Yesterday I started typing this:

Today has been beyond hectic.  Like I mentioned on Twitter earlier today, it feels like I have been thrown in, in the deep end, rather than being eased into the week!

Today hasn’t been any better.  I haven’t read a blog post in what feels like ages and I haven’t written a post in ages (since the weekend).  I have been meaning to do a post on Logan’s Dad.  For one, to compare where we were at as parents a year ago (battling maintenance agreements) and now, decent towards each other.  As well as to reflect on life as a single parent - Balancing parenting when the dad is involved with having a boyfriend. 

Yet today I was thrown off guard a bit.  Logan’s dad mentioned that he would like to fly Logan down to Cape Town in December to meet his parents.  (Slightly dysfunctional that he hasn’t met his grandparents, I know and no comment.)  At risk of sounding disapproving, I asked what the travel arrangements would be (my child will not be driving to Cape Town in a car, especially if I don’t even trust myself driving that far with him) and how long he plans to be in Cape Town.  I’m not sure what I was expecting, but I sure as hell wasn’t expecting two - full - weeks!

Naturally I commented on the fact that it is Two-Full-Weeks and said I would think about it.  Then of course he threw a temper-tantrum because he only gets to see Logan every second weekend – to which I made my feelings pretty clear:   TWO-FULL-WEEKS, in a far-far away place, where he knows no-one but him.  That is pretty scary!  For anyone, but when you are turning 4 while in Cape Town and celebrate Christmas without being sure if Santa will know where to find you – it is a nightmare gone wrong. 

I am petrified.  The more I think about it, the more the answer is no.  Am I being ridiculous?  I don’t think so.  Am I?

This certainly gives a whole new meaning to Tracey and I’s joke of this afternoon when our kids refuses to make us coffee (one day when we will trust then will boiling water)/ rub our feet / give us a kiss / well really whatever we need at that present moment.

 ”Screw the child baring, the puking, the sleepless nights, the changing of nappies – I needed to have sex with your father in order to have you, so you better get a move on and (fill in the blank word of what is required…”

products

i’d like to visit mieke willems : what appears to be a sweet little blue shop operated by veronik willems + mieke verbijien – housing the best pin cushions i ever saw!  problem? belgium is far.

said cushions: such sweetness

shop greeters

blog socks

i am super happy for the interworld because their blog is sweet + playful.  brain traveling . . .

A great way to learn somebody is to show off your superior movie knowledge. These next two scenarios involve two well-known films: The Karate Kid, and Star Wars. I am sorry to say that in one of these scenarios, I was the one being learned. I know. It’s hard to believe but it’s true. I will not, however, reveal which one I was learned  in.

The Karate Kid

It’s Decade Day at [insert school name here] and a bunch of guys decide to dress up as characters from The Karate Kid for 80s.

Person 1: Nice outfits. What does that say on your back?

Person 2: Cobra Kai

1: Oh. I couldn’t tell. The “K” looked like an “X”. Plus its Japanese anyway so there’s no way I would know.

2: It’s not Japanese.      

~~**LEARN**~~

1: laughing Right. It’s Korean.

2: It’s actually American. (referring to the movie)

~~**DOUBLE LEARN**~~

This next learn occurred during a heated discussion between Person A and Person B about how often things are blown up in the Star Wars movies.

A: How could it have blown up in space?

B: Because it’s in a galaxy ”far far away” not in our galaxy.

~~**LEARN**~~

While in Manhattan recently I wondered around Soho and stopped at Purl & Purl Patchwork.

First stop Purl.

I am not much of a knitter.  My great-grandmother knit so much she would sit in her chair knitting, would doze off but her hands were still knitting and purling away!  I’ve tried to teach myself to knit without much success.  Whenever I try, the edges roll up so much my scarf becomes a rope!  Needless to say, I wasn’t in Purl for myself.

I went in to get birthday and Christmas gifts to send to BF’s mom who is currently in the Peace Corps.  She crocheted in the past and has recently taken it back up to pass some of her free time and keep her warm.  BF and I decided to buy her a crochet book and some yarn to keep her going.

(This is what they helped me choose.)

