Holiday humor

Make your own digital fruitcake -- way fun! Pulled from Pomegranates and Paper. I also got a giggle from these ideas for amusing oneself in a department store.

I liked this categorization of gadgetry in Marc Fisher's Washington Post blog. For example:

Category #2: The Interesting Idea That Bombs This year's entry in this category is Story Blankets. Speaking of absentee parenting, get this idea: Instead of lying down with the little one and falling asleep in their bed, thereby wiping out that tiny window of adult time at the end of the long day, you could tuck a kiddie in under a blanket that also sings a lullaby and tells a story. No, really: This is a big fluffy duvet cover and comforter that has a big brick of a battery in it powering a three-minute-long sound and light show featuring 133 tiny LEDs and a tinkling tune that you activate by pressing a button in the blanket.

Instant intimacy? No, horrifying nightmare. The kids we tested this on were uniformly appalled or freaked. They called the thing creepy, sick and worse. "If the parent wants to abandon the child, fine, but don't stick them in a room with this thing," my son said.

::shudder::

Don't mess with old women

Check out this video (contributed by one of my students).

Cool link -- you know you want to see!

From bones to boots: drawing a woman from the inside out.

A single sheet of paper

Very cool use of sheets of paper -- incredibly precise and strangely compelling.

Today's funniest typos

I'm grading papers on sexuality education, and students make all kinds of spelling and typographical errors, some of which end up being kind of funny (emphasis added):

"Likewise my children will be in an environment that promotes abstinence, as well as other important life lesions."

"When I see that she starting [sic] to grow boobs I will buy her a brawl . . ."

Rugelach

I have discovered the danger of rugelach. Why did no one tell me? It's ok, though . . . they're all gone now.

Let us never speak of this again.

Happy Thanksgiving!

Feast and family -- what could make the day better?

Ironing and folding, ironing and folding . . . repeat and fade

During August, in my (foolish?) desire to reorganize my fiber studio, I decided I should store my quilting cottons in file boxes. So I pulled all of the quilting cottons out of the big armoire. The fabric had been washed and loosely folded, but not ironed. In a burst of enthusiasm for my new scheme, I thought I should iron the fabric before I folded it into the new configuration and put it in boxes. So, since August, I have spent about one full day each week ironing and folding fabric. Each piece got ironed, folded in half and half again (selvage to selvage), then folded around an acrylic ruler to create a 14" X 12" folded square (more or less). These were placed, end up, in file boxes, by color or theme. Anything smaller than 1/2 a yard was folded around a smaller ruler and put in smaller boxes. Scraps were placed in yet different boxes.

The exciting news is that I'm almost done! I have a few more pieces to iron and fold, and some more scraps and smaller pieces to deal with when I go through the big plastic bins that held scraps before, but I can see the end in sight. I cannot believe that I have ironed every piece of quilting cotton fabric in my stash. This is the accumulation of many years of purchasing fabric, and I ironed it all.

Now I need to tackle the garment fabric. That's a big job, but at least not everything will need to be ironed.

In the continuing saga of my obsessive nature, I also got back to working on the beaded belt I started several years ago. It's black velvet with silver beadwork, and I'm doing all the beading by hand (no appliques). So far, it looks gorgeous, and I can't wait to get the rest of it done. I have been using all kinds of flashy beads and crystals, and it just glows under the light. Pictures to come soon.

Now, back to grading papers, which almost seems restful after all the ironing!

Beaded kitchen

Apparently I'm not the most bead-obsessed person in the world ... Liza Lou spent five years creating an entirely beaded kitchen. You can hear her talk about her story on This American Life (search for the story on "Obsession"), which is also available on iTunes.