Friday, April 30, 2004
Monday, April 26, 2004
Monday, April 19, 2004
Speaking of the outlet mall...
Another good document from the Mississippi State University Extension Service:
P1849 Shopping Clothing Outlets
This is why I love Extension programs. For more good stuff like this, see MSU's index.
Another good document from the Mississippi State University Extension Service:
P1849 Shopping Clothing Outlets
This is why I love Extension programs. For more good stuff like this, see MSU's index.
Ah, spring
...when a young girl's fancy turns to... CLOTHES!
Yesterday I went to the outlet mall and ended up at the fabric store, after being fairly disgusted by the ill-fitting, cheaply made, ugly clothes I found at the mall. It's time to get serious about this sewing thing, but my knowledge is rusty, as are my tools. I've found help here:
P1302 4-H Clothing Project Reference Manual
You have to love 4-H.
...when a young girl's fancy turns to... CLOTHES!
Yesterday I went to the outlet mall and ended up at the fabric store, after being fairly disgusted by the ill-fitting, cheaply made, ugly clothes I found at the mall. It's time to get serious about this sewing thing, but my knowledge is rusty, as are my tools. I've found help here:
P1302 4-H Clothing Project Reference Manual
You have to love 4-H.
Monday, April 12, 2004
Sunday, April 11, 2004
Carpe diem
It's never too late to learn how to toss around Latin phrases to make yourself look smart. Look how well the Bush campaign seems to be doing by calling everything the Democrats say "an ad hominem attack."
Come on: aren't you every bit as smart as Scott McClellan? Here's your chance to prove it by throwing some Serious Latin into your everyday conversation.
It's never too late to learn how to toss around Latin phrases to make yourself look smart. Look how well the Bush campaign seems to be doing by calling everything the Democrats say "an ad hominem attack."
Come on: aren't you every bit as smart as Scott McClellan? Here's your chance to prove it by throwing some Serious Latin into your everyday conversation.
Saturday, April 10, 2004
Vintage fabrics
My friends and I agree: fabric used to be better than it is now. If you've ever bought old fabric at an estate sale or discovered a stash of it in your grandmother's closet, you know what I mean. Well, here's a place to find it: AntiqueFabric.com
My friends and I agree: fabric used to be better than it is now. If you've ever bought old fabric at an estate sale or discovered a stash of it in your grandmother's closet, you know what I mean. Well, here's a place to find it: AntiqueFabric.com
Easter crafts
Back at Christmas I shared some of the lovely craft projects I've found in Alcoa's Book of Decorations, a childhood fave. And I warned... er... told you that I'd be sharing more for future holidays. Well, Easter is upon us, and so, as promised, is Foil Craft.
Most of Alcoa's Easter selection is pretty lame: bunnies made of foil just look sad and ridiculous. However, there is one craft that Alcoa puts forth for Easter that I'm quite puzzled by: egg dolls. I've never heard of egg dolls, but according to the book, I'll "find fun and excitement in this new way to decorate eggs for Easter."
It's simple, really; all you need is a bowl of hard-cooked eggs, construction paper or plastic tape, aluminum foil, and scraps of gift-wrap paper, fabric, and ribbon. You make the dolls' bodies out of the cardboard tubes that you get from a roll of paper towels or--surprise!--foil.
According to the instructions, the "egg doll friends" are, from left to right: a tipsy gentleman with a top hat; The Baby; a robust young lady with braids; and a reclining rabbit (you could probably have guessed that one). The tall fellow in the center is apparently the traditional Easter Clown. His head is (just in case you couldn't couldn't tell) an egg. His body is the cardboard tube from the foil, but covered in foil. So you take the foil off the tube... and wrap it around the tube. Then you push it into a styrofoam disc and shape arms, with hands, out of foil.
[At this point in the instructions, confusingly, we're told that "If you wish to keep any egg doll long, it is best to blow out its contents." Only an experienced crafter could infer that this means the contents of the egg, not the tube or something, let alone know how to use a needle and enough lung power to make a whale hyperventilate to blow all the nasty egg bits out of a raw egg, not the hard-cooked ones that are called for. I've never tried it, but I imagine it's pretty much impossible to blow out the contents of a hard-cooked egg through a needle hole.]
The rest of the clown's costume is--surprise again!--foil, pleated, pinched, folded, and rolled into various shapes. If you go to the grocery store right now and pick up some foil and eggs, you could have a whole party of egg doll friends standing there to welcome your kids tomorrow morning when they wake up at the crack of dawn and race to the Easter Tree to see what the Easter Clown left for them. Hop to it, crafters, time's a-wastin.
Back at Christmas I shared some of the lovely craft projects I've found in Alcoa's Book of Decorations, a childhood fave. And I warned... er... told you that I'd be sharing more for future holidays. Well, Easter is upon us, and so, as promised, is Foil Craft.
Most of Alcoa's Easter selection is pretty lame: bunnies made of foil just look sad and ridiculous. However, there is one craft that Alcoa puts forth for Easter that I'm quite puzzled by: egg dolls. I've never heard of egg dolls, but according to the book, I'll "find fun and excitement in this new way to decorate eggs for Easter."It's simple, really; all you need is a bowl of hard-cooked eggs, construction paper or plastic tape, aluminum foil, and scraps of gift-wrap paper, fabric, and ribbon. You make the dolls' bodies out of the cardboard tubes that you get from a roll of paper towels or--surprise!--foil.
According to the instructions, the "egg doll friends" are, from left to right: a tipsy gentleman with a top hat; The Baby; a robust young lady with braids; and a reclining rabbit (you could probably have guessed that one). The tall fellow in the center is apparently the traditional Easter Clown. His head is (just in case you couldn't couldn't tell) an egg. His body is the cardboard tube from the foil, but covered in foil. So you take the foil off the tube... and wrap it around the tube. Then you push it into a styrofoam disc and shape arms, with hands, out of foil.
