Photo of the Week--8/1/11

Still hot, so still continuing with Icelandic waterfalls. This one, Svartifoss, looks like it would be nice to take a shower under in 90-degree heat ... not that it ever gets up to 90 in Iceland, but I'd like to transplant this beautiful waterfall into my backyard for the summer!

Please ... think of the trees!

It's been five months since I left off going through the pile of Boy's college brochures, and since then he's added very good ACT score and a second top AP to his credit. The stack is ready to spill out of its hidey-hole, so it's time for me to peruse the pile and add my snarky comments....

Rice U. (TX): glossy one-fold brochure with six reasons on "Why Rice?" Carbs not one of the reasons.
Boston U.: we're hedging our bets ... enter with a major in Engineering, like you said on your ACT survey, or discover "an unexpected new passion or career path."
Wayne State (3): Take a peek at your future ... wait, you can move your hands from your eyes, Detroit is safe now!
Northwestern U.: nice glossy brochure: we're fancy but not stuck up! And purple!
North Carolina: "May I tell you why I love UNC?" Actually, I think the question is "Can you," and the answer is "No."
Grand Valley State: Sign up for the Laker Experience! Does it involve Laker girls? Because Paula Abdul is so passe.
Brown U.: Combines the best of both worlds ... an Ivy League education and a name that lends itself to immature jokes!
U of Kentucky (11): New slogan "See Blue." Every month, it seems like.
U of Southern Cal: "As a top-rated private institution in the heart of Los Angeles, $$$$$$$$$$$$$." Sorry, I couldn't bring myself to read further.
Oakland U (MI): wouldn't it be so easy to stop by an check us out? Not as easy as trashing this postcard.
THE Ohio State U (2): Looks like no change from the last brochure, and no change in our response: AHAHAHAHAHA!
Ohio Northern (2): Big brochure with key facts, among them these seemingly contrary ones: School mascots are the Polar Bears, but the school colors are orange and black? Are they Halloween polar bears?
Harvey Mudd College (CA): Awesome holographic brochure! Focus on math, science, and engineering! And 35 minutes from Disneyland!
DePaul U (2): Come to our local reception in metro Detroit to hear about Chicago!
College of Wooster: Choose your adventure now ... in Ohio?
OSU (3): come visit and learn more ... or visit our tattoo shops for extra cash!
Sarah Lawrence: no need to mention we're co-ed, unless you count name-dropping Joseph Lawrence and Star Wars in the first sentence.
U of Michigan ... Dearborn (2): Damn.
Penn U: Ben Franklin founded us ... we're Ivy League but we don't need to mention it until the last paragraph.
Embry-Riddle: Aeronautical University! in Florida! Where you could train to work on the shuttle progr—erm, never mind.
Lake Superior State (MI): The one picture with snow shows kids wearing sweatshirts ... and neither does the flyer that came a few days later. Yeah, not buying it.
Penn State: Take five seconds to return this postcard ... or five minutes to try and unfold this brochure.
Michigan Tech: Visit our virtual booth at our online College Fair!
U of M Dearborn (3): Sigh. Great value, though!
Mercer U (GA): these Bears don't believe in hibernation! (And they're trying to attract teens?)
Miami U (OH): ACT score = potential $10K per year scholarship!
Princeton U: We're so Ivy League, we don't need to mention it.
Penn State (2): Check out our local meeting!
Bowling Green State (OH): Young eyes could read tiny white letters on a bright orange background, but old parent eyes can't.
George Mason U (VA): attend our National Youth Leadership Forum on National Security. Gulp.
Macalester College (MN, 2): This may be your last piece of mail from us, unless ... Promise?
SUNY at Albany: College of Nanoscale Science & Engineering ... Nano, nano, nano!
Kentucky (12): Ooo, a glossy newsletter instead of the usual letter .... zzzzzz.
USC (2): Big brochure with pretty pictures.
U of Chicago (8): Emphasizing research instead of the usual quirky stuff ... setting up for the big brochure coming soon.
U of Illinois: "We practically invented engineering. Ok, maybe not."
DePaul U (3): The postcard literally says "Hi." We say, "Bye."
Miami of OH (2): "successful students like you earn special perks," which sadly do not include free cars and tattoos.
Wooster (2): "Follow a path that's all your own," along with all the other students.
New York U: New York City, kids, with guaranteed housing!
U of Chicago (9): Includes big poster designed to give students "warm fuzzies imagining my future as a college student."
University of Michigan...: ... Ann Arbor! Hooray! It took you long enough. But hey, we had the president at our last commencement.