The staff at Purl were so nice, so friendly, and very helpful to someone who didn’t have a clue about yarn or anything else in the store (me)!  Walking into the tiny, but bright, somehow airy shop and being greeted by the staff was sort of like walking into a friend’s home.  I had no clue and they were all so happy and knowledgable.

After I sat down and scoured through all of the crochet books available, finally choosing one with some help, I said I needed yarn.      ”What kind of yarn?”, the nice male associate asked me.

“Blue,” I said.

So, I was asked all about what it would turn into, machine washable….and so on.  He recommended three sections and said, just touch them and see what you like.  I made my decisions mainly based on which color blue I liked best and which yarn was soft and cuddly.  A very informed decision as you can tell.

Finished at Purl, I walked just up the block to an equally airy, bright color filled tiny little shop, Purl Patchwork.  It was love at first sight!  Two walls filled with yards and yards of bright modern cottons.  Amy Butler’s new line Love, Heather Ross Far Far Away, tons of Echino and other Japanese fabrics!  I wanted EVERYTHING I saw.

As expected, the Japanese fabrics were a bit pricey for me, though I did some.  The Heather Ross Far Far Away line was pricey too, but I really wanted the cute princesses.

The pile of fabrics on the cutting mat are what I took home.  I love them!!

So, if you are anywhere near Sullivan Street in Soho, go!  Go to Purl, go to Purl Patchwork, you will love their goodies and their staff!!!  They offer classes too.  If you can’t stop by Sullivan Street you can shop online!

Nunca joguei aquele contato de msn fora. Alías, dificilmente faço esse tipo de coisa. Ele nunca acendia mesmo, não incomodava, apenas estava ali, quietinho na dele. Mas, então ele acendeu.

Cara, realmente, 16 anos depois. Mudou-se pra Santa Catarina, mas ainda me lembro de quando jogavámos taco no campinho do lado da casa dela, juntamente com toda a galerinha da rua. Sabe, tipo aquelas meninas que brincam junto com os meninos? Então.

Cresceu (e não ficou com cara de muleke, muito pelo contrário). Teve seus desentendimentos, suas tristezas e resolveu ir para longe. O irmão dela ainda mora por aqui, mas raramente o vejo.

Conversamos um pouco de noite, e a manhã toda do dia seguinte. E cara, como tem assunto! Coisas do passado, coisas que nos divertiam e coisas que sempre foram segredos muito bem guardados (maior que um precipício, viu!). Falamos sobre como nos divertíamos naquela época, dos videogames (o Street Fighter 2 original do seu irmão tá comigo até hoje!) e de como foi triste quando a galera começou a se dissolver.

Claro, sobrou melancolia aos baldes. Fiquei muito feliz por encontrá-la novamente, saber que está bem e que continua com caninos proeminentes legal como sempre foi.

Prometeu que quando viesse pra cá novamente, me ligava.

E eu acho que vou ter um treco se ela fizer isso.

Ah, I am done!  Claire slept with it last night.  I have spent a few evenings covered with it while slipstitching the binding to the back.  (No one warned of this last, time-consuming step!)  (Okay, my fault for not reading the book all the through first.:)  I conclude it will be the soft, comfiest quilt I will ever make.  Because I am never making a quilt out of japanese double cotton gauze ever again!  It stretches and it unravels.  What I mean by stretches is that when you slightly move it, it becomes uneven.  I don’t know how to describes this better.  It is a loose weave (good for handquilting?) and when you manhandle it, it does not keep the the weave at the 90 degrees angles, so it gets all wonky.  But it is done, and I am happy with it.  I just had to include a picture of it all pinned.  Over 300 safety pins!  I will never forget doing that with a toddler and corgi hovering at the sides, wanting to pounce on it.

The fabric is from the Far, Far Away line by Heather Ross for Kokka.  The backing is also double cotton gauze that I bought from Fabric Tales.  The batting is Quilter’s Dream Select.  It is very warm!  I was surprised because it isn’t too thick.  I did a simple grid machine quilting because this was my first time.  I am very happy with the results.  There was a lot going on with the color and design, so it didn’t need a crazy stitch pattern.  The quilt pattern itself is from AllPeopleQuilt.com.  It is “Sherbert Rail Fence” by Alice Kennedy.  It is 62×62 and I think I will never make something this big again!  It is a throw size and big enough for two to snuggle under on the couch and big enough to drape over a full size bed as a decorative blanket.  It is quite big enough for little Claire and she loves it.  I hope it can withstand all the years she will use it.  If not, I’ve got scraps to fix it with!

