Author: Susan

A crafty present pouch

While I’ve always considered myself an unusually structure-happy person, time management in the conventional sense isn’t really my thing. Master of procrastination, to put a positive spin on things. I run five minutes past fashionably late, I post in batches every two weeks, and I hate going to bed because I feel like I’ve squandered the evening. In some ways Kevin is the opposite. He likes getting up and being busy all Saturday morning so that he can relax in the afternoon, he likes leaving the house when he says he will, and he’s probably the most efficient worker I’ve ever seen. On the flip side, a list of 15 things can take him an hour and a half at the grocery store, and he’s more into the “season” of important days than the date itself. So perhaps it’s not surprising that we didn’t open each others’ Christmas gifts until Febrary third…

Part of it is that we didn’t celebrate at home, and we’d make a conscious decision early on to celebrate when we got back, rather than lugging, security-checking, and flying gifts to Florida and back. Then Kevin was busy at work, then we were wedding planning, then I sprained my wrist and couldn’t finish cutting out the pieces of his homemade gift book, and all of a sudden, January was gone. Kevin was at work all day on Saturday, and since I was in need of a project, feeling guilty about the delay, and realized that we were straddling Christmas and Valentines day, I decided to sew him a gift pouch rather than wrapping.

I bought this fabric a year ago — red with fireflies and a gorgeous white and taupe speckled pattern. I used pink thread to sew it and gold embroidery floss to tie it, as a nod to the holiday-straddling.

And here it is tied up:

It took all of 10 minutes to make, including winding the bobbin and sewing in the ends. I placed the two fabrics right-side-together, and cut so that there was 3/4″ on each side of the book, and so that the fabric was a little under 2.5 book-lengths long. I ironed both pieces. Then, holding them right sides together, I sewed a U down the long right side, across the bottom, and up the long left side. Cut thread, turned rightside out and pressed the edges with my fingers. I folded the top edge like wrapping paper (corners folded in as small triangles, rolled the edge around twice) and I seamed that. Then I folded the bottom edge up to make a big enough pocket for the book, and seamed both long edges. I like that you can see the white lining on the side seams. It looks so pretty and polished.

For finishing, you’ll have six ends to weave in — pull or sew the thread to the same side, knot, and sew the ends in between the layers. Fold the bag in half horizontally, and sew in ties (embroidery thread? Fine ribbon? A snap? A button and elastic?) at the crease.

The girl who never posts

What a waste of a week, blog-wise!

I made the enormous mistake of upgrading to the new Blogger (I’ve been putting it off each time the offer pops up), and have found the results paralyzingly difficult.

I’ve had gmail for almost three years, and have always been wowed by their customer service, attention to detail, and proactive attitudes. I’ve written in with suggestions or annoyances and seen the software change within days. The Blogger/Hello software has never been as exciting, but I’ve never had an issue with it either and it was free! So rock on. However, now that I have two and a half years of my life recorded here, change makes me leery, especially when poorly executed.

First of all, Hello (the program I’ve used to post photos) has been retired. It served its purpose, but I’m not sorry to see it go. Unfortunately, the next-gen Picasa 2 is best-case buggy, and more frequently fails to work at all. Such a time-suck. I applied my software testing skills to developing consistent repros and logged about 5 bugs, only to get an “interesting, but whatever” response back from google for each of them. Quite frustrating. Second, the new blogger dashboard does not let me log in consistently. The fix they emailed me was to stop using Internet Explorer (clearly not a good option, especially given how much I like IE7) — frankly, not helpful. I’m very disappointed.

For recent & unhappy blogger/hello converts who are in the same boat and can’t post pictures anymore, I’m recommending Flickr. It’s not the best site, usability-wise, but once you get it set up, it works like a charm and the tech support is great.

You can create a flickr account here, then once you’re logged in, go here for instructions on how to add flickr to your blogger account (follow the “head over to Google now” link). Once you are all set up, download the Flickr Uploadr client (despite the dumb name, it’s much better than uploading one picture at a time through the website). Once you have pictures uploaded, click on the picture you want to upload, and then click the “blog this” button above the photo.

Equivalent to Hello, without the new harddrive-rearranging tendencies of Picasa2.

Thanks for all the help…

… both in the comments, in person, and by email. You’re all an amazing resource.

