April 2006

Now that Sara has received it, I can post my April (orange & yellow) Project Spectrum postcard:

I made it a greeting card instead of a basic postcard because I wanted to include the knitted thread heart, which wouldn’t travel well sans enveloppe. It has been fun connecting with another knit blogger (and genuinely nice person), someone way across the country in New Hampshire even. Check out her blog and her beautiful quilted art, like her “postcards from the edge.”

Today I practiced more craftiness in making Julie’s birthday present:

On the right, you see the little plastic envelope with hand-punched confetti. The card, on the left, is the “key” to what each punch symbolizes.

Julie’s birthday is tomorrow, but it’s safe to post a picture here now because she is completely internet-free and even email-free. Can you believe that? Even though I am enjoying the blogging life and have been using email since 1991, I have to admire Julie for her low-tech lifestyle. She must have so much more time for knitting!

Yesterday’s urban safari part 1 (ducklings) was wildly popular (according to the stats of my lil’ newbie blog), so here’s part 2.

Turtles at Greenlake! (Click)

Click the picture above to go to the… gulp… movie. Make sure your sound is turned on. Watch carefully.

EDITED 4/26/06: If you cannot view the movie when you click the link above, you may need to download the FREE QuickTime player (both Mac and PC versions available).

Look, ma! Look what I made! A quicktime movie!! Ok, so I’m pretty proud of my technical advances. The way I see it, you gotta pat yourself on your back or no one else will .

Photos by me
Music by Elliot Goldenthal, from the Frida soundtrack.

Lately I’ve seen many different kinds of wildlife here in our beloved Seattle! And some outside of Seattle. It seems as if, over the past six months, I’ve seen more animals in the so-called wild than I did the rest of my life (excluding zoos). Okay, I admit it, I grew up a city kid. So I’m excited to present my animal urban safari photos, in installments. Today’s episdoe is the Ducklings at Greenlake, sighted this Saturday morning. Awwww…

Wonderful knitting group on Wednesday! And wonderful Joe Bar soup (creamy asparagus) with messages written…

Julie ordered the soup…  (In photo: Julie with the soup; Christine in the background with her knitting.)

Yes, the soup says “Joe Bar” in crème fraîche.

And Louise too… Hers says “I Heart Soup.” Note the mitten-knitting too!

Louise reading her pattern and Carol in the background with lovely knitted hat on head and charity knitting in hand.

Joe Bar is one of the (or the?) best cafe in Seattle with awesome food, personable staff (the owner is often serving up yummy crêpes himself), and art on the walls. They were featured in a recent Seattle Times Pacific Northwest article, “Social Scene Brewing.” And our knitting group was mentioned!!

Definitely time for some divertissements… Fun stuff from the ‘net.

Artist Ron Mueck makes really, really big sculptures of people. They look real too! As they call it in the art world, “Hyper-realist.”

This guy, zeFrank, makes a daily videocast called Knowledge, “thinking so you don’t have to.” Lots of silliness, cynicism and sarcasm, interspersed with his opinions on news items. Now that’s an alternative news source. Also, all you singles out there check out his pre-date confidence builder.

Can’t believe how cool this Manmade Notebook is! I find some of their links simply hilarious… like Microsoft repackaging the iPod. Some links are educational, fascinating… like Gapminder’s Human Development Trends. And then there’s just cool stuff you didn’t really need to know, but hey! Why not… like Aaron Koblin’s visual of flight patterns across the U.S.

And last but not least, cat humor, check out these two cat videos. Ok, maybe cat humor is the least form of humor, especially when your’re working on a couple hours sleep because your cat Jasmine’s boyfriend-kitty was yeowling through the window all night. Come out and play!
Talking cats
Herding cats
Oh, zeFrank has cat humor too.