Since Boy actually wanted to read that last one, I'm going to stop here. I've still got a stack two inches thick, but that can wait for another installment.

Photo of the Week--7/25/11

It's hot here in the Midwest. I even went up to the UP of Michigan on vacation, and it was still hot (ie, above 85). So I can't resist photos of cool, cool water. This is another Icelandic waterfall, the magnificent Dettifoss. The last picture I showed was of a slow, seeping, blue beauty; this one is gray and huge and nasty, but still beautiful. And look! Do you see any guide ropes, any railings, any "DANGER" signs? Nope. Either Icelanders assume tourists are smart enough to figure it out, or else they don't have many liability lawyers. Either way, it was easy to get a great photo!

The Quilt Files, Episode 23

It's been a while since I've detailed any quilting projects on the blog, because it's been a while since I've worked on any projects. I still have a king-sized piece I'm hand-quilting, but it will be a long time until that's done. In the meantime, I got invited to a summer wedding, and thought I'd find a little project to supplement a gift on the gift registry. I saw a kit in a catalog for an insulated casserole tote, and thought it looked like a fun little project. Then I opened the pattern, and saw the directions required 60 feet of cotton clothesline ... what the heck? I looked at the directions. What had looked like thin sewn strips in the tiny catalog picture was actually fabric-wrapped pieces of clothesline. So after a four-store search to find cord of cotton-blend, not polyester (which wouldn't be good with heat), I was finally able to get started. I wrapped twelve strips of fabric around the line, then zig-zagged the pieces together. I cut them into smaller slices and sewed the slices together to make the body of the carrier. (Click on a photo to enlarge.)

 For the covers, I pieced more strips together and made a sandwich: strip-pieced top, insulative batting in the middle, and solid bottom. Then I put a mitered binding around three sides of each cover. I didn't bother tacking down the binding by hand, I could stitch in the ditch and catch the underside without a problem.

Next was to take the covers and attach them to the top of the zig-zagged clothesline sides. That could be done by machine, and once the tops were attached to the sides I could do more binding on the top of the clothesline sides. Pulling the binding to the inside and tacking it down (again by machine) hid the seam very well, as you can see in this picture. I butted the edges of one cover right next to another; in the picture you can see one cover is flipped back (the black part on the left), while another is lying on top of where the casserole goes (the black and white stripes).

Next came the fun part—NOT! I had to attach the binding at the bottom of the clothesline sides to the reinforced, cloth-covered bottom by hand. Since this seam had to hold the weight of a glass casserole, filled with food, the pattern recommended using tapestry thread. As you can see from the picture, it's pretty heavy, at least three strands, and I had to use a tapestry needle to fit the thread. Pushing a tapestry needle through regular cotton fabric is tough, and I had to start over twice to get the circular side to line up with the square bottom. It was painstaking hand-work (emphasis on the pain, that's big needle to wield), but I finally finished.

And here's the finished product! You can't see, but there is a casserole dish on the inside, nestled under four layers of insulated covers on the top and kept secure by four ties that were sewn directly onto the bottom of the base. Something pretty, functional, and hand-crafted to accompany the casserole dish that was on the registry. It was a fairly work-intensive project, but I liked how it turned out so much I might make it again for myself.

Photo of the Week--7/11/11

I've seen bigger waterfalls, and taller ones, and ones terrifyingly fast, but never one as cool as this one, Hraunfoss in Iceland. If you look closely you can see yes, that the water is actually coming out through the rocks and not over them. Coming through the rocks is what turns the water that unusual and very lovely opaque aqua, as minerals leach into the water. It was just one of the wonderful sights we saw in Iceland.

Photo of the Week--7/4/11

Now this is one of the prettiest city hikes I've ever taken. Back in 2002 we took a cruise of the Norwegian fjords, and spent a day in Tromso, Norway. A cable car took us to the top of a ridge, and as we walked over a tundral meadow (Tromso is north of the Arctic Circle) we got this lovely view of the city. Blue skies, blue waters, white snow, white clouds ... sun giving just enough warmth to make it comfortable. On days like today when we have a forecast approaching 90F, this kind of summer sounds great!

