Artsy Fartsy

If you’ve had any manner of conversation with me in the last year, I’ve probably, at one time or another, mentioned my favorite podcast, Croncast.  I sometimes call them my “imaginary friends”, since I talk about them as if we go way back, when in actuality, I’ve never met Kris or Betsy and probably never will.  This small fact doesn’t stop me from catching myself saying things like, “oh, my friend Betsy…”  And then turning bright red, realizing what I’ve just said. So join me in imaginary friend-hood, and get yourself hooked the best podcast around.  Kris and Betsy started “Tell a Friend Friday” to encourage more folks to listen and since most of my immediate friends (the “real” ones) either don’t have an MP3 player or don’t know what in he world a podcast is (perhaps I need some new friends), I thought I’d celebrate TFF by shouting to the internet: Listen!  You’ll laugh!  They’re funny!

Go here and listen, then subscribe through let’s see, how does Kris put it?  “…through iTunes or an online streaming media player” and get yourselves caught up in the lives of the crazy Smith family (and I mean “crazy” in the nicest possible way).  You’ll laugh till people point and stare.

Quit it. Seriously. Do you think it’s funny to cover my ankles with poison ivy the last week in September? It’s FALL! Poison ivy is a summer annoyance. And not only is it horribly freaking itchy, I have a wedding to go to on Saturday. Now how is everyone supposed to concentrate on how pretty I look when my ankles are all red and puffy? Oh sure, maybe I should wear socks when I walk in the woods, but shut up. It’s bad enough I have to put shoes on. Socks are for winter. And poison ivy is for SUMMER. You may think you’re clever, but you’re not, funny lady.

Yours truly,
Lisa

PS: Hey, thanks for the full moon last night, that was pretty.

PPS: If you have a chance, could we please have some rain? I’m tired of watering my mums. Thanks.

I’ve never been good at being patient when it comes to getting new gadgets.  I was planning to wait until Friday (payday) to get my new camera, but I couldn’t.  As soon as I decided on the camera I wanted to replace my poor little FX01, I was obsessed.  That’s all I could think about and yesterday after work I figured, what the heck.  What difference is two days really going to make?  So here she is, my new Panasonic DMC-TZ3.  The TZ3 has all the features I loved about my FX01, plus a higher megapixel capability and a 10x optical zoom.  It also has a few new presets and an interesting setting called Intelligent ISO which senses the available light and the movement of the subject and adjust the ISO appropriately.  Interesting.  We’re still getting to know each other, but I think we’ll soon be best friends.

The picture above was taken at 11pm in the bathroom mirror on the Self Portrait setting with the flash off.  Not bad!  Except for the hair.  Sorry, there’s no crazy hair fix setting on the camera.

I finally updated my Lisa’s Studio shop last night and added the new little purses I’ve been sewing. Because everything needs a cute name, I call them Tiny Totes. Right now there are only five, I’m working on more, plus wristlets and business card holders. More updates coming soon!

Side Note (or footnote, I guess, since this isn’t on the “side” per say, anyhow… ) The whiney camera saga and the blind picture-taking which includes unfortunate glimpses of my chimney and my hose reel should be ending soon. Hopefully Friday. More details to come. How’s that for a teaser?

I’ve always thought that Molly, as a dog, was purely ornamental. Her ears work intermittently and sometimes not at all, and her nose is useless, and some days I’ll stand in the kitchen while she runs around the house looking for me. I always tell her she needs to work on that, because if I’m ever lost in the woods, who will find me?

But this morning I saw a little spark of hope that maybe Molly is a dog after all. We went for a little early morning walk down to the river to see how the beaver dam was progressing. Luke and I broke it clear apart on Sunday and this morning it was blocked again (those rats!). I was down on the shore taking pictures of the dam, and as I came up the slope of the bank, Molly was coming toward me from the opposite direction. As soon as she made eye contact with me, she made a tight U-turn, ran a few steps, then stopped and turned to look at me again. Was she pulling a Lassie? Did she want me to follow her?

