Reward

Posted on March 31, 2009 by Suzanne

As a reward for getting some stuff done over the last two weeks (which is completely boring and the cause of the quiet blog), I pieced a new quilt over the weekend. It’s the Slideshow pattern by Terry Atkinson, in the baby size. Super quick and easy piecing. I even have the backing seamed and the binding seamed and pressed. Now to get it quilted.

And then…I was reminded that Mark’s cousin’s baby was a year old on Sunday. And I remembered that I never made her a quilt, so…I started working on another quilt:

I’m following instructions from a Laps from fats book (but I can’t remember if it’s More… or if its L&F for Family & Friends…), she’s calls the pattern Cake Walk. I think this is very similar to the pattern called Bento Box by a different designer. People make such a big deal out of “who designed what” but you know what people? It’s freaking squares and rectangles.

On a different note, the boys are still fascinated by their new yo-yos. They are even learning (and mastering) tricks like the Baby Cradle and the Jamaican Flag. Mark and I are getting tired of undoing knots in strings, though.

I don’t know exactly what made Mark think of it, but this afternoon something about strings made him flash on the Cat’s Cradle trick we used to do when we were kids. Do you rememer doing that? As soon as he had the strings on his hands, I remembered what to do for some of it. Freaky.

He ended up looking some of it up on the Internet. And then taught Will and Joe what to do:

This was the least blurry picture I took. Sorry. Too dark. And haven’t done my lighting homework for this week’s class assignment.

My poor camera is making a really weird sound when I turn it on. It’s still taking pictures just fine, but it sounds strange starting up and it’s scaring me. If I have to send it in for repairs, the cost is something like $250. It makes the sound whether the lens is attached or not, and we don’t really have any idea what could be wrong with it. I’m worried that it’s probably something I did to it. I’m not always as careful with it as I should be (imagine that), so I hope I haven’t blown it.

Maybe if I go to bed, when I wake up, the camera will magically be all better.

Can’t hurt, right?

TTFN-

Suzanne

Time just flies

Posted on March 18, 2009 by Suzanne

It seems to do so, whether you are having fun or not.

I thought I was a week behind with processing and uploading my daily photos.

I was actually TWO weeks behind.

And, as it turns out, I apparently missed two days: the 8th and the 11th. I can’t even be sure those two days even happened. That’s my story, anyway.

If you’re just dying to see what I’ve been taking pictures of, you can go view them all here:

Project 365

This is probably the funniest one:

march 17 Time just flies

Gotta love a man who will fold the laundry.

Who am I kidding? He’s the one that DOES the laundry.

I’m sure the boys will be thrilled to know that all of you have now seen their underwear.

I live to serve

Posted on March 13, 2009 by Suzanne

My sister called me this morning to tell me I needed to post something on my blog.

I haven’t much felt like blogging lately, but since both she AND my mother asked today, I thought I’d comply.

First up are the pictures from this week’s photography lessons. It’s about aperture and depth of field. If you know more about photography than I do, please don’t laugh if I explain this stuff wrong.

I used my new 50mm f/1.7 lens, and mounted the camera on my tripod. I also had to try to figure out how to shift my focal point so that it actually focused on the doll.

First is with a wide open aperture of f/1.7. That meant a short depth of field, with only the doll in focus, and you can’t even tell what’s in the background. Isn’t it cool how blurry it is? That effect is called BOKEH. Bizarre word. Some people pronounce it bo-kay and some people say bo-kuh.

Of course, all of YOU know what that is in the background because you’ve only seen a million pictures of it already.

The next picture is with a closed aperature of f/22. This is where the tripod was so important: to compensate for the low light and the closed aperture, the camera used a much longer shutter speed. Without the tripod the whole picture was blurry because I couldn’t hold the camera still enough. In fact, I even used the timer so that after I pushed the button and let go, the camera waited about 2 seconds before it took the picture.

Longer depth of field, more of the picture is in focus. Much less interesting picture, too.

I was taking pictures last night and tried to get one of Mark.

That’s great, dear. Thanks.

Oh, my sister also told me that I needed to add back in the abillity to add posts to social networking sites, so, I did. I know you’ve been missing the opportunity to Digg me, so, go forth and Digg. Or Stumble. Or Facebook. Or whatever.

Or not.

An Exciting Anniversary

Posted on March 2, 2009 by Suzanne

Today is our 13th wedding anniversary. I’m going to celebrate by going to the shop in order to finish cutting and shipping a boatload of fabric. (Sale!)

Mark is going to celebrate by hibernating. He gets sick about…once a year, and when he does it really seems to wipe him out. I guess it takes a really strong bug to bring him down. (He’s not like some men who turn into babies when they get sick. He just…checks out…and sleeps a LOT.)

The last time he got sick was Christmas 2007 when we were visiting my sister and her family. He was so sick he actually consented to go to the doctor, which required a trip on the train into New York City.

I’m not sure how the boys are going to celebrate — today is a professional development day for the teachers. They were going to have to spend the whole day at the shop, but since Mark is here, I might leave them with him for part of the day. Between reading books and playing video games, they can do a pretty good job of entertaining themselves.

Though, I will need them for my photography class assignment later!

Have a great Monday everyone!

Suzanne

p.s. I was looking for a photograph of mark to use for today’s entry — this one is from Jan, part of my daily photo project. Originally I was going to use one of him from several summer’s ago, but when I looked back through the blog, I found that that was the photo I used when I posted about our anniversary LAST year. I wrote some really nice stuff about him last year. It’s all still true, too!