2011 Book Report: Second Quarter

Research for my history project helped me reach 28 books read in the first quarter, a good start on my 100 per year goal. How did I do this quarter, and I did read anything for fun? Check out my list below.

Key: C: Children's; F: Fantasy; H: Historical; Hr: Horror; M: Mystery; MG: Middle Grade (ages 8-12); NF: Nonfiction; P: Poetry; SF: Science Fiction; SS: Short Stories; V: Verse novel; YA: Young Adult (age 13+); *not in the last ten years at least; ^for work; #e-book.

04/03/11: Jane Austen-Leigh, A Visit to Highbury (H, 1)
04/10/11: John Steele Gordon, The Scarlet Woman of Wall Street^ (NF, 1)
04/12/11: Kenneth D. Ackerman, The Gold Ring^ (NF, 1)
04/18/11: Clark, Judith Freeman, The Gilded Age^ (NF,1)
04/23/11: Joan Aiken, Jane Fairfax (H, 1)
04/24/11: Charles R. Morris, The Tycoons^ (NF, 1)
05/01/11: Jane Gillespie, Aunt Celia (H, 1)
05/05/11: Robert C. McMath, Jr., American Populism^ (NF, 1)
05/14/11: David Weber, Field of Dishonor# (SF, 5 or 6)
05/18/11: The Rise of Big Business and the Beginnings of Antitrust and Railroad Regulation, 1870-1900^ (NF, 1)
05/20/11: Weber, Honor in Exile# (SF, 5 or 6)
05/25/11: The Great Strikes of 1877^ (NF, 1)
05/27/11: Robert V. Bruce, 1877: Year of Violence^ (NF, 1)
05/27/11: Weber, Honor Among Enemies# (SF, 5 or 6)
05/29/11: Weber, In Enemy Hands# (SF, 5 or 6)
05/30/11: Milton Meltzer, Bread—and Roses^ (NF, 1)
06/01/11: Weber, Echoes of Honor# (SF, 5 or 6)
06/07/11: Weber, Ashes of Victory# (SF, 4 or 5)
06/16/11: Paul Krause, The Battle for Homestead, 1880-1892^ (NF, 1)
06/21/11: Ian McEwan, Atonement (1)
06/26/11: McEwan, Solar (1)
06/26/11: Pete Hautman, Godless (YA, 1)
06/27/11: R. Hal Williams, Realigning America^ (NF, 1)
06/29/11: McEwan, On Chesil Beach# (1)

I'm amazed I managed 24 books this quarter. It felt like all I was doing was reading history books to research my project, but when I look at the stats, only ten of the books I read (just over 40%) were for work. (To be fair, though, I probably read part or half of another dozen books that I didn't list.) I did manage three variations on Emma—although I've only managed to blog about one of them—and just to give my brain a break I read half a dozen books in one of my favorite sci-fi series.

Which brings me to an aside: I attended a workshop by author Pete Hautman (see the 6/26/11 entry) in May, and we talked about how people read. He asked if anyone skipped a lot while reading, and said he often skipped whole chapters in books, or put a book aside altogether if it didn't hold his interest. I thought I'm not like that at all—I can count on the fingers of one hand the number of times I've started a book for fun and not finished it—but then while I was re-reading these books I realized I was skimming quite a bit. Every time there was a long description of a space battle, with the captains giving commands about acceleration and heading and gravities, I started skimming. I wanted to get to the more personal bits, the character development and political intrigue, which are what I really like about the series. Granted, this was the fourth or fifth time reading some of the books, so I knew I wasn't missing anything, but still ... I skim on occasion.

So anyway, of the few (7) non-research books that I read for the first time this quarter, which was my favorite? It was clearly Ian McEwan's Atonement, which was made into a very good film a few years back with James McAvoy and Keira Knightley. I actually saw the movie first, and was reminded I liked the other books of McEwan's I had read while I was living in England. I wrote a piece on him last summer, so I decided to read a few of his more recent works. Atonement has a historic sweep (it's mainly set before and during World War II), characters driven by strong passions, and a doozy of a final twist. Even more intriguing to me was how it was a meditation on writing, and it inspired this weekly haiku from me:

Words: a blend of sound
and revelation; with them
we remake the world.

So with 52 books for the first half of the year, I'm on pace for my goal of 100 books. Will I keep up during the "lazy summer" months, or will my not-so-lazy summer be too filled with writing for reading? Check back in three months for a progress report.