Jacquie's Journal

Run, Fat Boy, Run

You know how often in the movie theatre there is someone who laughs out loud, sometimes even when it's not even appropriate?  Well, today, I am afraid that was me!  We went to see Run, Fat Boy, Run directed by David Schwimmer and starring Simon Pegg and Thandie Newton.  It was just my kind of humour.  I am going to have to see it again because I am sure I missed bits because I was still giggling from the last funny bit.  Look out for cameo parts by David Walliams from Little Britain, and Stephen Merchant from Extras.

It was in complete contrast to Margot at the Wedding, that we had out on DVD starring Nicole Kidman and Jack Black, which was also supposed to be funny.  The whole thing was shot in such gloomy lighting that we totally failed to recognise anything amusing.  And it ended abruptly in the middle with absolutely nothing resolved.

My Greek Goddess of Hope in Pandora's Jar idea for March's QAL just wouldn't work out in my head, but then I had another idea that just manifested itself straightaway.  It was a much simpler idea - luckily as I was fast running out of time.  I did The Light at the End of the Tunnel

Happy Easter

Well what can I say?   I have been working and not been doing much else of interest again.  Hope you all had a great Easter.  We have had beautiful spring weather and have even had the heating turned off.  We went to Sam and Sunnie's new house for dinner last week which was lovely but I forgot to take any pictures.  It is a pretty house, and has a huge kitchen which I am quite envious of.

What is this?
Yes it is a knitted egg. 








What could be inside?

Why a chick of course!  I made it using the pattern in the Make: Craft magazine by Anna Hrachovec whose website is mochimochiland .  Actually I made him about a quarter the size he was meant to be by halving the number of stitches and rows, which is probably why he is quite difficult to turn from egg to chick.  I missed off the embroidered crack and eyes on the egg as eggs just don't have eyes in my world.

We never went to see Enchanted when it was on at the movies so we got it out of Blockbusters to watch last night when there was absolutely nothing worth watching - not even slightly.  I have to say if I am being honest that I was a little bit disappointed.  Some bits only made sense once we'd seen the deleted scenes - seems to me they weren't as unnecessary as the director seemed to think.  Also the whole magic thing.   The poor old chipmunk suddenly couldn't talk in the real world, but she could still summon all the local animals to help her clean, and produce dresses from curtains just like that.  I think it would have been better if she had to learn to cope without the magic.

I am falling a little behind with my assignments and challenges for March.  I have not yet had a goat spinning although I have purchased the book recommended by Alarming Female in my comments - Thank you it looks like exactly what I need.  I have had the idea for my March QAL block - the theme for which is 'Hope'.  I am going to do Elpis the Greek Goddess of Hope who was the only one to remain in Pandora's Box (which I gather was actually a jar!) when the silly girl opened and all the evils of the world escpaed.  I have had some chocolate, but it has been the 70% cocoa medicinal kind, and I have eaten only a small piece at a time.  We have been watching Paul McKenna's program, 'I can make you thin' with interest.  We watched the second episode while eating our dinner so I guess we haven't fully submerged ourselves in it yet!

March Already! How Did That Happen

I guess, even with the leap day, February is very short and March is here and has brought some lovely weather followed by some really horrible weather.  On Saturday it snowed a lot and Edward went to a party up in Big Cottonwood Canyon.  We went to fetch him him at 10.30 at night and I hope I never have to be more scared than I was driving up there with snow on the road and no sign of a plough!  We were slipping and a sliding sideways some of the time and were very lucky not to slide right off the edge into the creek or into oncoming traffic.  Coming down was not as bad as going up but was still not fun!

It was much nicer on Sunday and Gary got in some good skiing, while I pottered around at home. 

My resolutions are going ok.  I have not succumbed to the 10 for $10 chocolate so I have another $40 to give.  I have decided I will give Jan and Feb to Oxfam.  I have always supported them and the great work they do.

I looked for a dummies book on Analysis, after remembering that that was what I had failed - not Calculus - but it seems  that there is no way to explain it to dummies or idiots so I will give it a miss for the time being and my topic will be Spinning.  I haven't found a book on that either, but I have found some hopefully good online instructions that should at least get me started.

