Petula * Darling

My Dream Car

2010-01-14T21:50:00.005-05:00

Isn't it glorious?!
Not only is this 1957 Messerschmitt KR-200 lovely, but it got 87 mpg when it was new.
The fact that I probably couldn't drive it up a hill if I ate a big lunch doesn't bother me, nor does the likelihood that it probably sounds like a lawnmower. Nope, all of that pales when I picture myself sitting in the driver's seat, turning the key, and then jetting off into the future.
(ok, the stats don't actually mention the vehicle's ability to transcend time and space, but can you doubt it?)

Here is the interior and the rear view:

These pictures all came from the Microcar Museum which has a dreamworthy cars a-plenty.

Masks

2009-10-04T13:43:00.009-04:00

I've been on the lookout for masks lately - mostly classic, plastic, cute animal ones like those above. Unfortunately, that specific set seems to be unavailable in the US, although it's cheap and plentiful in the UK, and I can't bring myself to pay the shipping.
Anyway, in my quest for masks of the cute variety I've run across some masks that were so weird that I had to share them:

	I didn't know vintage astronaut masks would be so scary. Of course, it's nice to know that when humans go into space they transcend the need for gender identity.
	And then there was this collection. The monobrowed Native American fortune-teller(?) is kind of cute, while Frankenstein looks like he was drawn by a 14 year old. However, what got my attention was Little Boy Blue. Huh. It gives a whole new meaning to the "blue" in his name.

Hibernation Halt

2009-02-22T12:38:00.007-05:00

So what has brought me out of my blogging hiatus? The answer is: Mary Jane's annual Cassoulet Cook-off. It was as fun as ever, and a good time was had by all.
I'm afraid I don't have any pictures, but that might be all for the best since cassoulet is more mouth-watering than it is photogenic.
So why am I blogging about an event for which I have no photos and can only taunt you with various synonyms for deliciousness? The answer is: the Utilikilt.

Every year one of the top contenders for first place in the best-cassoulet competition is The Kilted Cook, a man who takes his cassoulet so seriously that he keeps a collection of duck fat on hand at all times (I like to pretend that he constantly scours ebay doing searches for vintage vats of the stuff). The first time I met him was the first time I learned of the Utilikilt, and ever since then I've been on a crusade to get Davis to wear one.

The Utilikilt is essentially a non-heritage-specific Carhartt-like version of a kilt.
Most men don't realize this, but chicks dig men in kilts. It's been scientifically proven. Ok, maybe my poll of 10 women wouldn't exactly be considered scientific, but 9 out of 10 women admitting to kilt digging still seems significant (and it should be mentioned that the one holdout was my mother whose lack of enthusiasm stemmed from a particular kilt-wearer who had annoyed her).

While I love traditional tartan kilts and all their accouterments, the wearing of them is generally limited to those of Scottish descent. The beauty of this new generation of kilt is that it doesn't discriminate by lineage (sadly it does discriminate by checkbook, though, as they start at $150 and go up from there).

I've heard that the look is common in the Pacific Northwest, but it's still quite rare around these parts. Davis has been hesitant to embrace these non-bifurcated garments because he doesn't like to stand out in a crowd, so my plan is to promote the look to others in the hopes that it becomes commonplace. The beauty of my plan is that even if Davis never becomes comfortable with the concept of wearing one himself, I'll still get to see plenty of kilted gentlemen strolling around town.
So will you all join me in this cause?

Voila!

2008-11-12T21:33:00.005-05:00

It's so nice to cross something off one's to-do list isn't it? And it's extra nice when that something is "write a novel"!
Of course, the whole thing becomes a bit less of a triumphant experience when the item is crossed off not because it's a completed task, but rather because it has become clear that it's never ever going to get done, and it's best to just be realistic and move on.
Ever since I was a child I thought I might like to write a novel. I had a romantic notion of living in a garret in Paris and scribbling with a quill deep into the night, pausing occasionally to argue about philosophical matters with my friends and fellow writers in the local cafe. Well it turns out that I don't want to actually write a novel - I want to have already written it. I want the glory of being able to say that I wrote a book without actually doing any of the writing. It turns out that even when I have an idea for a story, I have absolutely no desire to toil away filling in the details.
I do still want to live in Paris though.

Slow-mo NaNoWriMo

2008-11-03T21:28:00.004-05:00

Update:
word count=2,837
times I've said "I'm quitting"=3
times I've thought "I'm quitting"=42*
videos watched on youtube while trying to "find my muse"=70
favorite video involving a rabbit befriending a deer= this one

*make that 43

What Was I Thinking?

2008-10-31T19:23:00.005-04:00

I'm not really sure what came over me, but I signed up for NaNoWriMo today.
I have no real plot in mind and only the vaguest of characters to throw into it, so I'm under no illusion that I'll be writing anything that anyone would want to read. Why would I think that writing a novel in 30 days would be an attainable goal for me? Is it that I feel I've honed my writing skills by being an incredibly prolific blogger? Errrmmm.....clearly not.

I can only think of three reasons why I would sign up for an event that is clearly going to be horrific:
a) I'm a masochist,
b) I lack the backbone to stand up to the peer pressure being applied by two people at work who are also doing it,
and
c) I remembered my college habit of preferring to tidy everything in the apartment to typing a paper due the following day, and I realized that NaNoWriMo's deadline offered the perfect opportunity for our house to get cleaned in places that haven't seen a dust cloth since we moved in.

I'm not sure if the undertaking of this task will result in my blog remaining unwritten for many weeks, or if I'll suddenly start posting up a storm in an effort to procrastinate once I've tweezed all the cobwebs from between the radiator pipes.
Oh dear, it's nearly time to time to tie up my hair with my thinking ribbon. Wish me luck!

Pretty Potations

2008-08-12T16:52:00.007-04:00

I can't believe how fast summer is whipping by! Hopefully there will still be plenty of time to enjoy some deeeliciously dated summery beverages...

Davis and I were out flea-tiquing the other day, and I ran across a copy of a favorite cookbook from my youth: Betty Crocker's New Boys and Girls Cookbook. I was rather obsessed with food as a child (there are even rumors that my first word was "cookie"), and I used to love poring over this book. I don't recall how many recipes I actually made from it, probably not a lot, but I just loved looking at the pictures. There are plenty of the classic kid's goofy cakes and cookies, but for some reason the images that stood out the most were the soda fountain inspired beverages. I have to say, the pictures are still pretty appealing even if the thought of mixing grape soda and vanilla ice cream isn't.

Here are my two favorite pages (click on the images if you want to read the ingredients):

Here's a question for you: How do you pronounce "sherbet"? Do you say it as it's written, or do you stick an R in it and make it "sherbert"? Is that just a New England thing due to our habit of removing Rs from where they belong and putting them where they don't?
fyi - I used to pronounce it sherbert, but I've since gone upscale and now say "sher-bay".

Video Valor & Villainy

2008-07-17T09:38:00.008-04:00

The first two acts of the fabulous Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog are up now, and I highly recommend you check it out if you haven't already. It's a great introduction to the wonderful world of Whedon for those who have yet to become fans (and the only reason a sentient being wouldn't be a Joss Whedon fan would be an unfamiliarity with his work).
The popularity of the site is causing the video to bog down at times - my secret to dealing with this is to play the video in a background window with the volume off while doing something else, and once it is done, clicking the "watch again" doodad and it will now play through perfectly. I also recommend watching, rewatching, then watching one more time, as it gets better with each viewing. It will only be up until midnight on Sunday, so don't dilly-dally. Go now. What are you still doing here?
eta: If you missed it you can purchase all three acts for a mere pittance through iTunes. Trust me, it's worth at least seven pittances.

On a similarly wacky entertainment note, I've been watching the new series The Middleman and really enjoying it. It's a fun, funny, goofy, comic sci-fi action comedy with deliberately cheesy special effects and rapid-fire witty dialog. I only get about half of the pop-culture references (and that's being charitable - wait, is it considered charity if I'm both giver and receiver?), but that doesn't seem to hinder my enjoyment.
It's sort of like Men in Black, but centers around a female slacker who's in training to protect the world from evil.

One, Two, Cha Cha Cha

2008-07-14T00:06:00.005-04:00

My studio is in a complete state of disarray due, ironically, to an attempt at reorganization. I get tired just looking at it right now, so it could be awhile before it's a useful space again. In the meantime, I thought I'd share some things that are making me happy:

1) I'm totally digging the Ray Charles cover of One Mint Julep.
I've listened to it countless times over the past three days, and every time I'm compelled to dance around to its glorious lounge-y strains while picturing myself as a Shag-esque 1960s animation. My rebirth as a 60s cliche has also lead me to try to convince Davis to take up smoking a pipe while wearing v-necked sweaters.

2) I just got a pinball machine!
A while back I discussed my desire to own my own pinball machine (you can read about it here - no really, read it) while oohing and aahing over the amazing graphics of some of the vintage games. Sadly, my machine is not one of the lovely ones, but at least it is a real full-sized arcade pinball machine. It's from 1979 and has pictures of "sexy" elves and these sort of dwarf/Conan type figures (the Barbarian, not the O'Brien) that aren't especially attractive, but the fact that it was found at a yard sale just up the street for just $50 more than makes up for that. It needs a bit of work and is currently sprawled across Davis' workshop, so I'm spending my time asking him "Is it ready yet?" "How about now?" "Well what about now?"

3) Son of Rambow - I just saw it a few days ago and loved it. So funny and sweet and adorably weird.

4) There's a new gallery in town that has lots of fun eye candy. This area has a ton of very traditional landscapes-&-lighthouses galleries, but the In Between Gallery is totally different - in fact, the owner made a rule that there will be no landscapes or lighthouses of any kind. Aahh, sweet relief! I was really impressed by pretty much everything she had on the walls, and most of the prices were quite reasonable for original artwork.
Here's a piece from there by FletchyO:

Beatrix Ballet

2008-07-03T16:33:00.003-04:00

I ran across a reference in a blog a little while ago (I believe it was one in my blogroll, but I can't seem to find it now - let me know if it was you!) about a production of Beatrix Potter stories performed by the Royal Ballet. You can see a video from it here.
I couldn't believe the costumes!
How had I never heard of this before?
If I had one of those costumes, I think I might want to wear it on a daily basis, and not just around the house, but to work, the supermarket, the bowling lanes, etc.... Obviously I wouldn't want to wear it in the summer, but it might really be nice and cozy this winter. Beyond just being a-dorable, the outfit could potentially be so toasty warm that I would want to set the thermostat lower, and as a result we could save thousands on our heating bill! It's really so practical that I think I neeeed one!
If you see someone who looks a lot Squirrel Nutkin when you're in town, please be sure to give me a wave.

The Glorious Garlicscape

2008-07-01T09:25:00.007-04:00

I've been wanting to purchase a CSA farm share ever since I first heard about them, but I kept thinking of it too late in the year. Most places want you to sign up in March, and around here we're not convinced that there will actually be a growing season until May rolls around.
This year I finally remembered to do it early enough, and I'm so glad I did. It's great to have a gigantic bundle of organic vegetables handed to you every week, and there have already been some I hadn't tried before. "Our" farm, Hatchet Cove Farm, supplies us with tips and recipes for braving this new world.
The pleasant surprise this week was a beautiful bundle of garlic scapes. Scapes are the leafless flower stalks that grow above the ground, and they get cut off to allow more plant-growing energy (green chi!) to go into the bulbs. More importantly, they're deeeeelicious when sauteed with butter and served with pasta. mmmm....I'm getting dreamy just thinking about it....
Sadly, I don't think the garlic that I'm still exhaling is quite as enjoyable to those around me who didn't get to enjoy the meal. Perhaps I should invite everyone over for next year's garlic scape banquet so we'll all smell equally well nourished.

Peonies, Pens & Pantone Colors

2008-06-27T10:19:00.010-04:00

It's Peony season, and our yard is filled with them. With no planning on our part they seem to have staggered their growth habits to give us an exceptionally long flowering period. The tree peonies started blooming weeks ago with flowers the size of my head, and the regular ones with smaller but still sizable blooms are going strong now.
You've got to love a plant that demands so little fuss but gives so generously. My only complaint is the ants that invariably accompany them indoors, but it seems a small price to pay.

