Monthly Archives: October 2012

Silly Pumpkins …

Posted on October 19, 2012 by | Comments Off on Silly Pumpkins …

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(window sill.. :) )


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Moving right along

Posted on October 19, 2012 by | Comments Off on Moving right along
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I realized with my new smaller footprint desk, I have room to pin smallish quilts on the floor again. To be honest, I like pinning with clamps and the Rubbermaid table much better. I’m planning to quilt this along the zig zag lines in the ditch.

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Weekend Reading

Posted on October 19, 2012 by | Comments Off on Weekend Reading

Ramjeet Raghav, 96-Year-Old Dad, Claims He Is World’s Oldest New Father from The Huffington Post. For reals, y’all.

Wines Worth Dropping a $20 Bill as Easily as an Autumn Leaf from the NY Times.

The Snail Wrangler from the NY Times. This article about a snail rancher kills me.

Empowering Women With A Wriggly New Industry: Worms from Co.Exist.

Making Sleep a Childhood Priority (or Not) from the NY Times.

A Second Act, Stuffed With Pie from the NY Times.

Cost to Prevent All Future Extinctions: $11 per Person? from Mother Jones.

Where Will The Next Pandemic Come From? And How Can We Stop It? from Popular Science.

BOSS RAIL:The disaster that exposed the underside of the boom from The New Yorker. “A high-speed train crash in China unravels years of corruption in the building of the world’s most expensive public-works project.” A Home at the End of Google Earth from Vanity Fair. “Separated from his older brother at a train station, five-year-old Saroo Munshi Khan found himself lost in the slums of Calcutta. Nearly 20 years later, living in Australia, he began a painstaking search for his birth home, using ingenuity, hazy memories, and Google Earth.”  This one is my pick of the week.

The Greatest Fake-Art Scam in History? from Vanity Fair.

What have you read this week that made you wonder?

 

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I just don’t know…

Posted on October 18, 2012 by | Comments Off on I just don’t know…
some sneaky mums behind the false indigo

I feel like I'm always playing catch-up over here, because, well, I'm always playing catch-up over here.

lavender still going

So in no particular order, here's some stuff we've been up to.

We had our first frost of the season on the 13th,

first frost! 10/13/12

frosty grass

frosty thistle

frosty clover, all folded up in the cold

frozen birdbath in Linda's yard

I cobbled together something special for convenient backpack storage out of an old green board I found in our basement when we moved in, and some new lumber and hooks:

a new project...

the alphabet sign progress

the plan...

framed

stained

Almost done!

Still doing some detail work on the letters, but it is already a much loved addition to the dining room!

In family news, I did my first ever 5K walk (with a special walking partner!) while John did the 10K run,

yay! let's go for a long walk together!

Ethan turned six,

Ethan's 6th Birthday Party

and everybody keeps getting bigger!

9/19

super weekend of outside fun

super weekend of outside fun

22 weeks

I'm also in the process of "sprucing up" my loom and hoping to do some more weaving soon. For now though, just testing, testing...

testing the loom with the new heddles

There really are some soapy things in the works, including a whipped soap tutorial, and testing a soap kit from my favorite supplier, but the detailed stuff is proving to be painfully difficult with a small one in the house again, so you'll just have to be a teensy bit patient with me.

And for now, that's all she wrote.

Russian sage and broken trellis

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One Different Pumpkin …

Posted on October 18, 2012 by | Comments Off on One Different Pumpkin …

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Block keepers

Posted on October 18, 2012 by | Comments Off on Block keepers

Design squares block keeper

A week or two ago, Kate kindly pointed me in the direction of a mini design board tutorial. If you’ve ever been to my house, you know I don’t have any bare walls remotely large enough for a design wall of any size so I was quite excited about this tutorial. I was thinking about going to Farmer’s Wife class with 6 or 7 blocks cut out and realized that the version with foam core would not work for me so I built my block keepers with 12 x 12 scrapbook paper and a thick fabric with nap (flannel would work beautifully, I think I used PVU). I’d been having trouble with my previous system (just scrap batting stuffed in a notebook) and these worked a treat. If you want to be extra cautious, try binder clips around the outside during transit. Thanks for the tip Kate!

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murder in the neighborhood

Posted on October 18, 2012 by | Comments Off on murder in the neighborhood

Of crows that is…

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(sorry for the blurry pics!)