On the Crafty Threads 'n' yarns forum we have Hope as the theme for our March Quilt-a-long (QAL from now on).  I suggested dragons, but that wasn't chosen, so I have suggested it again for April - I like dragons!  Hope is a lovely theme but I am still hoping for some inspiration to hit.

Juno and Mags and Needles

On the day of the Oscars we finally got to see Juno.  I hope it wins some, we really enjoyed it, it was funny and although it deals with the usual "what to do about an unexpected teenage pregnancy" dilemmas it does it in a fresh way I think.

I have been very impressed with a couple of magazines lately.  The first is CRAFT: , the sister magazine of MAKE:.  It's jampacked with fun little projects including some knitting and sewing ones.  The more I look through it the more I find.  The latest issue has cute Japanese juggling balls to sew filled with short grain rice, a chicken/egg toy to knit, sturdy cardboard chairs and a reversible wrap skirt to make amongst other things.  I am making the chicken/egg toy and will post a pic as soon as I have finished it.  Amy O'Neill Houck of  The Hook and I  has very kindly posted on their blog about my KnitChartMaker which is exciting.

The other magazine is a UK magazine that Carolinne has very kindly given me a subscription for for Christmas.  It is Selvedge and is about all kinds of textiles.  I just love the whole look and feel  of this magazine - it's printed on nice thick paper - and it has ads but they are not as obtrusive as in some magazines.  It doesn't  have patterns, but it has lots of articles about designers and there is plenty to inspire there.

Gary bought me the KnitPicks Options Harmony Wood Interchangeable Needle Set for Valentine's Day and they arrived in the week.. They are so pretty and really lovely to use.  The cords are much thinner than the Denise ones so the knitting doesn't stick on them and they are nice and pointy.  Luckily the tiny keys are just there for leverage to tighten the join and any pin that will fit through the hole will do, when I have lost them both!

Speaking, as I was two paragraphs ago, about my chart maker, I am in the final throes of testing the new version and desperately trying to fight the urge to add more new features  that break the existing code.  It's difficult to know when to stop, but I know some Mac users are having problems with it and I hope the new version will address those.  I am sorry if I haven't got back to you with an answer to your problem - the simple truth is that I don't have a Mac to test on so it is difficult to diagnose and fix.   I will do my best to research the matter with Applets on Macs generally and see what I come up with.

More Kiss

Here is my completed block for the Crafty Threads 'n' Yarns Quilt-along:
I have really enjoyed making it and have been looking very carefully at some of his other paintings with the idea of designing a few more things on the motifs he uses.

It suddenly came to me yesterday that it wasn't Calculus that I failed at college, but Analysis.  I don't know why I thought it was Calculus other than I must remember so little about Analysis that I have no idea what it was even about.  Anyway I have been quite enjoying brushing up on my differentiation and integration!  I will save Analysis for another month!

Doe, a Deer, a Female Deer

Sam called us and told us to look out of the windoe, and this is what we saw:
She saw us and obligingly posed for me.  They come down from the mountains when it gets really cold and snowy foraging for food and she was nibbling on our bushes - I do hope they aren't poisonous. 

The Kiss

In case you have been wondering if I have been doing anything other than work and whinge about the weather,  I have actually been doing some sewing!  I explained in a previous post what my plan was for the February Crafty Threads n Yarns quilt-along and I have progress to show.  It is based on Klimt's The Kiss.
The circular flower motifs are on her dress and the border will use elements from his cloak which is a patchwork of gold, black, white and grey rectangles.  I don't know what Klimt was like, but I hope he wouldn't have been too snooty about my interpretation.  Come to think about it I am  making something in fabric from a painting of fabric - if you see what I mean :)  The finished block will be around 12 inches square plus a half inch seam allowance all round.  It has all been done using fabrics from my stash.  The section from the painting was done by cropping the faces from the picture, which I found online, enlarging them a little, and then printing it out on the special transfer paper you can by in all good stationery stores, and finally  ironing it onto plain white fabric.  I rather stupidly folded it across the middle to find the centre and its flaking off a bit, but never mind.  She also looks a bit green around the gills as though he has eaten a bit too much garlic!

More Weather! oh yeah - and Happy Valentine's Day!

After a few days of almost spring-like weather we were promised a little bit of snow in the middle of the day that would be all gone by the evening commute.

