Mood:  a-ok

Something really cool happened on Saturday.  My hubby and I had to take his mom to the vehicle licence place and it's boring waiting in a long line so I decided to take a walk along the trail along forwell creek, beside the building. There were signs of a receded spring flood, tufts of dead dry grass coagulated in the Y's of tree branches all facing the same way, the ends pointing in the direction of the rushing water.  The path was rimed with ice and the tracks of people and dogs were frozen in high relief. Among the tracks were the hoof prints of a deer, cracked through the frost.  Aha!  A deer had been through very recently!  I looked around for more deer signs.  In the underbrush was a clear low path, the brush bent backwards making a tunnel through the thin undergrowth.  I followed this trail to a spot on the south facing side of an esker and found the deer beds.  Deer beds are unmistakable once you know what to look for, patches of ice, the wrinkled skin pattern in the ice, the little bits of fur, it's quite obvious.

Meanwhile as i am observing the deer signs, I am oblivious to the fact that I am being observed myself.  When I finally became aware that i was being watched I turned to the sound of clattering hoofs.  I was just in time to briefly look face to face with a big old buck with large antler buds. He turned and ran just as i saw him.

This isn't the first time I've been face to face with a deer.  They are quite active in the early spring.  The entire walk reminded me of the song by Gordon Lightfoot, Pussywillows, cattails, water in the woodland...it was cool and damp and smelled of mud and green growing things.  There was some barbarae vulgaris, or wintercress growing in the meadow, just past the bridge beyond the eaves of the forest.  On the meadow side I saw a skunk wandering through not more than twenty feet in front of me.  I don't know which got my heart racing faster, the big old buck or the skunk! The skunk ambled into the hummocks and tussocks beyond the edge of the path.

Friday was very warm, up to 18C according to one Time and temp sign.  Shaggy...I mean BEN got his haircut!  We did a lot of puddle jumping!  Much of the snow is gone and what's left is mostly black and muddy. 

Another sign of spring: I have gone bead-crazy again.  My muse hit me on the head and forced me into making the crystal and geode necklace.  I'm now working on a piece made with a big heart shaped blue goldstone, blue crystals, canary crystals and blue goldstone beads.  Blue goldstone looks like a rock filled with stars.  The heart is full of stars and I want the piece to be like a heart full of stars.  When people look at it I can tell them I am wearing a heart of stars and that will be poetic and evocative. Or lame, one of the two.

I also have some butterflies made of carved moonstones.  Moonstones are a milky opal.  They aren't full of fire, like australian opals, but they have a milky multicolour aurora in them. I'm going to place the butterflies on some ballpins and have them floating away from a thicker chain with crystal bead intervals.  I want tit to look like the butterflies are escaping the necklace, flying away from the chain.

I also have a some tektites.  No,  not THOSE tektites, these aren't the bad guys from some retro video game, the tektites I'm talking about are are volcanic rocks, they are from the magma that splashes up with an asteroid crashes into the earth and breaks through the crust.  They are a matte black and have little holes and tunnels in them.  They aren't sharp edged and foamy like pumice, these holes are irregular.  I'm not sure what I will do with these, maybe combine them with some black and gold leafed fimo beads.

Lastly, I have a few crystal wands.  These are slightly turquoise, about an inch long and a quarter inch wide.  They have traces of their growing matrix on the one end and the other end is sharply pointed.  I think I will use epoxy glue to attach bails and then use them to make matching earrings and a pendant necklace.

And that's all for today.  Later!

Posted by lincatz at 11:48 AM EDT

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Mood:  not sure

It's raining.  You know what this means: It's not snowing.  This is a cause for much rejoicing and much celebration.  Or it's the cause of that huge puddle on the street.  This also means that some of the snow should melt away, leaving us with only five foot snow banks instead of the ten foot banks we've had all winter.

Dave and Dan both have colds, sore throats, sneezing, raspy coughs.  So who wants to start a pool for when I get the cold?  Wednesday?  Thursday?  I'll put ten bucks on Wednesday at midnight!

