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?