And the other joy in my life: my pens are here!
A few years ago I bought a bounty of inks (below). I didn't know what I was going to do with them, but they were on super sale and I couldn't resist. They dry too fast to be used by dipping a pen into the bottle, and not many pens these days allow you to fill them with your choice of ink. I thought a rapidograph might work, but didn't want to spend $25 for a pen if it didn't. Luckily it turned out that Davis had two as part of his dowry, so I was able to take one for a test drive. His collecting habits are so varied that it pays to ask him if he happens to have the most random things - the affirmative on the cheese press still cracks me up. Anyway, after discovering the joy of the rapidograph and seeing the great deals for new ones on eBay, I decided I neeeeeded to own several in various widths. I haven't had a chance to try them out, but I'm hoping to this weekend.

Pendants Pending

2008-06-23T09:49:00.004-04:00

I've been working on some pendants in my studio, having fun testing out materials, pens and designs.
Well, to be more accurate, it was intermittent fun and frustration because my drawing skills have gotten really rusty. I hate it when I have something in my head, and I realize that it's going to be a long learning process before I can bring it out of there.
My skinny pen died while working on that one of Mr. William Morris Minor, so production has pretty much stopped until my much anticipated Rapidographs arrive. I specifically mention these pens by name because the website says they're the sign of a serious artist, and I want you all to take me VERY seriously.

random aside: doesn't the one on the right look like it should say "Pow!!" or "Blammo!"?

Red Riding Hood Revealed

2008-06-18T15:30:00.004-04:00

I've been puttering around my studio for the last several days working on a project that I hope to show you soon. In the meantime I wanted to give you a couple pictures from a vintage Little Red Riding Hood book that I purchased recently.

The blase expressions in this one crack me up:

I also love her bloomers and the shag-carpeted riverbank.

The second one is quite interesting. Does it look like Grandma is enjoying this a bit too much?

I like to think that the real story of Red Riding Hood might have been that Grandma was involved in a little role-playing game with a gentleman friend when Red walked in, leading to misunderstandings, mayhem and the birth of a masterpiece of children's literature.
What? It's certainly not any more perverse than what wikipedia gives as the original pre-Perrault version of the story. My version just features the amorous relationship between two consenting adults - no cannibalism or interspecies pedophilia here!
oh dear....I hate to see what the search engines will send my way now...

Another Friday Favorite

2008-06-13T21:55:00.000-04:00

My new favorite thing? Having my time sucked away as I gaze at Etsy's Time Machine 2.
Have you ever noticed that everything seems more appealing when it's in someone else's shopping basket? TM2's "just sold" section shows you the last 1000 things that were sold on Etsy. When I see something I really like, I go to the seller's store to see if they have more of whatever it was - or maybe something else I like even more. This way I can blow through money as well as time! It's great!
Here are some of my finds:

	These soaps are from Haunt. Their descriptions sound even yummier than they look. I was on the verge of buying some when I realized the attraction might have been mainly because I was hungry. I put them in my favorites folder to consider at another time when I was better nourished. I just ate dinner, and they still look good to me...is it wrong that I want to eat soap?
	This pendant is from Imogen. It's really cute and has a great price. Added bonus: I'm not even remotely tempted to eat it.
	I'm quite amazed by Curster's minions. Their faces are adorable, and their construction looks so complicated it makes my head hurt. She sells some cool looking prints too. I've long thought I could use a minion of my own. I'm not sure this one would do my bidding, but it seems worth a try.

The Tea Party

2008-06-09T10:30:00.001-04:00

Davis recently brought home a very cute set of tiny cups and saucers. They're about the right size for espresso, but I'm off the sauce right now due to a recent coffee binge that nearly made my head explode.
I was worried the cups would remain tragically neglected until I was reminded that rabbits are known to enjoy a good tea party every now and then. I decided to hold a tea party picnic for them in my dressing room (my rabbits don't hold with going out of doors for fear of gangs of woodland ruffians).

	It started off in a quite dignified manner.
	Midge poured her tea into the saucer to cool, and she delicately sipped it.
	Morris became intrigued. He wasn't sure if he liked tea, so he took a taste of Midge's.
	Morris liked it so much that he decided to have a cup of his own. He enjoyed it with great relish.
	Possibly too much relish.
	The afternoon went on, and it seemed as if their manners declined as their caffeine levels rose.
	The rabbits were not happy when I announced they had been cut off.

Friday's Favorite is Filled with Hi-Fructose

2008-06-06T20:14:00.005-04:00

A little over a year ago I posted about my infatuation with Hi-Fructose, a magazine I had just discovered. After devouring the first two issues that I bought online, I got a subscription and have loved every page of it. It's the one magazine that I literally read cover to cover (well, technically it's more like cover to middle to somewhere in the back then over to the contents, etc... but it all gets covered). Even the ads are eye-candy.

The magazine only comes out quarterly, so that used to leave me with three and a half months of pining for the next issue. Luckily, they now have a blog that helps fill my pop-surrealism needs in the interim.

The image on the left is from their entry about Liz McGrath's latest show.

Dirndlicious

2008-06-05T11:56:00.009-04:00

I have long loved the dirndl, but in the past year or so it has become an actual obsession.
I've rewatched The Sound of Music and Heidi for dirndl sightings. I've quested in vintage clothing stores and combed eBay for one (or several) of my very own.
My pursuit has been thwarted by several problems:
1) Dirndls are not the traditional folk-garb of New England (unlike cat sweatshirts)
2) Dirndls are generally not designed to fit bust-free waistless gals
3) Dirndls can be really expensive

Imagine my joy at finding this kitschy catch of dirndly goodness last week at a relatively local antiques mall - and it was on sale! Hooray!!!

Awards, Aviaries, Automata and the Arts

2008-06-03T08:44:00.016-04:00

The wonderful Mary Jane has awarded me the Blogging With a Purpose award - yay!!!
Instead of choosing five bloggers to give my own award to (how could I choose just five?), I've decided to start up a Favorites Friday theme where I'll mention a blog I'm currently loving. Why Fridays? Because I just happened to do it last Friday and it seems as good a day as any.

And because I hate to do a post without pictures, I'll give you some photos from our recent trip:

	This is a freakishly fabulous roseate spoonbill from the rain forest section of the Cleveland Zoo. The outdoor part of the zoo was the usual depressing fare, but the rain forest was absolutely amazing.
	Another highlight of our trip was Marvin's Marvelous Mechanical Museum. It's a sort of arcade that's filled to the brim with vintage games and automata that all work. Put a quarter or two in, and this guy comes to life, complete with terrible jokes and power surges.
	The Detroit Institute of Arts was a wonderful surprise. They had a really impressive collection of art, and it was displayed beautifully. On the left is a portrait of a Colonial crossdresser (it didn't say that on the tag, but I have a degree in art history and I know these things), and below is a detail from Bruegel the Elder's The Wedding Dance. And to think some people think art museums are boring!

My New Favorite

2008-05-30T15:28:00.007-04:00

I have a new favorite blog that has kept my eyes glued to this screen for the last couple days. Well, truthfully, I have also gone to work, made dinner, gone to the bathroom, and done some embroidery, but I have been reading the archives of this fabulous and funny bit of iCandy quite avidly.
Check out tollipop for yourselves!

The Stitching Continues...

2008-05-28T15:49:00.006-04:00

I finished another embroidery!
This one was found here, albeit with slightly different text.

A Darling Dishcloth

2008-05-27T10:20:00.012-04:00

I found this pattern here along with many other fun ones. It's on a piece of heavy white cotton that I bound with bias tape. My photos of the whole towel didn't come out, so I'm afraid I can only show you the small area that I scanned.

I've been embroidering off and on since I was a kid, but it's been quite a looooong while since my last stitching spell. Turns out it's not quite like riding a bike - my skills were so rusty it's lucky I didn't corrode the dishtowel. Fortunately they seem to be slowly coming back now that I've started on my second one.

My favorite things about this:
- the vintage striped bias tape border
- the morose expression on Mr. Bee's face - he'd rather not bee cleaning
- the unintentionally ironic wonky-looking "Bee Tidy" (it could definitely bee tidier)

Doh!

2008-05-22T00:50:00.004-04:00

I found this adorable salt shaker on our trip to Michigan.
I'm not sure if the little guy is shielding his eyes from the blinding light, or if his gesture is due to the realization that he should have had a V-8.

A New Family Hare-loom

2008-05-20T08:50:00.004-04:00

Lookit what I just ordered from Magic Jelly's etsy shop!
I'm envisioning displaying it as a family portrait with an ornate gold antique frame.
It will take a couple weeks to wing its way over from Australia, and I'm pretty much planning to stand by the window staring at the mailbox the whole time.
You can check out the very cool Magic Jelly blog here.

A Finished Object

2008-05-15T13:35:00.009-04:00

It's probably too warm to look at woolly stuff where you are, but up here in Maine we still have several more weeks of sweater weather (it's actually beautiful today, but it is Maine and you never know when it's going to drop below freezing).
This is the Drops Jacket that it seems like everyone on Ravelry has been making. I probably wouldn't have made it if I hadn't seen how good it looks on nearly every body type - my favorite thing about Ravelry is that you get to see how knit patterns look on real people, not just on models with stylists cinching, hiking and hoisting. This is the first sweater I've made for myself, and it only took a little less than a month. Granted I worked on it while on vacation, and I have needles in my hand in virtually every photo, but still that's a vast improvement over the year-long Avast project for Davis!
And don't worry, seeing these pictures inspired me to get my hair trimmed almost immediately.

I'm Back!

2008-04-09T15:32:00.005-04:00

Not that you knew I was gone due to my being an ill-mannered blogger who didn't tell you I was going on vacation - sorry about that!

Anyway, we just got back from a tour of the old country to see the land of Davis' people and to pay our respects to his heritage:

We had a great time in Michigan.

If the mid-west looks a little different than you expected, it's because that photo was taken at the Dutch Village theme park in Holland, Michigan.

Davis is from Grand Rapids, so we went on a pilgrimage to visit his very large family there (he has seven brothers and sisters!). I only have one sibling, so it can be a little intimidating but they always welcome me with open arms and make me feel like one of the family.
Here's a photo of me peeking out of a window in the house where he was raised:

Well, maybe not the actual house he was raised in, but it's pretty close to the same size. I don't know how they did it at the time, but it seems to have worked out well - they're still a close-knit bunch who have a great time together. Every time we go there's a big boisterous family party that goes on well into the wee hours....or so I'm told... I always poop out long before the rest of them do.

I hope to post some more pictures from our travels shortly, but first I need to spend some time unfunking our refrigerator. Two weeks of being sealed up with aging perishables has led to some rather unappetizing aromas.

Take Back the Nest!

2008-03-20T15:22:00.006-04:00

Now, I'm not much of an activist, but every once in a while I see something so horrific that I need to take a stand.

We've stood by long enough, doing nothing while activities that border on genocide go on under our noses! This egregious violation of all that is good and right has been going on for hundreds of years, and it's time we put an end to it.
Who is it that is engaging in this slaughter of thousands?
I'll tell you: it's the cuckoo bird."But Petula," you're saying, "Cuckoos are just sweet little birds."
Sweet little birds? Sweet little birds? Does the bird sitting on this nest look sweet to you?:

Many species of cuckoos are brood parasites - they lay their eggs in the nests of other birds, the baby cuckoos hatch before the rightful inhabitants, throw their eggs out of the nest, and then run the foster mother ragged making demands for food. For more evidence about this heinous crime, please check out this shocking video. (all kidding aside, you really should take a look. The bird's behavior is so over the top that it's hilarious. It's like a Saturday Night Live skit about the worst houseguest ever)

So what can we do to let them know that this activity has to stop? Obviously we need to boycott cuckoo products.
I haven't purchased a single box of Cocoa Puffs since I first learned of the cuckoo's cruelty, and I have to say that I feel really good about it. But what about cuckoo clocks? This one is harder, since I've wanted one ever since I was a kid.
Well, I've come up with a solution that I feel rights nature's wrongs: I joined forces with the once-persecuted reed-warbler, and together we've managed to bring some justice to this situation by throwing a particularly guilty looking cuckoo out of her own home. Restitution has been made, and the reed warbler now rules the roost! It sounds cruel, but something had to be done.

