Thing a week sounds more reasonable at this point. I've been too sick from the meds to do any heavy duty...anything, so, yea that's where I'm at. I've been knitting a sweater but no one wants to see that.
Tomorrow starts the "thing-a-day project" but Pat's coming to town so we'll be picking him up early at the airport and then hanging out. So in place of tomorrow's post I'll show you Enid, my newest elephant, from The Last Minute Patchwork + Quilted Gifts book. Click to see more pics.:
I'm finished now with 1 course of meds, and will soon be starting the heavy duty fertility meds. Wish us luck and keep us in your thoughts!! We are so phsyched for another baby or twins or whatever!
I'm having a hard time with the whole "blogging" thing right now, so bear with me (if anyone's left to bear with me.)
I've got 2 things to talk about right now. 1. Jon and I have started a new fertility treatment and hopefully we will see results (i.e. a baby) very soon!
2. I've decided to sign up for this:
Hopefully thing-a-day will help me to not obsess over the baby-makin' and will also help me feel more creative, and you know, like I'm doing something with my time.
Oh yea, one more thing. Remember how I mentioned going back to school? Well it wasn't gonna work out this semester, for several reasons. Also, the only classes I even cared about were CANCELLED! Wtf? Ok that's it for today.
She's got what dentists call "shark teeth" meaning that her permanent teeth are growing in behind her baby teeth. I was concerned for some time about when the little guys were gonna finally fall out.
Since Dev was so sick on Saturday, and Jon was out of town (boo) we decided to postpone having the tooth fairy visit until Sunday night. At the last minute Sunday night, I got the idea to sew her a little tooth pillow that she could stick her teeth in, and put on her night stand (for easy money/tooth exchanging) So we turned on episode 3 of Tin Man and I got to work sewing the little tooth pillow:
I'd planned on embroidering a little face on the pillow but I actually like it better just the way it is. Unfortunately it's made of acrylic felt which makes me want to barf when I touch it. I only had cream colored wool felt and I thought that would make for a pretty gross looking tooth.
I think the tooth turned out so cute that I want to make more little felt things (but out of wool, not acrylic, gag!) We'll see if I can set aside some time for sewing. haha
(from Amazon.com) Liz Dunn isn't morbid, she's just a lonely woman with a very pragmatic outlook on life. Overweight, underemployed, and living in a nondescript condo with nothing but chocolate pudding in the fridge, she has pretty much given up on anything interesting ever happening to her. Everything changes when she gets an unexpected phone call from a Vancouver hospital and a stranger takes on a very intimate place in her life. From here the plot of Douglas Coupland's Eleanor Rigby skyrockets into a very bizarre world, rife with reverse sing-alongs and apocalyptic visions of frantic farmers. The style and plot paths are very identifiably Coupland--slightly mystical, off-kilter, and very, very smart. Ultimately a novel about the burden of loneliness, Eleanor Rigby takes its characters through strange and sometimes nearly unimaginable predicaments.
This book was entertaining and a quick read. I guess I recommend it. I kind of suck at this 'review' thing.
(from Amazon.com) Coming of age is a shock to almost anyone's system but imagine being like Kelley's character Judith Pippinger: spirited, creative, strong, yet facing nothing more fulfilling in life than the poverty and deprivation of a rural life. As with any lifetime, the human spirit provides moments of beauty, laughter and power-reserves upon which Judith must depend to survive a failing marriage, a disastrous love affair and the impending death of one of her daughters.
This book was so good. I read it in one day. I loved it. I love gritty, salt of the earth stories. Excellent.
(from Amazon.com) The story follows 100 years in the life of Macondo, a village founded by José Arcadio Buendía and occupied by descendants all sporting variations on their progenitor's name: his sons, José Arcadio and Aureliano, and grandsons, Aureliano José, Aureliano Segundo, and José Arcadio Segundo. Then there are the women--the two Úrsulas, a handful of Remedios, Fernanda, and Pilar--who struggle to remain grounded even as their menfolk build castles in the air. If it is possible for a novel to be highly comic and deeply tragic at the same time, then One Hundred Years of Solitude does the trick. Civil war rages throughout, hearts break, dreams shatter, and lives are lost, yet the effect is literary pentimento, with sorrow's outlines bleeding through the vibrant colors of García Márquez's magical realism. Consider, for example, the ghost of Prudencio Aguilar, whom José Arcadio Buendía has killed in a fight. So lonely is the man's shade that it haunts Buendía's house, searching anxiously for water with which to clean its wound. Buendía's wife, Úrsula, is so moved that "the next time she saw the dead man uncovering the pots on the stove she understood what he was looking for, and from then on she placed water jugs all about the house.
(from Amazon.com) Prep is the story of Lee Fiora, a South Bend, Indiana, teenager who wins a scholarship to the prestigious Ault school, an East Coast institution where "money was everywhere on campus, but it was usually invisible." As we follow Lee through boarding school, we witness firsthand the triumphs and tragedies that shape our heroine's coming-of-age. Yet while Sittenfeld may be a skilled storyteller, her real gift lies in her ability to expertly give voice to what is often described as the most alienating period in a young person's life: high school.
Ok, it was a mediocre story. Comparing this to JD Salinger makes me want to vomit, though. Just sayin'.
(from Amazon.com) Cavalry officer Slavomir Rawicz was captured by the Red Army in 1939 during the German-Soviet partition of Poland and was sent to the Siberian Gulag along with other captive Poles, Finns, Ukranians, Czechs, Greeks, and even a few English, French, and American unfortunates who had been caught up in the fighting. A year later, he and six comrades from various countries escaped from a labor camp in Yakutsk and made their way, on foot, thousands of miles south to British India, where Rawicz reenlisted in the Polish army and fought against the Germans. The Long Walk recounts that adventure, which is surely one of the most curious treks in history.