Since Monday is depressing, and rainy mondays are also depressing, even if the rain means winter is mostly over, here's a neat little game to make monday a little less grey and a little more colourful: An interactive collection of Mad Al Jaffe Fold-Ins.  just place the mouse on the right side, drag and drop and see the fold in magic!  Back in Mad Mgazine's golden age of 1965 to 1985 the fold in were one of the many highlights of the magazine.  Always brilliantly and cleverly executed they always conveyed a pointed and often timeless message.  Years later many of these fold ins are still relevant to today's news stories.  Number two, where the bloodiest battles are being fought, was originally referring to vietnam, today there is still relevance in the Iraq/Afghanistan debacle the  world finds itself in, having learned nothing from vietnam.  And the election battles this time are just as brutal.  Some of the mid sixties early seventies fold ins are quite trippy and reflect how mainstream drug culture had become in that era. 

We still have a bunch of old Mads hanging around somewhere, dating from 1968 to about 88.  I can't bear to throw them out even though they have been read and enjoyed to shreds.  The kids read them when they were teens.  We all noticed how similar the Lord of the rings Movies were to Mad's long ago "The Ring and I" musical, and they loved Star Wars, the empire strikes Out and some of the other stories and cartoons.  Mad is but a shadow of what it once was, the edge is gone, the bite is more like old man gums rather than shark tooth sharp.

We didn't do much on the weekend.  We turned off most of our lights at eight o'clock, Dan had to use his laptop by candlelight...so many of these so called "grass roots" eco drives seem to be nothing more than pissing in the ocean, if you'll pardon mon Francaise.  On the news there was some little kid parroting what he heard at a school's Earth hour assembly, something about a home using the same amount of electricity in one day as a McDonald's sign uses in one hour and that's why we had to turn off our lights for one hour.  I'm not sure about his facts, but it seems to me that the problem isn't home lighting, but too many McDonalds (and others) signs gobbling up too many kilowatts simply to tell us Billions and billions served bad food.  I's quite ironic That Branson...the guy from Virgin started the big "flick off" campaign, when his store signs are huge electricity wasters.  Something not right, somehow the blame is being deflected and attention taken away from the biggest electricity wasters.  Changing home light bulbs to those awful buzzing popping flickering compact fluorescents is not going to help when the biggest consumers and wasters of electricity is business and industry.  Do those office towers and shopping centers and stores really need all the lights on all day and all night?

So that's all i have to say today.  not much, i know.  but the snow is melting and I have started some flower seeds, so that's good, isn't it?  Later!

Posted by lincatz at 11:55 AM EDT

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Mood:  caffeinated

Hi!  It's thursday!  I like thursdays.  Thursday has always been my favourite day.  I've never been a big fan of Wednesdays.  Tuesdays are okay, they think they are far better than they really are because they come after monday.  Monday isn't such a bad day, it would be far more enjoyable if it began an hour later than it did.  I dunno about saturday, it's a mini van driving soccer mom who has scheduled too many thing in one day and is too much of a rush to get somewhere that it ends up nowhere.

Next week is the big Kitchener german Christmas Market at city hall.  The air will be filled with the smell of smoked pork chops, caramel popcorn, all sorts of goodies.  And there will be plenty of german language pop music, the kind with the accordions and the polka type beat...all the songs sound the same and they are in german.  And here's the website!  I always like to get a few traditional glass German ornaments, especially glass birds.  They may not be featured in the latest issue of Martha Stewart, but there's something special about german glass ornaments that makes them trump whatever the latest fad ornament theme.  And why not?  The christmas tree has its origins in far more ancient german pagan yule traditions.

Last time we met Ben and his english class there and then met up with Dan.  This year ben and I will be going later on either thursday of friday evening, meeting Dave and then coming home after spending some time freezing our asses off looking around and shopping.  Every year the have the festival during the first big cold spell of the year.

In case you didn't know, today is official Square Dancing Day.  As someone who was a kid in school in the late sixties, I was forced to learn square dancing.  For some reason square dancing was part of the required curriculum at that time.  No one knows why, and it's no longer part of the gym curriculum, but for some reason at one time square dancing was considered essential to a student well rounded education.

