Happy Valentine's Day

Hat with "Flower"

Just finished a hat for my sister Kristy, (it was suppose to be a Christmas present).  I kinda made up the hat by just doing a plain knit stitch and decreasing it as I got to the top.  The flower is a Drops pattern, only I left the last row of peddles off... I think it was going to be a little too big if I had left it on.  Anyway, Kristy liked it at the size it is.

Good For Your Health

We need to remember how often we need to exercise like this:

They teach this at Stanford University.

  The last lecture was on the mind-body connection - the relationship between stress and disease.
The speaker (head of psychiatry at Stanford) said, among other things, that
one of the best things that a man could do for his health is to be married
to a woman, whereas for a woman, one of the best things she could do for her health was to nurture her relationships with her girlfriends. At first everyone laughed, but he was serious.

Women connect with each other differently and provide support systems that help each other to deal with stress and difficult life experiences. Physically this quality "girlfriend time" helps us to create more serotonin - a neurotransmitter that helps combat depression and can create a general
feeling of well being. Women share feelings whereas men often form
relationships around activities. They rarely sit down with a buddy and talk
about how they feel about certain things or how their personal lives are
going. Jobs? Yes. Sports? Yes. Cars? Yes. Fishing, hunting, golf? Yes. But
their feelings? Rarely.

Women do it all of the time. We share from our souls with our friends,
sisters/mothers, and evidently that is very good for our health. He said
that spending time with a friend is just as important to our general health
as jogging or working out at a gym.

There's a tendency to think that when we are "exercising" we are doing
something good for our bodies, but when we are hanging out with friends, we are wasting our time and should be more productively engaged-- not true. In fact, he said that failure to create and maintain quality personal
relationships with other humans is as dangerous to our physical health as
smoking!

So every time you hang out to schmooze with a gal pal, just pat yourself on
the back and congratulate yourself for doing something good for your health!
We are indeed very, very lucky. Sooooo, let's toast to our friendship with
our girlfriends. Evidently it's very good for our health.

Garden Flower Art

Took pictures of a few flowers in my yard yesterday and decided to mess with them digitally.  I tried some effects I've never tried before.  Such as layering two or three different filters on top of one another.  I really liked the way they turned out!

Newest painting!

Just finished my latest painting.  Started out in watercolor, but things weren't going the way I intended, so I changed to acrylics.  I'm not too sure (as usual) if I like it, but maybe it'll grown on me or maybe it'll grown on somebody else. 

I haven't named it yet, does anybody have an idea.

My First Fruit

For Mother's Day last year my son gave me a tangerine tree.  Low and behold I have all of three tangerines.  I think they still have a way to go before I bite into them.  Take a look............

Spring is around the corner!

Looked out of the window this morning and what did I see, but my iris in bloom.  Just planted them last fall and didn't expect them to bloom until maybe March or April.  We have had a little cooler than normal winter this year --- so who knows what happened.