The lovely Craig (who’s blog URL shall remain anonymous) posted this on his blog a couple of days ago:
…especially as skin cancer was something that has occurred in the family tree. Admittedly on a branch of the family tree that should have been sterilised out of existence, but what can you do?
Guess he’s not keen on that side of the family, huh? 😉
It was cold today — 0.8C overnight, only 3.9C at 9:00am. So I decided to make a cup of hot Milo, made with milk (the BEST and ONLY way to enjoy Milo!). My husband makes his coffee with milk (no water), and I know he zaps it in the microwave for 2 minutes 10 seconds. So in went my Milo and I set the microwave to 2 minutes.
Look what happened… I guess 2 minutes was too long, huh?
Messy, sticky, goopy Milo
I FINALLY finished writing up the pattern for the laptop sleeve/tote bag I’ve made for me and for my friends Char and Sue.
Example instructions
The pattern is for sale from my Etsy store here: http://www.etsy.com/view_listing.php?listing_id=27045345 (as is the laptop made for the pics in that pattern: http://www.etsy.com/view_listing.php?listing_id=25830180).
The surprising thing about writing up this pattern was how hard it was! The initial writing was easy, but then I had to test it to make sure it was correct.At that point I realised how many assumptions I had made about the audience’s knowledge, so it was back to the drawing board. Like the presentations I’ve done using code, a pattern has to be absolutely correct — no missing or assumed steps. It was much harder than I expectedand took much longer than I thought it would — and I’m a technical writer who does this sort of stuff for a living!
Someone on the Etsy forums posted a link to this amazing site: http://www.morecloth.com/
You click on a colour strip, then get taken to a page of fabric swatches from various fabric sellers on Etsy. Click on the swatch and go direct to that seller’s page. Nice!
Step 1: Click a color strip
Step 2: Click a swatch
Step 3: View the fabric for sale from the Etsy seller
A few weeks ago, the state newspaper had some pictures of a snake eating a large goanna (lizard). Well, I’ve since had a whole heap of pictures of this event emailed to me!
It seems the pictures were taken in the Pilbara region of Western Australia by one of the crew at Cloudbreak (a mine). The information I got with the pictures was that it took 5 hours for the snake to finish off the goanna. And to avoid the snake being run over during its meal, they put some signage and tape up!
Wow! Another TWO fabric pieces from my Etsy store got added to an Etsy Treasury — one green, one blue. Thanks, DownHomeDiva and BlueHeronQuilts!
Etsy Treasury
Flora shared this joke with me, so I’m happy to share it with you!
An old Italian lived alone in New Jersey. He wanted to plant his annual tomato garden, but it was very difficult work as the ground was hard.
His only son, Vincent, who used to help him, was in prison. The old man wrote a letter to his son and described his predicament:
Dear Vincent
I am feeling pretty sad, because it looks like I won’t be able to plant my tomato garden this year. I’m just getting too old to be digging up a garden plot. I know if you were here my troubles would be over.. I know you would be happy to dig the plot for me, like in the old days.
Love, Papa
A few days later he received a letter from his son.
Dear Pop,
Don’t dig up that garden. That’s where the bodies are buried.
Love, Vinnie
At 4 a.m. the next day, FBI agents and local police arrived and dug up the entire area without finding any bodies.
They apologized to the old man and left. That same day the old man received another letter from his son.
Dear Pop,
Go ahead and plant the tomatoes now. That’s the best I could do under the circumstances.
Love you, Vinnie
I had a rush of blood to the head a few weeks back (always a dangerous thing!). My fabric and all my crafting stuff has been stacked in big tubs on the floor in the tiny spare bedroom I use for sewing and quilting, and which we use for storing wine, books, pantry items and the like. Then I realised that there was quite a bit of air space I could use… and remembered that we had an old pine shelving unit in storage.
So, on Sunday we got it from the storage unit and put it up on top of an old library catalogue cabinet where my husband stores his archive of music cassette tapes (!). I then spent an hour or so stacking it with my stuff and now I have more floor space which makes the room look less crowded!
Charlene Kingston from Crow Information Design used Twitter to let me know about this New York Times article on preventing memory loss as we age. The article starts off featuring a guy called Bob:
At the age of 78, Bob Branham, a retired computer software developer in Dallas, Tex., took up quilting. It wasn’t his idea, actually. He’d never dreamed of piecing together his own Amish diamond coverlet or rummaging around Jo-Ann Fabrics in search of calico prints. But then he enrolled in a trial sponsored by the National Institute on Aging to assess whether learning a new skill can help preserve cognitive function in old age. By random assignment, he landed in the quilting group.
… and it’s already on its way to the Australian Museum!
I popped out at lunchtime today and when I came home I saw a native cockroach on its back right near the front door. I thought it was dead, but it still had a little movement in its legs. So I hightailed it inside, found a small box, gathered up some leaf litter, put the cockroach in the box (I didn’t even draw breath to find out if it was a male or female or to take a photo of it), added some air holes and sealed the box.
Then it was back to the Post Office to send it Express Post to the researcher at the Australian Museum. He should get it by Wednesday or Thursday.
I doubt if it will still be alive by then — it looked pretty well done in when I found it (we’ve had the outside of the house sprayed for Portuguese millipedes and I suspect that most invertebrates coming into contact with the residual poison aren’t coping too well).
Still, the researcher will get a specimen and hopefully will be able to tell me whether it is a new species or a geographic variation of any existing one. Who’d have thought I could get excited by a cockroach!?!
Update: I’ve since found a couple more and sent them off to the Museum. The latest (November 2009) was a healthy female, completely intact. The researcher hopes she has eggs, and has taken her home to watch over her — just in case. When she dies, she will go into the entomology section.
