Time Waster

Ikea has these wonderful Swedish names for all their furniture. This site translates your first name into an Ikea name and appropriate furniture. Good for a ten second distraction after the Super Bowl.

Time Waster

I can't seem to make this work for me but you might have some fun with Wordle. It makes wonderful word pictures based on frequency of use.

From the files

One of the things that have been hanging over my head is clearing out some of my files from work. You know those old benefits folders and stuff that used to hang on your cubicle walls... all of it needs to be dealt with and I seem to have a lot of it. While going through one of those old files I came across this poem. I don't know where it came from but I can see why it used to hang on my bulletin board.

Enjoy!

INNER STRENGTH

If you can start the day without caffeine and pep pills,
If you can be cheerful, ignoring aches and pains,
If you resist complaining and boring people with your troubles,
If can eat the same food everyday and be grateful for it,
If you can understand when loved ones are too busy to give you time,
If you can overlook when people take things out on you when, through no fault of yours something goes wrong,
If you can take criticism and blame without resentment,
If you can face the world without lies and deceit,
If you can conquer tension without medical help,
If you can relax without liquor,
If you can sleep without the aid of drugs,
If you can do all these thing,
Then you are probably the family dog.

Definitely a Lack of Imagination

I've always wondered how streets get named in new developments



After all, new developments are usually carved out of large tracts of land that have been purchased from one owner. After you have put together a new subdivision you get to name the streets and can pretty quickly run out of variations of the original owners name... New/Old/Smith/Farm Road/Drive/Place/Lane/Circle/Drive is pretty limiting. As long as the new names are acceptable to the postal service you can name the new streets anything you desire.



There is a small subdivision just north of my area that failed to take off for reasons I will not go into here.



After the first dozen homes were built a succession of builders came in and did some fill in building. Finally someone came in and bought all the vacant lots and, for some unknown reason, renamed all the streets.



Here's where the lack of imagination comes in...



Not only did the final owners name two streets This Way and Thay Way, they built a house where That Way turns into This Way.









Now I am all for a good joke, but it must get tiresome explaining to friends and family that your house is located at the corner of This Way and That Way.







And before you go looking for This Way and That Way on Google Maps, be aware that they are both called Right Way there.







Have a great week!

Make Pom Poms Not War

In a way that seems dinstinctly Brit, there is an organization out there that is making Pom Poms as a statement of peace, love and harmony. After the pom poms are made they will be gathered together and made into one big pom pom. From the organization's manifesto:

Pom Pom International promotes peace and understanding across the world through pom pom making. Transform colourful yarn into a symbol of harmony and innocence!

I love this project. It is just silly enough that it could change the world.

This weekend, while you are hunkering down under the covers trying to avoid turning on the heat, grab some bits of yarn and make a pom pom for peace. Instructions and more information on this project are here.

I wonder if the our newly minted winner of the Nobel Peace Prize and his family would participate if he knew about this project?

Thanks, Selvedge, for reporting on this project.

PS. Apologies for not posting more frequently recently. It seems that helping with Sweet Sadie's has been taking up most of my litle grey cells these days with anything left over devoted to Alex and the Girls. I hope to get back on an even keel soon.

The September Issue

Every Year Vogue magazine puts put a huge issue in September showing all the best for the fall/winter season. I mean this baby is huge. Two years ago they put out one that was well over 800 pages. This year's was just over 500.

How things have changed.

The 2007 issue was so fabulous that I wrote a whole posting on it here. This year's is notable not for the clothes but for the articles. There was a book excerpt on being a prisoner in Iran, another on a wife's reaction to her husband's very public infidelity and a wacky one on exercises needed before you start wearing eight inch stillettos from Nine Ricci.

On the fashion front, the clothes were forgettable, the shoes are mostly ugly and unwearable, the purses can hold enough for a four day weekend and the boots look like hip waders. Not that all the shoes are ugly, the purses too big or the boots meant for fishing but that was just my overall impression.

There was one particularly weird pair of shoes that I can't seem to find a picture of on-line that I will now attempt to describe for you. Think of a typical Timberland style workboot, add a five inch wooden stilletto, replace the leather laces with cotton ones, the heavy leather uppers with crocidile patent leather and then remove the steel toe so your manicure will show. Can you even imagine anyone wearing something like this anywhere, anytime for any reason?