I followed her down the path to the thing she wanted me to see: a deer leg. Nice. She was so proud, looking down at the leg, then up at me, then down at the leg. Thanks. It looks like maybe coyotes de-legged a carcass and left it behind in the field. As unpleasant as that was, I was thrilled to know that Molly could not only find something, but also tell me about it and get me to follow her to it. I may not have to worry about wasting away, lost in the woods any longer. Of course, I may need to camp next to a deer carcass to get her to find me, but hey, we’re making progress.

EDITOR’S NOTE: The title, “Timmy’s in the Well” is our term for anything Lassie-ish that Molly might do.  It’s from the old Lassie show, you know, when Lassie would bark and someone would ask, “what’s that, girl?  Timmy’s stuck in the well?” 

This Monday started off with an hour-long traffic jam on 291. Actually, no. This Monday started off with my alarm repeatedly going off and me not wanting to get up, then blindly swinging at my alarm clock trying to get it to stop flashing, which woke up Miss Molly, my under-the-covers sleeper, who celebrated the morning by stepping right on my face and scratching me. Good freakin morning.

I almost walked out to leave for work in my slippers again, forgot to stop at the mailbox to leave my Netflix movie to be returned, then made my way onto the highway where I realized that I was almost out of gas. I did a quick calculation of how far have I gone, minus how far do I have to go, minus how much gas do you think we used sitting in Big E traffic on Friday, which equals I stop to get gas before switching highways. Thankfully I did, because no sooner had I gotten on 291 when traffic came to a horrible stop. Three miles I moved… in one HOUR. I finally made it to work where, pretty much, my desk exploded in my lap while the phone rang non-stop, and I desperately returned emails and made lists before I forgot anything I was supposed to be doing.

I left work two hours later than usual and headed exactly where you should NOT go after a frustrating day of puppy scratches, lousy work, and frustrated exhaustion: the grocery store. But even better, my first stop was Sam’s Club to quickly pay my bill, buy a mega-sized bottle of Advil and leave. Was it that easy? Are you kidding? For some unknown reason, the all-powerful cash register, controller of my destiny, could not read the numbers printed on my check. The clerk fed the check into the machine, oh, about a hundred times. It kept spitting it out, she kept reinserting it. I kept trying to breathe deeply and think non-homicidal thoughts. I suggested trying another register. Nope. I suggested there must be a way around this, perhaps she could key in the numbers. Nope. She handed my check back and said, don’t you have cash? Um… WHAT? Don’t you have customer service skills? After another several minutes of banging my head on the counter, I suggested that I try another check to see if that might help. By golly, what a good idea. I should get a manager’s salary for that 30 minutes I wasted telling the clerk how to handle her situation.

Sometimes days like today feel like a thick, heavy coat that I’m dragging around on my back. Each new thing that goes wrong just adds to the weight of the coat until I don’t think I can drag it around anymore. Then I get home and I shrug off the coat, I sit outside and watch the stars and snuggle my puppy and I think I just might be able to try it again tomorrow. But this time I’m setting my alarm a half hour later.

After seeing How About Orange playing with make-your-own Shrinky Dinks, I had to try this myself. Did you know there was such a thing as make-your-own Shrinky Dinks? Who knew? Jessica used a set from Readymade, and as much as I love Readymade, I found a better price on the Shrinky Dink website. All you have to do is enlarge your image, lighten it, print it on the Shrinky paper, cut it out, and bake it. So easy and completely cool!

I may have played with Shrinky Dinks as a kid, but somehow I don’t think so. A craft of this level of awesomeness would not slip from my memory. They are way too much fun. These four pieces above were my first try. I printed them out to be 3″ across and they shrunk up to 1 1/4″. I punched a little hole before baking and now I have some very cool pendants. I am so excited to try to make earrings and all sorts of other craft projects. It’s easy and foolproof. Everyone should try.

I even got a little creative and tried a little word block. I printed “peace” on a 1″x 1.5″ square, then punched two holes in the top and three in the bottom. I baked it, added some jump rings, beads and a little bell and… check it out!

Sorry it’s little blurry. But, really, how cool is that? I think I’m on to something!