Once again there’s no real inspiring photos to go with this, this is just a mere update. If only there was anything to actually remember these days.

I just want to go away. Far far away.

Before we speculate on the future of the Internet, let us go back deep in time, very deep indeed, just close to the beginning of the universe itself. I came across this amazing video from YouTube about the “Hubble Ultra Deep Field:”

It makes us wonder about what it is all about and why things are what they are right now, doesn’t it? The Hubble was pointed to an area in the sky where there was apparently nothing, but in the end it found out that this area was full of very distant galaxies, and as they are very distant they look very old from our perspective, so old that the light traveling from them shifted the wavelengths and they appear reddish to us. This phenomenon also corroborates the theory that the universe is expanding at a very fast rate, and they say in the video that it is faster than the speed of light itself.

This naturally makes us wonder. On the one hand we realize that we are just a tiny speck in the universe, but on the other, does the light from these distant galaxies are traveling toward “us”? It surely seems to be because we are the ones who are watching this video right now and are reflecting on the meaning of it all. So even if we are a tiny speck, we seem to be at the center of it all because we are thinking about it. The fact that we are conscious makes all the difference.

So what does the Buddhist say about this issue? The message of the Buddha is nothing if not directed toward the mind, toward realization of how to become one with reality such that we are released from the bondage of suffering. There is always a human dimension in the teaching. So it is well and good that we are perceive all these distant galaxies but the really important message  should be how these images point to our own realization inside ourselves. We are looking deeper and deeper at the outside, but are we beginning to look any deeper into the inside? Are we looking at our minds?

After all, it is our minds that comprehend the vastness of the univese and marvel at it. But what is more marvellous is our mind itself. In the end, however, there is not much difference between the two. Hubble ultra deep field may satisfy our curiosity, in the same way as vistas of unseen geographical regions satisfied the curiosity of our forefathers a century ago. We want to know what is out there. That is why we went to the North Pole and sent out subs to explore the ocean floor. But all these explorations would come to nothing if we do not explore the mind. If we keep on searching the outside, some part of ourselves will always be missing. Before long these images from Hubble will cease to be exciting and then we will crave more and more. More images, deeper resolution, going deeper in space and time, build a large telescope, and so on.

This is not a bad thing in itself. But if we do not accompany these yearnings by looking deeper at our mind, then we won’t be any different from what we are right now. We will still be yearning, suffering creatures we used to be even with much more powerful telescopes than the Hubble.

So the feeling we have, the sense of spirituality we feel through looking at these deep space images perhaps shows that there is a connection between the outside and the inside. We need to stop and reflect more and be more sensitive to what this feeling tells us. If we keep on doing so, perhaps one day we may arrive at a deja vu, things we have been yearning to see turning out to be what is already there in us all along.

Pattern:  New Look 6889

Modifications: bias tape hem

Fabric:  Far, Far Away “Field of Flowers–Green” by Heather Ross

Purchased at Sew to Speak

Ah, I finally have a new nightgown and my own piece of clothing in double cotton gauze. I’m feeling very good about this dress, but I have a word of caution.  DO NOT set the timer for two hours and see if you can beat the clock when the front of the pattern claims to be a 2 hour project!  This was the first mistake I made, which caused one, irreparable mistake:  I cut the fabric upside!  You can’t really tell, but the orange tulips are pointing down.  D’oh!

I’m very pleased with the pattern because I measured my bust, then cut according, sewed accordingly, and miracle of miracles, it fit perfectly!  That has not happened for me yet.  So with this simple shape that fits perfectly, I can envision making my own creative modifications on future nightgowns (or dresses).  This was actually a dress pattern, not a nightgown pattern, but I really wanted pajamas made of double cotton gauze because Claire looks so comfy in hers.  Another reason this is a nightgown and not a dress can be seen below:

It sticks to your underwear!  This was also lamented by Amy Karol on her blog, Angry Chicken.  She fixed the problem by wearing a slip.

