Voodoo Glove

Christmas is just 2 days away! Craig and I are excitedly waiting for daughter and grandson to arrive tomorrow. The holidays are good for many reasons, but one of the best reasons is family and friends sharing happy times together.

I decided to get a jump start on this year's resolution to henceforth refrain from uttering vile obscenities. I am blessed with a prodigious vocabulary from which I should be able to more creatively shout invectives, engage in character assignation, offer guidance to fellow drivers and reproach miscellaneous poorly guided individuals.

So, last night as I was laying aside my knitting project on the coffee table, I was amazed to realize that, wow, I actually know what each of the many pointy things are and what to do with each one. I have learned a lot over the last couple of years after all.

as I look at this picture all I can think is that is looks like some kind of tortured "Voodoo Glove"

Getting Crafty Again

The weather outside is getting cooler and the urge to nest is growing. We recently splurged on a new flatscreen TV, which necessitated moving all the living room furniture around and re-purposing a shelf unit to hold the TV. One of the attractive features of a flatscreen TV is the clean, streamlined look, which was completely spoiled by the tangled mess of cords we had to hook up to it.

I really like this shelf unit we got from IKEA a while ago, but the see-through shelves did nothing to disguise all those ugly cords, so it was time to get crafty!

We already have a red/black Poang chair (also from IKEA), which has bright red cushions, I wanted a little more red in the room, but didn't want to clash with the existing colors. This book by Alice Hoffman had the perfect combo of colors, so off we went to the fabric store with one of the chair cushions, the book and a little pumpkin for inspiration.

After much deliberation and consultation with an exceedingly patient Craig (who usually totally hates the fabric store), we found several suitable fabrics in the desired colors from JoAnns (I was a little skeptical, as JoAnns doesn't always have the best selection of "upholstery fabric" on hand). Onward we went to Home Depot, where a super friendly clerk helped us select and cut to size a 1/4" piece of plywood to the dimensions of the shelf unit.

Once again, Craig was a trooper and helped me layout the locations of all the shelves on the back plane. We also cut a couple of holes for the cords to poke through from the components to the back. The next step was using spray adhesive to adhere the fabric to the back plane in an alternating pattern of yellow, orange and red.

The spray adhesive seemed a little weak to hold everything together long term, so I used the glue gun to adhere strips of black ribbon to all the areas where the fabric joined. This also has the additional benefit of camouflaging minor misalignment of the fabric edges where they line up with the shelf edges.

Attaching the back plane to the shelf was easy as pie with a staple gun and VOILA, no more ugly cords to detract from the clean lines of the flatscreen.

I'm back from the Land of PMP

whew, well it's been awhile since I updated the blog. I took an extended break from pretty much everything while taking preparation courses and self study to prepare for taking the Project Management Professional (PMP) exam. This has been on my to do list since last November, so I finally got my rear end in gear:

• signed up for a couple on-line preparation courses from Solano Community College
• completed prep courses 1 & 2 simultaneously (nothing like a little procrastination to make you work extra hard at the last minute) on November 6th
• took the exam on the last possible day permissible, November 7th
• and passed, yay!

I learned some interesting project management techniques, including new ways to do financial analysis of alternative investments. The professional certification makes a nice addition to the resume and I actually asked to be assigned to a project at work, and got a big one! So, now I can put all my shiny new tools and techniques to good use.

Now, it relaxation & rejuvenation time. Craig took me out for a very nice, classic American, celebration meal of champagne, steak and lobster. On Sunday, we took a nice little walkabout at the Nimbus fish hatchery, it was pretty quiet as the salmon run hasn't started quite yet. We did see lots of big salmon in the river and quite a few were actually "knocking" at the gate to the fish ladder. We got some great photos and video of the scenery and fish. It's kind of hard to tell from the video, but the adult salmon are HUGE, about 3 feet long and 40 pounds of muscular fish. The trout in the raceways are 8-12 inches long.

Movie Maker Madness

Inspired by Craig's recent, positive experience with on-line learning, I decided to enroll in an on-line class offered by Solano Community College, Movie Maker for Windows. So far, it's great. I can sign on and do the class material anytime of the day or night and go at whatever pace suits me. So far, the class is practicing with some instructor provided video, but maybe I can shoot something interesting and apply all this new found knowledge soon.

raw footage of Bale Grist Mill

first edit with Movie Maker software

random musings

so I was surfing through the Ravelry site today looking at knitting patterns. As I was reading the descriptions of the gorgeous lace shawls featured in that section I noticed quite a few of the pattern names refer to rich, famous, beautiful and/or powerful women such as Nefretiti, Persephone, Cleites, and Boudica. I wonder if knitters subconsciously believe they can acquire a bit of the magic those women had by spending hours in the deep knitting concentration required to produce the delicate lace patterns. This reminds me of some cultures that believed you could acquire some of the power of the animal or enemy by eating them (i.e eating the heart of the buffalo for bravery).