[At this point in the instructions, confusingly, we're told that "If you wish to keep any egg doll long, it is best to blow out its contents." Only an experienced crafter could infer that this means the contents of the egg, not the tube or something, let alone know how to use a needle and enough lung power to make a whale hyperventilate to blow all the nasty egg bits out of a raw egg, not the hard-cooked ones that are called for. I've never tried it, but I imagine it's pretty much impossible to blow out the contents of a hard-cooked egg through a needle hole.]
The rest of the clown's costume is--surprise again!--foil, pleated, pinched, folded, and rolled into various shapes. If you go to the grocery store right now and pick up some foil and eggs, you could have a whole party of egg doll friends standing there to welcome your kids tomorrow morning when they wake up at the crack of dawn and race to the Easter Tree to see what the Easter Clown left for them. Hop to it, crafters, time's a-wastin.
Friday, April 09, 2004
Weekend reading
Lots of free books from Baen. Seriously--entire books that I've paid six or seven dollars for, online for free. What a great marketing tool.
Lots of free books from Baen. Seriously--entire books that I've paid six or seven dollars for, online for free. What a great marketing tool.
Thursday, April 01, 2004
I'd rather read the blog...
Than the original, sometimes. This usually happens with blogs like slacktivist, which offer marvelous summaries of everything from densely intellectual articles on politics to a line-by-line analysis of the ridiculous Left Behind series.
And in this case, I'd rather read Teresa Nielsen Hayden's comments about the whines of a Boston bookstore that's going out of business than read the article itself.
And let me add my own: if book buyers would rather shop in a mall or at Wal-Mart, why shouldn't they? My experience with independent bookstores in the last 10 years or so, as much as I wish it were not so, has been routinely bad. Snotty sales clerks who are often more interested in talking to each other than helping customers; unpredictable or at least inconvenient hours for people with 9-5 jobs; poor selections, often dominated by local writers who are published by local publishers. It didn't used to be this way. I remember going into lovely, charming, wood-floored bookstores (occasionally with fireplaces, even!) where the knowledgeable and friendly owner or long-time sales clerk stood ready to offer advice or reading suggestions. And there are still a few of those around--probably because they're great bookstores. But for the most part, I'd rather shop at B&N, where I can get a little help and nobody's going to give me an attitude about my choice of reading material. I'd link to the places where I've gotten that attitude, but they've mostly gone out of business, blaming B&N and Wal-Mart all the way, and I say good riddance.
In the meantime, I actually prefer shopping at the university bookstore, which carries a wide variety of literary fiction, non-fiction, and even a fair amount of genre fiction--and my 10% faculty/staff discount doesn't hurt anything either.
Oh, and here's a note to Avenue Victor Hugo: what makes you guys think that librarians are "destroying" books? Librarians spend thousands of dollars, during a time when dollars are harder and harder to come by, to make certain that the books they're digitizing in order to preserve the content for future generations are handled and treated in a way that will keep them from falling apart. Which books do, eventually. What exactly do you want librarians to do, anyway? There's a limit to physical space. Books must move out in order to make room for new books. Jamming them together on the shelves makes them deteriorate faster.
I look at stupid arguments like these and just think, no wonder they're going out of business.
Now, there is one former Newbury Street bookstore I'll miss: Spenser's, where I bought my first Ellery Queen pulp, among others. That was a great store. No attitude. Just good books.
Than the original, sometimes. This usually happens with blogs like slacktivist, which offer marvelous summaries of everything from densely intellectual articles on politics to a line-by-line analysis of the ridiculous Left Behind series.
And in this case, I'd rather read Teresa Nielsen Hayden's comments about the whines of a Boston bookstore that's going out of business than read the article itself.
And let me add my own: if book buyers would rather shop in a mall or at Wal-Mart, why shouldn't they? My experience with independent bookstores in the last 10 years or so, as much as I wish it were not so, has been routinely bad. Snotty sales clerks who are often more interested in talking to each other than helping customers; unpredictable or at least inconvenient hours for people with 9-5 jobs; poor selections, often dominated by local writers who are published by local publishers. It didn't used to be this way. I remember going into lovely, charming, wood-floored bookstores (occasionally with fireplaces, even!) where the knowledgeable and friendly owner or long-time sales clerk stood ready to offer advice or reading suggestions. And there are still a few of those around--probably because they're great bookstores. But for the most part, I'd rather shop at B&N, where I can get a little help and nobody's going to give me an attitude about my choice of reading material. I'd link to the places where I've gotten that attitude, but they've mostly gone out of business, blaming B&N and Wal-Mart all the way, and I say good riddance.
In the meantime, I actually prefer shopping at the university bookstore, which carries a wide variety of literary fiction, non-fiction, and even a fair amount of genre fiction--and my 10% faculty/staff discount doesn't hurt anything either.
Oh, and here's a note to Avenue Victor Hugo: what makes you guys think that librarians are "destroying" books? Librarians spend thousands of dollars, during a time when dollars are harder and harder to come by, to make certain that the books they're digitizing in order to preserve the content for future generations are handled and treated in a way that will keep them from falling apart. Which books do, eventually. What exactly do you want librarians to do, anyway? There's a limit to physical space. Books must move out in order to make room for new books. Jamming them together on the shelves makes them deteriorate faster.
I look at stupid arguments like these and just think, no wonder they're going out of business.
Now, there is one former Newbury Street bookstore I'll miss: Spenser's, where I bought my first Ellery Queen pulp, among others. That was a great store. No attitude. Just good books.
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