Spotted at the Tigard Fred Meyer
Category: All (-ish)
Completed receiving blanket
And we are done! I really like the size of this and the colors turned out to be fun.
Having one side be flannel gives the blanket a nice weight to it.
Binding troubles (I brought on myself) aside, this is a quick and easy project that looks great. It may become my go-to baby gift.
Media consumed while making this:
Mikey & Nicky
A New Leaf
Sherlock Season 2
The Sessions
This American Life episode 443
Dear Hank & John 008
Filmspotting SVU #87
Please Give
Endless Love
This is Where I Leave You
Closed for good reason
Peeking in the window at Cultured Caveman, a paleo restaurant in our neighborhood.
It’s a special day!
Let’s making a receiving blanket.
Friend Heidi mentioned she had a pattern for a baby blanket and since I needed to make something for a soon-to-appear baby, she gave me a copy. Here are the instructions. Fabric in the City is no longer in existence, but it’s nice that their pattern lives on.
If you are going to use this pattern, I will add my notes right here:
1/3 yard was not enough for 2.5 inch binding. 1/2 yard would have been better.
My four strips did not reach all the way around my material, as you will see. I had to join pieces together.
For an excellent binding tutorial, including joining pieces, I used this link: https://youtu.be/2egganTi2us
After you sew you binding to the blanket, go around an make sure that you have actually attached the three layers together. I didn’t do that and discovered two places where the binding wasn’t attached.
Here I have placed my two fabrics together so I can cut them to be the same size.
Before I got to this point, I added a satin stitch monogram to the green material. I learned that satin stitch takes a very long time when you are doing it by hand.
At this point, I was disappointed to note that the ladybugs show right through the green material. Harrumph.
Using my awesome quilters ruler to mark out 2.5 inch binding strips.
I used my Clover Chaco Liner Pen–another excellent product–to mark my binding strips. At this point I thought, “It doesn’t look like this binding will be long enough to go all the way around. What would have been smart would have been to measure to find out the answer.
But what I did instead was cut out the binding to prove that it didn’t stretch all the way around. Feels so good to be right, doesn’t it? Then, unfortunately, that feeling dissipated because I was only left with the option to cut the binding strips in half. So I went from 2.5 inches to 1.25 inches. Trust me when I say that this makes a very narrow binding.
Other late-breaking conundrums. I realized that with my smaller binding, I would now have to cut off the selvages. I did this, and then had to re-trim the green material.
Here, I have pressed the binding in half and sewn it to the fabric layers. I followed the directions on the link above, though I used a 1/8 inch seam, rather than 1/4 because I didn’t have 1/4 inch to spare.
Then, because I didn’t have 1/8 inch to spare on the other side of the seam line, I did a lot of tiny, careful trimming. Trust me when I say I brought all this on myself by having to prove that the binding didn’t go all the way around. It would have been so much easier if I had just knocked my binding back to 2 inches.
Then it was time to hand-sew the other side of the binding to the blanket. We will pause and read a few more movie reviews while I do this.
Random Song. Cake: Rock ‘n Roll Lifestyle.
At one time I was very into music and it was a big part of my life. With that came the worst archetype of the music world: the asshole who knows everything about music and thinks your taste sucks.
Not surprisingly, this archetype was always a man.
Which is why I greatly enjoy this song, as it seems to skewer a particular brand of music asshole. I was all about music, but, given the constraints of the time, I could only listen to the music that played on the radio, MTV and stuff that I could buy myself or tape off of stuff that my friends bought. My music tastes were as broad as it could be, but there were huge gaps, which asshole blowhard music guy was always happy to remind me about.
A good detail from Heavier Than Heaven, Charles Cross’s extensive biography of Kurt Cobain, was the large music gaps Cobain had. Which, of course he did, he was a poor kid with a Walmart for a music store. I remember a scene in the book where a now-famous Cobain was blissing out to something like Peter Frampton’s “Baby I Love Your Way” and the other musicians in the room–for which this was a completely cheesy song–were unsure if he was serious or not.
I afforded my rock & roll lifestyle as much as I could, but there were many people who could outspend me.