The obvious problem with this is that the cuckoo actually looked better on the clock.
Oh well, sometimes the fight for justice gets ugly.

Skirting Spring

2008-03-10T21:04:00.004-04:00

My new skirt arrived today from Made With Love By Hannah!
Davis got me the red Scherenschnitte Skirt with lovebirds and I love it. I can't wait until it's warm enough to be able to wear it beyond the confines of my dressing room.
note: Hannah has an A-dorable blog that I highly recommend.

In other news, my Alice obsession is slowly abating. I finished the game the first time and then immediately started again on a harder level. Now that I'm nearing the finish of my second run I think I may be able to put it away for a little while. Maybe.
It became so all-encompassing that for a week and a half I've woken up with its soundtrack in my head. When real-life things occur that I don't like, my first instinct is to pause and revert back to the last time I saved. The game has even started to influence the way I dress.
Sure that's a little obsessive, but Alice is such eye-candy that it actually makes for a fabulous little vacation from a gloomy late-February/early-March.

Down the Rabbit Hole

2008-02-29T16:56:00.009-05:00

I'm happy to report that my cold is finally abating, unfortunately a new illness is upon me. This new sickness is an addiction - an addiction so great that it could easily threaten my health, my family and my ability to hold a job.
I know you're asking yourselves, "Is Petula smoking the crack? Chasing the dragon? Paying a visit to Mr. Brownstone?" (because that's how you guys talk). No, it's something far more insidious: the video game American McGee's Alice.
I read about it when it first came out about eight years ago and really wanted to try it, but it was for pcs and in those days we just had a Mac. Since then they've released a Mac version and I've switched to a pc, but I'd already forgotten about it.
Just a little while ago I ran across a reference to the soundtrack of the game which jogged my memory and caused me to hunt it down. How was I to know the mayhem that would ensue?
After a rough beginning (I'm a complete novice at video games and definitely not a natural) I got completely sucked in. Morning turned into afternoon which turned into night. At midnight I tore myself away and went to bed, only to toss and turn sleeplessly as I imagined myself battling the Queen's guard cards and evil mushrooms. I then caught myself thinking, "Hmmmm....maybe I should go downstairs and play a level or two just to help me relax." Just a little fix, that's all I need....
Today has been more productive, but only because I'm using the game as a carrot on a stick. In fact, the only way I was able to write this post was to tell myself that as soon as I finished I could play another level.

edited to add: I've put in at least 12 more hours of playing time and I'm still not at the end. I think my addiction might be on the verge of curing itself as I've started to develop a hostility towards the game.

Snails in Love

2008-02-25T09:07:00.003-05:00

I have a bit of a head cold, so I thought it would be best to wait until my brain is capable of complete sentences before I do a real post. Until then, I'll give you this picture of my kitchen that shows true love between a salt and a pepper shaker. Insulin anyone?

Scherenschnitte

2008-02-13T20:59:00.013-05:00

There have been many great scherenschnitte/paper-cutting posts on the crafty blogs lately (see: here,here,here and here for starters). I've been tempted to try my hand at it, but reluctant to start something new when I currently have so many half-finished projects strewn around my studio.
When I saw this post at Little Acorn all my good intentions went out the window. I could resist the call of the X-acto no more.
I used her pattern, and here are the three I made before I ran out of paper choices. As you can see, it's highly addictive.

Cassoulet Soiree

2008-02-10T18:47:00.000-05:00

I didn't think it was possible, but Mary Jane's 4th annual Cassoulet Cook-off was even better than last year's.
There were 12 (12!) huge cassoulets, 7 gazillion jovial guests, 2 wonderful hosts (the petticoat-bedecked Mary Jane and her prizewinning cook of a husband Erik), countless bottles of wine, and one giant bonfire all at their French-farmhouse-like home.
First prize was taken once again by the Kilted Cook (I wanted to alliterate, but "Kilted Kook" had an entirely different meaning than what I was going for), who narrowly squeezed by silver medalist Erik.

I was fortunate to have the opportunity to interview the world champion cassoulet chef and was able to glean a few of his secrets:
Not only does he make his own sausage from pork that he butchered himself, but he also happens to have a coveted duck fat collection that he saves for just this sort of occasion. But the real trick? He says that the dish needs to be prepared with free range ducks that have been lovingly tended and raised almost as family members. The Kilted Cook even goes so far as to incubate the eggs of the ducks himself before they're hatched. When unable to sit on the nest, he has been known to tuck an egg under each arm so he can do things like attend the Christmas pageants of his human children.*
(Erik: you might want to take note of this to get the winning edge for next year)

Here are Mary Jane and I, both photographed with our eyes open and only one chin each!
I had been hoping to post some delectable pictures of cassoulet, but we were so busy eating it that it wasn't so delectable looking by the time Davis got the camera out.
And, yes, I'm drinking Labatt's. I'd like to say that it's a reflection on my own lowbrow tastes and not those of my hosts. I thought it would be a nice yin to the cassoulet's yang.

*believe it or not, I only made up that last part.

Odds & Sods

2008-02-07T22:57:00.000-05:00

I've come up with some more potential names for our ramshackle mansion since Quincy Jones wasn't getting any love. They are:
Crumblehurst
Tumbledown Manor
and
Trickly Fifth
That last one is a reference to the house's leaky inclinations (slate roofs are lovely, but not so easy to repair) combined with either the 1/5th acre it sits on, or the very old and empty liquor flask that was found in the eaves of the barn, possibly explaining the logic behind some oddities regarding the house's construction.

I'm sorry to report that I'm still not spatterdashed. I have been working on my steam-pest look though, and have acquired the following items to give me some Gashlycrumb flair:

The pendants are from etsy seller adorapop, and I think they're so cute I've been wearing them almost constantly. The boots were an ebay find, and I think they're exceedingly spiffy. So spiffy, in fact, that the first time I wore them I expected strangers to stop me on the street and marvel at them. Shockingly, no one did.... perhaps they were too shy?
Undaunted, I wore them three times the following week, ran into plenty of friends, and still no one said anything.... hmmmm..... obviously it might be one of those if-you-can't-say-anything-nice-don't-say-anything-at-all situations, but it really seemed more like nobody noticed the new look. And then it occurred to me: my look isn't steam-pest, it's invisigoth!

Spatterdashes!

2008-02-04T22:56:00.001-05:00

I recently rewatched The City of Lost Children, and it has resulted in a new fashion obsession. The story is rather bizarre and convoluted, but the sets and costumes are so gloriously steampunk that it's a must-see.
So what, praytell, is my new fashion obsession? Spatterdashes!, or spats, as they're more commonly called.
They have practical benefits: they're warm (like legwarmers, but with far more elegance), and they protect the tops of your shoes from dirt. Ok, fine, that second one isn't especially helpful these days, but if you think of them as aprons for the shoes they seem almost au courant. Of course the real reason I want a pair is that they're really really pretty. I neeeeeed some! How have I lived all these years without owning a pair? The mind, it is boggled.
Obviously I'll need to downdate my wardrobe with some Steam garb so I'll have something to wear the spats with. I don't want to draw too much attention to myself (no bustles or undersea globe helmets), so I'm thinking my new look will be more Steampest than Steampunk.

The top pair of spats are new ones, done in the classic style.
The second pair is vintage. They were found on ebay, but, sadly, I was too late for the auction.
The next two pairs are made by etsy seller Straight Razor Slasher and they're shockingly reasonably priced at a mere $35. $35! With all those buttons! They're selling faster than she can make them, and they're often sold out. (update: she just increased the price to a still-very-reasonable $45)
The penultimate spat is from Maide
The knitted spats on the bottom were found at Booze & Yarn. There isn't any information about them there, just a picture. Too bad. It would be nice if they had a pattern so I didn't have to trouble my poor little head with all those bothersome calculations to make a pair.
Hopefully the next time you see me I'll be spatterdashed!
(hey- that one's actually a real word)

p.s. - Thanks for all the great comments on the previous post!
eta - Whoops! I didn't mean to have comments turned off for this post - all better now!

Jane-uary

2008-01-28T13:00:00.000-05:00

Are you all watching The Complete Jane Austen on PBS? It almost makes January tolerable.
I just watched Northanger Abbey last night - it aired last week, but I'm a little behind. It was a lot of fun, and I really enjoyed it. I've never read the book, but I have seen the 1986 version and I liked this one much better.
An added bonus is that the costumes are beautiful. I'm assuming this means that they're historically inaccurate, but I can live with that.

Watching Jane Austen always fills me with a need to give our home a name like the estates in her books - something romantic like Pemberley, Netherfield or Mansfield Park.
I wanted to go with something that speaks of the history of the land we're on and contemplated the family names associated with the earliest records of our property, but Walsh and Jones didn't give me too much to work with ( I was hoping the records would make something like Chateau Lafite Rothschild a sensible choice).
Maybe if I combined one of those names with some other attribute of the property?
We're on well under an acre of land, ruling out anything with "field", "wood" or "meadows"...... ok then, what about going with a spin on some of the flora and fauna we found here when we first moved in? The Feral Cathouse was quickly ruled out, as was anything involving raccoon carcasses. Plants then? Davis the magical gardener has turned it into a virtual jungle out there, but there weren't many plants when we first moved in - some peonies, an ugly mystery tree that's we've only been able to narrow down to the genus Prunus, and a quince.
All this pondering, and what name did I come up with for our "estate"?
Ladies and gentlemen, I present to you our family home: Quincy Jones.

Yeah, I might need to work on that a little more.

Edited to add: comments are back - I missed you guys!

Bookends and Blogs

2008-01-21T13:00:00.001-05:00

After whining about a lack of thrifting adventures in our area last week, we decided to make a pilgrimage to more fertile flea-friendly fields. Our excursion was 160 miles round trip, but it made for a fun day by Maine-in-January standards.
I've only had time to get pictures of one of my finds so far, but I hope to take more shortly. In the meantime, I present you with these freakishly kitten-like deer bookends that I'm quite smitten with:

I also thought I'd promote two blogs that I've really been enjoying lately:

	Little Robot is working on a paper & wood theater that is boggling my mind with its greatness. She's showing the project from start to finish, and it's really interesting to see the process.
	The artwork at Art and Ghosts is really inspiring - lots of dreamy pop surrealism.

On Wombats

2008-01-18T13:15:00.000-05:00

I ran across a reference to wombats the other day, and it occurred to me that I had no idea what one looked like. In fact, I may have thought that "wombat" was just a word used in children's books to reference any of a variety of goofy make-believe creatures.

After a bit of research, I learned that, while real, they do look like something belonging in a storybook. I've since taken to daydreaming about what it would be like to live in a place where you could go outside and see one moseying through your yard. Do you think Australians see pictures of raccoons and think about how cool it would be to see one in their yards? Or living in their attics, as we were once fortunate enough to experience?

If you check out the photo below, you're sure to notice one of the wombat's more prominent features - something I've taken to calling the "wombutt".
This term has already found it's way into Darling family vernacular, in sentences like, "Honey, do these jeans give me wombutt?"
Gentlemen, make no mistake, the only answer you should ever give to this question is, "No."

Mini Maidens Make Me Merry

2008-01-14T13:10:00.000-05:00

It's a bit challenging to find vintage treasures to bring home this time of year in Maine.
The flea markets have been closed since October, old standbys like Goodwill seem extra picked-over, and it'll be months before the next yard sale. That leaves the antique malls. We have several within a 40 mile radius, but they tend to be the pricier variety (I prefer the sort that use the term "antique" loosely - if they have videos and blocks of Velveeta mixed in with the LuRay and Haeger planters, then I'm more likely to come home with armloads of goodies...and, no, I don't buy the processed cheese products, vintage or otherwise).
Even when there's nothing we can afford, it can still be pretty fun to go the nicer antique malls. I just think of it like going to a museum to see things I haven't seen before.
Every once in a while I find something charming and affordable at the local antiqueries. I just recently got these little figures that I'm guessing are from the 1950s for just a couple dollars each. I have no idea what they were originally used for, but they look cute with the winter village. With their flowers and bluebirds, they hint that spring is just around the corner. Granted, that corner is miles away, and it involves crossing mountain passes and fording streams to get there, but once you do it'll just be a right hand turn into spring.