I tried to record a little video of the shrinking process because watching the pieces curl up, shrink and flatten out perfectly is like watching magic happen. I was going to put the video on YouTube to share, but then I watched it and saw that you could clearly make out one big, giant dork in the reflection of the toaster oven door watching the pieces shrink. I figured that my dorkiness is way too distracting and took away from the instructional quality of the video, so that video is not going to be shared.

A big, cable-knitted thank you to Christine for recommending the site KnittingHelp.com to me. What a difference! KnittingHelp is great because it’s loaded with information and, best of all, videos of techniques from basic to advanced. The videos are filmed from the point of view of the knitter, so you can easily see how the yarn and needles should look from your point of view. I think it might even be easier to learn to knit from KnittingHelp than it would be from a friend. After all, you can’t really sit in your friend’s lap and see how she’s knitting from her perspective. Well maybe you could, but all of my friends are too tiny to have me sit on their laps.

I learned new ways to cast on, and then I found a supposedly “easy” pattern for a cable knit scarf and went to find the video on making cables. Look! I’m doing it! It really is easy. The first row of cables have a few big holes where I didn’t pull my stitches tight enough, but who cares? I’m making cables! I loaned out my nice #8 circular needles to a friend who wanted to learn to knit, so rather than taking another trip to Jo-Ann Fabric to get a new set, I used my double-pointed needles. A little risky, kind of easy to loose my stitches off the end, but cheaper. Now I can spend that money on more yarn instead of another set of needles. Actually, I think I want to get a stitch counter. With cables, you really need to keep track of your rows, and I keep forgetting how many rows I’ve done and I’m tired of recounting.

So, let’s see, two nights of knitting=six inches of scarf. I would like a long scarf, maybe 60 inches. 60 inches divided by two nights of knitting=two more weeks until I finish! So next time you’re at a farmers’ market or craft fair and see a handmade scarf for $40, understand that you’re getting good deal. Ten days worth of work for $40? This is why I only knit for fun.

Did you know that today, September 19, is Talk Like a Pirate Day? Argh, ’tis. Flickr just reminded me with this cute addition to their logo. So how shall we celebrate? Maybe I should change my voicemail message to “Yar! Who goes there?” This could be fun.

Molly and I took a walk down to the river tonight and it was gorgeous. It was so beautiful that I was sorry I was alone and wished I could share it with someone. Since my favorite someone is sleeping, I thought I’d share it with you. Walk with us, would you?

You can always follow Molly, she knows the way. This is on a new trail that Luke made with the bush hog a couple of weekends back so we could ride the dirt bikes through the woods. It makes a good walking path, too! Can you smell the grapes? They’re everywhere and even though they’re evil and horrible invasive and killing the native trees, they smell really nice. Take a whiff.

When you first step out of the path and into the field out back, this is what you see. Can you believe I get to come here anytime I want? I wish we could see this from the house. There’s more dirt bike trails. Whee!

Peek over the riverbank - oops, don’t get too close! You might fall in. See that there? Damn beavers. I mean wow, a beaver dam. Admire the wonder of nature and the marvelous engineering of those flat-tailed rats the fastidious beavers. We broke this dam apart a couple of weeks ago and those rats the beavers built it back up again. Before you get angry at me for undoing the work of those buck-toothed jerks the beavers, do you know why beavers build dams? Because they don’t like the sound of the running water. Think about that for a minute. Why don’t they just settle somewhere else?! I don’t like the sound of route 6 but you haven’t seen me out there dropping trees across the lanes. Anyhoo… turn around. Isn’t this pretty?

Yes, I agree. Molly does, too. She sat and admired it for a while. OK, moving on now, peek over the bank here. There’s a tree leaning into the water and you never know what might have gotten caught in the roots. See anything interesting?

Among our finds here there has been a swing set, a beach chair, a port-o-let and several 2×4s. Nothing interesting today, though. Hay, look over by that field.

Get it? HAY? Actually it’s grass gone to seed, but it looks hay-ish. Ah-choo!

Well, time to head back up to the house. Thanks for sharing our walk with us. I think that counts as calories burned, go treat yourself to a ring ding.