Ideas we wish Saturday Night Live would consider

Occasionally, as Craig and I are sitting around watching TV, we have these great ideas for spoofs we think Saturday Night Live would love.  Sadly, the Saturday Night Live website doesn't agree and will not take random submissions.  This, unfortunately for you dear reader, leaves me to share these strange thoughts here on this blog.

Now for these to work, you need to have some familiarity with the basic premise of the show, and since I know I have readers who profess to "not watch that much TV", hmmpf, I shall provide some explanation of the show premise.

Scenario #1 - Project Runway - Extreme Challenge

• premise: a dozen or so clothing designers compete to be the big winner (lots of $$, fame, etc), each show a different crazy challenge is given to the group, like "make mother/daughter matching outfits for under $50 total", at the end of each show the worst designer is eliminated.  The designers are highly motivated to win the contest.

now imagine they are down to the last 4 or 5 contestants, the winner of this night's challenge gets to dress a big Hollywood star for the Oscar's (major big deal for designers).

As the host, Tim Gunn,  enters the cutting/sewing back room, all the remaining contestants look expectantly at  him, he puts his hands together and sorts of hides a grin behind his steepled fingers:  "Designers, today's challenge will be to make a fashionable raincoat for some underprivileged little ones".  The designers are obviously expecting cute little children, but as the door opens behind the host, in walks animal shelter workers leading scruffy mutts behind them on leashes. 

Now, being the eager contestants they are, they immediately start petting the dogs (even the flaming queen who hates dogs) and trying to work out cute doggie coat designs.  They are really taking this seriously and begin cutting and sewing furiously to try to wow the judges with their fun and funky designs.

Several hours into the challenge, in walks the host again and says "Designers, we are going to add a little wrinkle to this challenge", dun, dun, dun, pregnant pause, "the remainder of this challenge will have to be completed... without the use of your HANDS!" . Gasp! all the contestants then start frantically crawling around the dogs on hands and knees, trying to pull the garments into place with their mouths, noses, elbows, whatever, just not their hands!  Ha, Ha, Ha

I think this would be quite hilarious especially with crazy professional comedians who can just run wild with the concept and improvise super insane antics!!

stay tuned for more crazy TV spoof ideas, like "Ghost Hunters, Pet Edition"

Jean Genie

I've been collecting our denim jeans that are beyond repair for a couple years now thinking that I wanted to recycle the fabric somehow.

 

I finally found the perfect opportunity when a group at work started collecting blankets for a charity relief effort.  I didn't pay too much attention to what the actual charity was, I think to provide basic needs stuff, in this case blankets, to earthquake victims.  If that is actually the cause, I'm a little dubious how much use the Haitians receiving the donation will get out of blankets.  Isn't Haiti a tropical island?   Whatever. I was simply excited that this would be a great way to experiment with making a quilt out of the denim.  One of my friends gave me one of her cast-off pairs as well, and off I went cutting, cutting, cutting 4 pairs of jeans in little strips.

 and then sewing, sewing, sewing all those strips together to achieve a "subway" tile look and taking some care to make a pleasing pattern of the different colors of denim.

 

I didn't quite have enough of the denim pattern to make a full 40" x 60" (standard crib size) so I had to decide if:

1. I was OK with making a dinky, not even going to cover up a kindergartner, blanket? - heck no
2. having run out of the gray denim, did I want to just add more regular blue denim? - also, heck no, it took some effort to make a pattern I was satisfied with
3. should add blocks of a different fabric entirely? - YES! 

 

This little problem actually turned out to be a blessing in disguise.  I was concerned that the denim was a little stiff  as the heavy fabric and lots of seams turns out to not be the best of ideas for a cuddly blankie.  A trip to the local fabric store turned up the cutest fleece with a googly eyed lizards all over it to add to the top and bottom.  Now, it will make a very snuggly, cuddly blankie, especially with the flannel backing covered in goofy blow-fish.

 

my favorite thing of all was adding the pockets.  I can only imagine Barbie getting tucked into bed along with her little girl, or maybe some little boy's secret treasure of green army men will hide in the pocket "caves".

Redneck Safari

Yesterday, we went to a friend's new place out in Grimes (farming hinterland near the Sutter Buttes) for BBQ.

 We heard there was some interesting wildlife so we all piled into the truck for a little "redneck safari" (must credit my clever friend Jack with coining that great phrase).   After bumping along the country roads for a little bit we came upon a raucous cacophony of bird cries in the nearby slough.  It is a rookery for Night Herons, Egrets, Bitterns and who knows what else.  It stunk to high heaven, but oh what a sight, there were literally hundreds of birds and nests all crammed into this one little area in the middle of miles of farmland.

we saw lots and lots of nests with juvenile birds, many looked just about ready to fledge, like these egrets.

the Night Herons make a very interesting cry, sounds like a cross between a little dog woofing and bird whooping.

Jack found some volunteer walnut saplings to take back to Esparto.

back to the homestead, we enjoyed some great food and company.

after dinner we took a walkabout to a little pond up the road known to be home to some beaver and otter.  We didn't see any critters at first, but there was definitely wildlife trails and evidence of beaver cuttings and dam building activity.  Io, Blair's super friendly black Labrador dog, decided to cool off in the pond.

We were just fooling around, throwing rocks for the dog to chase, when out of nowhere a beaver appeared

 and was swimming towards the dog, who was unaware of anything amiss at this point

the beaver was making a bee line for Io, and everyone started screaming at the dog (who is kind of deaf) to get out!!

when all of a sudden SLAP!! went the beaver tail

luckily this story has a happy ending, Io was just a little startled, no one had to get into the yucky water to rescue her and the beaver was evidently OK, it simply wanted to scare the dog away from the pond. 

