Scribbles & Bits

Sometimes I Blog....

I've had great plans to blog about all the things I've been working on, but with the run of Wicked for 4 weeks, it's not an easy possibility.

It's a shame, because I think this card deserves some face time.  A tracing of a french curve and a lot of free time with hole punches turned this out.  I made my usual 7 again (2 for me, 2 for my Grandfather, 2 for my Aunt, and 1 for the card box at work).

I thought this one came out pretty great, too.  A Father's Day card for my grandfather.  It's was my first time to work with ribbon on a card.  I thought it looked pretty great in the vellum envelope.  I included it with some homemade gingersnap cookies and the latest Evanovich book.

But this sock has been my knitting obsession.  I have posted a lot about knitting lately because I've been working on a piece I'd like to submit to Knitty, but I've kind of gotten tired of it for now.  I've been ready to work with someone else's pattern and this one from Sensational Knitted Socks by Charlene Schurch seemed like the perfect one. I tired it once before but for some reason wasn't haviong a lot of luck.  Luck is on my side now, though!  The pattern recommends a self-striping yarn, but this one from Yarn Pirate (earth and ocean) basically only has two colors so it works brilliantly for that! 

And, a little by-the-by: Wicked seems to be a wonderful show (the little bit I've ever seen of it), but working it has made it live up to its name....  Can't wait till I can pull my head from the sand!

Quakes On a Plane

A quick post since I'm backin town.  The graduation was awesome and it was great to see my family under positive circumstances again!  

Really, the only downer was the leg back home: the flight was quite turbulent.  After we landed and we were sitting on the tarmac, the woman in front of me gets up, turns and gets back in her seat on her knees so she's facing me.  She tells her husband, "I'm so sick to the stomach!  I wish I'd taken some Dramamine!"  I would say that that is pretty close to the top of the list of things one doesn't want to hear from the person facing them....

A Small, Random Post

When I haven't been working or reorganizing my craft room (a.k.a. The Repository For All Homeless, "What-Are-You", and "Someday-I'm-Sure-You'll-be-Useful" Objects), I've been working on this 3"x3" cross stitch.  It will become a card for my cousin/godson who is graduating in about a week.  I will be flying back to see him and, in the process, run into half my old teachers and some classmates since he's graduating from my old stomping grounds (and, actually, the same high school both his mother and my mother graduated from). 

The pattern is from Cross Stitch Card Collection: 101 Original Designs by Claire Compton and the original version is actually shown on the cover.  However, I changed it to the school colors.  Ahhh, the perks of handmade!

Now for the truly random part of this post: I am bothered by the newest Danactive commercial (I would post a youtube link, but oddly it's one of the few things ever televised that hasn't made its way to youtube yet).  So Jamie Lee Curtis is in a grocery store passing out yogurt samples because honestly, what's left after fighting off Mike Myers (the villain from Halloween, not the comedien, although she may have fought him off, too.  Who knows?  Anyway....) and some woman walks up and call her the Danactive lady.  Jamie looks a little sad as she looks to the camera and says, "That's my new name."  Then there's some patter about how supercoolawesome Danactive is and, aside from that moment of wistfulness, it seems like a normal commercial until the end when a random woman stops by the free sample table to announce that she's been using it and now she's "loving life."  I can do a pretty decent job of suspending disbelief (that's how I can love opera), but not when someone announces that she is "loving life" because she's started eating a yogurt that makes her regular.  Beyond the fact that strangers don't normally announce that sort of thing to each other (at least not around here; please let me know if this is normal grocery store conversation in your neck of the woods), I have trouble believing eating yogurt would be the thing that turned her life around.  Either she was so blocked up that that was truly the biggest problem in her life (lucky her) or this is some miracle yogurt.  Maybe there's more to the commercial that got edited out.  "Danactive paid off my student loan, my car, my house, resolved my broken relationship with my sister, offered free marriage counseling to my friends, makes my bed, and unblocks more than my creativity!  Now I'm loving life!"

Yeah, that must be it.

Frost/Nixon Has Nothing to do with Robert Frost

Ok, technically, I knew that.  But that's the show that's in right now.  We bid a fond farewell to Rent, but not before I got to see a 6'+ guy in 6 inch stiletto boots.  I in no way object to his choice of footwear, just to the fact that he didn't seem all that steady on them.  I just wanted to go up to him and tell him he's ruining it for all the guys who CAN walk steady in their 6" stilettos.  I was hoping he wouldn't trip and fall, although my inner 5 year old thought that might be one of the more fun incident reports to write.  It probably wouldn't have been my favorite, though: that title continues to strongly sit with the incident report about the guy who accidentally handcuffed himself to a rail at a children's holiday pageant.  

