Waiting for the Service

Christmas Eve, Church of Our Savior, Milford, New Hampshire

Needle-Felted Ornament

I had been dying to try needle felting, so I got a needle and some roving. Here's a blow-by-blow of my first project. (I don't count the first practice round, in which I double-poked my thumb and bled a lot.)

Below is the first step, needling some undyed roving. (You use the undyed/natural roving underneath so as not to waste the dyed roving.)


Then I covered the ball with green and kept poking.

After smoothing it some more (needling and squishing), I sketched in the star in yellow. To do this, you carefully poke some roving along the edge of your design:

Then work on poking the middle:
And filling in spots, and poking some more!:
I lined the star with variegated sock wool:
And added some lettering ("Peace") in magenta sock wool:


Then I thought the star needed some more work, so I added some white roving for highlight:


And that's it! I added a hook (right through the top of the wool) and it's ready to hang.

So here is a shot of the finished ornament in situ:

Crop Circle in the Ice

Are aliens among us? Crop circles have adapted to northern climes...

Still Pictures

I'm re-watching Ken Burns's The Civil War (on my iphone) and am astonished anew at the power of those old photographs. Most of all the simple ones that weren't supposed to be "historic"—the family posing with slaves in the background, soldiers warming their hands...

Sicky Whine

The worst part of being sick right now is I don't have the energy to play with the NEW CAMERA I got for my birthday! But perhaps there will be more frequent photo updates in the future...

Thanks, BVD

BVD at the DailySunTimes paid me several compliments tonight -- remembering my birthday, plugging my blog, thinking I'm under 40 (!), and supposing I'm a witch. Hey, whatever works.

Here is my spell to get rid of H1N1:

Pig germs, pig germs,
I will defeat you in certain terms.
Porcine RNA,
You cannot stay.
I will rid myself of you:
By cough, by sneeze, and down the loo.

THE BEST

Stephen Fry

I just discovered stephenfry.com. With apologies to those who have known and loved it as it deserves, I, a newbie to frydom, present it as brilliance incarnated.

Just listened to the first two episodes of "Series 2." (I listened to it as a podgram, but you can get the audio episodes on his site on a desktop computer too, or in iTunes.)

I'm sure I would love to read his writing, but to hear him speak it with that Fry voice is ineffably fulfilling. (and it makes me use words like "ineffably")

I have yet to explore the rest of the site; that's my plan as soon as I "publish post."

www.stephenfry.com

Technology, entertainment, design

TED.com

It's free!

Stars, moons, nebulae, and planets of the day

Astronomy Picture of the Day

Do what I do, browse the universe with your morning cup of coffee.

http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/astropix.html

App of the Day

It has to be Blogwriter, since I'm composing this on the iPhone. Free version works great.

Hidden gems of wikipedia

Best of Wikipedia

I'm not going to talk about Wikipedia itself—I find it very useful and all (with grains of salt at the ready), but you already know everything you want to know about it, I'm sure.

Twice a day "Best of Wikipedia" highlights a weird, fascinating, and/or loopy entry; visitors can also nominate their picks.

http://bestofwikipedia.tumblr.com/

Site of the Day: What's that song mean?

I'm not going to recommend a site for song lyrics—there's tons of them out there, and each one seems to be as good (bad) as the other.

After wading through many sites for song meanings, however, I do have one that stands out. There's no guarantee that anything on it is true, but at least you can easily find your song or artist without being bombarded by obnoxious ads.

http://www.songfacts.com/

Starting Apps

Facebook ... free
Kindle ... free
NYTimes ... free
TwitterFon ... free
WeatherBug Elite ... 99¢
Brushes ... $4.99
iBird North ... $9.99
Just Tune ... 99¢ (guitar tuner)
Pandora ... free
Public Radio ... free
Remote ... free
Shazam ... free
SmackTalk ... 99¢
TED ... free
What's On TV? ... free
Wikiamo ... free
YouTube ... free

Starting Sites (no one should be without) III

Pandora

If you don't use it, start. On the iPhone, too.