Lenticular Loveliness

2008-01-09T22:21:00.000-05:00

I haven't written about them for a while, but my obsession with lentographs continues.
Here are some of the ones I've gathered over the last year. You'll need to imagine their headache-inducing triple dimensionality since it doesn't really come through on a computer monitor

Here are the Three Little Pigs complete with banana peel pratfalls and many bad puns.

Here's Little Red Riding Hood in what is apparently a new twist on the story with Grandma bringing the Big Bad Wolf breakfast in bed. I like to pretend it's a new sitcom called My Two Grandmas that's rife with innuendo involving the ambiguous relationship between the two elderly "women" in Red's life.

This is a very Brady bear house. I love that each bear has their own tv:
"This show is too procedural!"
"This show has plot arcs that are far too long and involved!"
"Aahh - this show is just right!"

And, lastly, here's my lentograph wall. I have a bunch more to add, but I'm a bit behind on my framing.

New Family Heirloom

2008-01-08T05:25:00.000-05:00

There's a running joke in our household that I am like Ernie and Davis is like Bert, so when I ran across this puzzle of Bert playing the accordion (Davis' favorite instrument) I had to get it.
But what's one to do with a puzzle when you're not puzzle people? Turn it into a mock family photograph. A few hours of photoshopping is a small price to pay for an "heirloom".
Meet Great Grandpa Bertier who was a troubadour back in the old country...

Changes Afoot

2008-01-07T17:33:00.000-05:00

Despite what my dwindling post count might have led you to believe, I still really enjoy blogging. The problem is that I'm just not sure about the sort of blog I want this to be.
In my fantasies I'd like to have one like Posie or Soulemama, prolifically posted upon with beautiful pictures of amazing things I've made and done and writing that gives you a sense of who I am (or at least my better side). The reality is that kind of blogging takes an incredible amount of time and dedication - far more than I ever would have imagined back in my maybe-I-should-start-a-blog days. Making crafty stuff is a big enough time investment on its own, and then when you add the hours it can take to get a good photograph (well, that's how long it takes me to get one anyway) to the time it takes to write a post that says what you want it to say, it's absolutely mind boggling! I need to accept the fact that my blog is not going to be like their blogs, and embrace it for what it is.
But what is it?
There's so much stuff I'm excited about and want to share, but then I start questioning whether whatever it is is blogworthy. And the fewer posts I make, the more important it seems that those few posts should be really fabulous. As if anything I come up with is ever going to get my own this-is-freaking-fabulous stamp of approval (hey-we're all our own worst critics). And as the pressure builds, the post count continues to spiral downward.
So what's a gal who still wants to be a blogger to do? Well, obviously I need to shake things up, let go of some unreasonable expectations, and just start posting again without those crippling questions of blogworthiness. For the next few weeks I thought I'd turn off the comments section and try to post without thinking about how things will be received. I'll still have the internal critic, but she's a lot quieter when she thinks nobody is watching me.

In the (St.) Nick of Time

2007-12-24T17:31:00.000-05:00

I'm embarrassed to admit that our tree still isn't completely decorated.
But look - it's supersized! We joined our new Snowbird Mountain Tree with 2/3rds of our old one and made a towering tannenbaum!

In Christmas craft news: it took countless hours and our household is strewn with glitter and candy crumbles, but at least we have a little nook of Winter Wonder to show for it (click on the image for a larger view).

Happy Holidays!

Delicious Dream House

2007-12-09T20:18:00.001-05:00

I ran across my dream house in a picture of a now-defunct Santa's Village in California while doing some research (or perhaps the term would be "procrastinating").
I immediately started to daydream about how fabulous it would be to live in a house like that, and was mentally picking out drapes and a sofa when I learned that Davis did not share this dream-house dream. What? How could anyone not want to live in a mock confection?!? I calmed myself down with the knowledge that I'd probably have plenty of time to bend him to my will before we actually have an opportunity to buy a sugar-shack like this one.

Closer to home is the Swiss Miss Sweet-Tart shown below. I've always admired its insistence on standing out amid the white modular ranch homes that surround it. It's kind of the plain cousin of Santa's Gingerbread House above, so Davis and I have taken to calling it Santa's Gardening Shed.

Hopefully I'll have some pictures of little houses of my own soon. Like I said in the last post - that winter wonderland is slooooooow going.

Snow Day!

2007-12-03T14:05:00.000-05:00

I didn't have to go in to work today due to the snowstorm, so it seemed like the perfect opportunity to take a picture of one of the trees that I've made. I'm hoping to make a whole miniature Winter Wonderland, but sheesh it's slow going. I'm sure it will get faster once I know what I'm doing, but something tells me it might only be a Winter Wondercorner by the time Christmas rolls around.

On a similarly wintery note: I love these mittens that were made by Anny Purls . The pattern came from Ellephantom Knits, and I might need to whip myself up a pair (you know, in between making a forest of rick-rack trees set in a Winter Wonderland, gathering gifts for my loved ones, and actually going to work when the snow lets up).

Petula's heart grew three sizes that day...

2007-11-23T21:41:00.001-05:00

I don't know what's come over me (an undigested bit of beef, a blot of mustard, a crumb of cheese...), but rather than feeling all bah-humbuggish, I'm finding myself quite swept up with holiday excitement.
I think the credit may go to my Martha Stewart Snowbird Mountain tree for filling my heart with Christmas anticipation (and if you missed that whole saga last year, here you go). I tried to convince Davis that we should put it up after Thanksgiving dinner last night, but he convinced me to put it off until at least December 1st.
The tree's success has filled my head with dreams of other winter wonders that I'd love to have in my house, like:

	this Christmas doll house from Allsorts,
	and these sequin trees by Jennifer Paganelli (there's a tutorial video for them here),
	and this winter village of Martha Stewart's.

I don't know that anything will come of these dreams of mine, but they certainly are fun to imagine. It goes without saying that I certainly hope this season's creative endeavors work out better than the flaming baby arm fiasco of 2006.

Tonight was the lighting ceremony for our town's Christmas tree. It's made of lobster traps, and the fishermen are invited to hang their buoys on it as decorations. Yes, it sounds tacky, but I actually really like it. It's the third year that they've done it, and it gets better each time.

Cupcakes For My Cupcake

2007-11-16T14:53:00.001-05:00

Petula: What kind of cake do you want for your birthday?
Davis: Something simple.
Petula: Are you saying that because you're craving a plain sort of cake, or is it out of fear that I'll get wound up trying to make something complicated, and I'll have a complete meltdown again?
Davis,small voice: I just don't want you to ruin my birthday.

So I set out to make a simple birthday cake. What could be simpler than chocolate cupcakes with dark cherries inserted into their centers, brushed with a kirsch syrup and topped with whipped cream, chocolate shavings and maraschino cherries? Shut up. It seemed simple in my head.
The baking went fine, as did the cherry insertion and syrup brushing. The problems began with the whipped cream. The "simplicity" of the plan hinged on my cream whipper/dispenser, and I'm sorry to say that it let me down. Instead of a lovely swirled whipped topping, I ended up with an oozing soggy mess. I kept thinking I hadn't shaken the gadget enough, so I'd shake more and dispense a dollop of sog atop one victim after another. It turns out there was a problem with the chargers that had been sitting in the drawer for two years, but that realization didn't dawn until it was too late.
What to do now? As I picked the cupcakes up to try to correct the problem, they started falling apart. I soon realized that, even if I were able to make them more attractive, they were far too messy to be eaten like normal cupcakes unless one were to dine leaning over the sink.
Cue: meltdown.
It may have been Davis's birthday, but I like to find little ways to make things all about me. It was the increasingly piercing pitch of my whines that drove the poor boy out of the house to get more whipping cream. Fortunately, this gave me some time to reflect and adjust my attitude into one that was less likely to make Davis ban me from future birthdays altogether.
Things went a bit more smoothly after that. The old cream was scraped off, and the new cream was mixed using a conventional mixer and dolloped on top with a spoon (not fancy, but perfectly adequate). Then I removed the paper cupcake wrappers and served them on plates with forks. I have to say, I was pleasantly surprised by the final product, although I'm pretty sure that Davis will be requesting that his next birthday cake is made by Hostess.

Avast At Last

2007-11-07T14:52:00.000-05:00

I started knitting last year's Christmas present for Davis in early October of 2006. Unfortunately, the gift that waited for him under the Christmas tree was a half-finished sweater and an I.O.U. for the rest of it.

Obviously things hadn't gone smoothly between Avast and I, and relations continued to deteriorate through the spring when Davis tried on something that looked like it should have been in an avant-garde knitting pamphlet from the '60s. Not a cool mod-looking garment, more of a what-were-they-thinking homage to astronauts, the result of a collar that jutted up about an inch and a half from his shoulders. It was so funny that I should have taken pictures, but the pain was still too fresh. Davis felt my pain so acutely that he actually tried to convince me that it looked fine and that he'd wear it just as it was (and, yes, he probably would have actually worn it for a while, but only because he's a kind-hearted man who loves me).

Well, after much knitting, frogging, re-knitting, re-frogging and re-knitting some more, I was finally able to give Davis his Christmas present last month. I'm happy to say that I'm kind of pleased with how it turned out.

I learned a lot while knitting this project:
1. While I'm not a fan of seaming, I'm even less fond of lugging around a whole sweater that's knit in one piece.
2. I should always read through a pattern before selecting it, and I should avoid ones that involve picking up a couple hundred stitches several times over.
3. It would behoove me to choose yarn that has a weight that's somewhere near the ballpark of what the pattern calls for. Fortunately, a sweater that's the same density as carpeting comes in handy up here in Maine.

The Mad Scientist's Ball

2007-11-02T20:27:00.000-04:00

It's official, Halloween is wasted on the young.
Our sci-fi themed gala was a lot of work, but the grown-ups definitely appreciated it. We had a Jacob's Ladder, glowing test tubes, specimens in jars, and showings of classic sci-fi films like Metropolis and The Mask of Fu Manchu going on in the background.
Of course, by the time Halloween actually rolled around we were pretty much over it. We just didn't have it in us to put on another show. Instead of The Driveway of Terror, we gave them....

The Porch of Mild Trepidation

Petula's Pushing Pushing Daisies

2007-10-15T21:44:00.000-04:00

I was hoping to get some photos of my latest finished object to show you, but it involves a reluctant model and scheduling problems. If I keep on waiting for it to happen it'll be New Years by the time I post again, so I offer you this instead....

Forgive me, but I can't help waxing poetic
about a show that's so sweet you'll become diabetic.
The show Pushing Daisies is the story of Ned,
a good natured guy who raises the dead.

It sounds like it's creepy, but really it's not.
It's pretty and funny and it has a lot
of moments so charming they might make you cry,
and, best of all, it's got plenty of pie.

Ned runs The Pie Hole and does all the baking
when he's not solving crimes by magically making
dead people talk and tell what occured
that led to them needing to now be interred.

He asks them to tell of their recent attack,
then, after one minute, Ned sends them back.
There is one exception - a cute gal named Chuck,
who had quite a bout of very bad luck.

Chuck was Ned's sweetheart when he was a boy,
and seeing her now brought him so much joy
that he went ahead, ignored each misgiving,
and let once-dead Chuck remain with the living.

It dreamily floats like a fine fairy tale,
due to narration by the winning Jim Dale.
It's quirky and funny and quite surreal,
with a great retro look and Amelie feel.

It's rich with kitsch and pleases with ease,
with synchronized swimming, and exotic cheese,
and men who knit cozies to relieve stress,
and petticoats under many a dress.

