I'm Off to Environmental Conference on Thursday




I have the pleasure of being one of a sold out crowd to attend Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.'s presentation on "Our Environmental Destiny".

I have heard part of this talk at IdeaCity and I am so proud to have him available at the University.

He is using old treaties the Americans and French and British made with the Indians (aboriginal peoples of our First Nation) to protect fishing waters, way back at the time of the British/North America Act and before..., to get companies who ruin ground waters running into lakes, rivers and streams to be legally held accountable for the immediate clean up.

After IdeaCityI got really interested in the water issues. You know by my own Mother's Day story that our family has a great appreciation for water and fishing, and being able to eat from our lands and waters. So I have a mini list of things we will be changing here as soon as I can do it.

One of the things is to remove our personal sludge from the sewer system of our town. When we do our next big bathroom renovations we will install a self composting toilet system in our house. I have all the fliers on it, and the best one for us will be one that uses a little bit of water for flushing. We will compost our sludge into rich soil for our gardens.

Our first toilet will be a dry one and it will be the soonest installed.

Anyhow I will talk more about this later!
After tomorrow I will write about the keynote talk on Thurs.

http://motivated-motion.blogspot.com/2008/05/im-off-to-environmental-conference-on.html

Some More Needle-felted Creations By Me!


I am so addicted to this needle-felting.
When folks ask me about how I do it I say this:

Remember the story of sleeping beauty? She pricks her finger on a spindle needle?
Ever think what a spindle needle is? It is a very sharp needle with barbs on it.
You take a hunk of carded wool fluff and press the needle into it repeatedly to shape it. The ball of fluff gets smaller and smaller and out comes a creation from imagination.

A very old toymaking trade.

Chief the Dragon

Sleeping Smouse

Sandy Bear, Pinky Bear, Lilly Ladybug, Rose, and Humphry Bunny

Humphry and Chief and Smouse will go on my other web site soon to Auction on Ebay.
I will let you know when they are up.

http://motivated-motion.blogspot.com/2008/05/some-more-needle-felted-creations-by-me.html

Heh Heh try the click test!

I am chipper and perky!



Knit Owl had this on her blog and I thought it was cute, so I stole it!
you click and click for a min and it grades your click number

OnePlusYou Quizzes & Widgets

http://motivated-motion.blogspot.com/2008/05/heh-heh-try-click-test-i-am-chipper-and.html

Cam Goes Down In History!!!!


Well, when you would think Cam was satisfied in doing all the cool and weird things he does, he has now put up a video of his amazing hand bending trick on YouTube.

Please, click on the video below and watch it and then please rate his feat on YouTube by clicking the video after you watch it to bring up his page.

I would love to see how many views he can get by Monday!!!

If you have a crazy feat you can do please send your own video as a video reply to Cam's one!

http://motivated-motion.blogspot.com/2008/05/cam-goes-down-in-history-well-when-you.html

(There are four new posts...be sure to catch them all.....!)

A Funny Story About My Mom,

There is a contest this week on buzz online radio. If you submit a story about your Mom you have a chance to win a prize of her being sent flowers for Mother's Day.
The story below is the one I submitted:

I have had a really interesting life. I have been able to accomplish every dream I have ever had.

I know this is because my parents instilled in me to always set new goals.

As examples, my parents have been amazing.

My Dad was a cop and and my Mom was the first woman to become a captain licensed to navitate Toronto harbour.

We spent our holidays in the very far north at a wilderness camping area on lake Missinabi, 55 miles north of Chapleau, Ontario.

To give you an idea how far north that is...it took 2.5 hrs to drive the 55miles on a rugged logging road to get to the end of the road, and that was the end of a 15.5 hr road trip from Toronto, Ontario.

Why would a family travel so far to spend their holidays in the deep woods with no amenities? For the best fishing in Ontario. That's why.

My Mom is an amazing angler. We followed fish like Walleye and Muskee all over North America.

The best place to fish is on the Missinabi River which is a direct route to James Bay.

Every year, we would meet a group of other anglers up there, and it would be a couple of weeks of fresh fish dinners and grand ole times.

Every night we would all congregate together and cook the fish of the day and eat fresh chowder. We all sat around the fire together surrounded by our campers and tents. ....... Tall stories and marshmallows all night.

One night we all sat around the fire whoopin' it up. A few drinks and lots of snack food as we watched the Aurora Borealis dancing in the sky.

Mom was sitting in a lawn chair eating chips as we all laughed and talked.

Stories and conversation going on and on. A few chips fall on the ground under Mom's chair.

When suddenly and calmly my mother gently says, "Whatever, you all do, don't make any sudden moves. Pay attention to me and stay relaxed."