Relieved, we all walked slowly back home through a gorgeous sunset

At Last

I finally captured a decent picture of one of the hummingbirds, at last.  I haven't figured out the best camera settings for getting a decent photo of these guys, mostly they come out blurry.  I was out this morning playing with my new to me, used Nikon D50 SLR (got from a friend at work for a song) and managed to get one of the birds at the feeder.

This is the best I could get out of like 15 shots and I had to really clean it up in the free photo-editing Shutterfly software.  As I was giving up and heading back into the house, a male (or different species, not sure as it is the same size as the others, but has much more dramatic coloration with black head feathers and an iridescent purple throat patch) buzzed quite close to me and started feeding on some flowers ('Desert Sunrise' Agastache).  I hurriedly turned the camera back on and started snapping away.  I took about 10 photos and it turned out the very first one was the best of every shot I've gotten to date!

color me HAPPY!  I just love, love, love the little hummingbirds!

The bad dog is taking some time off from mischief today and snoozing on the bench outside.  The other dogs are sensibly in the house with the AC on, but Tex considers it his duty to keep a close eye on the backyard activities.

Bad dog!

bad dog strikes again!

can you see the mischievous glint in his eyes?  Or maybe he really did think that the BRAND NEW, still in the package quilt batting material was a true threat? The family/pack was in imminent danger of the batting somehow strangling us in our sleep?!?  Anyhoo, our little security guard thoroughly "killed" the batting.

 

Threat neutralized, for now anyway.  He doesn't know about the reserve army of dangerous batting massing at the local quilting store, hah!

Hot Glass and Cold Beer

A friend and I went to a fun event at the Public Glass studio last night, Hot Glass and Cold Beer.  It was quite a scene, for the $25 door charge we got to pick our very own keepsake hand blown glass, as much beer and wine as we could stomach (which in my case was just 1/2 a glass, lightweight!) the fun of watching real glass artists design and create glass sculpture right in the midst of everyone and enjoyed it all to the rockin live band, Jabberwocky.  What a thrill.  I didn't take many pictures of the glassblowing stuff because it was quite crowded and I was a little afraid of getting bumped and, heaven forbid, somehow getting burned or messing up the artists at work.

below is the unique hand blown glass I chose, it is rather large and heavy, so I think it will make a great flower vase.

 we also were treated to a demonstration of superb lamp working, this is a slightly different technique of glass working using a torch to melt and work glass rods into smaller scale pieces, like glass beads. The artist we saw last night was creating the most amazing glass flowers in clear glass to be made into pendants, earrings, door pulls, etc.

 

The best part of the whole night, for me personally, was finally getting to see my very own, first ever, glass creation.  When last I saw this, it was a dark, shiny lump that was too hot to handle.  Now that I can see it, especially in the sunshine, I am most proud!! 

 

I think I might be hooked and will just have to take more glass working classes.

Sewing isn't for sissies

The Hawaiian quilt is coming along. I have made it through several nerve-wracking steps.  As I get further along, the stakes for messing up get higher.  The progress to date now represents hours of precious time. I constantly have to remind myself to just keep going, that if it gets messed up, SO WHAT! Every success, but more importantly, every failure is a learning opportunity.
It took a few tries to figure out how to cut away the turtles shell pieces after the main body was all sewn down.

The quilting kit instructions were basically incomprehensible on how to cut out the little pieces before any quilting was actually holding things together and appeared to be written for hand applique.  I am simply against hand sewing on principle, I mean this is the whole reason sewing machines were invented anyway, to free us from the tedium of hand sewing.  So, left to my own devices to make this work for machine sewing, I first copied the pattern and traced over it again, eliminating the seam allowances.

 then I tried copying the design onto water-soluble Solvy (looks sort of like Sarah Wrap), and free motion sewing over the cut lines onto the turtle.  This turned out terrible, the Solvy just didn't have enough body to stay exactly in place and the stitch lines distorted everything as I was sewing.  Note: just now in my quest to find the hyperlink to Solvy I actually read the directions for use, which suggested putting everything in an embroidery hoop, maybe next time.

Next, I created a little template, sort of a reverse stencil, of what would be the cut out portions, laid this over each turtle and traced with a chalk pencil.

and now for one of the "not for sissies" parts, actual cutting.  Slowly, slowly, ever so carefully feeling underneath the fabric to make sure I wasn't going all the way through and thus make a BIG HOLE in my lovely work, of much lesser concern in my concentration was taking care not to cut off my own fingertip as I gripped the fabric, but couldn't see through the fabric to exactly where my finger was in relation to the scissors.

Whew, made it through with the quilting backing AND all my fingers intact.

And now onto the basting step, I just love this Quilting Basting Gun from Dritz, it puts little plastic T-bar tacks through the fabric, very similar to how store tags are attached.  This is a real time saver over putting in safety pins or heaven forbid, hand basting.

there is a small drawback to this unit, the tip of the gun is a rather large, hollow needle and to properly set the tag you have to really press the whole fabric sandwich (top fabric, batting and backing fabric) up against the nose of the gun or you get misfires. Misfires are no big deal, you just clear the jam and keep going, but it's a waste of tacks and time, so it pays to be careful to really press the fabric up to the nose of the gun from the bottom.

 Yet another operation that involves sharp objects above and invisible fingers below.  This time my finger didn't remain unscathed, and in true hobbyist fashion my first thought was "oh no, I hope I didn't get any blood on the fabric". Luckily, no blood stains and only a really minor injury, but this proves my point that sewing isn't for sissies.