Two note worthy things did come out of this issue that I think you might want to take note of this season.

First of all there is a documentary movie in limited release right now of how the 2007 September Vogue issue was produced. I haven't seen it, just snippets, but it seems to be extremely well done and I am looking forward to seeing the whole thing.

Secondly, in a slightly disturbing sign of the times, September 10 has been declared as Fashion's Night Out. All over New York City stores are having shopping specials and many stores will be open until 11:00 PM. There will also be collection points to gather clothing for many needy causes. There will be special T-shirts on sale where about 40% of the proceeds will go to the national September 11 Memorial & museum at the World Trade Center.

One part about the shopping thing that I find particularly fun is that you can go to Barney's in New York and not only window shop but you also learn to knit. How cool is that?

On the other hand, I find it disturbing that fashionistas in NYC need a reason to go shopping. I'm in Houston and I don't need an excuse.

For a different look at the world go out and get a copy of Vogue magazine, or better yet, subscribe. At about $12.00 a year it is definitely a best buy and a very fun thing to find in your mail box every month.

I hope your weekend has been going well and that all you laborers out there will enjoy your day off tomorrow.

Fabric Collage Artist

If you think all fabric collage is dorky, be prepared to have your mind changed by Laura Btrietman.

ABSOLUTELY AMAZING! Thanks Joyce for the link,

Creepy!

If this doesn't make you want to take care of your teeth nothing will!

Time Waster

Why your dog really goes outside - your dog, not mine! Courtesy of Bits and Pieces.

Time Waster

I just tried this color hue test after a write-up in How About Orange. This is a great test for piecers as it really brings home the differences between color hue and color vlaue. It takes a little time and it helps not to be distracted by a ball fetching puppy while doing it! My score was a 37 which I think is pretty good for an old girl... how about you?

Thanks to Julie for sending this test to Jessica!

Time Waster

I have often been accused of leading friends and family away fom serious work on the internet by providing too many distractions. Here are a couple of sites that I currently find fascinating:

Here is a wondeful site by a woman in India. As a great-grandmother, she has a lot to offer in the way of memories. The link sends you to her memories of a wonderful custom which combines dolls, sweets and visiting. I'd never heard of it before and I wish we had something like this here.

Here is another male adventure blog. This time the guy is heading off to Chili. He's only posted once, so far, as he is not leaving the States until November 13th but I think he's future entries should be interesting. Definitely a spot to watch.

Here is the perfect site for those of us who have yearned to live all over the world but never had the nerve (or the stomach) to do it. No great drama here, just a fascinating slice of life.

Enjoy!

Potential Halloween Costumes

I wonder if Alex and the girls would put up with these Fairy wings for Halloween?

Every Mother Will Relate

I came across this response, in English, from a Japanese mother to her sons who hate her making them elaborate bento box lunches for school every day. The English is a little fractured but very understandable. Thanks to Crafty Daisies for pointing out this post to me.

PS. Don't install a Japanese language pack just for this post. However, if you do read Japanese, I bet the rest of her writing is just as pointed.

PPS. Ribbon designed by 'How About Orange' and sold locally by jcaroline creatives - of colorful Dachshunds... just wondering how many yards to order... or rather how much I can store... its so cute!

In the Mail

Chronicle Books had a friends and family sale last week and I couldn't resist ordering a couple of things I am always thinking I need but never buying. With 30% off it was finally my chance to get 'The Complete Wosre-Case Scenario Handbook' . It is 500 plus pages of advice on how to survive many extreme situations. Like, the pilot is dead, or you are locked in a walk-in freezer, or your child won't eat their vegetables, or you meet a mountain lion in the woods - this book has hundreds of solutions to these and other scenarios. Most of the advice seems very practical for the layman and gives you the confidence to actually survive a bad situation. The book also includes a DVD of all the worse case scenarios from the eleven books in the series. I have not looked at the DVD because the book is so engrossing.

For your bathroom library or reference shelf, this book would be a wonderul addition.

Now if I could just remember the advice about meeting a mountain lion or landing a plane without carrying the book with me all the time!

This will make you smile

Via Betz White. Check out this video.