This show is the loveliest thing on tv,
so give it a try and I'm sure you'll agree
that it's a mood mender, a stopper of snarling.
Signed, your tv critic, Petula Darling.

The Most Wonderful Time of the Year...

2007-09-21T12:33:00.000-04:00

I know it's still September, but it's never too early to prepare for Halloween.

I think it's safe to say that it's my favorite holiday - there's no pressure (basically it's all bonus points once you go beyond answering the door with a bag of candy), and there's a whole lot opportunity for creative crafty goodness.

In the past we just put up our display on the big day (previously blogged about here and here), but that's really a lot of work for just a couple hours of theater. This year we're thinking about celebrating throughout the Halloween season, which I've decided is about a week long (significantly more festive than a single evening, but nothing like the ridiculously drawn out multi-month holiday of Christmas). I've also decided that Halloween is a holiday that's wasted on children. Sure it warms my heart to see youngsters weeping at the foot of my driveway in fear of what lies ahead, but that's canceled out by the annoyance of teenage boys trying to have "relations" with our Vampira mannequin. Additionally, the wee ones may be cute, but their ignorance of 1950s B-movies is so very trying.

In light of this, we're planning on throwing a grown-up Halloween bash on the preceding weekend. This way we can serve glowing cocktails (mix a black light with some gin & tonic, shake and serve) and display a sci-fi electrical transombobulator or two (Tesla coil, anyone?) with far less fear of lawsuits. Brainstorming is currently underway for decorations, music, food and drink (I love the brainstorming part because it's all about the fun ideas with none of the hard work!).

My latest obsession is the relatively recent revival of the Doctor Who series. I always liked the theme song of the original series, but would quickly get bored and wander off once the show started. Not so with this newer incarnation. Christopher Eccleston's portrayal of the Ninth Doctor sucked me in and pretty much had me either giggling or weeping every time he was onscreen. Part of the reason I've been absent from my blog is my Doctor Who love, which consists of not only watching the episodes, but also reading the 20+ page recaps on Television Without Pity, and then following that up with a viewing of Doctor Who Confidential. Then I had to mourn for several days when #9 died. I do try to be thorough.

Anyway, Doctor Who will be the theme. Throughout its life, the show has had a great retro look that I love (art deco cybermen, 1950s call boxes, fabulous Victorian foppery, and much steampunk goodness), it works well with the alien and mad-scientist themes from previous years that we'll be building on, plus it easily lends itself to the warm costumes that are necessary in New England that time of year (nothing says toasty warm like a Doc #4 muffler). An added bonus is that now I have an excuse to make my very own TARDIS!

Campfire Tales

2007-08-27T08:46:00.001-04:00

I've long said that one can never truly be overdressed - how can it be wrong to be the fanciest gal in sight?

That all came to an end last weekend.

When you're by the campfire enjoying a big pot of lobsters with a group of revelers, and you need to eat standing up, awkwardly pitching your top half forward in an attempt to keep the inevitable deluge of lobster juice from sluicing onto your petticoated pouffage, I think it's safe to say that you truly are overdressed.

Another Pouffy Skirt

2007-08-22T08:33:00.001-04:00

It's made with some vintage fabric that I had on hand and didn't have a lot of, so this one uses less than last month's circle skirt. It's more of a 2/3 circle skirt (a 240 degree skirt?). I think I prefer this shape to the full circle since there's less material swirling around trying to bunch up in unfortunate places.
My favorite part of the skirt is the trim I used on the hem. It's made with bias tape that I ran through the sewing machine using the shell stitch setting with the tension jacked way up to give it that scallopy effect. Then I sewed the trim to the base of the skirt and used it to turn the hem, cutting out the gazillion-plus hours spent carefully measuring and ironing the creases that sucked away my youth during the previous project. I still needed to hand stitch the other edge of the trim to the skirt, but it was easy and went quickly.
I wore the skirt yesterday, and anyone who made the mistake of commenting on it was subjected to having that trim thrust upon them with the demand that they admire it, which was followed up with a lengthy explanation of how it was done. Glazed eyes and bored expressions have no effect on me!

Could It Be More Argylicious?

2007-08-17T10:07:00.001-04:00

This is my latest flea market find. Davis likes it because at first glance it looks like it's called "POOP".
I know her outfit is mockable, but I kind of love it and want one of my own. I wonder how many years it would take for me to knit the ensemble....

And speaking of slow-to-finish projects, I've finished a hem and a zipper on the unfinished objects I mentioned in my previous post. Of course, the hem was on one and the zipper on the other, so neither is actually finished. It shouldn't be too much longer, though.

Where Does the Time Go?

2007-08-10T15:36:00.000-04:00

Summer whips along so fast!
I'm afraid I have a lack of photogenic projects to show you. I have two nearly-finished-objects that will hopefully be blogworthy soon, but photos will have to wait for some zippers to be installed and hems to be sewn.

In the meantime (because I hate to have picture-free posts), I present you with my cute new shoes that recently arrived in the mail. I'm afraid this might be all you'll ever see of them, though, because I don't think I can wear them out in public, having lost the ability to walk in anything taller than a Dansko.
I used to happily teeter off to high school in a beloved pair of ultra-steep, ultra-pointy black stillettos without giving their impracticality a moment's thought, yet now I find myself quite aware that my lurching movements are reminiscent less of Grace Kelly than of Divine. The fact that wearing shoes like these in L.L. Beantown is the social equivalent of slapping a sign on my forehead that says "I don't have enough common sense to wear functional clothing" isn't adding to my comfort in any way.
Oh well, maybe a bit more practice and watching a couple episodes of Mad Men will give me enough courage to head out of doors in them. I'll let you know.

In other news, my friend Julia Pequlia recently came for a visit and we had a great evening together. She's a big fan of bunnies, and she made a movie starring the Darling household's very own Mr. Morris. She wrote a very nice post about the visit on her blog, and you can even see his cinematic debut there.

Goodbye HaloScan

2007-07-26T15:55:00.000-04:00

I've had several people mention lately that they couldn't comment on the blog, and after a bit of research the problem was tracked down to my comment service HaloScan.

I checked their forums and looked for fixes, but all I found were other people having the same problems and no solutions. I tried to patiently wait for HaloScan to work out their issues, but after several weeks I couldn't take the erratic behavior anymore, and I've switched back to Blogger's comment system.

Unfortunately, this means that all the comments that were left on the blog over the last year have disappeared. They're not gone forever (I looooooove comments, and made sure save them all in a safe place), but in order to get them back I'll need to manually add them to each post. Yippeeee! This might take a while.

If you tried to post a comment recently and couldn't, I hope you haven't lost the will to go on commenting and you'll give it another shot.

Sewing Scallops by the Seashore

2007-07-22T18:17:00.000-04:00

About a week ago Davis and I drove north to go on a flea-venture. The pickings were rather slim (has anyone else been having that experience this year at their favorite flea markets/thrift stores/junk shops?), but I did come home with a couple of cute aprons.

Unfortunately, I hadn't noticed that one of them was begining to disintegrate at the slightest touch. Seriously, it looked fine when I was at the stall, but when I looked at it in the car it had a couple of tears, and my attempts to try it on at home left it in shreds.

It had a really nice scalloped shape that I hadn't run across before, so I decided to make a pattern from it while it still had a couple threads holding together. I didn't want to lose momentum, so I bought some retro fabric and started sewing the next day. What a ginormous pain! I think it will be quite some time before I even consider sewing a scalloped edge again.

When I first tried it on I was pretty disappointed - it just kind of hung there with the scallops jutting out strangely from deformed little folds. It certainly wasn't worth all the extra work, and I wrote it off as yet another failed sewing experiment (my success rate generally hovers around 50%).
Then, the next day, it came to me that I should try it on with....wait for it... my petticoat! Yahtzee! It suddenly became a cupcakey-cute sugary confection that was sweet enough to require an insulin emergency kit to be kept nearby (not to toot my own pixie stick or anything).

The problem is that now I need ANOTHER petticoat-friendly skirt to wear under it.

The Details

2007-07-13T09:42:00.001-04:00

I thought I'd post some of the skirt details for those of you who like to sew.
I drew up the pattern using directions from Sew What! Skirts. I've read really good reviews on the book and I plan to make a couple more skirts from it, but I found that the circle-skirt instructions left a lot to be desired. For one thing, the skirt was HUGE when cut out as instructed. At first I thought I had just been sloppy, but when I pulled out my trusty calculator I found that their formula would make it come out over 4" larger than it should be (I finally got to use the pi key for something other than figuring the square footage of pizza!). I think they forgot to put the waist's seam allowance into the equation, which wouldn't be a big deal with an a-line skirt but it adds up to a lot with a circle. It took a lot of tweaking, but I was finally able to get it to fit.

The design for the applique came from a picture I found online (unfortunately I can't remember the website, so I can't give the artist the credit I should). I then traced the image onto Pellon Wonder Under (an iron-on adhesive), ironed it onto some lightweight iridescent fabric, cut out the design, and then ironed it onto the skirt. I should really stitch along the border to make sure it doesn't lift when it gets washed.
Here's a picture of how it looks from different angles (the shine doesn't show in the pictures, but I'd imagine it's enough to make Julia Pequlia happy).

It's Finished!

2007-07-11T20:53:00.000-04:00

Things got a little hectic at the end, but I finally got it done.

I ditched the pocket ideas, and ended up doing a bird applique which I'm fairly happy with. The one issue I have is that it's a little too close to the center, and now when things swish just right it appears as if the bird is trying to look up my skirt. I'm considering adding a few more birds to distract from the effect, but I'm worried it could end up looking like a whole flock of fowl perverts.

I meant to put up this post hours ago, but I had no idea it would be so hard to photograph a pouffy skirt. I'd set the self timer, run to the corner, and then frantically try to make sure the skirt wasn't all smooshed to one side or the other. The "artistic" pose I finally went with has me looking down to make sure that I covered the big water stain on the floor with my foot.

Gina may not have sewn a skirt, but she definitely followed through on the bet. She's showing off her petticoat with aplomb, and looking downright festive.

Pies and Petticoats

2007-07-10T09:12:00.000-04:00

I'm afraid I haven't made any further progress on my petticoat-friendly skirt. If I'm able to show you anything other than the plainest pale green circle-skirt tomorrow, it will only be because I worked very hard on it tonight.

So what have I been doing (other than making and discarding another pair of pockets)? I went to see Waitress and loved it. It was funny and sweet, and yes, I did have to dab away a tear or two. It was also really pretty, with a twist of a 1950s esthetic. I'm quite sure there was at least one petticoat involved in the making of this film.

The only real problem I have with this movie is that it made me desperately crave pie (the main character is a "pie genius"). Now I want to open my own pie diner, invent dozens of pies and then sample all the goods. My clothes have been really tight since our vacation, and I'm pretty sure that pie is not a solution to that problem. I'm considering just letting myself go.

Peonies and Petticoat-Challenges

2007-07-02T09:24:00.000-04:00

It's the tail-end of peony season around these parts. Every year I'm bowled over by how boisterous and exuberant their blooms are. You have to love a plant that asks so little, yet gives so generously.

In Petticoat-Challenge news: hemming the skirt took far more time than I would have imagined. The ever-patient Davis marked it for me with only a few grumbles (he had my sympathy - measuring the length of a skirt with a gazillion folds that's hanging on a twitchy and impatient me is quite a challenge), but the pressing of the hem took an eternity, and then it had to be hand-sewn to prevent the ugly rippling that sewing by machine would have given it (believe me, I tried to do it by machine, but it was immediately obvious this was a bad idea). If I had to guess, I'd say that the pressing and hemming took about 6 hours. It's now entirely wearable, and I'm fairly happy with how it has turned out.
My plans for spiffing it up a bit have been foiled - the pockets I designed are too stiff to work with all the folds of the skirt (there's one shown below that hasn't been sewn down). I really love them, though, so perhaps I'll put them on an apron in the future. This was my first attempt at sewing scallops - what a pain!- but I'd do it all over again because I'm such a sucker for them.
The skirt really does need a little something more, so it's back to the drawing board. Julia Pequlia's comment last week makes me think that getting a Bedazzler might be the way to go (I'm kidding....sort of...is it wrong that I kind of want one?).

