Lanae' Hale

I don't usually do promos on here, but I got an email from downhere yesterday saying you could get a free copy of a new artist with a CD coming out today. Turns out I was one of the first 500 to visit the site so got the entire CD download for free. Check out Lanae' Hale at this link and see if you can get the album as well.

Found Photos Update

You might recall that while in Myrtle Beach, SC this spring, I found a camera on the beach. After I blogged it, Peter left comments that I should contact http://ifoundyourcamera.blogspot.com/ and perhaps reunite the owner with their photos (the camera sadly was too damaged by water and sand). The website has now put up a couple of the photos I sent and some info here.

Some of My Favourites

I just finished a five-week student teaching placement, and currently am in the midst of my final three weeks of teacher's college classes. Tuesday my last three assignments are due, then I just have two weeks of seminars to sit through and 4 more weeks of another placement block.

These pictures are from an assignment I had two different classes complete, one a grade 6 class, and the other grade 7/8. Each class was broken into six table groups, and each table group was assigned to create a "family" of portraits using an assigned colour parameter and line parameter. These six are some of my favourites.

Striving Higher

For this past Christmas, I finished two quilts to give as presents. The first one ended up being a pinwheel design I blogged here, here, and finished here. The other one I talked about here, but never put up any photos of when it was finished.

My original idea for both of these quilts was from the little zig zag quilt in this post from the blog a Stitch in Dye. But, as you can see, neither of the two quilts I made ended up looking anything like it.

The second quilt I originally planned to craft from white and orange and brown patterns and solids in cotton. However, I found that it was nearly impossible to find a variety of prints that matched in those colours, in fact, it was very near impossible to find any prints in those colours. I had a few in my stash, but not nearly enough to make a whole quilt out of.

One day whilst I was at Fabricland on another mission, I stumbled across two matching shiny home decor fabrics in different shades of orange. And, they were on sale. I wasn't too sure about the content of the fibre (and still am not sure exactly what it is... satin, nylon? Something a little plastic-y, but not scratchy). They were stiffer than what I was hoping for, but I figured they'd make an okay quilt, seeing how they were home decor fabrics to begin with.
The shiny orange fabric was quite nice on both sides, reversing to an opposite design on their reverse sides, so I knew I would be able to use the two fabrics as if they were four.

I can't remember how much fabric I bought, but it ended up being just a little short of what I needed, so I had to go back and get more fabric to cut a few more blocks from.

For the backing, I used some chocolate brown broadcloth. The broadcloth dictated how big the quilt ended up being, as they only had three metres of it. I had to piece it together to make it wide enough, I ended up putting a wide section in the middle and two smaller side sections, rather than having a seam down the centre back.

The quilt block pattern I stumbled upon on the internet when looking for a quilt idea using squares (rather than triangles, I was triangled out after the first quilt!). The pattern is called "Bento Box." The fact that the Bento Box pattern is actually squares and rectangles meant that it would take even less sewing time than squares. I can't find the original picture now that I had used for an idea, but Google of course has a whole wealth of other Bento Box quilts.

Although, this quilt ended up being very labour intensive. I was able to finish it in a couple of weeks, but it did take a lot of non-stop work. I decided on sewing all of the seams flat because a) I liked the way it looked, and b) the nature of the fabric meant it unraveled very easily (and there are still orange threads all over the house). Sewing the seams flat made a nice look and gave the quilt a better durability. In the end I used a little over 3 spools of orange thread to finish the project.

I planned the quilt out by using Microsoft Excel. I played around with a few different designs of block placement before I decided on this stair-type option. Unfortunately the height of the blocks meant I ended with the bottom section not being complete boxes, but in the end I don't think it hurt the design at all. This is a "tv watching sized" quilt, and was a little too short without those additional two rows of blocks on the bottom.

The centre of this quilt is two layers of a polyester batting. I wanted a puffy sort of look with the chocolate brown cotton ties, and found that I needed two layers of the batting to get that effect.

Unfortunately these aren't the best photos, but I don't have a great digital camera at the moment. You can click on any of the photos to make them bigger and get a closer look.

Overall, I quite love this quilt. And it's very warm and comfy.

Reagan

Cleaning up my photo folders, I found photos of this baby dress I made earlier this year but neglected to post. I bought the floral fabric a couple of years ago on sale for a couple of dollars a metre, the orange is just regular broadcloth, and the rick rack is from my thrift store stash. The buttons are two from a bag my Gramma gave me. The little green one has an off-white centre, and the dark orange one has a lovely carved design.

Queen's Park

Yesterday I found myself in downtown Toronto with a few hours to kill, so went for a walk and wound up at Queen's Park, the site of the Ontario Legislative Building. I had driven by it once or twice before, but I'd never walked around the park so took the opportunity to snap a few photographs... so here's a sculptural tour for you all.





Sir John A. Macdonald, first Prime Minister of Canada.

Not being from Ontario originally, I really wasn't sure who some of these guys were at first. There were plaques on all of the statues though. This is James Whitney, the sixth Premier of Ontario.

John Sandfield Macdonald, first Premier of Ontario. I thought it a bit strange that I had no idea that there were two big John Macdonald's around in 1867 (the year of Canada's confederacy).

Queen Victoria.

John Graves Simcoe.

"Commemorating the struggle for responsible government in Upper Canada...", I couldn't find any information on this monument.

William Lyon Mackenzie.

Sir Oliver Mowat, third Premier of Ontario.


George Brown, known as one of the Fathers of Confederation.

The Northwest Rebellion Memorial , this was the one I was most surprised to find.




This statue of King Edward VII was moved from Delhi, India, in 1969. Here's a better photo of it, I couldn't take a very good one as there were all these parents and their kiddies playing around it.