What else?  Oh yeah Project Runway US featured men's wear!  That's a first!  Men's wear is much different from women's you can't just drape a bunch of fabric, tack it together and call it a suit.  Suits require much more skill and technical ability.  It was okay, so far there's nothing really outstanding in this latest incarnation of the show.

And CSI:New York...I am of two minds, first they changed Mac's life story, and it's too bad the whole episode didn't match the intensity of the final ten minutes.  It was cute the way the guy used the same laser arrangement Mac used in the Die Hard episode, but I could see the ending coming from a mile away, once they brought the brother in from Chicago I knew he would be the one shot by the elaborate laser trap.  All in all, a not too bad conclusion to the 333 story line.  I really appreciate that Flack is getting more face time...he's hot.

Dave's going to be home tomorrow!  Yay! That's all for now.  I have to thread my sewing machines.  Bye!

Posted by lincatz at 12:02 PM EST

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Mood:  not sure

All I can say is that all television should be discontinued it's reached its peak with CSI:New York's Second Life episode.  Television has reached some sort of nexus point and nothing else will ever come close.  Second Life...also know and no real life in some circles.  Between time travel, James Bond cars and now an episode that mostly took place in the cyber world, this is either stunningly brilliant...or stunningly stupid.  I can't make up my mind which.  All I know is television has entered a new era...

Now, about the world series  Don't care.  You can't make me care.  If I hear one more thing about fenway park being holy baseball ground or whatever I'll shriek!  I don't care who wins, as long as it was not the Yankees.  The yankees are not there, so baseball season is over for me.  I'd like to see boston get bostOWNED! simply because they were so stupid that they thought lit bright pics of Mooninites were terrorist threats.  I have a bostowned pic somewhere:

Cool!  There it is! So yesterday i went to Bead Bazaar in Waterloo.  I did not need beads, so I only got a few.  I also went to the art store and got a bigger sketch book.  The store is having their anniversary sale so I also got a fridge magnet and a clear plastic artist's pallet with the store logo on it.  I resisted the allure of the yarn shop, after all I'm going to the needlework show.  Because Dave asked, here's a map with all the parking:

We can print it later as I have it saved now 'kay Dave?

Now it's off to usenet to see if there's anything interesting out there.  I posted a rant on a group and then proceeded to be unable to get on usenet for a few days as the free server I use crapped out. It's back on now.  I have to see what kind of crap i stirred up.  i posted a rant against faith based ontario schools in one group and somehow it now being cross posted to at least eight groups, including a programming group?!?  I don't get it. I was nominated for a kook award but no one seconded it and it was removed for lack of kookness.  that's sad; I need to try harder.  My biggest regret in life will be that I was never an awful site of the day, a portal of evil site, or a usenet kook. 

And that's all for today...I now must go out and post anti PETA rants on fashion groups. Ta! 

Posted by lincatz at 12:28 PM EDT

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Mood:  a-ok

My kitty now hates me.  I accidentally stepped on her and she spent all of yesterday hiding from me.  I went searching for her because kats hide when they are hurt or sick, and I was worried.  Ben and I searched high and low and I finally asked Lucky to lead me to her.  His tail stuck straight up in the air and he trotted up the stairs, turning and looking at me and thinking "follow me!  I know where she is!" so we followed him up and he went to closet and stuck his nose in and thought..."she's in there look!"  I looked and she wasn't there.  I told him she wasn't there so he took me to a pile of dirty towels (where she was the day before and thought, "this is her favourite place to sleep" and I said. "No Lucky...that's YOUR favourite place to sleep." and he thought back, "well FINE!  I'm having a sleep then you kat stepper onner!"  I found her behind Dan''s bedroom curtains on his window sill with her nose up in the air.  She was avoiding me and Lucky was helping her.  He's always thinking at me like that when I talk to him.  And I hear him as clearly as if he speaks out loud.