As an addendum to the last post, I’m sorry for the slow responses to your comments. I managed to randomly sprain my right wrist last weekend, and since then everything (brushing my teeth, lifting glasses of water or tea, driving, writing, reading, and predictably, typing) has been a challenge. Some coworkers scared me into thinking that I had RSI (repetitive stress injury — common forms of this are carpal tunnel, “tennis elbow” and assorted versions of tendinitis). I went to the doctor, who confirmed it was a sprain. I’ve never been so excited to have a one-to-four week injury. RSI would be plausible, giving my 7-11 hours a day on the computer and that knitting habit. It would also be wildly career- and life-limiting. About a third of the people I work with have permanent nervous injuries that prevent them from typing, gardening, using knives for dinner prep or forks for eating, driving, etc. I’m always pretty neurotic about ergonomics and taking frequent breaks, but this has been a good reminder to be vigilant.

That said, in the interest of healing, I’ve been typing and writing as little as possible. A friend lent me the Hawaii guidebook that she used for her honeymoon. I’ve been soaking it up, but it’s hard not to make lists of cool things as I read. Instead, I bought some of those little tabs (I love office supplies) and have been merrily sticking them.

Yellow is “things to do”, red is “things to avoid” (samples are rain, cold, and shark-infested waters), blue is maps, and green is interesting information (did you know that Mauna Loa, the biggest mountain on the Big Island, is 100 times the volume of Mount Rainier? Crazy!). I’ll summarize them in written form once I have my writing hand back. It’s a pity that I’m so right handed — my coordination on my left side is embarrassingly limited.

It’s seeming like we’re narrowing things down to Maui and the Big Island. A volcano is too cool not to visit, and the Maui snorkeling seems exciting. This site was a find. Oahu sounds so nice, but I suspect that we’d be frustrated by the crowds, traffic, and homogenization. Kauai looks beautiful, but very remote and not quite touristy enough, if that makes sense. I have a fear of showing up somewhere where they expect you to prepare food and entertain yourself — while that’s ideal at home, it’s not quite what I’m going for on this trip. Any disagreements?

Suggestions?

So, the wedding planning is continuing apace, and with it the honeymoon planning.

If you were going to spend a week in, say, Hawaii, where would you go? What would you do? On which islands?

We’re excited about snorkeling, volcanoes, hiking (in the Larry-described “baby hike” genre — a few hours, a few miles, prettiness), happy hour, beds and breakfasts, and beaches. Any recommendations?

Wheeeee!

I wrote all of these posts last night, catching up for the week, but the dumb new blogger photo software didn’t work and all of the links didn’t come through. I can’t fix it until I get home tonight, so in the meantime, here’s a funny, quasi work-relevant video from youtube to cheer your friday. (Definitely use sound.)

Update: Finally fixed with an annoying work-around. The new blogger is definitely buggy for IE7.

Haven’t I touched this already?

Woot! I’m done with the first sock, and all cast on for the second! Casting on took fortitude — the picot-like double-long-tail cast on was very, very tricky for me. The first sock took many do-overs and lots of concentration. The second only took two starts, but I’m still not sold on the edging for the amount of work, even if it is fussy and pretty. Now that I’m done the first sock and able to try it on for real, I’m wishing that I’d gone down a needle to 1s. The sock is very loose. It feels nice, but so delicate. These socks wouldn’t have much elasticity, so better too loose than too tight, but I think one needle size smaller would have been ideal. I’ll have to remember that if I buy the yard again.

This yarn came with a spool of reinforcing thread. This is only my second pair of socks, and I could see how that might be helpful, but it just seemed like way too big a pain to actually incorporate into my knitting. I’m not a spinner, and I’m not a “holding two threads together” sort. Now that I’ve started the second sock, though, I’m appreciating my reluctance. The two spools are not only completely different sizes, but totally different colors.

I’m glad I didn’t bother.

Now that I have one sock done in about three weeks, even if it has been my only knitting, I’m starting to get all sock-yarn-happy again. My knitting group had an exchange last spring, and I was essentially gifted some awesome Lorna’s Laces* (generally way outside my budget). Here it is cuddling with the completed sock.

Since socks actually seem to actually move along for me, I wonder if this is my next project waiting in the wings? 🙂

*(Kevin is deeply unimpressed by sock yarn, even Lorna’s Laces, and credited with the title quote for this post.)

Some of the dudes

It must be the pressure of demonstrating that the clowns are happy and healthy, but I’ve been completely incapable of taking a good picture of the dudes since the storm. I’m officially throwing in the towel. If you can’t see that they’re wriggly and charismatic from this, I have nothing helpful to add other than a reminder that my photography *truly* is not representative.