Rent was followed by a performing group that protested Communist China but was fearful of protests from people.  That was very odd, to say the least.  Their security guy was convinced that Communist spies lurked around every corner.  I felt bad that I picked that day to wear that red sweater, but it does such a good job of covering my hammer and sickle tattoo.  (disclaimer: I don't think communism is funny, but this guy's paranoia was).  And I don't know what he was doing to his "security" staff, but he was short-handed the first show, just as short plus an additional 4 shorter for the second performance, and so short by the last performance that he didn't have enough people to man the lobby.  After all his over-the-radio freak outs at me, I enjoyed the moment when he informed me of such (well after lobbies were open) and I informed him that I had noticed and already posted people in those spots!  I also enjoyed telling him later that I didn't think much of his observational skills when I'd been introduced to him as Virginia, wore a name tag with my name printed on it, responded to every radio call identifying myself, yet he persisted on calling me Victoria.  No wonder they've had such disasters at other venues!  I was pleased that there were none here.  Why?  Because my staff is amazing and competent!  Another amusing note from this event: many of them thought I was from Canada because of my accent.  I said y'all enough times that I can only presume they meant southern Canada.  :)

  I love a lot of things about my job and one of those things is staff meetings.  Yes, sometimes (even most of the time) we all sit in a room and put on a serious face and talk about budgets and upcoming shows and problems, but sometimes we get to go someplace and have fun!  That was the case with our last staff meeting.  We went to the botanical garden where they had glass works by Chihully. I by no means consider myself a photographer, but I was happy I brought my camera and gave it a go anyway.  I won't barrage this post with every picture, or even all of my favorite pictures.  I'll conveniently litter them among the next few posts.  It was such a great experience to go to this.  To be honest, due to this job, I rarely go out anyway, and when I do, going to something like this would not have been my first pick, but I loved it!  Perhaps I should make trying new things more often a New Year's resolution.  It's not too late to add that one on, right?  It will look great under "No more procrastinating!"

Still, as great as this staff meeting was, I can't beat the one where Garry Marshall sang Happy Birthday to me!

Geez!

Well....  It's been a while since I've written anything.  Truth is, I've been swamped and I've felt uninspired.  There isn't a reason, it's just the way it's been.  So I'm going to try to get back into the routine (like I've sworn to myself I would about 8000 times now), but I'm not going to try to stick to a topic.  Think of it more like a restaurant chat.  It'll probably still be about crafts mainly, but I've censored a lot of what I've written to stick to a topic and it's just not working for me.  Perhaps I've read too many horror stories of the people who talked about their jobs and then got fired.  I'm not naming names and I'm probably not going to talk all that much smack, so hopefully it won't come back to bite me in the bum.  And hey, I'm pretty sure no one's reading anyway.

So what's been happening?  A 5.5 week run of a show (which seemed like it was going to be soul-crushing, but, in the end wasn't too bad).  Right now we have Rent in the building w/ the original Mark and Roger.  The cast is overall excellent so it's been a pleasure to listen to.  I say listen b/c unless I take a night off, I'm not comfortable popping into the house to see any of the performance.  In many ways I feel that this gig would have been more suited to someone who doesn't like theatre.  But really you have to like it and have to be supportive of it to be willing to be here for 14 hour days.  You have to like it to think 8 shows over 6 days is a normal life.  You have to like it to be ok with getting home at 12:30 at night (and not b/c you've been out drinking) and turn around and be back by 9AM.  You have to like it to put up with being cussed out by people who consider the show start time listed on their ticket to be a suggestion, not a hard and fast rule,and are then upset because they are missing part of the show.  You have to like it to be treated as the bad guy by the audience, the traveling company, and sometimes your coworkers and staff and still come back.  Or maybe I'm a closet masochist.  Nah, pretty sure that's not it.  And, to be honest, 97% of the audience doesn't cuss me out, people who I'm supposed to be on the same team as don't gripe beyond all reason, and life runs much as it should.  But when you have a bad run, it just sticks out in your mind. 

Thank God for the crafts, right?  I've been working on another Frank Lloyd Wright piece (no pics yet), also on linen.  There are solid sections of color so there's not the mind-numbing frustration of changing the needle after a minute of stitching.  But w/ no events last week, there was time to really clean the house and realize that to hang up two other pictures next to each other, I needed a third one also in black and white.  Enter the Taj Mahal! Click it if you want to see it in its full-sized glory.  It's from the book Cross Stitch Silhouettes and still took me about a week to stitch despite its smaller size (approximately 6x8).