From My NatGeo newsfeed...ancient skull fuels theory homo sapiens interbred with neandertals.  And to quote a farker...and their decedents ran for the Kansas board of education.  Actually, it breaks down some more of the conceit that H. sapiens is somehow different and special.  We aren't. There isn't any difference between us and the cavman...as anyone who's ever attended a monster truck show can tell you.   The Geico cave man nods in approval, check his rolex and realizes he's late for his cricket match.

It's the long weekend!  I have no idea what we will be doing or if we will be going anywhere, but I'm certain some of it will be spent sitting in a car while driving to or from somewhere that is not home. I hope as we drive we don't see any of these road signs.  Especially the bottom sign of page three.  Although there used to be a one way street off Weber that terminated at a dead end sign at the train tracks with no streets coming onto or off of this one way street.  Hasn't everyone felt at one point or another that life is a dead end one way street?  OOOOOO!  How EMO is that? a dead end one way street!  Get out the eye liner and the black t shirt!

Oh yes, here's the website for the atelier of Lesage, master embroiderer house.  Ther's a school, almost 7000 euros to learn hook-needle couturier embroidery. I think it would be worth it! There's a couple books available, and a couple kits.  Kool!

okay, so I'm as much an atheist as the next person, provided the next person is Richard Dawkins or Sam Harris or Austin Cline...but there's something not quite right about these t-shirts...something a bit like Hester Pryn was forced to wear in The Scarlet Letter. They even mention the scarlet letter, and the idea of outing...didn't gays get a copyright on that one?  I dunno...I like the flying spaghetti monster shirts better.  When I wore that one I had stranger come up to me and remark that they too were atheists pastafarians.  Here's a whole bunch of far better atheist t-shirts from Cafe Press.

And that's all for now!  I just got a notice that my website's terms of service has been updated...and it's three scrolls worth of tiny tiny words...looking for magnifying glass...

Posted by lincatz at 12:09 PM EDT

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Mood:  cheeky

In the continuing saga of the rise of our guitar playing overlords who control time and space, Brian May has finished and submitted his PHD thesis for peer review.  It's nice to know he has a good education to fall back on in case this whole rock star thing doesn't work out.  He needs to break free, after all! At least he should break free of those bunny slippers.

Those are some mighty fine lookin wimmin...

Merriam Webster has repaired their new words web page so I can now feature a link to the Dictionary site with Ginormous.  Also being promoted to real word status is Bollywood, telenovela, and smackdown!   

Ben received his final report card yesterday and he has officially finished high school.  he has all his credits, his community service and passed his grade ten test.  He will be graduating in October or November, whenever the official ceremony is.  Not bad at all, considering how questionable his future was when he started school.  His average ended up being in the seventies, which is fine.  We never expected him to be on the honor roll or end up in the Ontario Scholar ranks; indeed anything over 70 is outstanding for a kid with so many challenges as he went through school.  Next is signing him up for a special mentoring program called "jobtrack" which helps kids like Ben find full time well paying jobs. 

And that's all for today.  Once again, just a tiny little entry.  Have I mentioned how much I adore my new sewing machine? He makes the biggest jobs go so fast!  and he gives me such amazing results.  Like I said, I don't know why I waited so long to get him!  And that should give you an idea as to what I've been spending much of my time on....

Posted by lincatz at 10:59 AM EDT

Updated: Thursday, 12 July 2007 11:02 AM EDT

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Mood:  hug me

I can tell it's monday.  I got up, grabbed what I wanted to wear...and there was a large barbecue sauce stain on it from the night before.  I got another dress from the closet, and then tried to stick my head through the armhole and my arm through a buttonhole, then between a pair of buttonholes.  When I got things straightened around I then poked myself in the sternum with a bra wire that burst forth from its casings.  Ouch.  Then when I get down here, I crash the computer on start up not once, but twice!  Then I go to my temp internet files and discover they are no longer purging themselves and they are a bloated 500MBs in size.  And I have 67 emails in my hotmail account and half are junk and five have viruses and I have three flames yelling at me and for what I don't know because the writing is so freaking awful. 

