PaperWhimsy

A first effort

Lately, I've been drooling over fiber art.  I don't knit, I don't crochet but I've been dying to add fibers to what little art I actually get around to creating.  So, I went out and purchased a Janome Xpressions.  Well, I didn't actually "go out" as you all know I wear pajamas 24/7.  I went to my computer, bought it off eBay and then walked to the door and waited for it.

Thank goodness my sister, Laura, came to visit me this weekend because she's the one who finally took this machine out of the box and got it up and running.  I'd had the thing for a couple months afraid to do anything with it.  I'm much better at learning if someone will learn for me and then teach me.

Once Laura got the thing up and running (the belt wasn't on so we called a Janome dealer and he told her what to do) we had an immediate need for roving and yarns.  I found a local yarn store that carried roving.  WOW!!  I could have spent several hours and several hundred dollars there.   My sister started panicking (we were going splitsies) so I grudgingly put a bunch of stuff back.

The name of the little shop is Stitchery and Scones.  I wanted to see a "scone" thinking it was some sort of fiber thing that I absolutely needed to have.  But they were scone scones like in the edible kind.  Probably American-style (they were out of them).  English scones are pretty much like Jiffy mix biscuits. 

So we discussed the difference between American scones and British scones while the yarn girl rung up our semi-massive purchase.

Anyway, enough about that - maybe I'll include a photo of the stuff we bought, later.  For now, though, here's a peek at a WIP, a very first effort using my new (ish) Xpressions.  If I suddenly become organized, as that's my New Year's Resolution for 2008 and it's just a couple of days away, I'll post follow-ups to this project.  It really turned out to be the kind of thing that I'd like to finish.

Gale's Ears

I really am going to get back to the trip, especially since we're (I) starting to think about trip 2008.  In the meantime, though, I thought I would meander around and post some nonsensical and totally irrelevant stuff as it comes to me.  Today, it's about my ears.

I am terribly hard of hearing - I've had two surgeries, one in each ear, to repair ruptured eardrums due to the ridiculous number of tubes I've had inserted into both ears.

Well, there are worse things and sometimes my hard of hearingness can be somewhat entertaining.  As in today's "Gale's Ears Episode".

My son is getting ready to watch Live Fast or Die Hard and wanted to know which version he should watch: the Unrated version or the Theater version.  Draw and I had watched the Unrated version (which ended up being a puzzle to me as there wasn't any particular thing in that movie that I hadn't seen before) so Draw and my son got into a brief discussion of Unrated vs Theatre.

Draw has quite a low key and semi-sarcastic sense of humor (he's English so it's in his bones) and he was making a comment regarding the difference.  "It could be something as simple as a cup of brains", he says.

A cup of brains!  I laugh out loud.  Apparently a cup of brains in a movie is a big fat no-no.

"A cup of brains", I say as I'm laughing out loud!

Draw looks over at me with this sarcastically quizzical look on his face.

"Huh?", he says.

"You said it could be something as simple as a cup of brains - that's hysterical!" I say, still laughing.

"I said", he says, "it could be something as simple as a couple of frames".

I much prefer "Cup of Brains".  Sometimes it's quite amusing for me to be stuck with these ears.