screams "our neighborhood is ghetto!" more than having mall cops at every storefront. (Photo stolen from the interwebs... yelp.com)



And then there's the commute... While Mark may only have a ten minute drive into work, it takes me about forty-five minutes to drive twelve miles every day (one way). Everywhere in town is 15-30minutes away and getting honked at or hearing someone else get honked at is completely normal. I am going to need new brakes before we move.

So when we're not commuting, standing in line at the grocery store, choking the smog, sneaking away to Disneyland.... I'm usually here, in my favorite place in the apartment. Note the Tide, since my kitchen is also my laundry room, my garage, and my attic. I keep my china in my pantry and my Christmas decorations in my cupboards.

So that's home for us! It's going to be different soon...

Rain and Showers

I just got back from spending four fantastic days in Seattle. I think this is a record for shortest time in between visits! Our very good friends Emily and Nathan (Check out Emily's stamping over at stamped and delivered) are having a baby so we decided to throw them a shower. Together with my good friend Annie, we planned a DIY shower full of crafty fun.

I flew in on Thursday and spent the afternoon shopping with Emily. Few things are better than spending the afternoon at the mall with a good friend! Living far away my trips are often filled with very focused bouts of visiting time, parties, and activities. The luxury of an afternoon at the mall made me ~almost~ feel like I was home.

Thursday night through Saturday was filled with girlfriends, shower prep, and so much baby talk! Annie made a fantastic cake...

Christie made a really beautiful paper sign...

Cat and Annie constructed the diaper cake...

I made the favors (heat/ice packs filled with rice, flax seeds, and lavender)...

And somehow all the food got made too!

At the shower we played pictionary with baby themed items. Not surprisingly the couple in the group who already has a kid totally rocked this! Carley cleverly illustrated "PackNPlay". She's got a little one on the way too, due just a month after Emily.

Maija took a turn at pictionary. She drew a BIG baby! (Looks like an ultrasound to me!)

Finally we took a big group picture and eventually had to say our goodbyes. Suddenly we are older, grown up, at that age where everyone is having babies and jobs and houses and they are so with it. I came home with the edge of baby giddiness worn off and a little bit weary about my friends getting old! Luckily I'm not anywhere near as old and not nearly half as successful as they are hehe.Here we are, all old and grown up and just the thought makes me overcome with an urge to do something completely irresponsible.

I want to talk for a bit about pictures and beginner photography. So for those of you only tuning in to stalk my life, feel free to tune out now. Up until recently Mark and I have been taking pictures in the beginner mode known as "auto/no flash", AKA "point and shoot". This has been working out in our favor as we have been taking a lot of pictures outdoors or in very well lit areas. A few times Mark has had the time and patience to mess with the settings. An example is the amazing pictures he got of the St. Louis Arch. To be fair to myself, I have messed around a lot with the preprogrammed settings like "kid" or "pet" or "sports" and I have read enough about cameras to not feel dumb when other people talk about them. Ultimately though neither of us have really truly set the camera in manual and made it fly. However, after looking through our pictures from the shower we saw that they turned out a little less than fantastic and that has us pondering how to make future pictures better.

So the debate is this. Should we have shot in the dim indoor setting with the flash? We have a crappy flash. Mark wonders if we had a really nice flash if that would have helped. Or should we have shot in... gasp.... manual... with a wider aperture and F-Stop or some other configuration. Those of you real photographers out there can stop laughing now. But we're learning as we go, and this was this first real "huh" moment for us and to be honest the first time that shooting in plain old auto/no flash didn't give us pictures we felt really happy with. Here are the two group shots: one with flash and one without. Clearly the flash picture turned out better. Now we know!

I'm not entirely convinced a flash (even a nice one) would have done the trick. But alas, I can't go back and retake the exact pictures again with different manual settings. I can play with the pictures in picnik and expose them a little more and saturate the colors and what not. I did that with this cake picture and feel "okay" about the results vs. time and effort.

From what I've been able to tell is that a lot of photographers really value the time and effort spend on photoshop or other picture editing programs as far as making their pictures look good. I don't agree or disagree with this style of picture making, but I do have a goal (and so does Mark) of making the straight-out-of-the-camera shot as good as it possibly can be. My reasoning for this is that why do with a mouse and arrows and 15 minutes what you can do with a twist and click in 5 seconds on the camera? Plus, realistically, just getting those pictures off the SD card, into Picasa, sorted, and uploaded is kind of a miracle. I say let's make them come out of the camera as good as we can!