Since I am knitting a sweater named the "Can Can", I guess I am secretly hoping to gain a magical ability to dance on stage in a Vaudeville show with a big puffy skirt :). I just finished the front, so far I haven't spontaneously broken out into song and dance, but I'll keep you posted.

Yolo County Fair

We went to the Yolo County Fair on Saturday. What a great deal, it's totally free. It had all the essential summer fair elements; FFA animal auctions, pie baking and gardening contests, meat on a stick, tons of tractors both old and new, flashing lights, midway barkers, screaming riders, cotton candy and lots of happy families.
We visited with all the animals, Aidan particularly liked the very friendly sheep that licked his fingers. We observed an auction and as we entered the building Craig cautioned me strongly about raising my hand or making any kind of gesture at all, as the last thing we need is a lamb in the backyard. It just so happened that that particular lamb went for $30 dollars per pound!! It must be some gloriously good lamb or the little FFA girl had some grandparents planted in the crowd.

We visited most of the exhibit halls, I think my favorites were the garden exhibits and of course, the giant vegetable exhibits. This enormous butternut squash could easily be mistaken for a baby seal!another big hit was the Entomology table put up by UC Davis, the students there were letting people gently get to know the hissing cockroaches and the very strange Walking Sticks.

Bug update

The wonderful people on BugGuide.com have identified both the mysterious caterpillar and the beautiful moth I posted about earlier this week.

The caterpillar is a Common Buckeye, more formally known as Junonia coenia , who will one day look like this!

while the beautiful moth is a female Sphinx moth, also know as Eumorpha achemon. Just to be fair, I copied this picture of the Sphinx caterpillar, quite a bold pattern, but the brown color is not so exciting.

Name that bug!

We had a BBQ this weekend and I think the highlight of the whole evening for everyone may very well have been the fantastic nighttime bugs. Even after a couple of beers I was still able to capture a couple of pretty great pictures of our uninvited guests. Now I have to research just what these critters are on my favorite entomology website, BugGuide.net.

this caterpillar is about 2"

the moth was by far the largest I have ever seen

now, I wonder if they are related?

How to tell when it's really hot out

it gets really hot here in Winters (which is kind of funny given the name of this little town), so hot we think 90 really isn't that bad. We have become like the Eskimos who have something like 22 names for snow, similarly we have many names for degrees of hotness, such as: superhot (90-95), double sun hot (95-100), based on the double ringed sun graphic in the Sac Bee indicating a really hot day), surface of the sun hot (>100) and for the very worst days: center of the sun hot (>105).

We have an indoor/outdoor thermometer mounted in the kitchen, but sometimes I need a little independent verification of just how darn hot it really is out there, so I have devised this technique to test the actual outdoor temperature:

grand times with grand baby

Aidan, my 20 month old grandson, has been visiting with us for the last 2 weeks. His greatest amusement is taking stuff from it's assigned place and redistributing it across the entire square footage floor of the house.
We have visited many fun places like the Sacramento Zoo, Marine World, Steinhardt Aquarium and many local parks.

Playing in the kiddie fountain at Discovery Kingdom (formerly known as Marine World)

teasing the fish with baby fingers in the Butterfly Garden

We went to The Old Clam House in San Francisco after visiting the remodeled California Academy of Sciences in Golden Gate Park


in this video the little guy enjoys some new tastes and smells as he happily gobbles down calamari (also known as squid).

I can make the Can-Can

Next knitting challenge: to turn this:

into this:making progress

Conservation Carousel

On a recent trip to San Diego we had much fun at the Wild Animal Park. We got a little lost on the "9 minute" trip from the Motel Mediteran, a lovely, independent hotel near the park. After the 3rd miscue from my Blackberry (which was likely directing us to the keeper's house :), Mary ratted us out and called Jack for directions, so now we had me shouting directions from the backseat, Diane calling out directions based on her good sense of direction and Jack trying to direct us from afar over the phone, can you say cacophony?

In spite of our initial difficulties, the rest of the day went beautifully. We stayed from 9am until just after 7pm.

Not to be missed was the Conservation Carousel, we liked it so much we did it twice!