The tank really has bloomed since the storm. Part of my brain wonders if the difference is the tang — they’re known to be time- and resource-intensive fish, and 55 gallons is the bare minimum for keeping one. I wonder if the water quality is so much better without him? It’s also possible that we’ve been more attentive since the averted disaster, and that’s made the difference. The tank really is preoccupying.

In that vein, here’s a great picture of one of the two turbo snails.

Isn’t he neat? I know he’s a snail, but really, he’s captivating. I ought to try to bend youtube to my advantage, and then maybe some of the tank-doubters out there would understand? You just have to see him in (surprisingly fast) motion, and delight in the suspense of whether he’ll eat the nearby annoying algae or take a different route… you’d understand, in person.

In other snail news, we’re seeing a lot more “naked” snails, again. When we first saw these guys, we almost wondered if we’d managed to develop a new species of unpreyed-upon shell-less snails. The moniker “naked snails” stuck long after we learned that they already existed, were named, and were commonplace besides. They’re exactly like snails, except that they only have a backplate (my term) instead of a shell. But they come in a beautiful, velvety black as well as the less exciting snail-color, and they’re interesting. However, I don’t think I’ve ever seen one as big as I did last night.

To the left, you can see a turbo snail on the back wall. And to the right: do you see that naked snail? Enormous! In other interesting news, the blue SPS coral in the mid-foreground has completely recovered from the storm, and can be seen growing like mad between the two. Neat.

More respect is due

The weather has impressed me in the last week. Generally I see Seattle as a place with abysmally repetitive weather, dark clouds, and (no offense) sort of weather-hysterical residents. YET, way after rush hour, we had real snow today, and actual snow clouds in the sky. True, work attendance ran at 50%, but people are getting so much more resigned to snow.

My car, decked in snow:

The snow is practically typical at this point! I also took a picture of my view after I turn out of the driveway in the morning. See those snow clouds, all yellow at the horizon? So pretty. It reminds me of driving down Winter Street on the way to swim practice in high school, only with the addition of a lake and major mountains. (Even if I can’t see them, I know they’re there.) Usually at this time of year, it’s just slate gray, with no glitter in the lake, and deep darkness in the sky. I loved the snow clowds, and they lasted for a full day.

The interesting part of the day was actually via email once I got to work. Kevin was all worried whether I’d arrived intact. His mustang (visible beyond the corner of the 4WD Matrix in the top photo) is not ice-worthy given the hills (it’s really heavy, really powerful, and doesn’t have the tires to be a snow sportscar.) Despite several antilock brake incidents, I really didn’t have a problem taking the backroads to work. Snow is snow. But after he sent a video of the situation in Portland (and I heard that he’d seen two accidents while waiting on the corner for the bus to work), I understood the concern. The Portland home video had been taken off someone’s apartment balcany, and it looked like some sort of car ballet, as all these vehicles slowly slid down hills, off each other, and accelerated downhill offscreen. It looked so controlled, until you realized that there was someone inside recognizing that they had no control at all and were essentially sledding an SUV. Especially with multitude of hills and the lack of plows and sand, it really is dangerous to drive here in certain conditions. Duly noted.

Win some, lose some

The football viewing continues. Going into the weekend, we were both psyched — three teams in contention: the Eagles, Seahawks and Patriots. Despite our loyal viewing, however, the results weren’t stellar — only the Patriots made it through. 🙁

That aside, I had a lot of couch time, and made major progress on the sock. By mid-Saturday, it looked like this:

Can you see what that is? (Aside from the high-def football, now that Kevin has a new power source and his computer and media center are back up!)

It’s a heel turn!! A *major* mental victory, if not a real (sports) one.

Astronomers for a day

On Thursday, we had yet another snow day following the evening ice and snow. The upside (aside from the obvious prettiness outside and cozyness in) was that we were home at sunset, and able to climb up the hill to try to get a look at Comet McNaught. There’d been a blurb in the paper calling this the brightest comet since Hale-Bopp, and which instructed you to look more or less “at” the sun right after sunset. For the first twenty minutes or so, we didn’t see anything. It was a gorgeous, cold evening though, and Kevin and I spent a good while at the top of the hill admiring the scenery. Kevin got some great Olympic mountain photos – click for a bigger, prettier version where you can see the snow on the peaks.

See it? Here’s a zoom-in:

Friday and Saturday were both cloudy, so it was fun to have the chance to see it while it was still around!