Regardless of what mode to be shooting in, one thing's for certain. The more pictures we take, the better we'll be! Oh... and I think we might also need a tripod.

Seattle Christmas, 2010

After four days in Illinois, it was time say our goodbyes and catch our flight to Seattle. I just checked my calendar and Christmas was our 5th (FIFTH!) trip to Seattle in 2010. If it seems like we're always there... well we are! Over the last five and half years we seem to be averaging somewhere between four and six trips per year, though they are usually very short. We were excited to be able to spend eight days with family.

If you were to look at our pictures, you might think the only exciting thing that happened was putting Christmas ribbons on the cats.

Mme. Batch

Mr. Oscar

Miss Cleo 

Mark, holding Oscar and Cleo

This is in fact a lie propagated by the cats and their interest in keeping themselves at the center of our attention. But the truth is that our week was filled with a lot more than cats. We hung out with friends, spent time with family, and generally enjoyed not rushing for once!

We even had time to go over to Bremerton to see some of my mom's side of the family. We took the ferry to and from Bremerton. It was a rainy day but we still enjoyed the ride (ask me sometime why I love ferries). How many people can say they spent a little of the holidays with so many branches of their family? We were truly fortunate this Christmas.

We also managed to find time to go skiing, but the trusty camera stayed at home and the snowy day did not lend to great pictures. The other really cool thing we did was go to the Harry Potter Exhibition at the Seattle Center. This was a Christmas present from my mother-in-law (MIL WIN!!!) and it was really awesome! Unfortunately though, there were absolutely no pictures allowed and there just is no sneaking around with our DSLR. It was still a fantastic afternoon and an extremely well done exhibition, even to my very picky fan eyes.

Even the longest trips come to an end though, and soon we were saying our goodbyes and flying home. Till the next time, Seattle!

There is no NOISE in Illinois!

My dad is from Illinois. Not Illinoise. FYI, the s is silent, and I cringe when I hear people pronounce it like there is a /z/ at the end. Thanks Dad for teaching me the really important things in life!

But back to my dad being from Illinois. His brother and much of his family still live there. 50 years ago my Uncle Terry married a wonderful woman named Kathie and I've been fortunate enough to grow up having a fantastic "Uncle Terry and Aunt Kathie" in my life. Every niece should grow up with an Uncle Terry and an Aunt Kathie. When I received an invitation their anniversary party, I immediately started checking airline prices and playing around with our frequent flier miles. Sure enough, we were able to swing it! Leaving just 4 days after our San Diego Brady Christmas weekend, our trip to Illinois started our 12 days of Christmas.

It was really fun helping getting all the last minute stuff (food) together. Terry and Kathie did all the hard stuff and I got to do the fun things. This is me being a dork for the camera. Need I say more?  

My Aunt and Uncle had their party in their basement and we estimated about 50-60 people came throughout the afternoon.

It was amazing to reconnect with family I haven't seen in years and some family I have never even met before! At one point we gathered some of the distant cousins together for a picture. There was a lot of debate about "removed" vs. "3rd or 4th" but I mostly just liked that we were able to say we were actually related!

The party also featured a skit, written by my Uncle and performed by various family members. My dad was the narrator and of course the stars were my aunt and uncle. It was super cheesy and full of win! 

Later in the afternoon my aunt (on a whim) ran upstairs, dug out her wedding dress, and put it on to surprise Uncle Terry. It was SO fun to see her dance around in it and then they cut their party cake with her in her dress and Terry in his jeans. 

In the couple of days after the party, we looked at albums and albums of old pictures...

Made cookies...

And generally had a fantastic time. On our last day in town, Mark and I managed to sneak in a day in the nearby city, St. Louis, MO with my Aunt and Uncle. We went to the St. Louis Arch:

And then spent some time at the St. Louis Zoo where my aunt and uncle worked for (13?) years before retiring a couple of months ago. We had such a wonderful day and it was really amazing to get to spend such great time with them!

I'm having a hard time not posting ALL of our pictures... so please check them out here! There are some really amazing ones (and some boring ones) but overall lots of pictures from the whole trip.

Had to end on a family pic... That's (L-R) Uncle Terry, Aunt Kathie, my brother Rick, me, Mark, Mom, and Dad.