To day is fabric cutting day.  I cut out four patterns based on the basic shorts block that I made on friday.  I had to raise the center-back waist seam a bit,  from force of habit I make it for a bigger ass and slightly swayed back, now all I need is the slightly swayed back.  My ass isn't quite the bubble ass it used to be.  So for much of the day I'll be cutting those and several other things.  snip snip snip...my wrist will be aching by this evening!

On saturday i went to Fabricland for a while. I got some brown and pink boho border print.  It was fifty percent off so I got twice as much!  The border is on both selvage so I have four times as much to work with!  I also got three types of twill for shorts and a couple of different cotton voiles to make matching blouses for the boho print.  There were scads of border print fabrics there.  ALmost all were simple skirt weight fabrics, I can imagine it would be super easy to make one seam patternless skirts from these. 

Mr Anderson and I are getting along famously.  I'm beginning to wonder why I waited so long to welcome him into the sewing room.  He sews and sews and sews with nary a complaint.  One of us still has a bad habit of putting the bobbin in the bobbin case the wrong way, but I'm working against forty years of habit.  I'm having no trouble with the speed, either fast, slow or anything in between.  My only complaint is dragging my chair between the new machine and my old sewing room.  I think I might get a new chair just for Mr Anderson.  He's so good, he turns jobs that used to take hours into quick little joys that take minutes.  I'm trying to get into the "pinless sewing" habit.  It takes practice but it's really the best when working with a machine like this.

We also went to the farmer's market on Saturday.  I got a large bag of dried Morels.  Black Morels, the ones that are richer, earthier and smokier tasting.  The guy who sold them is a fungophile and has a mushroom farm because he loves fungus.  We discussed the different shrooms out there, he said he's looking for a mushroom hunting buddy.  Dave gave me one of those looks, so I don't think that's a good idea!  Never get two fungophiles talking about shrooms, or they could talk for hours. They were simply spectacular in my pasta sauce.

That's all for today. I have far too much work to do.  Later my brother is bringing me a CD of the pictures from Rockwood so tomorrow will be a picture day.  But for now, it's laundry day. Again.

Posted by lincatz at 10:52 AM EDT

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Mood:  chatty

I'm back!  I've been busy.  My new baby is all together and I'm learning how to best exploit him. 

So what have I been up to that doesn't involve the motorized monster?  Quite a bit, actually.  I think I was mostly out of the house everyday last week which was quite foolish considering the sore throat and horrible cold I had.   I did quite a bit of garden work, the seeds I planted around march break are mostly ready for he garden in spite of the setback they had when winter made an appearance in April.

My kid went to Toronto with his uncle.  The went to the ROM, shopping on Yonge, and then to Medieval Times dinner theater.  He had a good time.  He went to Sam's for a CD, everything is on sale, no surprise there.  he got Guns'n'Roses Appetite for Destruction.  He went to a comic shop and got the first Sandman graphic Novel.  I insisted the kids wait until they were eighteen to read that one.  There's a high level of violence and I wanted to be sure they were mature enough before reading it.  Both the boys adore Death, sort of funny, isn't it?

I was at my Mom's on friday... they're going on a three week trip out west next week.  The avon lady was there and she was showing us all kind of new things.  She waned us to try their b5rand new sunless tanning spray, unlike all the others it gives a natural glow, not that horrible orange look from other tanners.  So she sprayed a bit on the back of my one hand so I could see for myself how natural this tan looked.  I forgot all about it until the next morning when I looked at my hand...and it was dark burnt orange, like the shag carpeting in our first apartment.  I ran upstairs and scrubbed it off.  Later on Friday Dan and I went out to look at a dead animal on the train tracks near Wellington.  Dan saw it the day before and thought it was a giant rat.  I wanted to see for myself, turns out it was a giant muskrat, nowhere near any creeks or streams. 