A couple more details:

I liked the narrow ribbon tie.

I couldn't figure out how to do the bias tape on the neckline. The directions were not very clear. I recommend looking for help on this.

Bought today from a random quilt shop, originally uploaded by Indie House.

I didn’t get a chance to work on my pincushions today because I got sidetracked fabric shopping. I travel a lot for work and when I do I try to make time to visit local quilt shops because you never know what you will find.

Today I scored Lush, Heather Ross, and American Jane Wee Play for around $9 a yard each. I bought 10 1/2 yards and had to stop myself. I almost bought the entire bolts of the Sky Painter’s Palette and Deer but I forced myself to behave.

They had some other hard to find fabrics and a lot of current prints that I love. It’s a good thing this store isn’t right down the street!

I’ve been trying/wanting to get my hands on some of these prints, but oh my, they are running out SO FAST! If you missed out but want to have a change to score some, Whipstitch is having a fun giveaway this week – check out the adorable way of deciding on the winner, too! Ingenius, altho a little more work than your usual ‘pick a random number’ way…Good luck!

After 10 weeks in Tanzania, I finally got the chance to leave Arusha! This came in the invitation/requirement to go on a school trip to Morogoro for a swimming and football competition, with 28 children/young people, aged from 10-16.

We left school at 9.15am on Friday morning and drove for 11 hours in a south-easterly direction until we reached our destination. I really enjoyed the chance to see some of the Tanzanian scenery (lots of mountains and little villages) on the way down. The kids were very rowdy after being cooped up in a bus for so long though – I don’t think the heat (about 35°C in places), the excitement or the sodas helped either!

The journey shouldn’t really have taken that long, but the drivers were given a speed limit by the chief administrator, which was over-ruled, after a while, by Jo (the headmaster’s wife). When we started going a bit faster, one of the buses was pulled over by the police for speeding – how typical! The driver got out of paying the full fine and getting a ticket though, thanks to some sweet talking…

At least our journey wasn’t as long as the school travelling from Mwanza (a town near Lake Victoria in north-west Tanzania), who’s bus broke down twice on the way! Pole (this word means “sorry” and is pronounced like “poorly”, rather than how we’d pronounce “pole” in English. The Tanzanian’s say it a lot, in situations where we just wouldn’t in England, it’s quite sweet really).

We had dinner in a nice restaurant in Morogoro as soon as we arrived (we were kind of hungry by 8.30pm), then went to the school where we were staying. It wasn’t exactly luxurious staying in a classroom, but it was still quite exciting. We were all squashed in on foam mats, with sleeping bags, like a sleepover. I should add here that the boys were sleeping in the hall, and had put up tents –how adventurous of them! Before going to bed, the girls had the choice of teeth-brushing in the boy’s bathroom that was completely flooded, due to rain coming through a leaky roof. Or of teeth-brushing in the girl’s bathroom, that was dry but very dark (as the lights were broken). The boys went elsewhere for teeth-brushing (if indeed at all…)

The competitions took place on Saturday, with football in the morning and the swimming in the afternoon. The children were completely exhausted at the end of the day – especially those that had competed in both activities. Braeburn did well, winning the girls’ football, coming second in some of the boy’s football competitions and coming overall first in the swimming! Whoop, whoop! The school in Morogoro had organised a disco in the evening, where the Braeburn kids sat sleepily, watching the kids from other schools dancing –so it was a strange disco in that sense!

We got up early, early on Sunday to leave Morogoro at 8am – determined to get back to Arusha before dark! We ended up arriving at 5pm (ish). I think fast driving and not needing to take many toilet stops helped – the kids slept for most of the journey, so weren’t drinking as much water or soda as they had done on the way down.

All in all, it was a fun trip. Although it was a very long way to go, just for one day’s sporting events! It was even fun hanging out with secondary kids (as a break from Year 4). Some of the secondary kids that came were quite full of attitude, some were really sweet and others were just plain hilarious –eg. one yr 9 boy cracked hard-boiled eggs on his head at breakfast time before peeling the shell off (I’m sure people normally tap them on the side of a plate, with a spoon, or some other implement). What would he have done if the egg was not quite hard-boiled? He was so dim!