All eyes turn towards Mom.

"If you guys move wrong I am going to get it!"

All of us looked at her, so calm and cool and collected just sitting there eating her chips with a smile on her face. And under her chair.......

was a skunk eating the fallen chips!

Everyone just did as she said and we carried on, making sure no one made any moves toward her. After a very long time, the skunk finished his chips and sauntered away.

Geeze, was my Mom brave.

This is only one of the amazing tales of my life, thanks to my Mom.

Oh, and to answer, "What vessel did my Mom Captain?"

When Dad retired they bought a big boat and opened a Salmon Fishing Charter Business on lake Ontario.

My Mom was the Captain and videographer...always the multitasker!

Stories about those days will have to wait for another day.

Respectfully,

Lynn Tucker (also known as witchamy)

http://motivated-motion.blogspot.com/2008/05/there-are-four-new-posts.html

Pauline's Awesome Flattened Chicken

Well last night my best friend Pauline told me about this low cal chicken she makes called flattened chicken.
I changed it up just a bit to fit my metabolism diet and tried it tonight for our dinner. I also added a makeshift side-dish of my own unique stir-fried veggies.

Here is how Pauline told me in chat how to do the chicken.
You flatten the chicken breasts by bashing them with the cast iron frying pan.
Then you make a paste of peppers, onion, and Dijon mustard. I added some spinach and celery too.
Spread the paste on the flattened chicken.
Then lay out low fat/low salt ham on the chicken, and a no fat swiss cheese slice on the chicken, then roll it up nice and tight. I changed it up by using a thin slice of roast pork loin to reduce the salt even more.

Once the pieces are ready, then fry them in a Teflon pan with olive oil or pam. There will be crispy bits! Yumm! Then after they are cooked in the pan you want to bread them in bread crumbs. I bread them in crumbs of my high protein soy pita instead.

Place the breaded chicken pieces in a pan sprayed with pam and bake them at 400 degrees F. You can add a bit of low salt chicken stalk to the pan, and cover it and bake about 20 min. You can put veggies in the pan to cook if you want. Take the lid off for a few minutes at the end to brown the pieces.

Instead of putting the veggies in the roasting pan, I stir-fried them and added a bit of the Dijon/pepper sauce for zest.

Viola! Flattened Chicken!
Thanks Pauline! It was fabulous!

Oh..apparently I made a mistake. Pauline says I should have breaded the chicken first then pan fried it. You can season the breading. I seasoned it with thyme, montreal spice, and Mr Dash.

http://motivated-motion.blogspot.com/2008/05/there-are-three-new-posts.html

Diggnation Teas for my Mother's Day

Alex came home from the city of Peterborough (2hrs away from Newmarket) for a few days. Alex has an apartment there and will stay there all summer and commute to Toronto (1.5 hr greyhound bus ride) to his new job.

Carl was able to get Al an internship in the IT development devision of the large Canadian bank he works for. So this is Alex's life until the end of the summer. Now he will have one of those "I travelled two hours on a bus to get to MY internship" to tell his kids when he is old.

Al stayed with us Wednesday to Saturday just so he got to travel with his Dad for the first few days. When he came, he brought me my Mother's day gift. It is a sampler selection of loose teas hand picked by the guys from Diggnation.com.
I am sure you DIGG, so I don't have explain that......

Do you like my mug? I got that last year at CafePress. It is a two cupper mug!

Along with tea came this awesome tea pot. It is a two cupper. It also has a removable loose tea filter, and it has a valve on the bottom so you just sit it on the top of the cup and the tea pours through the bottom! No more tea spout spillage!
It also came with a great book on tea.

You can click any of these pics to make them bigger. By doing that you will see the labels on the sampler teas I got. I like the oriental spice one the most. Alex has some other tea selections in larger cans which are the DIGG guys favorites. Out of those I like the mint and chocolate ones best.

Ahhhhhhh! The blessings of Geekdom!

http://motivated-motion.blogspot.com/2008/05/diggnation-teas-for-my-mothers-day-alex.html

(the post you have been waiting for. it is long, but has mostly photos)
Stash.....

My stash is like most other folks stash.
It starts out with stuff in zip-lock baggies hidden in all different places around the house.
It is worth lots of money.
Probably more money that I should spend on a habit.

And I feel sooo good after I have spent some time absorbing it into my brain.

Yep I can see your eyes glaring now!

But my habit is not illegal. It is of a creative nature....