Morris has found all of this sewing to be quite fascinating. I managed to get a photo of him looking in my sewing box, making sure that I had the correct size needle for the job. I don't know how I'd manage without him.

eta: Haloscan seems to be on the fritz, so the comment section has been coming and going of its own accord. Hopefully it will fix itself shortly.

Summertime Blues (and pinks)

2007-06-23T21:57:00.000-04:00

Look at the lovelies that Davis brought home for me from the almost-free-store this week! They make me happy every time I look at them.

Thrifting has been rather hit or miss this season, but I suppose that's always the case. These were enough of a hit to balance out a plethora of misses.

In crafty news: I'm happy to report that I will not need to post a photo of me in my skivvies on July 11th (see the previous post if that needs explaining).

I've been working on a circle skirt that is 75% finished and is just hanging up waiting for a hem. It's a little plain so I may need to put some spiffy pockets on it or something, but the important thing is that I will be spared underwear-revealing humiliation.

The Petticoat Challenge

2007-06-13T13:45:00.000-04:00

Remember how I whined in the previous post about how I have run out of petticoat-friendly outfits?

Well, I'm about to do something out of character:
stop whining and do something about it.

Gina has a similar dilemma, so we've issued a challenge: we have given ourselves one month to each sew a petticoat-friendly skirt.

And, because we have a shared history of shirking similar challenges, we've added a bit of insurance to keep us on task: we shall each wear our skirts in public on the due date, whether finished or not.
If that means going to work wearing a crumpled tissue-paper pattern piece taped onto a petticoat, so be it. If you're gonna shirk, you've got to pay the piper (or something like that).

Petticoat Days Are Here Again

2007-06-08T15:40:00.000-04:00

I had a wedding to attend last weekend which caused a bit of a clothing crisis. I'm always convinced I have nothing to wear, but this time was more of a dilemma than usual - I still have a few vacation pounds to take off which rendered some garments unbuttonable.

Fortunately it was an evening wedding, so black was acceptable, and I was able to wear this new-but-vintage-looking skirt and my dear, dear petticoat.
note: warm weather is slow in getting to Maine, but I did not actually wear a turtleneck (unfortunately), despite how it looks in the picture. The day was sunny and in the high 70s, but just before the big event there was a rain shower. The weather turned so chilly I would have been glad to have had a turtleneck as well as a snowsuit. I still had a great time, I just needed to do some extra twirling to stay warm.

My latest dilemma is that I now need more petticoat-appropriate frocks!

Almost Done (really)

2007-05-21T16:20:00.000-04:00

Don't worry, I'm nearing the end of The Vacation Tales.

Our last night in Italy was spent in Como, which was far nicer than the guidebooks would lead you to believe. Unfortunately, it was raining while it was light out, so we weren't able to get very impressive pictures. Then it was onward and upward through the alps into the heart of Switzerland again.
I can't stress enough how amazing Switzerland is. It has it's fair share of headaches (the parking! the prices!), but it more than makes up for them with its beauty. I've never done so much slack-jawed gaping in my life.
It was raining there on our second pass through, so I'm afraid there are no shots of the alps. Fortunately, Lucerne looks amazing regardless of the weather...

I keep hearing stories about how the Swiss are unfriendly, but that was absolutely not our experience. The people there really went out of their way to be helpful while we struggled with the typical tourist confusions. One woman actually paid our parking fee when the machine in the parking garage wouldn't accept our credit card and we didn't have Swiss Francs!

After Lucern we only had two days left before we needed to reach Paris for our flight home, so we pointed northwest and drove.

We spent the night in an unassuming town called Luneville in the coolest place we stayed in on the whole trip. We were just driving through a residential area en route to the center of town in the hope of finding a hotel, and we stumbled upon a house with one of those "Gites de France" signs on the gate. I had read about gites and have always longed to be the sort of savvy traveler who stays in them, but my sorry grasp of the language had always held me back before. My courage was greatly bolstered by the fact that we had recently had a couple challenging evenings trying to find hotels, so I bit the bullet and rang the bell. I'm really glad I did, because this was our room:

It was huge. The bathroom alone was bigger than most of the rooms we had stayed in on the trip, and the price was incredibly reasonable.

We were the first Americans to stay there, and I'm afraid I did little to improve our reputation as a nation of single-language-speakers. The wonderful woman who owned the place didn't speak English at all, but she was really friendly and communicative. My present-tense, no-irregular-verbs, charades-infused style of French was pretty entertaining to all.

The following day was spent in Nancy, which is known for its art nouveau architecture. We were disappointed to find out that their museum that specializes in art nouveau was closed - they're supposed to have a few fully furnished rooms in the style which are rather hard to come by. If you've never seen a full room of nouveau-ities that were designed as a set, it's pretty darn amazing. The ones I've seen have felt like being in the middle of an enchanted Hobbit forest.

We made do with walking around the the town and seeing some of the many nouveau exteriors scattered around.

I would love to go back and spend a couple days there in the future. It was one of those places that's an adventure to walk around because you never know what cool sight is going to spring up around the next corner.

One happy sight was a patisserie which yielded this bounty:

The deliciousness was indescribable, so I won't even try. I wanted to eat them all myself, but Davis made me share.

The following day it was back to the airport for the long trip home.

Check out the crazy tubes they send you through at Charles de Gaulle:

Here's a view from the plane, I think it's in the general area of Greenland:

Well that pretty much wraps up the trip. I do have a batch of photos of many of the creatures we saw, as well as a lot of pictures of relics and reliquaries (something of a fascination of mine), but this post is plenty long as it is. I'll spare you the eyestrain and save those for another time.

One

2007-05-18T13:19:00.001-04:00

Petula Darling is one year old this week!

The birthday almost went unnoticed (much like when I missed the 100 post milestone), but fortunately I caught it in time and kept her from becoming the Samantha Baker of blogs. You all have been very patient, sticking with me despite my erratic posting schedule.

I now return you to our scheduled program: Eurotrip 2007...

After Interlaken Switzerland we dove into a seemingly endless tunnel and popped out on the other side of the alps. It was a whole different world. We drove into Italy and headed for Stresa, which we really liked. According to Lonely Planet this makes us fuddy-duddys who are possibly too old to carry their guidebook around. Shut up Lonely Planet.
Stresa is a fairly small town and there are no big sights other than the lake that it's on (which, believe it or not, I forgot to get pictures of!), but it's charming and it made a good starting point for the Italian leg of our trip.

I call this thing the Crunchberry Tree.

This is an abandoned building in Stresa that Davis and I jokingly referred to as "our little fixer-upper".

After 2 nights there we headed towards Parma, making a stop in Cremona (below) which was very charming.

From Parma we went to one of the towns in Cinque Terre (below) which was far too crowded with tourists for my taste, but still very pretty. It was quite warm, so I even went for a swim. That water was soooo salty! It was seriously floatastic and really fun.

From there we headed to Pisa...

I originally had no desire to go to Pisa ("Why do I need to see a leaning building when I live in one?"), but it was on the way. I'm really glad we did - the sight was far more striking than I would have thought.

From there we went to Florence.
Aaahhh....Florence.... the most overrated of all cities.

Here are the two main sights:

Hordes of tourists and...

Lots of very tasteful items for the tourist throngs to buy.

It's not that Florence is so awful, it's more that it's a huge letdown after all the buildup it gets. If a person had never been to Europe before and their only stop was in Florence, I could see how they'd think it was pretty great. The thing is, there are many many towns that are much prettier with far fewer hassles that I would recommend over Florence. Of course, it's possible that my opinions are colored by the fact that I had to wait over 2 hours to get into the Ufifizi and 3 and a half hours to get into the Accademia. To keep my head from exploding while standing in line, I took to composing poetry about the experience which caused me to elicit evil laughter. I shall refrain from sharing it, since I don't want my readers to leave with a bitter taste.
Fortunately, we discovered the secret to washing away the annoyances of a day lay deep inside a carafe of red wine. We saw the bottoms of many such vessels during our days in Florence.

edited to add: From what I've heard, the tourist industry in Florence has grown exponentially in recent years, and it's likely that we were just too late visiting here. If you visited and enjoyed it, I certainly didn't mean to insult your taste in travel destinations. If anything, you should take it as recognition of your "I did it before everyone else hopped on the bandwagon" coolness.

I do want to say that I was really impressed by the kindness of the people we met in Italy. When I think of how people here in "Vacationland" treat tourists by the time Labor Day rolls around, it gives me a great appreciation for the tolerance shown by the locals in towns where tourist season goes on and on and on.

I shall end this looooong post with a picture of two of the many delectable cappuccinos we had in Italy. Their coffee is soooooo good that I'd dream about it at night if I didn't think it would keep me up.

Home, where my fox is sleeping*

2007-05-11T07:40:00.000-04:00

Aaaahhhh....home at last.
The trip was fascinating, fabulous, overwhelming, exasperating, exhausting, amazing, etc... as such trips are wont to be.

Before I did much travelling myself, I imagined going abroad to be akin to entering some sort of dreamscape, where everything glowed in a soft haze of marvelousness, and I'd float around with my feet never quite touching the ground. Imagine my shock when I found out that, amid the marvelousness, it also entailed the occasional evening of going from one hotel to another in a desperate quest to find a bed, arms waving around because I only know 12 words of the local language, all the while wearing some ridiculous outfit comprised of the only cleanish clothes available. Anyway, sorry for the long absence, we're alive and well - things just got a little too hectic for blogging.

Lots of fun was had with lots of food eaten, wine drunk, miles covered and art seen. I have many tales to tell and also many pictures, but in order to get the blog rolling I'll just offer up this one of me in Parma. I'm the least photogenic person ever, so I'm afraid this is the most flattering one taken on the whole trip. It doesn't help that I expanded as the trip went on (seriously - I outgrew one of my skirts). Oh well - it was totally worth it, even though it's a little painful re-adjusting to life without pastries and butter slathered on everything in order to fit into my old clothes.

More pictures will be coming soon!

*I love to speak in song lyrics. I'm also prone to getting the lyrics wrong. My childhood love of Simon and Garfunkel led to many a mondegreen that amuse me even to this day (songs about "silence like a casserole" and "camembert shirt"s never grow old). In my wee-est years I thought the lyric referenced in this post's title (from the song Homeward Bound) referred to Paul's pet fox that I envisioned curled up by the hearth. When I got older and realized that it was unlikely that he kept a pet fox in his New York apartment, I concluded that the "fox" was actually late-sixties terminology for his lady-friend (also envisioned sleeping by the hearth).
I have neither pet fox nor foxy lady at home, but I do have a case of jet-lag-induced silliness.

Switzerland (part 2)

2007-04-25T13:27:00.000-04:00

Our next stop was the Cailler chocolate factory, that I first read about here (her description is really funny).
There were brief glimpses of the actual factory, but the tour was designed to be more of a tutorial on the history and process of chocolate making. There was a great display of vintage chocolate molds. The picture below shows a ginormous one that was probably three feet long.

There was a room that showed a variety of films from the 1940s and 50s about the factory's history that was quite fun - it was definitely better than that one with Lucy and Ethyl. One of them featured a recurring yodel of "Chocolat au lait" that I took up later on, much to the dismay of Davis.
The highlight, of course, was the all-you-can-eat chocolate tasting room. The chocolate was great, but I have to say that it was a challenge to do it justice after having just eaten a cheese-swathed breakfast a few hours before. You'll be glad to know that I did give it my best try, though.
From there we went on to wind our way through the mountains as I called out things like "Look! There's a Heidi-house!" and alternated between my new chocolate-themed yodel and the yodeling song from "The Sound of Music". I'm a lot of fun to travel with.
I'd love to share some pictures of the spectacular mountain vistas, but I'm afraid my photos really didn't do them justice. I can give you this guy though:

A mere 400 mountain passes later we found ourselves in Interlaken where we spent the night. The main street is fairly meh, but if you go just one block off it's really beautiful - charming Heidi-houses surrounded by mountains, plus streams that you can walk along.

