Garden of Senses!

Well, it was not perfect, but I was still pleased with the finished product and I now know what I would do different with future cloth books. For starters, I would actually measure and mark the base fabric, har-har.

My only real regret is that I finished sewing it just a few minutes before we had to leave for the party (actually about 4:55 but Hubby was working on Cthulhu, so we were still 15 minutes from leaving) so I didn't have time to really appreciate it, or show it around as much as I normally would.

I took a bunch of photos though, and I made a Flickr set for Garden of Senses, but here's a peek at the finished inside of the book:

The birthday girl was a bit too overwhelmed, but the bee on the "ears hear" page got a smile, so I figure it will be a hit.

Counting down

One busy weekend and four work days until vacation starts -- WOO!

Today, job #1 is "finish The Garden of Senses" (see last post for details) but we're also going out for dim sum this morning, so that will take some time out of my day before the barbeque get-together this afternoon where I hope to presenting the book.

Tomorrow, Kiddo gets to be a test subject for a psychological study at the University. Basically she will be in a control group as the study aims to develop aids for children with Autism Spectrum Disorder and Asperger Syndrome in the area of face recognition. However, the research team has cleverly designed a whole day of activities in between the testing and re-branded it as "Face Camp." I actually signed her up before getting her buy in, but "free pizza" and "t-shirt" was pretty much all it took to get that. I think she'll have a great time.

While she's doing that, I plan to use the time for research. I'll take the EEE with me this time (much easier to carry than my laptop) -- though really, the smartest thing I did was to take my camera to photograph the microfilm images on the viewer rather than create a lot of paper waste and spend a lot of money on blurry print copies.

Next week at work, it's full speed ahead with digitization -- trying to finish off one project while we go all out to push through another. The one we are finishing off is mounting the original serialized version of Charles Dickens' Pickwick Papers. The project we need to get through is digitizing and posting about 450 theses and dissertations from the past two years. Needless to say, my role in that will be more of coordinating the work than hands-on. I have been re-thinking the workflow to allow for better sharing of the workload.

Friday will be spent madly running about packing and prepping for our week-long road trip up to the top of Vancouver Island. I am looking forward to a vacation that involves no ferry or air travel and lots of rugged West Coast forests and beaches.

A crafty experiment...

wip_scale
Originally uploaded by triviaqueen

I finally found something to inspire me ... I have been in a creative funk for a while, so when the muse/voices in my head started whispering "what about a cloth book?" I started sketching. Before I went to bed last night, I had a plan and several of the pieces cut out.

Tonight, I finished most of the embroidered details and the title on the cover (seen here with my hand to show the scale). Still to do: stitching the wording on the pages inside, stitching the felt images to the pages, adding quilt batting and building the book!

The plan is to give this to a friend's daughter who is celebrating birthday number two with a party this Saturday.... here's hoping I can get this finished by then!

Baking experiment

I was short one banana to make my favourite banana bread recipe, so I improvised, replacing one banana with a cup of pineapple chunks and substituting shredded coconut for walnuts. Overall, I was pleased with the result though I think next time some dried papaya would really finish it.

Tropical Loaf Cake:

(A) Preheat oven to 350°, grease loaf pan
(B) Blend 2 ripe bananas, 1 cup pineapple chunks and 2 eggs in food processor.
(C) Add ¾ c sugar, 5 tbsp butter, blend well.
(D) Add remaining ingredients: 1 ½ c flour, 1 tsp baking soda, 1 tsp cream of tartar, ½ tsp salt, 1/3 cup shredded coconut.
(E) Pour batter into loaf pan and bake approx 50 min.

"No, Mister Bond, I expect you to die."

 

"No, Mister Bond, I expect you to die."
Originally uploaded by triviaqueen

Of the many scenarios Kiddo creates daily, one caught my eye. She said it was a tanning bed with an artificial light. I said, "Oh, I thought it was some sort of James Bond laser thingy."

As soon as I put the idea in her head, Kiddo scuttered off and immediately rearranged the scene, finding a Bond-like minifig and pointing the laser at his chest.

(I would say it was racial memory, but I didn't seeGoldfinger until she was 6 years old.)

As you can imagine, I thought this was several layers of wonderful.