http://www.pandora.com/

Starting Sites (no one should be without) II

Go Fug Yourself

Guilty secret (no longer): I waste a lot of time looking at celebrity fashion and critiques thereof. My favorite fashion site features two writers (Jessica and Heather) of infinite wit and irrepressible sensibility. Ogling Tilda Swinton and Rumer Willis just doesn't get any better.

http://gofugyourself.celebuzz.com/

Starting Sites (no one should be without)

The Daily Dish

Andrew Sullivan, of The Atlantic Monthly, blogs about politics, culture, and blogging itself. A self-described conservative, Sullivan collates much of the daily chatter that would otherwise be bewilderingly noisy. I don't always agree with him, but I trust his discernment, and he's proven that he'll admit when he's wrong.

Look for occasional Mental Health Breaks for just that.

http://andrewsullivan.theatlantic.com/the_daily_dish/

Blooming blooms

I wish pictures and internet could transmit scent—this variety of daphne is the sweetest:



and dianthus (dianthi?) are no slouches in the pretty-smell department:


On the right you can see one of my garden markers—gel pen on river rock.

flowers of the day

I'm feeling a bit cranky about politics and such... thought I'd restart some blogging time with FLOWERS

The lilacs were, as usual in New Hampshire, lovely this spring. I caught our Pocahontas just before the main bloom:


I planted a new columbine variety; here it is in almost-bloom:



and full blown:

Dickensian nap

I know you were wondering—the Dickens URL for this blog is:

http://dickensurl.com/48a7/Thats_the_state_to_live_and_die_inRrrich

(see dickensurl.com for explanation)

In an iPhone program called Brushes, I made this painting. (The daffodils were in Nick and Sarah's apartment; I finished it without them in front of me.)



The program lets you export a movie of every fingerstroke.

For a real expert’s work, see www.jorgecolombo.com/isketches/

Art in progress

My friend Mike Fitts, a kick-ass artist in Charlottesville, recently posted a series of photos on Facebook. The series shows one of his paintings from beginning to completion.

Mike paints in oil on found metal. He fashions metal into a canvas shape around wood framing and paints small objects—often kitschy or vintage—realistically to the point of trompe l’oeil. Below, a painting that will be in a show in NYC later this spring.





and the final painting—the twinkies are actual size; the whole piece is 15 by 21":

Voilà. Le mouton

sorry this post is so late—just getting back to blogging after vacation. thanks to Holly for fulfilling my Little Prince Dreams (Mes Reves du Petit Prince)!

Reading material

I'm rereading Saint-Éxupéry's Le Petit Prince. “Dessine-moi un mouton!”

Photo of the day

Happy happy day!

Recently illuminated lyrics

I realized two instances of misheard lyrics this weekend. Both involve "ué":

Song: Cars, "Let's Go"
What I heard: "and a risky mouth"
Actual lyric: "and a risqué mouth"

Song: "Lush Life" (recorded by Nat King Cole, among others)
What I heard: "gray faces with distant gay traces"
Actual lyric: "gray faces with distingué traces"

Photographic image of the day

This gorgeous, painting-like image is the Astronomy Picture of the Day. See description below.




Suspension Bridge Solargraph
Credit & Copyright: Justin Quinnell
The six-month long exposure compresses the time from December 17, 2007, to June 21, 2008, into a single point of view. Dubbed a solargraph, the image was recorded with a simple pinhole camera made from a drink can lined with a piece of photographic paper. The Clifton Suspension Bridge over the Avon River Gorge in Bristol, UK, emerges from the foreground, but rising and setting each day the Sun arcs overhead, tracing a glowing path through the sky. Cloud cover causes dark gaps in the daily Sun trails. In December, the Sun trails begin lower down and are short, corresponding to a time near the northern hemisphere's winter solstice date. They grow longer and climb higher in the sky as the June 21st summer solstice approaches.

Losing at Scrabble

Words that Laurie has played against me in Scrabble (so far):

nevus
quinoa
skirl
equator (played alongside another word with all tiles; score 78)

Cartoon of the day: Cheap GPS