Saturday we went to the market.  It was quite hot and steamy.  It's funny how many more vendors are there in the warm months and how few in the cold months.  It's also funny the number of people selling counterfeit goods.  Levi's for five dollars a pair?  I don't think so!  And those plastic chanel earrings...ther wa one place selling jewellery...five pieces for a dollar!  Wonder what back of a truck they took that pile from?  Most was cheap junk.  Oh yeah...would you buy lobsters out of the back of a junky pick up truck from a dirty looking guy on a street corner?  Me neither.  We did get a bag of old fashioned gum balls.  My favourite are the pink, sweet little mouthfuls of pure childhood.

Yesterday we went out for a hike.  Not really a hike, the Mill Race trail in St Jabobs is like trail 101 for dummies.  But there's plenty of wild life if you know where to look. And if you walk slowly and quietly.  There are turtles who rest on the stream bank in the sun.  ONe looked over at me every time i said, Hello Turtle!  there are trails in the underbrush, made by small mammals.  There are runs that go from the river into the stream, made by Muskrats.  Sometimes you can see them running over the trail and sliding into the water like children at a waterpark.  Last year we saw a Muskrat lazily swimming along side us.  He swam as fast- or slow- as we walked. There were frogs that called Bung! Bung! Boing! It's still too early in the year fro the big throated jugorum! of the bull frog.  No interesting birds to speak of, it was the wrong time of day.

The speed with which some people walk the tail is startling.  How can you see anything or admire anything?  They walk with the speed of someone downtown attempting to get to the bank before it closes.  And other walk slowly with the intent of seeing wildlife, but they are so loud and noisy they scare everything away.  Kids have an excuse, but the bunch of morons in their tourist duds yelling about seeing animals and where are the animals and then blaming global warming for them not seeing any animals...that so stupid.

The antique store has two things I like.  One is a 1920's art deco cabinet in blonde wood with red accents.  There's amber glass on the top of the curio shelve on either side, and a chest of drawers in the middle, a practical little storage unit that  with a wonderful old charm.  It was less than three hundred dollars.  The other piece I want is an Art Nouveau highboy/curio/secretary combo.  It has a glass front on one side, drawers under the curio cabinet, and a drop front desk area on the other side.  Again, plenty of practical storage.  And there are classic art nouveau swirls and squiggles.  When we saw it last year it was a thousand dollars.  This year it's just a bit under six hundred.  The antique market is collapsing.  There's no way we could buy two similar pieces brand new for under a thousand dollars.   I don't know which I like better. The twenties piece would fit in better with our home, but the art nouveau piece is simply so unique...I've never seen anything like it before.

And that's all for today.  I have some work to do.  I have five pounds of asparagus to freeze.  Nothing is better on for christmas dinner than asparagus that was frozen fresh in June.  And I need to wind some bobbins and learn how to thread the bobbin case, how to change needles, all that stuff. 

Later!

Posted by lincatz at 10:41 AM EDT

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Mood:  a-ok

Okay...so here's what's happening with the black fabric.  I went through a couple old Burda WOF magazines.  Found a pair of pants for stretch sateen.  Traced the pattern.  Laid out the fabric on the floor.  Amused and entertained the cat with the fabric on the floor.  Tossed the cat onto the back porch. Cleaned up the pins she spilled on the floor, brushed the cat fur off the fabric, and once again laid the fabric on the floor.  Pinned the pattern.  drew the seam allowances around the pattern pieces with chalk.  Cut the fabric.  Took the fabric downstairs.  Set up the regular sewing machine with the proper thread and needle.  Set up serger with proper thread.  attempted to change needle.  dropped needle into inner mechanics of machine.  Lost needle forever.

Sewing has been the easy part.  In fact, this is so easy the hardest part has been adding some level of challenge to the project.   So far I've made the pockets curved and I've added a couple patch pockets and I've changed the closure from an invisible  side zipper to a more standard fly front..  But so far the most challenging thing is staying awake because this is boring sewing.  I could have made it like the khaki pants or the mauve pants, but the reality is I want a very basic pair of sporty pants that I can wear with a t shirt for everyday or that can be dressed up when the need arises.