Anyway, the real question is: where will I go next? The Easter holidays are fast approaching…

This is REALLY common and really aggravates me…
“how is star wars set ‘a long time ago’ when their technology is better then what we have now

The answer to this is simple… Read the next line after the one you’ve picked out ‘in a galaxy far far away’
There… There’s your fuckin answer it’s in a different galaxy that’s far far away it ain’t set on mars

So they coulda advanced technology alot faster then us, specially due to all the different intelligent species in it
Or
They mighta been around long before us… So They coulda done the whole evolution thing years before us
And so while we are in the year 2009 in their galaxy they could be in year 5000 so even though it’s a long time ago it’s also further onto their development and evolution then we are
Tbh there are plenty of reasons
And any one saying that’s unlikely
It’s slot more probable then Allah making a tree grow from an acorn…specially since science has already solves and told us how that happens.. And at no point is any god mentioned

So this concludes … Star wars owns and is worth more then your life

And pippin … Is alot better then scar face you wanker
Ha

After the madness that is the ending of ”Misunderstood”, it was really hard to know what would be coming next.  I was anticipating more noise and confusion, but was completely thrown to find “Far, Far Away.”  It’s very low-key and sounds like something that could have been left off of the album.  I think these feelings are because of its odd placement.  Really, it would fit much better on the second disc with the rest of the slower acoustic songs.  When you put it right in the middle of songs like “Monday” and “Red-Eyed and Blue/I Got You”, it can’t help but sound a little out of place.

Another thing that has always struck me about the song is how it’s been revisited by the band.  The chord progession sounds an awful lot like “She’s A Jar” at one point, and the guitar solo reminds me of “Sky Blue Sky.”  They played it at the first St. Louis show last May, and it sounded really nice with the newer material in the setlist.  I must admit that I would have preferred to hear some other songs from Being There ahead of it, though.

So I guess what I’m trying to say is that it’s just about the definition of a decent song by a great band.  If not for its odd spot in the tracklisting, it would totally blend in with the furniture.

This morning I accidentally slept through four snoozes on my alarm.  As a result I left my apartment at 7:25am instead of my usual 7:15am.  Usually, when I leave at 7:15am I get to work at around 8:15am or 8:25am (sometimes as early as 8:10am), right on time to start working at 8:30am.  This morning, I left a mere ten minutes after my usual time and instead of arriving at 8:25am or 8:35am, I arrived at 8:53am.  I waited for the bus for twenty minutes.  We got stuck in traffic behind a school bus.  The orange line was insanely crowded.  I waited for the green line for way too long, watching two D trains and two E trains go by before a B train showed itself.  Then the B train got above ground and went express to Packard’s Corner and I had to get off to get on the next local train.  When the driver of the green line train announced that they were going express a woman near me said, loudly, “YESSSSSSSSS.”  I consider myself a non-violent person.  I almost punched that woman in the head.

That being said, I do not want to move.  This is a testament to how AWESOME my apartment is.  Not to mention that I have a strong sentimental connection to it because it’s my and Billy’s first apartment together, just the two of us.  But it’s also really just a great, great apartment.  Billy and I went to Ikea this weekend to get some final things to complete the decoration/organization of the apartment and once we had it all set up the feeling of calm that flowed through me is worth an hour and a half commute every day.  I don’t even care.  It’s that good.  We have a place in the kitchen where we hang all our pans!  We have a long magnet thingy for our sharp, fancy knives!  We have a stylish magazine rack!  We have a carpet in the living room!  We have shelves above the toilet with little containers on them that hold my tampons!  IT DOESN’T GET ANY BETTER THAN THIS.

Sadly, our friends still don’t want to visit us because for all intents and purposes we live in Antarctica.

Do you sometimes have the feeling that you just need to get away? Sleep for a 100 years or just buy a one-way ticket to some huge city where you can get totally lost?

