A weekend at the cottage is never complete without certain required traditions, and the creation of some new ones. Here are some of my memories from our most recent cottage expedition, to celebrate “Old Man Wallace’s” 30th birthday.

Getting “While you’re upped,” which means getting sent for a beer when you’re not actually up.

Colin and Aiden getting inducted to the “I’ve tipped in a canoe” club, of which I have been a proud member for years.

Ollie trying to eat a caterpillar, a chipmunk and that ugly bug with wings we found in the cabin.

Learning that Aiden does not require sleep. We think he’s a cylon.

Adam taking record 2 Gigabytes worth of pictures in 4 days.

An 8-foot bonfire for no reason on a perfectly warm night.

Sleeping 15 people in a cottage that is supposed to sleep 10.

Adam endlessly poking the fire because he can’t let it alone, and me endlessly bugging Adam about poking the fire because I can’t let it alone.

Watering the flowers in the rain because “it was a directive.” The weather was great, except for the fantastic thunderstorm as we were leaving, and it was a perfect mix of hilarity and clarity, of laughing so hard our cheeks hurt and sitting still for almost a full hour to stare at the perfect sunset. With Colin & Emily’s move to Oregon just around the corner, our cottage days together are numbered. But even when they are over, we’ll still have all these stupid memories to keep us laughing.

From Adam ’s most recent Twitter update:

“For sale: 1 slightly used 15″ crt monitor. Has only been on the front curb of my driveway in the rain once.”

From the back of Adam ’s pouch of Big League Chew:

Sitting in a bullpen one night 25 years ago, Portland Mavericks lefthander Rob Nelson, and teammate Jim Bouton, the former New York Yankee All-Star, wanted something really different and fun to chew. So they came up with a great idea - shredded bubble gum in a pouch - and called it Big League Chew. It soon became a hit with ballplayers everywhere. 

Over 450 Million Pouches later, Big League Chew celebrates its 25th anniversary! More and more professional and amateur players in all sports are turning to Big League Chew, a fun gum that keeps your mouth from getting dry when the game is on the line.

So now you know.

“Big League Chew is so soft it’s like slime in your mouth.” - Emily

I used my burgeoning skills in Photoshop to make a few buttons for anyone who wants to link to either the Etsy Sellers Blog List or The Etsy Canadian Shops List, to add a bit of colour to your beautiful blogs and help promote the lists to encourage people to add their shops and blogs. If you look to the right (yup, right there on the sidebar -> See it?) there is a link under the main navigation that says “Link to Us” where you can pick up the buttons for yourself. I plan on adding text boxes with the exact code to add to your site to make it easy to link, but for now you can just save the pictures (right click, choose “Save Image As”) and use that to link to the pages.   Contact me if you need help adding the link to your site. 

If you would like a different colour button, or a different size to match your blog, just contact me as well and I will whip something up for you. 

This was going to be a “Currently Working On” post, but I guess I am not working on it anymore. I wish I had at least not finished all the etching before it broke. The fact that I was done the piece makes it that much more painful.

So. I joined Twitter. I figured I wasn’t wasting enough time online since I haven’t been fired yet and my husband still knows my name. For the un-initiated, Twitter is essentially the Facebook ‘”status updates” feature and nothing else. It allows me to send little updates (“New items posted to the shop!”) or random musings (“If everything in the universe suddenly doubled in size would you notice?”) or current observations (“There are 50 snails on this stretch of sidewalk”) from the web or my cell and get updates from other people sent to my phone as well, if I want.

I Installed a Plug-in (I’m all about plug-ins this week, aren’t I?) called Twitter Tools that automatically posts an update to Twitter when I write a new blog post and makes a summary blog post each night from my Twitter updates for that day (in case you were wondering what that post was).  You can also use services like Twitterific to update your Twitter, Facebook Status, MSN or Adium Status and Skype Mood all at once.

I swore I wasn’t going to give in and join Twitter, and then I couldn’t remember why I had sworn that. Give in to what? If I don’t like it, I can just stop using it. I know everyone else is doing it too, but that isn’t a reason for me to boycott. I think not doing something because everyone else is is just as silly as doing something because everyone else is. My philosophy for all these viral fads is just do it if you want, and if you don’t want to anymore, stop.

So, if you want to Cyberstalk me, here ya go: (Love to hear from you all)

Blog: www.sixthandelm.com (you already know this one, you’re there now)
Shop: www.sixthandelm.etsy.com
Flickr: www.flickr.com/photos/sixthandelm
Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/home.php?#/profile.php?id=512543545
Twitter: www.twitter.com/sixthandelm
YouTube: www.youtube.com/user/sixthandelm
Trunkt Portfolio: www.trunkt.org/client.listing_detail.cfm/id/2592

Phew. Anything else?

I really need to get a flex shaft since I did that with my clunky old Dremel and now my forearm is numb. I plan on adding more branches to the other sides, once I get the feeling back. I swear I’ll get all these etching pieces I’ve been working on in the shop soon…

I started doodling on this candle holder with my Dremel last night and this is the first of two candle holders I made during my break from woodburning. The pictures aren’t that good because Adam had his “more-expensive-than-anything-else-we-own-so-be-careful-when-you-use-it” camera with him since he was using it at the Much Music Video Awards last night.

My crochet experience has been ongoing, but not extensive, so I thought I’d share my progress here to inspire me to get off my butt and learn more. So far I have only made blankets (and one scarf for Dad) for two reasons. The first reason is that blankets are simple and give you plenty of time to learn the basics. The second reason for sticking to afghans is that I really, really like blankets. I collect them and can’t think of a thing I would like to make more with a crochet hook.

So the only way to get better at crochet if I am only going to make blankets is to make more interesting blankets. I have recently started 4 new blankets (I need to have a few to work on at a time in case I get bored, and I get bored easily) with fancy new stitches learned from Donna Kooler’s book of Afghan patterns (although she didn’t make any of the afghan pattens in the book, so I am not sure why it’s HER afghan book). The pattens include ripple shown above (pretty easy and I actually already knew this one), basket-weave, front-post raised row, and drop-hook (where you skip down and crochet through two rows). I’m going to make that beautiful blanket on the cover, eventually. I’ll keep you posted as I go….

…to think this was a good idea?

And, being boys, I heard this conversation shortly after:

“Okay, Adam , sit down it’s your turn.”
“But that looked like it really hurt!”
“Yeah, it did, A LOT! Sit down…”
“Okay…”

which resulted in this:

Of course, the chief reason these hilarities ensued was likely due to the ball game and drinking too much of this:

One small keg, six people, dry by 3am. .