A question from the peanut gallery...no.  I would not recommend dyeing crimpelene polyester.  That yellow is AGE, and all the bleaching and or dyeing will not negate the effects of age. The fabric is likely stiff and brittle, possibly even a bit sticky and tacky feeling, again that's age, not dirt.  Polyester is notoriously difficult to dye, and the reputation is well deserved.  Because of the denier(thickness) of the fibers, they can't absorb enough dye to give a true colour.  If it even absorbs any of the dye!  Some older polyesters are dye resistant.  Instead of a rich Green, you'll end up with a sickly yellow green, or worse, with a sickly yellow.  So no, don't dye crimpelene.

No.  I'm not sending the nice people of project runway canada an audition tape, even though they extended the deadline and they are begging for people to enter.  Listen, an audition tape is expensive, why can't we just send in an application and a small look book and  if we get past that THEN we can go to the expense of an audition video?  There are too many like me saying that it's quite expensive for the first round of auditions.  And using a cell phone camera or a video camera used for kid's birthday videos would look horribly un-professional.  So no...I'll see how big a mess the first season is, and then I'll try for the second.  Look at all the break out stars from the first season, the ones who didn't get to the final three, like um...the cancer dress girl and then there's the um... who made the swimsuit that was a rip off of another famous designer...and then there was the boring wedding dress...andwhoever that postal guy was in season two...the only one who was memorable was Daniel Franco and that's because of his return appearance in season TWO!

I mentioned the padawan's place before, but it's been a while since I visited it.  I'm going through all my old bookmarks to see which ones are still active and which ones have changed and I was pleasantly surprised by all the changes here.  The Padawan's Place is a site devoted to Star Wars costumes, including the original instructions for making jedi costumes.  It's got plenty of detailed photos of Padme's many dresses, some of which are simply spectacular.  reading the details of these gown, most would cost thousands to buy.  All are made by hand featuring the finest haute couture sewing techniques.  No expense was spared in her wardrobe, and in the third movie she wears some of the most glamorous maternity dresses ever seen. The work put into each of the dresses is simply staggering, hand dyed silks, devore velvets, smocking, beading, embroidery, lace, leather... It must have taken months for each dress.  It's hard to say which is my favourite, but the picnic gown would be near the top, it's light, flowery, carefree, and far from the ceremonial gown she spent much of the movie in.  My least favourite was the stupid leather corset..."stop looking at me like that it makes me uncomfortable" and i wanted Anakin to reply, "stop wearing a gown that looks like your boobies will pop out of!"

One of my favourite science awards is the "ignobel" awards.  They go to scientists who study strange things, such as the ones who patented the comb-over, the guy who spent fifty years watching tar drip, and the good people at MIT who study everything from alarm clocks that run away to new and fun ideas for jello.  The alarm clock that runs away is an invention of particular brilliance, especially for anyone who's turned off the alarm and then slept another two hours by mistake. Now the clock is available for sale, and you can find it here!  They call it clocky...and while it's cute, it's diabolical!  Everyone needs a clocky!

So I have a kid in college.  Did the latest college shooting make me panic.  No.  Not in the least.  seriously.  College is far safer than his daily trip to the local bus terminal.  That place is crawling with gangs all the time.  Yikes!  he told me that the charles street station was crawling with cop cars, now we know why.  That's why you should never take your samurai sword out in public.  That's not a knife...this is a knife....is that a samurai sword in your pants or are you just pissed off? 

So that's all for one day.  I have to finish up the yawn pants and try to stay awake.  Later!

Posted by lincatz at 10:37 AM EDT

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Mood:  chillin'

It's friday!  Finally!  This week has done everything to frustrate me.  Yesterday needless to say; was no exception.  Something happened that completely messed up my plans for the next four days.  Needless to say, once you see the pictures, you will understand why I'm much more accommodating and accepting of this setback. I didn't get to the sewing store yesterday, and it looks like Tuesday next week will be the earliest I get there.  But I'm not complaining. 