Making this piece served another great purpose: helping me start my New Year's resolution (starting a bit late, aren't I?).  I love craft books.  Anyone who knows me knows that!  I have decided that over the next two years, I want to create at least one thing from every book that actually has project directions in it.  Obviously books I've already used are immune, so time to start tapping those with the projects that I "absolutely have to make right this very minute or I'll die a scissorless death" and then promptly don't get around to when I see I lack all the materials (or the sheer gumption to get off my duff and make it).  Since I seem to have a similar obsession with cookbooks and a need to expand my meal preparation repertoire, they'll probably make it into this resolution as well. 

So yes, a more chatty, crafty, picture-taking, cooking me.  Let's see how long all that lasts....

Quick and Dirty

Far more a description of the pictures than the project itself.  As I'm sure you'll recall (since I've referenced it about 800 times in the last 2 posts), I was working on a cross stitch version of the Frank Lloyd Wright Wisteria Window.  Apparently, I'd been working on it since February of 2007.  Yes, it was a difficult project with 100,000 color changes (no, I'm not exaggerating at all.  Why do you ask?).  However, it seemed to really just be shiny things and a move that made the project stretch on for this long.  Naturally, I have provided the obligatory full shot and random close-up for no good reason.  It's not pressed, but I was really ready to get on to something else. 

I'm in a stitchy sort of mood, so the first "something else" was a Bucilla needlepoint kit of a heron by a lake.  Very pretty, very pre-printed on the canvas.  However, all the colors were jumbled together and with so many similar ones, I just wasn't up to it for some reason.  Then I remembered this kit: Maiden Hair (also by Bucilla).  What I didn't realize until I had already started sorting out floss is there are literally 48 different colors, 11 of which are green.  Some of the names are (and I kid you not) dark green, darker green, darkest green, and dark forest green.  This goes swell with pale pink, palest pink, peachy pink, and light pink.  Needless to say, after about 4 hours of profanity-laden eye strain, I'm kind of over this project.  It's ok, though.  I really should be spending time preparing for the presentation I'm supposed to be giving to 100 students about my job.  I think I shall provide them with some useful words of wisdom.  "You can be whatever you want.

"Except a stripper because the economy is bad and quarters are cold."

thisclose

I am truly thisclose to finishing the FLW embroidery referenced here so I don't want to take a progress pic just to turn around and show the completed one on, say Monday (or whenever in the very near future).  So instead I'm just going to mention how much I love when Amazon sends me a book recommendation with a really long title that won't fit in the Yahoo subject line.  Apparently today's book recommendation is Easy Stitching with Butt!  Imagine how many projects I could finish with that sort of skill!  :D

Random Posts=Random Thoughts

While I truly do intend to become more regular with my posts (hey, don't they make a yogurt for that?), I don't have any pictures today so I'll fill in with this random thought that's been bugging me for weeks now: I suck in my gut for extended periods of time every day.  Why is my stomach not rock hard and flat by now? 

Move along now!  Nothing more to see here!

*taptaptap* Is This Thing On?

I guess I can't really say that when it's me that's been MIA.  So let's see: what's happened since I last posted?  I applied for a job at random, was interviewed, offered the position, and had to move cross country in less than two weeks time.  This all happened in November.  I don't even know where to begin talking about how much happier I am and all about my new job.  Knitting, stitching, and whatnot got moved to the back burner, but I've taken up a pair of socks to help me through the ups and downs of my grandmother's open heart surgery. 

So that's my life in a nutshell.  What's new with you?  ;)

The Best Thing I've Learned Today And a Tip

I promised myself that I wasn't going to post again until I was posting something I'd made (or at the very least I'm working on), but today has been an epic fest of suctackularity (that's a word, right?) so I'm cheering myself up with this fact: Dr. Ruth was a sniper in Israel.  I can't explain exactly why it cheers me up (Hey!  Way to go!  You can kill people AND give frank sex advice!), but it does.  (and no, this isn't another one of those "Mr. Rogers was a sniper and his cardigans covered the tattoos" things.)

Also, a tip that I've never seen anywhere and it's actually helped one person, so I'm going to pass it on, feeling rather clever that I thought of this on my own.  When the pattern directs you to knit until the piece measures (x) inches, just figure out your row gauge and you can keep clicking your row counter and it makes it go by faster and you don't end up with that black hole of knitting where it never gets any longer and then all of a sudden it's 2 inches too long (like the run on sentence you just read).  And if everyone already does that and this isn't such a novel tip, then never mind.