Diane finally gets her Cheetah ride

The park is very family friendly, and we got the pleasure of observing this friendly family in action. Check out the video

Bathroom Redo Done

the "much longer than it should've taken" bathroom redo is done!
just in time for the family visit and BBQ.

What did I learn?

• telling myself "just 30 minutes" can, most of the time, get me started
• I don't like wood stain, especially the kind with polyurethane already added, it's just a sticky mess
• grand schemes quickly bite the dust when matched to this worker's skill set and strength
• sometimes good enough just has to be (even when it isn't really)
• your friends and family really don't care what the bathroom looks like and your enemies shouldn't be in your home anyway

Lunchbag upgrade

Pretty Denim Lunchbag (or how to turn a very simple project into a multi-day extravaganza)

step 1: refuse to repair DH's jeans in the same exact place for the 3rd time

step 2: stare intently at said jeans while wondering what good use to put the durable denim

step 3: smack head in realization that the leg of said jeans would make a perfect lunch sack

step 4: cut off about 20" of upper leg

step 5: again, stand back and stare at what is now a denim cylinder and realize it's just not gonna be pretty enough without some girly decoration

step 6: haul out all the embroidery apparatus and spend at least an hour poring over design options

step 7: finally select original idea of peacock design and sew onto a separate piece of denim cut from jeans

step 8: sew lovely peacock on front of leg as a pocket ("why a pocket" you might wonder, to which I would reply, "why not")

step 9: sew on a circular bottom (after racking brain to remember simple formula for calculating the diameter from the leg circumference.... C=Pi * ((D/2)^2)

step 10: sew in casing and add draw string

step 11: prance around house waving the pretty new bag in the air until husband gushes over the "mad skills" of wife

now, before you feel compelled to point out this was a pretty basic sewing job, I know this is no demonstration of mad skills, but what can I say, I'm an approval junkie

Sewing machine review - Queen Bernina

This review is part of a group project for the Sew, Mama, Sew! blog to develop a user's review of all different types of sewing machines, both new and old. The questions are theirs, the answers are mine.

What brand and model do you have?

Bernina Artista

How long have you had it?

about 2 years

How much does that machine cost (approximately)?

way more than I should have spent and I'm embarrassed to say

What types of things do you sew (i.e. quilting, clothing, handbags, home dec projects, etc.)?

quilting (love the BSR electronic eye gadget), home deco, misc. projects

How much do you sew? How much wear and tear does the machine get?

About once a month. She is very gently used.

Do you like/love/hate your machine? Are you ambivalent? Passionate? Does she have a name?

I love this machine, I am a bit of a gadget freak and she has gadgets and features galore. I call her "Queen Bernina" since she has the crown jewels affixed to her front and of course, the heraldic theme to announce her presence whenever she is switched on.

What features does your machine have that work well for you?

I used to have a commercial embroidery machine which I sold when the business was a failure and we moved. The Queen fills the gap quite nicely for my current "whenever the whim strikes" one at a time embroidery projects. I also love the auto thread cutters and the BSR foot mentioned above.

Is there anything that drives you nuts about your machine?

I find the front load bobbin case a little fiddly, especially as the door is hard to open (I keep a little plastic stick on hand to hook into it) and when I have the Queen's sewing arm lowered to the sewing table height the bobbin case is sort of under the table and I have to extract and replace the bobbin case by feel mostly. I liked the drop-in bobbin on the last machine better.

Do you have a great story to share about your machine (i.e., Found it under the Christmas tree? Dropped it on the kitchen floor? Sewed your fingernail to your zipper?, Got it from your Great Grandma?, etc.!)? We want to hear it!

no great stories yet

Would you recommend the machine to others? Why?

The Queen is not cheap, oh no she isn't, so unless you have some serious cash on hand from say, selling a big commercial embroidery machine, I would recommend this only to the serious sewer. Also, she may not be the best machine for technophobes as she is fully computerized with a bazillion features. If you do invest in this royal machine, please do take full advantage of any classes that are offered to help you get to know her better.

What factors do you think are important to consider when looking for a new machine?

1. experience (if new to sewing, start with a simpler machine, it may force you to learn to do a few things manually that you will then appreciate so much more when you can spring for an upgrade)


2. the store you intend to purchase from, I got mine at Meissners in Sacramento, even though it was a bit of a drive, the staff is very knowledgable and friendly, they offer free classes on most new machines, they have repair staff on hand and also a pretty good selection of used machines if you have champagne taste on a beer budget.