They are raucous and incredibly entertaining. Some of them make cronking noises almost like a raven. I think that’s because there are sometimes ravens nearby, and the crows are trying to play with the big boys.

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The Cornell Ornithology Lab has some info, including recorded sounds. The crows around town make caws, calls, and rattles like those, but they also make that cronking sound. I have no idea what it is.

Hmmm… Life Histories of Familiar North American Birds suggests it might be a lovesick crow…

The prolonged ‘car-r———-a———-c——-k’ of a love sick individual in spring, uttered in various tones and drawn out into prolonged gurglings, though somewhat like the call of the young for food is still quite different.

But they do this all year round here…

In a 1923 excerpt at the Life Histories book, Townsend notes this…

The conversational notes of a small group or family of Crows are always entertaining, and the observer is impressed with the extensiveness of their vocabulary and with the variations in their feelings. At times the notes are low and confidential, pleasant and almost melodious, if I may use that word here; again they are raucous and scolding, bursting at times into a veritable torrent of abuse. In the same way, in human conversations, one may, even without understanding the words, be able to interpret the meanings and motives involved.

Maybe I’ll manage to record their crazy noises and play them for somebody who knows about such things.

In the meantime, we also have a super lucky elephant.

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Twenty-five pounds of jasmine rice. Is that a bat hanging on that elephant?

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Probably something you would like…

Posted on October 18, 2012 by | Comments Off on Probably something you would like…

27 Reasons Why Kids Are Actually The Worst Some of these are so funny that I nearly wet my pants!

I don’t want to live in a world where these Melting Wicked Witch cookies by Jennifer McFadden of Death by Cupcake don’t win a Nobel Prize for Pastry.

Softball-sized eyeball washes up on Florida beach Yup. It’s real.

Oh Lord! I have a mad crush on an astrophysicist.

This is the best thing ever from a really funny blog.

Out of Place: Photos of Accidents Waiting to Happen. Very clever.

Variations on Normal. This charming little book is on my wish list.

10 Words You Literally Didn’t Know You Were Getting Wrong.

Jesus Christ, How Many Famous Actors Have Appeared on Law & Order? A fair few, as it turns out.

From the blog Once Upon a Time in War, as is the following pic.

Despite having his restaurant destroyed by German bombs, a Bristol chef continues on.

What is knocking you out this week?

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Review: Reversible Scarves by Audrey Knight

Posted on October 18, 2012 by | Comments Off on Review: Reversible Scarves by Audrey Knight

Reversible Scarves by Audrey Knight, Cooperative Press 2012, 134pp.

Every once in awhile a pattern book comes along that you just know you’ll keep going back to – and Audrey’s Reversible Scarves is one of those.

Audrey presents more than 30 patterns, ranging from simple to intermediate plus, and a plethora of information to empower the knitter to create their own patterns.  She addresses the impact that yarn choice (weight, color, fiber blend and so on) can have on the finished object throughout the book – compare the different mistake rib scarves, for example, or the linen stitch scarves worked in different types of yarn.

Techniques include ribbing, knit/purl textures, cables, lace, slip stitch with multiple colors, and double knitting.  Many of the patterns with charts include, if practical, line by line instructions.

My favorite, I think (though it’s really, really hard to choose!), is the double knit Surprise Stripes scarf, featuring horizontal stripes on one side & vertical on the other.

It’s no surprise that I love the various cabled scarves as well, especially the Braided Cables scarf & the Cables & Knots scarf.

The girly part of me love the ruffled edges of the Double Eyelet and Cables scarf – and the glorious ruffles of Tux!

Would you like to win your own PDF of Reversible Scarves?  Leave a comment on this post by midnight PST October 25th with your THREE favorite scarves.  (I think it’s easier to pick three than just one!)

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Cover Story

Posted on October 18, 2012 by | Comments Off on Cover Story

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They say you can’t judge a book by its cover, but there’s no question that it can make a difference!

What book(s) have your favorite covers? Something that’s perfect for the story, the tone, the colors, the mood…

And did you pick up the book BECAUSE of the cover? Or were you going to read it anyway, and the cover was just serendipitous?


Don’t forget to leave a link to your actual response (so people don’t have to go searching for it) in the comments—or if you prefer, leave your answers in the comments themselves!


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