By the time I got out there with my camera ("there" being the street in front of our house) the moon had long since shed it's "super" status and was just a regular 'ol moon. But when was the last time I went outside to look at the moon?
Mar:19
Mar:18
We're about halfway through the Kinder eggs. Ok, I'm about halfway through them. Along with my nightly coffee and crossword, a sweet little treat usually gets me through the after-hours, leaving behind a highly choke-able surprise for the kids to find in the morning.
Mar:17
These little cups are the workhorses of our tableware. They are our go-to juice receptacles, yogurt servers, snack apportioners, tea service, wine sippers. Dishwasher safe, and durable in greasy little hands. Today they contained the delightful jiggles of Jell-O, cut into snackable little squares to bribe a sick Boy into getting lunch down his sore, sore throat.
Mar:16
The weather forcast still insists that today would be all rain and puddles. But the reality was that it was quite nice out, and we celebrated by pouring out some dirt into a container and sprinkling (ok, dumping) in all manner of wildflower seeds. But a tamped-down surface of potting soil makes for a poor pictorial, and I'm pretty sure I've already worn out that photographic cliché of a palmful of seeds over a pile of dirt. And Spring has been blaring its horn the past few days with the daffodils suddenly greeting us on the back porch and the birds whistling their good-mornings and the neighborhood cats stalking the best sunny spots to laze. A couple of the trees out front (I really am botanically dense) have blossomed the sweetest shade, prompting The Boy to declare that, today, pink is his favorite color.
Mar:15
For months the darkest corner of the house was the one our couch sits in. A lovely couch it is, custom ordered once the paychecks started rolling in again, a spot designed for lounging with a crossword puzzle or settling in with some needlework. That is, if there were enough light to make out anything between my face and the television. And I've got some binding to sew onto my latest project. So lighting that corner pushed its way up the priority chain this weekend, and we headed down to Ikea to pick up my favorite lamp, one we've previously owned and failed to move with us. You've likely seen it a million different times in magazines and other people's homes. Maybe even your own home. Not exactly an original. But I like the shape and life of it, even while I dream of brewing up some lighting concoction out of mason jars and cardboard tubes. Some other unlit corner, perhaps.
Mar:14
The Boy's preschool class took a little bus and train expedition to the asian supermarket today, and came away with spoils in the form of chocolate panda cookies (because his shopping buddy likes chocolate panda cookies) and these teeny tiny puffy stickers. Now, normally I might insert some snarky comment here about white people wandering down aisles and macro-documenting all the wacky foods and novelties to be found in the depths of the International District. Except that this is THE asian supermarket we're talking about. And I've been known to, on particularly uninspired days, pack up the kids and head down to the ol' 'Waji and poke through Hello Kitty provisions, bento box stacks, the world's cutest office supplies, craft books to die for (if I could only decifer all the little diagrams), and a truly impressive array of ramens and Pocky. So I'll just hold my tongue and sit here, envious that my son got to go and I didn't.
Little accomplishments
March 13, 2011
Nearing the end of the Great Roman Shade drive of 2010/2011 I started getting antsy to work on more immediately-satisfying projects. It's partly what makes these projects take so damned long to complete. A sort of Inceptionesque, project within a project syndrome. What ends up pushing the completion back is my shoe-horning of new tinkerings into the final drive — always at the end of the project — when, if I'd just put my nose down and grind out the job on the ol' sewing machine it'd just be done already.
So, with rod pockets aligned and staple gun set to merge hardware to software, I scanned Teux Deux for instant gratification. It was when I glanced up from my computer, though, that the next project jumped out at me. Set back into my side of the desk/bookcase/hutch is my little message board, half corkboard, half magnetic whiteboard, handy for list creation, postage stamp wrangling and amusing-thing-I-tore-out posting. But cork and whiteboard surfaces are uninspiring things, and I'd already aestheticized similar surfaces elsewhere. And The Boy, on a not enough snow to make it worth going out on a too cold day, was rallying for a project of his own. So together we taped off the whiteboard side, and applied one then another then a third coat of chalkboard paint over the course of a day.
Before I tackled the cork side, though, I interrupted that project to chop a couple inches off the bottom of a pair of pants. Because that's how much shorter I am than producers of corduroy jeans would like. Now, normally, cutting into designer cords would leave me near paralysis with the fear of misstep. I would measure not just twice, but likely five times, marking the incision line with chalk, then measuring another few times for kicks and giggles. But, when the said pair of pants is snagged off the tightly-packed rack of the fluorescent-lit bottoms aisle at Value Village, and brought home without the benefit of a visit to the fitting room because the two children you brought with you would surely escape under the door while your pants dangled from your knees (but you found they fit perfectly anyway once tried on at home during naptime!) you can be more cavalier about cutting precision. And a half hour after I started, I had pants neatly hemmed to a length that didn't have them dragging under my soles in the rain and mud in constant flow here.
That nagging concern out of the way, I could once again focus on the cork side of the message board (remember that?), and I turned to the iron-on-fuse method with some fabric sitting in the stash. Sanded down the rougher spots on the chalkboard side, and returned the board to it's custom fit nook in the bookshelf.
Now, I'm going to take a little breather here, from all the small jobs, to show you perhaps my favorite tool from my ever-growing collection of crafty paraphernalia. The handy 'lil chalk pencil, with tidy little refill chalk sticklets in a lovely pastel array, sharpen-able with any stationary aisle pencil sharpener. Perfect for pattern marking and penning your autobiography (legibly!) one slate at a time. Remember that chalk holder your high school English teacher kept locked in the top drawer of his desk? Remember how you'd come in before class and try to sneak a scribble with it? Right. Sometimes I forget not everyone is such a school supply nerd.
Ok, one final, little thing before I get back to searching for the perfect cleat to complete that first roman shade, already. And I've already shown it to you, so this'll be quick. My new, hermaphraditic camera strap. A cheater project, says Mr. New Media, because instead of working a new one from scratch I simply encased the strap that came with the camera and put a few stitches on it. This one, too, came together in little time (interrupted with the business of feeding a family), and I never quite got to the little lens cap pouch I wanted to build into the strap. So, just add this to the list of projects not quite done.