3. weight (if you intend to cart it around to classes, your friends house, etc), more metal in the body will probably last longer, but makes it quite heavy.


4. get one that does an automatic buttonhole if at all possible


5. your comfort level with computer systems, there are plenty of perfectly good machines that are not computerized (my last one was an entry level Elna and she was great).

Do you have a dream machine?

Yea and she lives in my sewing room :)

Goat Herder chores

hanging with Mary doing chores at Turkey Oak

bad goat! standing on the water dish

my favorite rooster, ole one-eyed Piorn

Backyard Bliss

Yah, the yard is "done", basically as done as it's gonna get for the time being. The weather has heated up to >95 everyday. Some of the plants we got from the local nursury have shriveled up and died, but all trees are are doing great. all the plants we got from High Country Gardens are thriving and have gotten about twice as big.

all the drip irrigation, dry stream bed and landscape gravel is in place.

Before:

After:

Minor Miracle

this morning I was quietly eating oatmeal and reading the paper when I caught sight of a little finch outside the window, as I glanced over I was startled to realize he was actually a zebra finch, the very same type as those in the aviary. My slowly awakening morning brain took a moment to make the connection and then I ran outside to see a big gaping hole in the aviary. Most of the birds were still inside, only 2 missing. As I was inspecting the hole, one of the little escapees was clearly very interested in getting back inside and kept flying around and peeping back and forth with his buddies.

I was torn between immediately fixing the hole to prevent more escapees or trying to net the fugitive. I opted to fix the hole and figured it was a lost cause to catch him. Somewhat dejected I went back inside to finish breakfast. As I was eating I once again noticed him really focused on getting back inside and he seemed especially interested in the little door I usually put the food bowl in. At that point I was feeling quite sorry for him and decided to risk propping the food door open to see if he would go back in. Well, no more that 60 seconds after I went back in the house he popped right back inside and started happily preening, inspecting his sleeping nest and peeping with relief to this buddies. I quickly closed the little door as my heart was just bursting with joyful feelings at this minor miracle, he's happy, his buddies are happy and I'm happy!!

Kazak Star Felting Complete

my first stranded color work and felting project is now complete! Below is the mess that resulted when I was trying to work with all 5 colors in the same row. I tried to do this with the Fair Isle method, but eventually realized that the Fair Isle technique of carrying all the colors along the entire row really only works well for 2 or maybe 3 colors, any more than that is just too much yarn to mess around with.
by the middle of the piece, I switched to using just the minimum colors needed to make the background pattern, finished the entire piece and then went back over it using the duplicate stitch method to fill in the additional colors (like the purple middle stitch and yellow outlines). Overall this worked much better.
After I got it all seamed together came the fun part of felting it. I simply put it into the washing machine hot water, put a towel in for additional agitation and balance and then let it go through the normal wash cycle. Next time I will probably put it into a mesh bag and stop it before it goes into the spin cycle, but on this go round it worked out just fine with my "let er rip" approach.

The bag came out feeling like it felted properly (no pun intended), but it was really "furry" and so I took a shaver and trimmed off the excess "fur".
this is just one side's worth of removed fur.

and Viola! the finished product, looks pretty damned good if I say so myself.

Memorial Day Weekend

The backyard landscaping is progressing at a pretty good pace in spite of our general laziness. We just cannot seem to get up and out early enough to beat the heat and then must wait until after 6pm for a tolerable temperature to work outside. We did get all the new plants in the ground. I was really worried about the 2 additional Desert Willow trees we planted. The first one that went is finally in full leaf and has some really lovely flowers, but when these new ones came out of the pot is was apparent that they didn't really put out any new roots and probably should have stayed in the pot for a bit longer. We got them into the ground and every single leaf immediately wilted and eventually fell off, in fact they got really crispy and then fell off : ( So, being a novice landscaper, I have been obsessively worried about them and checked every single day to see if there were any new signs of life. Lo and behold, the trees have risen from death's doorstep! They still look like crap, but I think they really do deserve the name of Desert Willow and will be OK.

On the other hand the first one we planted is doing splendidly, and has bloomed with these lovely pinkish purple trumpet shaped flowers. They don't seem to have any particular scent, but they look great.

The whole yard is really coming together and we are both very, very pleased. We are now looking at backyard furniture and planning for a BBQ in June or July which will be a good motivator for us to finish up the details. I think we will not be planting anything else until late fall/early winter as it's just too hot now for a tender young plant to get started.
The pergola is done and we spent a little time this weekend stringing some lights for ambiance.