For the longest time (ever since I moved to the US, nearly 5 years ago?) I’ve had a growing collections of framed family photos (and friends! There’s a photo of my first crew, too.) that needed to be hung. I even knew where I wanted to hang them! It’s just that every time I thought of it, it was late at night, or people were sleeping or studying. It just wasn’t the time to be banging nails into walls. Finally, this week I did it! It’s amazing how taking a photo of these sort of things lets you know just how crooked your hanging is! The photos aren’t particularly well lit, but I have a good view of them from my bed. It has been very pleasant these past few days to wake up and be reminded of my family.
Archive for April, 2007
Photo of Photos
Returning to Earth
I’ve been listening to an audiobook of Jim Harrison’s Returning to Earth. I’ve never had this happen to me before, but I’m having serious issues with the reading of the book. Specifically, the person who does the majority of the reading reads very quickly. If it were my own English and my own accent, I might be able to deal with it, but it’s not, and I’m finding I almost have to pay more attention than I have to follow along. It does get better as I get further into the book, but I’m still struggling. At first, I thought they’d just sped everything up in an effort to get more material onto fewer CDs, but I don’t think that’s it. All the other readers work at a much more reasonable pace!
Hot Air Ballooning
My maternal grandmother, Gwynneth, is a pretty amazing person (actually, all my grandparents are pretty amazing, but I’m going to concentrate on Gwynneth ). She recently turned 90, and she:
- still lives on her own, is incredibly health-concious (she eats very well, and walks every morning)
- still has her own car, and drives herself around
- is an incredibly savvy cribbage player
- attends a weekly portait painting group
- frequently writes letters of disgust to Australia’s prime minister
- is an expert on identifying and cultivating Australian plants
- is a fantastic mother to 5, grandmother to 11, and great-grandmother to 2.
To celebrate 90 years on the earth, and to continue a tradition of embracing new things and experiences, she went hot-air ballooning. She took along two of her grand-children and one of her sons.
The images she sent me that were taken from the balloon are truly amazing. They remind me how much my country’s (and my grandmother’s adopted country’s) landscape is imprinted on my soul.
The Art of Knitting
This year, Rinske gave me The Art of Knitting: Inspirational Stitches, Textures and Surfaces for my birthday. It’s an amazing book, with beautiful photography, and lots of inspiration for textures and stitch ideas (as the title might suggest). Most of the photographs of the knitted fabrics are macros and are juxtaposed with images from nature that reflect the texture and colors of the knitting.
This really is more a source of inspiration than a stitch library, although it does include instructions for some of the patterns – both in form of hand-knitting charts and machine-knitting charts. The instructions mainly are for machine-knitting, and much of the text describes how certain textures can be acheived with knitting machines of various types, but there is are good descriptions and discussions for hand-knitters. The emphasis within the book is definitely on textures and surfaces of various kinds – there’s no so much for people looking for complicated lace and cable designs (although there are some of these, usually in the context of creating a particular texture or effect).
Kaye Effect
Here’s another very cool science video
This one is a little closer to my own research area. Which is to say, I work in a field of science that is actively interested in the properties of shampoo…