I don't know if you can tell from the picture, but the water was a crazy color. All through Switzerland it seemed to have a strange blue-green hue. It was as if a beverage manufacturer set out to make a youth-marketed drink called "Xtreme Freeeeeze", and they chose the chilliest color imaginable.

The only real complaint I have with Switzerland is the price of things. It's reeeeeeaaaaalllly expensive. Hotels and food were 2-3 times what they cost in France. We knew this before we went, but it was still rather painful. It would have been nice to spend more time there, but it would mean having to sell the house upon our return. Oh well, it's hard to complain about moving on to Italy.

Switzerland (part 1)

2007-04-25T12:24:00.000-04:00

We're definitely not the "If it's Tuesday we must be in Rome" sort of tourists, but that isn't how it felt this week.

We've been to France a couple of times before, so we pretty much made a beeline to Switzerland. Our first sighting of the alps caused both of us to utter exclaimations of the "holy ____" variety. Actually, it wasn't just the first sighting that warranted it - the saying became pretty common as we drove around. Switzerland is unbelievably beautiful.

We had a brief pause in Lausanne (not big fans) and then wound our way up and over numerous hills to the melodic strains of cowbells and ended up in Gruyeres (below) where we spent the first night.

We stayed at a great hotel and wandered through the very tiny walled village (complete with castle) to find dinner. Once seated, we were each given serious heating devices: I ordered the raclette which is a big slab of cheese that gets put under a heater and you scrape the melty goodness off and slather it on potatoes and/or bread, and eat it with pickles and pickled onions, and Davis had the "mixed grill" which was a platter of various local meats and sausages that get put on a grill. They were both incredible and a perfect compliment to each other. I tried to take a picture of the event, but I think my enthusiasm for the experience caused me to become too spastic to frame properly.

Our hotel fed us an amazing breakfast the next morning involving meats, great breads, meringues with deliciously extra-fat-laden cream, and more cheese. Davis then announced that he didn't want to eat cheese ever again. That's when we went to visit the cheese factory! I'm all about cheese.

It was really interesting, and I took about a gazillion pictures (I'll spare you the others). We were given a history of the production on our listening devices that contained the quote: "The cheese barons made their fortunes. That was a golden age." For some reason I found this hilarious. I think it was both the notion that there was such a thing as a cheese baron, combined with the very dreamy voice saying, "That was a golden age. " I decided right then that when I grow up I'm going to be a cheese baron.

Stay tuned for my post about our visit to the chocolate factory...

J'aime la France!

2007-04-21T14:32:00.000-04:00

We made it! We're sitting outside at a cafe in Langres drinking lambic (not at all French, but so yummy). We seem to have shaken off the jet lag and the weather is great, so no complaints here!
We flew on Icelandair, which was a little bizarre. They only had those distant teeny screens to watch, and the inflight movie was "Tootsie". I'm quite sure that movie came out before some of you were born. It made the film on the second leg of the trip, "Sleepless in Seattle", seem cutting edge in comparison.
We rented a car at Charles De Gaulle (you'll be happy to know we've already made our car stinky with cheese), and headed to Fontainbleu for our first night. . Fontainbleu is a very pretty town, and the chateau is amazing. Then we headed east towards Switzerland.
I forgot to put pictures on the laptop before we headed out, so I'm afraid I have no eye-candy for you. In fact, I have no reason to be writing this post at all except that I was so excited to catch a signal that I hopped onto blogger. I'll try to give you a post that's more worthy of your while soon.

Random note - my blogger page is entirely in French - "modifier le code HTML" , "Moderer les commentaires", etc...
Time to "Publier".

Fly By Night

2007-04-16T14:27:00.000-04:00

The trip frenzy is in full swing. Packing and panicking is now being done in earnest. We'll be flying from Boston to Paris on Thursday, and we're sooooo not ready. So why not sit down and write a blog post?

Actually, I have a request for some suggestions:

1) It always takes a little while for one's system to get in synch with the local timetable. This has led to us starving at times when there are no stores or restaurants open. I like to bring snacks for just such emergencies, but I don't know if I can stand eating any more Odwalla or Cliff bars (I think I ate too many during our last vacation). Does anyone have any ideas for packable snacks?

2) We like caffeine first thing in the morning, before getting showered and dressed. The problem is that we won't be staying in establishments that offer such amenities as bedside coffee. In the past, this has led to us staggering, bleary-eyed and cranky, around the streets in search of cafes as we indulge in a spate of caffeine-deprived bickering. That's no way to start the morning, folks! Should I just get some No-Doz and take half a tab in the morning? I tend to be wary of the stuff after getting all hopped up on it once during study hall in high school (of course, part of the problem may have been the quantity I ingested and the fact that I didn't even drink coffee back then). Is there, hopefully, something better?

Your input will be much appreciated.

Easter

2007-04-08T18:36:00.000-04:00

Despite being camera-shy, Morris and I want to wish everyone a happy Easter.

Check out the sweet basket Davis gave me. It's filled with chocolates, spools of pastel crochet thread and a girl&bunny figurine.

VACATION

2007-04-06T23:57:00.000-04:00

It might be April, but this is the sight that greeted me when I looked out the window into the driveway yesterday morning. Eeek! Not only had plenty of snow fallen in the usual way, but a big pile of it zoomed off our slate roof and landed right on out doorstep.

I'm not upset though. Why? Because I'm going on vacation! I'm floating two feet above the ground, which helps to keep my feet warm and dry.

We're leaving in two weeks for Italy via France, Switzerland and Germany. I waver between being excited and worried that I'll never get everything I'm supposed to do done. I've been spinning in circles and haven't even been able to focus enough to blog.

I'm afraid posting will probably continue to be on the light side until we leave, but I do plan on writing while on the road. I'll keep you updated.

Little Wing

2007-03-28T19:37:00.000-04:00

Several years ago we inherited a sweet dove named Rosie. She was very sociable and loved nothing more than to perch on a shoulder and visit. Sometimes she'd even restyle our hair or forage in our ears with the hope that we were storing sunflower seeds there.

We let her out as often as possible, but her rather uncivilized potty habits were problematic. She also had a knack of flying right by you when you were doing paperwork, sending all the receipts and bills flying.

Her cage was large, but it still wasn't big enough for a bird of that size. When she wanted to come out (which was most of the time) she'd start agitatedly flying back and forth in the cage, periodically letting out a loud and very human-sounding laugh.
It was unnerving, to say the least.

When her original owner returned and expressed an interest in taking Rosie back, I have to admit I was relieved.
Since then, we have discussed getting another, much smaller, bird, but haven't felt quite ready to commit. In the meantime, I repainted this vintage birdcage and got a fine-feathered artificial friend to put in it. I'm not usually a fan of fake friends, but this one is so pretty and low-maintenance that I'm not complaining. I think I need to get her a partner to swing on that perch.

In crochet news, I've completed several more squares and come to the conclusion that I don't think I want to make a pillow. Even with the updated colors, it just seems too old-lady-fussy, and I'm just not sure that I want to push that look any further than I already have. It has been nice to go back to doing a bit of crochet, though, so I may embark on another project shortly. Of course, I still haven't finished Davis' cardigan Christmas present, so I may need to tie up some loose ends first.

These are a few of my favorite things...

2007-03-23T21:26:00.000-04:00

Look at the adorable vintage planter I just got.
He's so cute I just want to make doe-eyes at him all day. I have enough knitting needle holders now, so he may become the keeper of the pencils.

Another one of my favorite things lately is staring at socks. I recently discovered Sock-Dreams and I am completely hooked. The socks are really cute, good quality, and reasonably priced. And there's free shipping!
I've already received four orders, and I'm about to place my fifth. When I'm not actually ordering socks, I spend my time trying to come up with outfits that will show them off (or, when I can't, hiking up my pant legs and demanding that people gaze at the glory of the socks), and I even read their sock blog. I know I should be ashamed to admit that, and yet I'm at peace with it.
The photos below are a sampling of my glorious new sock collection (note: those aren't my knees - the photos are from the sock-dreams website).

Oh, and one more favorite thing - Friday Night Lights.
I'm not a sports fan, and I'm extra not a football fan, but this show has completely won me over. The first episode was football-heavy, and I didn't think the show was going to be for me, but by the end of the second one I was so caught up in the characters that I would have continued watching them even if it was a show about....well, actually, I can't think of anything I dislike more than football, and still I love this show. Every episode has something so funny that I laugh out loud and something so moving that I'm often found dabbing my eyes and claiming that the room has gotten dusty. It's one of those shows where I want to re-watch each episode as soon as it ends, and then I start pining for the next one to come out. If you haven't been watching and want to jump in, you can watch all of the episodes to date online at their website.

Sunshine In A Mag

2007-03-19T15:21:00.000-04:00

This time of year I'm always greatly in need of eye-candy, so it was lucky for me that boingboing clued me in to this magazine.

Hi-Fructose is basically a contemporary pop-art mag. It's a little toy heavy for my taste, and they could use someone with a red pen to check things over, but the artwork in there makes it worth several times the cover price. They've introduced me to so many incredible artists that I'm downright giddy with excitement.

The current issue (top right) features the art of Ray Caesar (among many others) with an interview that blew me away. I love looking at pop-surrealist imagery, but I've always felt kind of guilty for it. It's compelling and pretty, but my doubts about the depth of much of it frequently left me feeling cheap and easy. Thankfully, those fears have definitely been put to rest at least as far as Ray Caesar's work is concerned. The story behind why he makes these images is really dark and sad and beautiful.

I read the magazine from cover to cover, and then decided I needed to get the previous issue which featured Mark Ryden, Chris Ware, and ----- wait for it ----- a pop-art View-Master reel! After much searching, I found a copy online and devoured it almost as soon as it arrived. I haven't been this inspired in a long time.

note: Hi-Fructose can be a little hard to come by, at least in these parts. I had good luck ordering from Rotofugi and Last Gasp.

Stormy Weather

2007-03-17T13:59:00.000-04:00

I was supposed to work today, but a slushstorm has left me housebound.

Yay! A day snuggled up on the couch with crafts and books and a smattering of the Pride and Prejudice box set is the fine stuff of which dreams are made. Of course, I first need to finish the cleanup from the kersploosh of water that came through our roof this morning. That kind of dampened my enthusiasm for the day (pun intended), but I'm pretty sure all is not lost.

I've started playing with some crocheted squares to make an updated version of a vintage pillow I saw at an antique mall last week. Here's one of my practice squares:

I'm actually planning on going with an entirely different color scheme (mostly pastels), but I am kind of fond of this fella.

Is Winter Over Yet?

2007-03-14T19:11:00.000-04:00

This little guy has had just about enough.
Fortunately, the last several days have been quite springlike, by Maine standards anyway.
Davis went to a flea market without me last Saturday because I had to work (the injustice!). Luckily he knows how much I like penguins, so he brought me home a new friend.
I've been begging for a penguin of my very own ever since seeing this video, and I'm guessing Davis thought a porcelain one who can shake salt out of his head might be a better idea than getting a real one. I don't agree, but I'm happy with this guy for now.
The chilly winterland in the photo is actually made up of toasty warm wool roving.
I was doing some needle-felting the other day, and realized I needed some new colors. Fortunately I had a couple balls of natural-colored roving and several packets of Kool-aid on hand (I promise I only use it for dying and don't drink the stuff!).

A couple fuit-scented hours later:

Hoppy Bunnies

2007-03-07T15:12:00.000-05:00

My friend and fellow bunny lover Marie sent me a link to videos of show-jumping rabbits. Wow. My jaw completely dropped.