Myrtle Socks

I'm procrastinating from doing things I should be doing (like, oh, you know, lesson planning, working on my resume, applying for jobs, figuring out my taxes, cleaning, going for a walk, etc.), but thought I'd post some pics of my Myrtle Socks.

I bought the yarn at Wal*Mart in Myrtle Beach, it's Bernat Baby Jaquards yarn in the colour "Boo Berries". I'd always wanted to try a self-striping yarn, and this was a real cheapo. I made up the pattern, using size 3 needles. Checking Ravelry there are a few others who've made socks with the same yarn in various colourways. I had thought about making another pair with the yarn I still have left, for a Christmas present, but I think I'll wait a bit as I'm wondering how they'll hold up to regular wear.

And, in case you were wondering, oh yeah, it's totally cool to knit socks while you're on vacation.

Just So You Know

If I had a sound recording option on this computer, I would record my neighbour's kid's band for you so you could hear it too. They practice a lot.

But I haven't noticed a discernible difference.

Stuff I'm Really Good At

1. Procrastinating. Like right now when I should totally be doing homework.

2. Messing up my room. This one is so easy. I can have just done a spotless job cleaning it up and in 10 seconds flat have the entire floor covered with stuff. By "stuff" I mean mostly books and craft stuff, which usually end up on the floor because I've been looking for something else.

3. Collecting water cups on my bedside table. My housemates make fun of me all the time on this one. I like to have a cup of water to take a lovely tablet of levothyroxine in the morning, but I don't like to drink it if it's been sitting there for more than one day (come on, who wants to drink water with dust in it?). However, I don't always remember to take the old cup downstairs to the dishwasher. So, sometimes a couple pile up. I claim my record is 5 cups, however, they claim it's 7.

4. Eating bacon. Man, bacon is good stuff. I lost count after 12 slices at a buffet once. But please don't repeat that, because that's totally gross.

5. Reading blogs. At home. At work. At school. They're a good mind break. I have a whole long bookmarks list of regulars, I have a bunch of Bloglines subscriptions, then I have the ones that I check every once in awhile, then I sometimes just follow links. Mostly I read craft blogs, and friend blogs, and family blogs, and etc. But my tastes have changed over the years.

6. Not doing all my laundry. I LOVE having all clean laundry. I mean, it's so nice having everything clean and folded and smelling nice and put away where it belongs. Then you can wear whatever you want and it's exactly where it should be when you want to find it. But I have this t-shirt that I got sap on in July 2007 in the bottom of my laundry basket. And a silk skirt that I'm not exactly sure how to wash. And usually there's a few wool sweaters in there waiting until there are a few more so I can wash a whole load at once and use water more economically.

7. Eating candy. Usually I can't stop. Like the other night I ate a whole pack of Razzles. And you're not even supposed to eat Razzles, because, after all, they really are gum. (And, they're hard to find. I got mine at Cracker Barrel last week).

8. Forgetting what I was talking about. Ask my friend Joanne about this one. I blame this one mostly on Grave's Disease.

9. Interrupting myself (and other people). I think this stems from the previous one. Or I just get so excited about whatever I have remembered that I interrupt the previous story or think I was just talking about.

10. Procrastinating. Like right now when I'm still not doing my homework and am totally supposed to be writing a paper that's due tomorrow. And it's 8pm. And I haven't started.



P.S. I just found out that I have to moderate comments now, so sorry your comments weren't showing up... I think I clicked on that a few weeks ago when I was getting tired of all the spammers. But now I know. :)

The Myrtle Beach Report

This March Break I wasn't planning on doing anything but homework (and I still have a whole boatload left to finish before class on Tuesday!!!), but a friend invited me to go to Myrtle Beach with her and another friend, so off to the south I went.Our first few days were cloudy and rainy, but it was still warmer than at home. We drove straight through the night and arrived in the mid-afternoon. The ocean's nice even when it's cloudy.
This was the sunrise on our last day. Thankfully things had cleared up and gotten sunnier towards the end of the week.


Our second last night we went to Original Benjamin's Calabash Seafood, which was an all-you-can-eat seafood place. 170 items in the buffet. I wouldn't go again, but it was a neat unique experience. On the way out I saw my old pastor on vacation with his golfing buddies, chowin' down.
Waffle House. I don't get it. They're EVERYWHERE down there in the Carolinas. And they say that they sell a waffle every two seconds. We stopped at one of these establishments on our drive down, but our waffles weren't quite cooked all the way through. And I had forgotten that some places you can still smoke in restaurants. Food doesn't taste good with cigarettes.
Last night on our drive back home we stopped at a Cracker Barrel somewhere in Ohio. I had Chicken n' Dumplins, with turnip greens and fried apples. I wasn't sure what turnip greens were, but I could guess. The biscuit and cornbread were very good, as were the apples. You can also see some deep fried okra there in the picture, which I had experienced at Benjamin's... although there they called them "Oysters Rockefeller". I like pickled okra better than deep fried okra, but they didn't have any from what I could tell.
I found this Samsung L200 camera in the surf on the beach. It didn't appear to have been there very long, had minimal water inside, but a lot of sand. The battery appears to be fine, and the memory card has a few dozen pictures on it (some girl and her friends, same girl kissing a guy, same girl and her new tatoo, some pics from Christmas, and a set of twins having a birthday party).
I've been trying to take it apart... I can only find 5 screws but the backplate won't come off the top section, I can't figure out how to get it apart where the dial is for the different picture modes. Couldn't find any info on the internet on how to take apart this particular model of camera. Anyone have any info or suggestions?