I also greatly love Cake, whose music is sort of a 90s-era cool oasis for me. Plus they have horns. I’m a sucker for a good horn part. When we saw them several years ago, the horn player was a hard working man, covering not just the horn parts, but also backup vocals and extraneous rhythm things.
As a side note, I was interested to note that the guitar riff in this song reminds me of one in one of my favorite Cake ditties, “Stick Shifts and Safety Belts”
Also, the above video is weird.
Let’s revisit 1536 N. Schofield St.
This lot, you might remember, is for sale and has a really great tree on it. Walking by today, I noticed some signs, and wandered back to investigate. 
Good job, Lindsey & Dan, for doing your part to save the tree.
They’ve attached a sign to the fence between their property and the lot and put a sign on the tree.
Until this year, the back part of the property had a garden. I suspect it was the house behind that tended it, given the gate.
Looking out from the back of the lot toward the street you can see the walnut tree, the former garden and the holly tree.
Sunset grabbed on the way to the airport.
Driving out to drop off the car at the airport for Matt, and it was killing me that I had to drive and not take pictures. I managed to grab these shots, neither one of them framed, just pointed and shot. By the time I got to the parking garage, all the colors had disappeared.
Hunger Games Sweater completed. Again.
When I finished my Hunger Games Sweater, (Properly known as the District 12 Cowl)I took it to school to show my colleague, who had been receiving updates throughout the knitting process. She loved it and expressed sentiments that she wished her mother would knit her one instead of something for the baby. (She’s due very soon.) Being the kind of girl who completely understands those sentiments, I opted to make her something, instead of something for the baby. Another colleauge funded the yarn purchase and I provided the knitting. And I hope she enjoys her new sweater. (I also hope it fits.)
Media consumed during the creation of this project:
Sherlock Season 2
A Place in the Sun
Now You See Me
Elysium
Ain’t Them Bodies Saints
The Sessions
Edward Scissorhands
PAE’s Macbeth
Martha Marcy May Marlene
Beverly Hills Cop
Walking and Talking
Tonight You’re Mine
Magic Mike
Celeste & Jessie Forever
Greenberg
Only Lovers Left Alive.
Hello to Canon Powershot SX710 HS
That’s me, taking a picture with my new camera remotely by using my phone. I can then upload any photos on my camera to my phone, (or computer or other device) wirelessly. It’s pretty awesome. Especially because it will eliminate the need to take a photo with my camera and then take another photo with my phone to post to social media. This normally isn’t an issue, but I did it more than I would like on my vacation and it was annoying. I could just switch over to using my phone on my camera, but I don’t like it as much as actually using a camera.
Other features I’m excited about? It has a mode where I can hold down the shutter and it will capture multiple images, which is useful for Matt’s sporting events. There’s a mode where I can take one photo and it can format it five different ways. It has a zoom function that will stay focused on your zoomed subject, even if the subject moves. And it continues the tradition of great zoom. Also, it has a slimmer profile than my previous PowerShot.
I would have examples of all these things, but in getting to know the camera, I accidentally deleted all my example photos. I’ve got it down now,though. No need to worry.
Also, for the first time in my life, I bought an extended warrenty. If I drop this one, I want to be able to get it repaired.
Goodbye to Canon Powershot SX170 IS
Well, thanks to the blog and the search function, I can tell you that I welcomed this camera into my life on October 10, 2013. It replaced my PowerShot Digital Elph, which I had for six years. Unfortunately for this dude, I dropped it within the first two months of owning it and it’s never quite been the same since. It was too expensive to repair it, so I made do. If you look at the recent vacation photos, a lot of the corners are shaded black because I was constantly having to put the lens back together.
We had an okay time together, this camera and I, but it was a little bit bigger than I liked and I missed the slim profile of the Elph. It still works (-ish), and has the same battery as my new camera, so I’ve tucked it away in a drawer just in case it needs to be pulled back into service. (Which is why this is not a requiem post.) And I walked by the place where I lost the two lens pieces, and recovered them (it was after hours, so I didn’t feel so self conscious about fishing around under the fence).
Thank you for your service PowerShot SX170 IS. You had a good zoom and we took some good pictures together.