Time Waster

..... but worth it! I got this from Angry Chicken and had a good time playing with this on-line photo manipulation site, photofunia. You do not need to log-in or buy anything and you can load the picture to a disk or your hard drive. Way too much fun! Here is what I came up with - I wonder if Alex would enjoy having his portrait at MOMA?

That's Sew Wrong!

That's the name of a Michael Miller Fabric I picked up a while ago. It is one of those 'conversation' prints that are fun to have but you never know what to do with them. This fabric, however, has really sparked my interest and I have several projects lined up for it. Or rather, I will be doing a lot with it until the three yards I have of it runs out. Here's my photo of the fabric:

and here is the MIchael Miller Fabric website showing all three color ways. There are few images on the fabric but the ones they have are priceless. Right now I feel like the sewing machine repair guy with the sledge hammer and I know I made that wonky blouse in a previous life. My first project was to recover my cheapo Ikea backup sewing chair. You can see a similar one here. I don't use this chair a lot but it is out in public quite a bit and the sickly blue fabric it was covered in was really beginning to bug me. Today was the day to use the new fabric. I think it definitely brightens up the place:

I cut off the original fabric for the back rest to use as a pattern. The original fabric was so securely attached to the core of the chair that I could not remove it all . I ended up attaching the new fabric cover by hand slip stitching it onto the back rest. The seat cushion would not come off the legs so I ended up tracing the shape on the fabric, sewing it up and then hand stitching it to the bottom of the seat. This is not the best reupholstery job in the world but the final product makes me smile a lot.

I really need to get moving on my Gabrielle Swain design but, frankly, I am a little hesitant to actually start getting the applique fabric prepared for the design I created. Tomorrow is another day and I will try NOT to avoid the issue much longer. After all, with all the really bad sewing projects I have shown on this blog this one could just join the roll call of great ideas gone wrong.

Wish me luck!

Obsession

Several years ago my son gave me a Nintendo DS for Christmas with a cute virtual Dog training game. This may seem a strange gift for a 20-something son to give his 50-somehting mother but ever since he got his first Nintendo game system I have been obsessed with video games. I would stay up late at night playing the first Mario Brothers game and finished it before he or his friends. t. One little boy's mother told me I was the coolest mom to her kids because I could play video games, an activity she found as exciting as watching paint dry.

Over time I have narrowed my focus on the kinds of games I enjoy. I do not like the 'shoot'em up' games or those that require a lot of manual dexterity. I do like the puzzle type games where you either have to solve a puzzle to advance to the next level of play or those based on shapes or numbers. The virtual Dog training game that came with the DS was a real bust as I do not the patience to wait around for time to pass before I can walk the dog or feed it.

My most recent obsession has been the Sudoku Girdmaster game for the DS. I started working on this late last year and started getting obsessed when I realized I could actually solve some of the harder puzzles without breaking a sweat. I've played it in bed when I couldn't sleep, in the doctor's waiting room, in the bath, in the car at the drive-up teller and in restaurants while eating. I finally threw in the towel yesterday with only 3 of the 300 Suduko grids in the game incomplete. The game proudly told me that I had spent 191 hours solving the puzzles but that did not count the numerous times I had to retry various grids like the 10 plus times I tried the hard level grid number 118 without a final answer. I now find that it is almost impossible for me to solve a paper based grid as I am always looking for my stylus to record guesses in the empty spaces.

I don't think I have ever spent as much time on a single activity in my life. I know that if my mother was still alive she would snort in disgust at my Sudoko playing. My excuse is that I am an obsessive type person. From quilting to stash busting, I easily get obsessed with a particular activity to the exclusion of all others. And besides, don't all the geriatric experts claim that as we age our brains need puzzles and such to keep our brains healthy?

I guess my brain is 191 hours healthier than if I spent that time cooking or cleaning. Well, that's my story and I'm sticking to it.

How Evil Are You?

Courtesy of Jonco at Bits and Pieces is this odd little quiz to determine 'how evil are you?'. I am came out twisted while he came out Angelic. I think I was classed as twisted as Canada was my weapon of choice. Enjoy!

Laugh Out Loud Funny

Another stunningly funny bit from Jonco at Bits & Pieces. Go to google and put in the search box 'find chuck norris'. Click on the 'I Feel Lucky Box'. Be prepared to laugh out loud more than once as you read all the stuff on the screen.