So now I will show you my stash:

My stash arrives in the mail or in a bag from a shop. It is high end fibre.
You see Fibre is the name we use....not wool or yarn.
It comes in skeins or balls and I might have cut of a hank or two for my patterns.
This is my latest aquisition.
Pure wool fibre in bright colours. These are hand spun and hand dyed making them completely unique.
The purple blend on the left will be for a top for me. It is called Irises inspired by Van Gogh. The Balls are Labrador Yarns I will use with the the bright coloured skeins to do felting projects.

Sometimes the fibre is by the bag.
This yarn is designated for a hoody sweat shirt for me. It is 100% cotton.
I have alot of stuff planned for me because I am losing so much weight I need new clothes.

When the fibre comes in a skein I have to wind the skein into a ball, and I use this nifty set up to wind the yarn.

And to the best of my ability I organize my stash in a solid fashion.
Yarn that is already measured and organized for projects can be found in zip-lock bags in specific drawers in my studio.

Specialty fibres are stored together.
All of these are designated for clothes for me.
The silky wool is for a shadow knit scarf in the Linux penguin design for Alex.

This is all 100% cotton fibre wound in project sizes to make dish cloths, face cloths, and towels and spa cloths and soap bags. I keep the patterns for these in the drawer with the yarn.
These are great quick knits for gifts and for waiting room time-filling on appointment days.

The drawers seem endless, and filled to the brim. Every yarn whore has the same huge stash. Why? Because if you know what you want to make and can get a bargain, take advantage of it...
It means there is plenty of bargain fibre in many a knitters closet just waiting to be made up into a designated project.
This top drawer is baby yarn. All for my kids. I will soon begin making projects to put away in their hope chests, just in case I am not up to knitting when they have their families.

The lower drawers are sock yarn and shirts yarn.
I got these yarns on a by the bag sale before the distributor stopped carrying them in Canada.

Knitters don't usually just knit.
The other part of my studio is for scrapbooking and jewelry making.

The last stash drawers are for holiday and craft yarn.
This is yarn in primary colours, and festive colours.
These fibres will be a synthetic yarn so it is easy to maintain.

This antique dresser was mine as a little girl.
Carl and I had it refinished 25 yrs ago.
This dresser contains every leaflet knitting pattern book or magazine I own.
Some are very very old.
I keep the most current and hard cover books in my bedroom on a bookshelf.

Any visitor here would find a basket or two with current projects tucked away in them

And there is always one or two projects near my chair, where I watch TV.

This is a cardigan I am finishing for me.

Just Carded Sliver is here too. Waiting to be made into miniature felted toys.

The collection of crocheted doilies my Mother-In-Law, who is 95 yrs old, has made for me to sell on ebay. Soon these will be put up on the Motivated Motion dot com and dot ca sites and sold on ebay.

This is a tank I am making for my friend.

Teddies Teddies Teddies

Below is how I made my first needle felted teddy.

Needle felting is a technique of matting pure fibre into a toy by poking it with a barbed needle, felting the fibres...ever-shrinking the teddy to a miniature collectable.

Here is the beginning of a teddy body, and I am attaching his arms
follow along in the photos to see him come to life and finally become my Mom's present.

This is a felting needle. It has a sharp triangular tip with barbed sides.

This is the book I got with my first kit

My little ball of fluff is already looking bear!

He is the same size as the scoop of a teaspoon!

I have really small hands. They are the size of a 10yr old's hands.
He is the same height as my thumb. My thumb is not quite 2 inches high.

Here he is holding a Toonie coin.

I am beginning to shape one paw.

The right leg is poked dencer than the left. Soon the left will be the same.

To fatten his belly I add more fluff.

Cam loved the first teddy so much. He asked me to make a miniature of his own teddy bear Pinky. Pinky is a GUND bear. This is the beginning of my Pinky miniature.

The two bears sit together. You can see Pinky is even smaller than the first bear.

I embroidered the nose of the bear, and I sewed in glass eyes. They are soo small.....these eyes.

Grum's Birthday and Mother's Day Combined

Every year we have a day with my Mom just before Mother's Day. We do a combined Mother's Day and birthday celebration. My Mom was born on May 6th, 1940.

With Mom's gift I gave her the bear.
She loved it.
She named the bear Sandy Bear.
My Mom wanted a bear with a name like her's, Sandra.

We got her a card with a video of newsreals from 1940. It was really interesting to watch.

My Mom loves slippers. She like a specific kind, so we got her some. Plus the video "The Golden Compass" and some moisturizing cream.

Alex and Cam and I had a great time with their "Grum" (what they call her instead of grandma). Mom and Dad also had a celebration dinner of Swiss Chalet chicken and cake!

http://motivated-motion.blogspot.com/2008/05/post-you-have-been-waiting-for-stash.html