I know I do. The past few weeks I’ve really been struggeling with the reality, real life. It’s all to much, way to much pressure, to many expectations and loads of responsibility. I really wanna go to bed and sleep for a 100 years, then wake up and start over fresh, a new name, new memories, a new life. Now I know that is not possible, but I would if i could. I have been thinking about really working my ass off for a few months, like really pull 2 shifts a day, and save all the money I can get, then buy a one-way ticket to either Tokyo, Cairo, Bali or Delhi and just start over, a totally new life. Leave everything behind at home and be totally reborn with clean sheets.  Go to a huge city where I don’t know the language and don’t know anyone. Also with a totally different culture and religion? This might sound dangerous, but I’m so tired of it all. I’ve reached the point where I don’t care anymore. Don’t care for anything.

This option is an alternative to drowing myself in the sea. I could do it quite easily, since I live right next to the great big ocean. But I want to live. I love life. And Death is to easy.  Then there is the people that I love. I would never want to hurt them like that. Never. My lover, across the atlantic ocean, and my online brother in England I would miss the most. And my beloved friends here in Oslo. I would miss them terrible if I went somewhere and started a new life. That’s what’s keeping me here. It’s like they are always holding my arms and pushing me forward and catching  me everytime when I fall. But my willpower is lost, my heart is empty. Again. I mean, in my heart are the people that I love, but my personal space  in my heart is empty. It’s like i’ve lost myself somewhere along the way. And then you might ask, what about your family? Well I don’t really have any special bonds with me biological family. I believe that we choose our own family, so then i choose that my friends are my family, and yes, then I would miss them terrible. But my father and mother, step mother and step sis. Half brothers and sister, and their kids. The whole step family. No. Those bonds were broken a long time ago. Maybe my half sister, she’s been like a mother for me. Yes, I would miss her. But she would not understand. *smiles* My sis-in-law, married to my brother in England would tell me to, “suck it up, deal with and move on.” And shes right. Reality bites. But with zero motivation I’m not strong enough to deal with it. I feel tired. So very tired..

*sleeps*

In time with the incoming holiday season (heck, it’s December 1st!), I have started a line of Christmas-themed videos and movies. So just yesterday, I got hold of Shrek The Halls, the first holiday special featuring Shrek, Fiona, their kids, and the rest of the Far Far Away gang.

Title screen for Shrek The Halls.

Christmas for Village Idiots. Now really!

This 22-minute special tells of Shrek celebrating his very first Christmas (because Ogres don’t celebrate Christmas); and his, Fiona and their kid’s first Christmas as a family. Since it’s Shrek’s first Christmas, he hasn’t the foggiest idea of how to celebrate it. He gets hold of a “Christmas For Village Idiots” book, and follows all the guidelines indicated, with disgusting and hilarious results (i.e.: striped snakes for candy canes, overinflated frogs for christmas balls, and a dead log for a christams tree)! When at last, he finally gets everything all patched up for Christmas Eve, Donkey, Puss in Boots, Gingy, and the rest of the gang show up and somehow get everything out of control [again, i.e.: a tree shrew for christmas dinner (only it was burned to ashes), chocolate barf (c/o Gingy), spoofed versions of The Night Before Christmas, a choking pig, trashed christmas dinner, and a burning christmas tree.] Shrek losses his temper and gets everyone out of the house. But along with it, he losses his family on Christmas eve. Only then does he realize what Christmas means and how it is done–”you just do it!”

This television special is just a great way to start up your holiday season. It’s been some time after Shrek The Third, and this is a great film to keep the Shrek spirit going. Short movies like these make good viewing for kids and those at kids at heart. Truly heart-warming, inspiring, and full of laughter! Already, I am clamoring for christmas specials of animated movies I’ve seen in the past (think: Kung Fu Panda, The Incredibles, Cars).

MERRY CHRISTMAS EVERYONE!!!

HAPPY HOLIDAYS!!!

Eh-he-he! Presenting... Ogre Claus!! Ho! Ho! Ho!

]]> http://etrangehistoire.wordpress.com/2008/09/18/love-undone/ Thu, 18 Sep 2008 14:45:31 +0000 Nikki http://etrangehistoire.wordpress.com/2008/09/18/love-undone/