25
Feb, 2006

sticky buns!

the bread of the month for march is cinnamon rolls and i just couldn’t wait so i tried my hand at a “sticky bun” recipe from cooking light. no big problems the first time through! (i think i’m finally getting the hang of this “yeast bread” thing. yum. yum. yum. only problem? mr. happy stuff and i really shouldn’t finish off a whole pan by ourselves (we discussed whether the fact that they were from cooking light made it ok for us to each polish off half a pan). wanna come over and share one?

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25
Feb, 2006

look up!

yesterday, i had to work three hours to make up for last week’s snow day. on my (slightly grumbly) way in, i looked up at the pillars of the wall that “hides” the dumpsters behind the chinese restaurant down the sidewalk from my job. on top of one of the pillars sat a small, smiling golden buddha. he looked so happy i just had to smile.

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24
Feb, 2006

packaging

so, when i started making the pidoodle line, it was only jewelry and i was way more excited about making the packaging than about making the jewelry. pidoodle has expanded to new product lines in the last year or so and once again, i’m having to create lots of different kinds of packaging. sometimes this is fun, sometimes it challenges me and i have to be creative. (how do you package a pair of wool slippers in such a way that they stay together but people can still try them on? solution at the bottom of this blog entry!) today’s challenge: packaging magnet sets. i have these cute magnets that i’ve made, but they’re too small (and loseable) to be sold singly and i think they’ll look better in sets. but, how best to package them so that they’re individually visible (not jumbled in a box or bag)? final solution? re-used candy tins. your opinion–do you find it charming that i’ve recycled packaging, or does it strike you as cheap, tawdry and possibly illegal? i’ve covered up the original label and i’m trying to decide if it’s worth it to try to get rid of the nutritional information on the back (it will be covered up when it’s in display mode). still…i think they turned out exceptionally cute. what do you think?

slipper solution: buy cute bulldog clips (i found silver ones in the shape of a half-circle!) and use them to clip the slippers together. i also slid one of my circle tags onto the metal wire part.

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22
Feb, 2006

dead fred

tonight in class, we had someone come and talk to us about genealogy research. she gave us a lot of information (most of which i’ll likely forget, except for the overarching theme of “look beyond just your family name!”), but my favorite piece was probably the website deadfred.com. it’s a website where people post old photos and other readers see if they can identify the person photographed. (i.e. “that’s my great uncle ralph!). the example photo she showed us was of a man named james gorman and of another, unidentified man. mr. gorman is a white railroad laborer and he is photographed standing behind a seated black man playing a guitar. although it is a typical, posed 1920’s photo, the characters seem much more lively than the usual straight-faced crowd that usually populates the photo records of this era. plus, what an unusual pairing of men for a photo like this! it just seems to sparkle and their slight smiles make me want to smile back.

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22
Feb, 2006

an interview

today, i went to a local after school club for kids in a low-income apartment complex. their teacher had approached me awhile back telling me about how they like to bring the kids to the library with their reading buddies. she came up with the great idea of introducing me to them through an “interview.” so, together with their teacher, the kids have been working on coming up with appropriate interview questions for me. most of the questions were things like, “what’s your favorite book?” and “what’s your favorite thing to do at the library?” and “do you like your job?” but one question (i found out later that the author of this question hadn’t been able to attend the interview and was disappointed that she couldn’t ask me herself) was more along the lines of “what inspired you to become a librarian?” what a great question from a kid that age!

anyway, we all had fun–i had fun, the kids had fun (they giggled a lot anyway!), the teacher had fun, the reading buddies (retired volunteers) had fun… and it was so easy for me to do and the kids actually had a learning experience from the whole thing! (oh, and i asked them interview questions too!) plus, now i’ll have a better feel for the kids when they come to visit the library.

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22
Feb, 2006

tile patterns

so, maybe this is a little obsessive of me, but i’ve noticed that whenever i’m sitting in a bathroom where the floor tiles have a pattern of some kind, my eyes rove over the tiles, figuring out the pattern, following the pattern or playing with the positive and negative spaces that the pattern leaves. yesterday, i noticed that the bathroom tiles at my new job have a single instance inconsistency (some might call it a “mistake”). there is a pattern of three colors, where each row consists of two tiles of each color, repeating over and over. in one row, instead of a two-orange, two-lt. green, two-dk. green pattern, there is a 1-orange, 3-lt. green, 2-dk. green section. when i found it… it made me smile. it made me think of the amish tradition of a “humility” block in quilts where one quilt block is intentionally off-pattern so that the quilt isn’t “perfect” and the creator may retain their humility. i wonder if the tile layer was amish…

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21
Feb, 2006

new artist

i discovered a new artist today. here is some of her stuff. she’s like the andy goldsworthy of consumeristic disposables. very interesting…

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20
Feb, 2006

the other fun thing i did on friday

so i think i wrote about a few fun, happy things i did last friday, but i forgot to mention the nice lunch and photo shoot i had with one of my good friends. we enjoyed lunch together and then she agreed to model some of the new purses that pidoodle is putting out for the “spring line” (if pidoodle ever gets her act together enough to get them into stores…). this is one of the photos we took. this is another one. i’m thinking of making it the main photo on pidoodle’s webpage for the season (if…i ever get my act together… yada, yada), but i can’t decide which one i like better. the bag design is named “lulu” so please vote. do you prefer the photo of green lulu or orange lulu?

p.s. aren’t they cool pictures? they make me happy just looking at them. i love the colors and the lighting is pretty good and i love that i was (sort of) able to acheive that unfocused background look. now if i could only justify owning a camera that would allow me to have manual control over how focused or unfocused the background was… think i could write it off as a business expense?

Posted in stuff that makes me smile | 2 Comments
19
Feb, 2006

correction.

a while back, i made a post about the “i want the truth, ruth” sketch and after watching the third electric company episode on the dvd, i think i have to change my assertion that the cartoon originally aired on sesame street. while i didn’t get to see that sketch, i saw a very similar cartoon about “true, blue, sue” and i’m pretty sure “ruth” was on electric company. i wonder if the famous, “myrna’s basement” sketch was actually from electric company too, and not sesame street?

i had fun again yesterday watching e.c. while biking. i discovered another song (all about traffic signs in new york city) that i still remembered all the words to. i was singing along to a song i haven’t heard for twenty five years or more. ah, the power of music.

Posted in la la la!, trip down memory lane | 2 Comments
17
Feb, 2006

hymonica

today is apparently my grandparents-in-law’s 57th wedding anniversary. i did not know that when i chose to call grandpa to ask him a favor this morning. i had heard rumor (from mr. h-s’ father) that this particular grandpa plays hymns on his harmonica and i thought i’d like to hear one of these songs. mr. h-s’ father warned me that grandpa might stall a little, but that he’d be pleased as punch that i wanted to hear him play and… it was all true! there was a little stalling, but sooner than i’d expected, he was blowing “shall we gather by the river” on his harmonica. somehow, he acheived a background rhythm along with the melody and it was lovely! i was singing along! it reminded me of the “squeeze box” sounds we used to get from an old family instrument when i was a kid and he was getting them from a simple mouth organ! oh, grandma and grandpa were thrilled to their toes that i had called and i truly enjoyed chatting with them and hearing those old hymns (he played two more, slightly less familiar ones later) on the harmonica. grandma said she’d have to write about it in her notebook. and so… i’m writing about it in mine. :)

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