What do weather forecasters know?  It did start snowing around lunchtime - I guess they got that part right - but it just didn't stop.  By my usual leaving time it was 2 or 3 inches deep and I couldn't even make it across the parking lot to my car in the ridiculously unsuitable shoes I was wearing and the roads were terrible.  At six-o'clock I chickened out and asked Gary to come and get me. 

When he got back from lunch he managed to lock his keys in the car.  He was driving the Montero which you lock inside before shutting the doors so you don't need the key.  But Luckily now that Sam is working at the same company - (Did I mention that?  He started about 2 weeks ago.) he and Gary drove over to my work and parked right outside the door so he could drive us over to my car.   We scraped the ice and snow off it and Gary drove it home.  It took over an hour and it was eight o'clock by the time we got home.

Things were pretty bad over the whole area. School buses were getting stuck and some children had to stay at school all night because the roads to their homes were shut.

Things are not much better this morning. It isn't snowing but it is very windy and the snow is drifting and blowing around - it's like being in a giant snow-globe.  Edward went out to catch his bus, but came back a few minutes later as he heard via texting that all the schools in the area were delaying classes for a couple of hours.  We would have heard if we were morning TV watchers!  The roads are still bad, but I will go in in a while when hopefully they will be clearer and quieter.

Happy Valentine's Day by the way! Hope you are having a lovely day.  I got some very nice 70% cocoa chocolate which really is a treat now I have stopped eating chocolate as though it was one of the major food groups.

tiwi

I am really excited about my job! The company actually makes products that save lives - devices that monitor and mentor driving.  Up to now it has been targeted at  fleets like trucks and taxi cabs where its use has saved their companies tons of money by reducing the number of accidents, and NASCAR where the data recovered after crashes has played an enormous part in the better design of the cars.

NASCAR fans may have noticed green stickers on the windshields of the cars during the Budweiser Shootout last week.  They were attached to our lap counter devices that we are currently testing.  The sticker said "tiwi" and a link to www.driveaware.com

If you have teens who are or soon will be driving then this site is worth a visit.  The tiwi is the new device we are working on and it will be available very soon.  I will definitely be getting one for Edward when he starts driving next year!

I hope this doesn't sound too much like an ad, but I think this is such a great thing and I wanted to tell you all about it!

Still Snowing

Well, it is February already!  It was pancake day (Shrove Tuesday) on Tuesday, but we didn't have pancakes - does pizza count? - it's flat and round.

Last month I chose green living as my "...for Dummies" topic and learned a few things I can do to be more environmentally responsible.  This month's book is "Calculus for Dummies" which I got out of the library.  I failed Calculus at college partly because I was a dummy and partly because not only did we have the Maths Professor to teach us but we used the book he wrote on the subject as well and both were incomprehensible.  Maths was meant to be my best subject so it has been a great source of annoyance that I just didn't get it - especially more recently as Sam seemed to find it so simple. So now is a good time to take another look at it.  I have read the first chapter and it's making sense so far.

This month's Crafty Threads 'n' Yarns quilt-along challenge theme is "Romance".  One of my favourite artists is Gustav Klimt so my intention is to do something inspired by The Kiss - probably his most famous painting.  I love the swirls and spirals and all the shapes and patterns and colours he uses in that picture.  I remember looking at it in Office Max, but I am hoping I actually bought some of that paperbacked fabric that you can put through the printer so I can print off the faces from the picture.  That will be the centre and then I will surround it with appliqued motifs from the rest of the picture.  I am feeling this is a little ambitious at the moment, but we will see.  One thing I find a little odd about this painting is that the faces are squished up in the top of the painting and there are acres of space it looked like he had trouble filling up at the bottom.

I haven't been doing much knitting lately.  I made a vest from Patons SWS, but it is a bit too short and a bit weird round the armholes, so I may frog it and start again.  I made it short because I was worried I was going to run out of yarn, but Ialso need to shape the armholes so, I am hoping they will compensate for each other.  I have nearly finished a coat for Charlie made from washable wool.  I made the pattern up starting at the neck and trying it on Charlie at regular intervals to see how the shaping should go for each section.  I used a 2x2 rib throughout to make it stretchy and close fitting.  It's black so won't photograph well.

We mananged the whole month without buying any chocolate so I must now decide who to send the loot to - so many organisations are deserving it's hard to know what to do and I'll have to think very hard about it.