I didn't do any sewing, but I did get a couple drawings and sketches finished.  Now all I need to do is colour them and roughly plan the pattern pieces on graph paper.  I've been putting some of my favourite together into a book.  I want it to look good, and somewhat professional, but I don't want it to be TOO professional, like I'm more interested in scrap-booking as a hobby then fashion design as a profession.  I don't want to be like my one cousin who went to her interview with Ryerson with not a single garment but a professionally bound book of drawings.  (I don't want to learn how to sew!  I want to be a fashion designer!)  So I'm putting some of my best together in a book.  I don't have a lot of "inspiration pages", because I don't keep a bunch of paper snippets everywhere,  other than in my head.

So here's the first picture, and why I wasn't upset when my plans for the day went flying out the window. they went flying out, but no one could see them due to the terrible winter storm.  This is looking out the back to the garage, and the mess we woke up to.  The snow came down in whiteouts from about nine yesterday to about six in the evening.  Then there was the briefest of breaks, and then the ice pellets and freezing rain started.  By one in the middle of the night, the wind was howling and tree branches were flying everywhere.

Here's the big maple tree in the back, sporting a lovely quarter inch coat of ice on all its branches.  We didn't sleep for about an hour or so, until the wind dies down.  It was loud, we could here things rattling and banging into the side of the house.  Oh yeah, and to make matters worse, on Tuesday I twisted my back when the snow bank I was stepping across gave out from under my foot and i twisted my back a bit and pulled a muscle.  Sadly, it was the same  muscle I pulled in the summer.  Happily, I don't need to go to the college three times next week.

So here's the mess of branches left by the trailer.  The snow shovels are iced firmly into place, the first thing we will need to do is chop them out of their icy prison.  You can see a couple footprints in the ice...Dave barely dented the layers of ice and snow.

And finally we have one more picture.  Around nine last night someone with a snow blower blew out all the sidewalks on the two streets.  Now what's left behind is a skating rink on the sidewalk.  Below is poor Dave attempting to make a dent in the three inches of ice on the sidewalk.  He put the shovel away, brought out the bag of salt, and salted the walk.  Later the kids will need to scrape up some of the ice and lay down a bit more salt.  Behind him you can see the icy mess the streets are in, that's about a good foot of icy, wet, salty slush on the street.  Did I mention that all the schools are closed, most of the highways, and many work places?  Dave's place wasn't closed, so he walked in.  His doctor's appointment was canceled, no reason to kill yourself to make yourself healthy.  Or something.  And for photo enhancers, the picture is dark and muddy for a reason.  it's dark and muddy outside.

It's supposed to rain and snow again today.  Dan has more homework so he'll be dominating the computer again.  A couple of his mid-terms are open book at home on the computer exams.  This is in no way easier than an at school timed test.  It's actually much harder.  I do feel for Dan's girlfriend.  her midterm work needs to be done at the college, and I don't know if it's open today.  So Dan has two or three more exams and tests to do on line. I don't know how anyone could do this without the computer or internet access. 

SO what else is going through the cat box?  Not much.  I'm still peeved at the way the week has gone, or rather not gone, but the storm puts it into perspective.  Sometimes there are things that are beyond my control, and life is what it is sometimes.  ~*sigh*~

Here's something disgusting and interesting at the same time.  What's in a bag of microwave popcorn, before it's popped.  I thing the comment about how it looks like a baby diaper is the most accurate.  Hot air popped with a drizzle of butter and sprinkle of salt is still my favourite.

Now I'm craving popcorn. Oh yes, my CD player works quite well.  It plays CD's encoded with MP3 music.  this means I can stuff huge amounts of music on one CD and not have to carry a bunch of CD's with me, which can get heavy and bulky.  I should go and haul out a bunch of older drawings and put them in my book.  I have so many design sketches and ideas cluttering up everything, and i don't want to get rid of any of them because I often find they inspire newer and better ideas...I just need to organize them in an --um  organized way. 

Later! Edited to fix picture glitch.

Posted by lincatz at 10:13 AM EST

Updated: Friday, 2 March 2007 10:59 AM EST

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