Amazing. Amazing. Amazing. Also, read this with a hankie or a tissue.
(From the New Yorker) Dr. Amin Jaafari, an Israeli Arab, seems fully assimilated into Tel Aviv society, with a loving wife, a successful career as a surgeon, and numerous Jewish friends. But after a restaurant bombing kills nineteen people, and it becomes apparent that his wife was the bomber, he plunges into the world of Islamic extremism, trying to understand how he missed signs of her intentions.
This book was really good. I didn't want it to end. Another page turner.
(from Amazon.com) The Kite Runner follows the story of Amir, the privileged son of a wealthy businessman in Kabul, and Hassan, the son of Amir's father's servant. As children in the relatively stable Afghanistan of the early 1970s, the boys are inseparable. They spend idyllic days running kites and telling stories of mystical places and powerful warriors until an unspeakable event changes the nature of their relationship forever, and eventually cements their bond in ways neither boy could have ever predicted. Even after Amir and his father flee to America, Amir remains haunted by his cowardly actions and disloyalty. In part, it is these demons and the sometimes impossible quest for forgiveness that bring him back to his war-torn native land after it comes under Taliban rule.
I thought this book was wonderful. I cannot wait to pick up A Thousand Splendid Suns by the same author.
Tonight, after meeting Jon and his friend Kevin for dinner, I picked up another book that I'm super excited about. Amy Karol's (angry chicken) book Bend the Rules Sewing I just had to have it after taking a peek over at the flickr page devoted the projects from the book. Click here to see all the great stuff.
At some point I'll be back to show you my own sewing projects: a quilt and 3 sundresses for Devan. I've also got a knitting project to show off: I'll give you a hint, it starts with "socka" and ends with "palooza" but right now I'm tired. So tired. And no, I don't work for amazon.com, it's just a handy site to get info on books.
I made these little guys last night from a free pattern at Wee Wonderfuls. The one on the left was in Devan's Easter basket this morning, and the one on the right was a present for Jon's grandmother. I also gave her the cabled socks I was making. Here's a pic of them finished:
I'm super duper tired right now, so I'ma go relax for a few minutes.
Yea. Tired. I woke up at 5 this morning, because I couldn't keep my eyes open past 9 last night. I had a dentist appointment yesterday that sucked all the energy and enthusiasm out of me. I won't go into it, boring gross details no one wants to hear about.
Before my appointment I met Jon for lunch but I had an hour to kill. Thank you Jon, for choosing an eatery next door to a yarn shop! I bought some yarn for some gifts, and some Crystal Palace circular needles for Flicca.
And in other news, thanks to some brilliant artists on etsy, my love of bookbinding has been rekindled. I did a couple practice books using scraps, so I don't waste materials on poorly made books. I've got a great Japanese bookbinding guide that I have read over and over. I haven't tried any of the techniques yet. What I have done is some coptic binding, which is my favorite anyways. Don't mind the bottom book. Devan claimed it so I wasn't really careful and the binding is super loose (plus I didn't use waxed linen so it's kind of crappy.) Click the pic for a larger version.
I decided to set up an etsy shop, but I haven't got any items up for sale yet. Subscribe to the feed!
Today I got my first ever ROOT CANAL. UGH. Shot to the roof of the mouth- don't believe the hype, it's no fun. Other than that I was just a bit squeamish about the whole situation, but there was no pain to speak of. I have to go back next week for another shot of novacaine in the roof of my mouth (joy!) to start the crown. :(
Tomorrow is little Devan's last day of preschool. It went by soooo fast. I'm kind of sad, but also relieved. One less direction I'll be pulled in every day. I wanted to give the teacher and her helpers a nice card. So armed with my inspiration : A lovely asian fabric from reprodepot.com, I drew a couple illustrations in adobe illustrator and used one for the card and one for the front of the envelope, printed em, burned masters, and gocco'd til the cows came home.
I don't usually pat myself on the back, or even like most of the work I do, but I seriously love both designs sooo much. While I was drawing them, I really liked them in just black and white, and the negative space made such an impact, but I only had these 3.5x5" cards in a creamy beige color and I wasn't feeling black with that. So I went with two colors I'm really into right now - a dusty kind of robin's egg blue (doesn't translate well with my family room lighting, and a dusty coral/orangy/pinkish color (which also doesn't translate well). I'm really feeling the simplicity of the design on the envelope. I'd like to use it again for something else. I only needed 1 card for the preschool thing, but I couldn't justify wasting precious gocco supplies on just 1 card, so I made a bunch. I'm not sure if I'll keep them for myself or gift them or what I'll do. For now I'll just look at them and smile.
-(8-08) LIKING:
baking, my bed, sleeping in my bed, indian food, my birthday, Ricky Gervais, tenament museums, linen, Air (the french band), Hugh Laurie, Intervention, babies, Iron & Wine, Clive Owen, buttered toast & strawberry jam, letterpress, Yeats,
Robin's egg blue, Fabrizio Moretti, 30 Rock, mini-pigs, hotel chevalier, steak, Paul Rudd, spring cleaning, tea, young Paul Newman, pigs, Quebec, Foreign Films, ginger ale, Rohinton Minstry, Montclair NJ,
modern simple quilts, sewing animals, summer, hating infertility, white on white, paper, cute french & japanese things, stamps and ink