Mine are only trained to run away on command (or, y'know, when looked at). I'm thinking, though, that if we spend a year or two doing some serious training I might be able to get Morris to do this:

To Every Craft There Is A Season

2007-03-06T14:21:00.000-05:00

For me, winter is a time for the mindless crafts that allow me to sit on the couch for hours on end while watching my favorite shows. It's the time for knitting projects, preferably of the sort that don't require looking at the instructions more than twice. Looking at instructions would interfere with my television viewing, and that would be completely unacceptable.
Summer is the time for more active crafts - the ones that require actual thought and movement. I have little patience for couch-dwelling in the summer, so that's when I like to make random constructions, or sew, or just putter about in my studio.
The start of spring* is a strange no-man's-land. Sitting on the couch becomes a bit tedious, and finishing those mindless projects that were once so fulfilling now seems like an excrutiatingly boring chore. Spring energy has a spastic and unfocused quality that lends itself to spinning in circles and accomplishing little. So that's what I've been doing.

I hate have a pictureless post, so here's a photo that I picked up several years ago at a junk shop in Colorado. I love these gals.

*Despite the 8 degrees that the thermometer is showing right now (egad!), the extended hours of daylight are giving things a springlike feel. True spring in Maine occurs for two weeks in early June.

Petula and the Oobleck

2007-02-26T19:03:00.000-05:00

Do you remember this book?

You might remember it a little differently from how it looks here (this copy is from a rare limited-edition printing).
This version tells the tragic tale of when oobleck filled poor Petula's head and lungs, causing her to become a putrescent, hacking, spewing mass of germs who needed to flee from proper society.
Yup, that's me with the plaid pants, pointy shoes and green ooze about my torso. Pretty, huh?
Unfortunately, I've been performing a re-enactment of that historic event, and am much too busy (and oobleck-headed) to blog. Hopefully I'll be back with you soon.

Isn't She Lovely?

2007-02-18T23:07:00.000-05:00

We're test-driving an older-model Francis Francis! espresso machine.
She refuses to pull a decent shot, but with looks like that, who needs personality?

According to reviews I've read, the newer models do a much better job.
Sadly, buying a new one would mean no money for groceries for several months, and what's the point of an espresso machine if you can't buy the coffee to put in it?
Oh well, perhaps I'll put a new one on my dream appliance list - right after the La Cornue range in summer blue (I'd also take this one, I'm not picky).

and they called it Bunny Love

2007-02-14T10:48:00.000-05:00

Morris had been reading a particularly moving passage in The Pruning of Trees and was overcome with emotion. Midge reached out to let him know she was there.
They know love is more about the little day-to-day moments than big flowery gestures one day a year (not that Midge doesn't love receiving a delicious juicy bouquet now and then).

Happy Valentine's Day from the whole Darling family!

Valentine's Day

2007-02-13T11:27:00.000-05:00

Davis and I are a little erratic with our Valentine's celebrations.
Some years the day involves flowers, homemade heart-shaped cakes, and hand-crafted gifts. Other years it's more of a "here's a pack of gum" sort of an occasion.
It says little about how we're feeling about each other. In fact, if anything, the emotion-to-gift ratio might be an inverse one (the better the relationship, the crappier the gifts).
We must be doing exceptionally well right now, because I don't think either of us has a clue about what we're giving to the other.
There's still plenty of time, though, right?

This valentine here is one I made a few years ago. It's a candy Sweetheart surrounded by five graduated mats, glass and a paper and ribbon frame I concocted (it measures about 5"x5" )

Little Red Redux

2007-02-06T12:09:00.000-05:00

Words are failing me...just watch (and shield the young ones).

Let's give thanks that they didn't make lentographs from these scenes.
It's all fun and games 'til someone loses an eye.

Am I Blue?

2007-02-05T22:33:00.000-05:00

No (unless you're referring to my hypothermia-induced complexion), but lately it seems like everything I bring home is.
New footwear, bakeware, bedware and bunnies - all blue!

(yes, I know the bunny is a little scary in that creepy-clown way, but I like him. )

Japanese Craft Books!

2007-02-01T08:57:00.000-05:00

Look what arrived on my doorstep from Amazon Japan:

Taking it to the next dimension

2007-01-26T00:09:00.000-05:00

My obsession with lentographs and dioramas has grown to the point where I really want to make my own.

I have already purchased a 3d camera for the task. Normally they have two lenses, but this one has four. I'm thinking that if a two-lens camera makes things three dimensional, then shouldn't a camera with four lenses take me into the sixth dimension? I tried to do a little research on this topic, but since I can't even grasp the fourth dimension I didn't get very far.

My current quest is for objects to put in the dioramas. I really want a doll like the one shown below. I've been looking on ebay, but so far no luck (I have, however, seen some dolls that are likely to give me nightmares for years to come). Does anyone happen to know the name of this doll?

Also - Gina has now been double-tagged for the six-weird-things meme. I thought about duo-deca-tagging her, but that seemed cruel (120 weird things would mean dredging up memories of things like eating paste, and she's gluten free now).

Oh, and kudos to The Tussler and his six weird things for making me laugh out loud. Don't let his political views frighten you, he's really a very good person.

I shall leave you with a bit more lenticular goodness (and try to imagine the 3d effect that I know you can't see on a computer screen).

6 Weird Things About Me

2007-01-23T20:41:00.000-05:00

I got tagged by Ms. Pagoda for the 6 Weird Things meme, so here goes...

1. Despite having been born and raised in Maine, I took an ESL writing class in college. I'm happy to report that I passed.

2. I can't fall asleep without a pillow over my head. It started when I lived near a club in San Francisco as a defense against the noise generated by the 2:00 a.m. exodus, and now it just feels wrong to have my ears all exposed.

3. I used to want to be a nun. It began with The Trouble With Angels and was perpetuated by Sister Wendy.

4. I love rhyming. The problem is that once I start I have a hard time stopping.

5. I think Steve Buscemi is totally hot.

6. I have never seen Star Wars, Rocky, The Godfather, Jaws, Jurassic Park, or that "show-me-the-money" movie. I have, however, seen Santa Claus Conquers the Martians, Teenagers From Outer Space, Cannibal! the Musical, and all of the Beach Party movies.

I shall now tag Mary Jane, Tracy, Yarndemon and The Tussler - and if anyone else wants to join in, consider yourself tagged.

She's No Pinball Wizard (but she can do The Twist)

2007-01-22T20:07:00.000-05:00

I recently decided that I neeeeeeeeed to own a pinball machine. I have always loved the sport (well, it's not any less of a sport than bowling is it?), and I think it would be awesome to be able to play it in the privacy of my own home.
Why do I need privacy, you ask? Because I'm embarrassingly bad at it. I become mesmerized by the flashing lights and boinking sounds, and then I make the flippers flail spasmodically with little regard to the proximity of the ball. Crowds gather to stare and mock. It's very sad.
I'm not sure how I made it this long without realizing that I require my own pinball machine, but once it became clear I got right on the job of finding one. After doing some surfing on eBay I came to the realization that contemporary machines are beyond ugly, in fact they're soul-scarringly hideous. Of course, if someone were to give me one I'd be thrilled beyond belief (my soul has bounced back from far worse sights). But since this is all still in the fantasy stage, I'm going to select something pretty to dream about. That's where the Internet Pinball Machine Database came in. They have some super-fantabulous vintage pinball goodness. It seems to be compendium of virtually all pinball and pinball-like machines ever made, and it supplied me with all of the images shown here. Check these out:

The playfield from Catalina, 1948

The playfield from Lazy-Q, 1953

The playfield from Hong Kong, 1952

So they all have amazing graphics, but are you noticing anything else about these?
Anything like, say, lots of GIGANTIC BOOBIES? Well, it gets even better:

Backglass from Judy, 1950. Nice angle.

The playfield from Wonderland, 1955. Hmmm...I guess Alice has already gone through puberty in this version, and they've also thrown in a buxom brunette. Perhaps it's the Queen of Hearts striding over to show Alice her sovereignty (wink, wink). You might want to also take a look at the text, if one is in a lewd frame of mind it can be quite entertaining. Not that that's my frame of mind. I'm just saying...

And then there's this one that needs no comment:

Backglass from Balls-A-Poppin, 1956.

Now, believe it or not, I didn't intentionally select only Pin-Up Pinball machines. That's just what the majority of the ones from that era seem to look like. Don't get me wrong, these machines are incredible and I do hope to own at least one of my own someday (or several...to be housed in our fabulous gaming wing...the one that I'm sure Davis will build me if I just ask nicely...), but their curvaceous qualities do seem a little excessive.

More View-Master Goodness

2007-01-17T22:35:00.000-05:00

Here are some more pictures from my new collection of View-Master reels.
These are all from the Adventures of Sam Sawyer series. Click on the images to make them larger.

The first three are from the underwater adventure Sam Finds A Treasure from 1950. Too bad I don't have one of those talking View-Masters, because I'm quite sure this one is a musical theater extravaganza.

Sam offers coins to his new fish friend Marty in exchange for certain favors.

Gary, Marty's octopus boyfriend, gets very jealous. There is talk of a sword fight.

Marty is in awe after Sam shows them what's under his codpiece. Sam is as giddy as a schoolgirl and leaps in triumph as the music swells. Gary is despondent.

The End

These next ones are from Sam Flies to the Moon, 1950.

"Greetings Earthling. My name is Fisher Price, and my fellow Bulbots and I would like to welcome you to our ~~toybox~~ molten satellite."

"Hey - put that back in your pants. You're making me very angry. "

The Moon Men are vanquished/exhausted. Sam feels rather jaunty. He's not sure if it's due to his recent triumph or if it's the hormone therapy kicking in.

The End

I've been scouring eBay for other Sam Sawyer adventures. I'm keeping my fingers crossed that I'll find the very popular Sam Meets Barbara Streisand and Sam Visits the Bathhouse reels.

View-Master Is Now the Master of Me

2007-01-15T22:59:00.000-05:00

I never had a View-Master when I was a kid, and I never particularly wanted one. My friends had them, but the few times I had used them I was unimpressed. The only reel I can clearly remember seeing was of Robin Hood, and looking at it now I can understand why I found it less than compelling, since it featured 1970s-era photographs of badly coifed men in tights. Yes, they were in 3d, but the whole world around me was in 3d (and there was a comforting lack of bestockinged gentlemen sporting pageboys in my immediate vicinity).

When I unwrapped one of my Christmas presents from Davis last month, you can imagine the forced smile that I pasted up when I saw that it contained two View-Master viewers and around 50 reels. great.
I took a look at a couple of the reels in an attempt to feign enthusiasm.
Holy-crap! I had no idea some of them were so cool!

Most of the reels are from the 40s, 50s and 60s. Yes, some of them are boring, but some of them are absolutely incredible. My favorites are the dioramas. They're like these amazing little alternate universes that seem almost real due to the 3d-ity. After seeing these and the diorama-like lentographs I've been collecting, I'm now so obsessed that I want to start making my own little Petulaverses. Turns out my boy knew me better than I knew myself.

I used our slide scanner to capture the images on the reels so I could show them to you, although you'll have to imagine the three dimensional part.
Here are some pictures from the 1963 version of Goldilocks:
(warning: angry bears look very scary)

Fumes and Flip-out Follow Flaming Fimo Fiasco

2007-01-06T20:40:00.000-05:00

I know everyone is sick of all things Christmas, but I thought I'd share one last related post.
I’m afraid my holiday crafting this year was rather unsuccessful, to put it mildly. I’ve long dreamt of making some ornaments like these ones that have been in the family since I was a kid:

Unfortunately, this is what I managed to create:

The original ornaments have pipe-cleaner arms. I thought I could improve upon that by using Fimo (that plastic-y clay that gets baked in the oven). I spent several hours making arms, and the next day set out to bake them. It seemed silly to heat up the whole oven for something so small, so I decided to use our toaster oven that was tucked away, unused, in the pantry. Unfortunately, it seems that I don’t know how to operate these crazy newfangled devices, and I managed to toast them instead.
I noticed the problem before it was too late, and changed the settings. I must not have changed them enough, though, because the next time I looked I saw flames. And I’m not talking about those measly dripped-cheese-off-of-a-bagel sort that we’ve all caused. These were fairly tall and of the leaping variety. The fates were smiling upon me, because not only do I own a kitchen fire extinguisher, but I actually knew where it was (which is more than I can usually say about my car keys, my hairbrush or whatever sweater I’m looking for).
I actually thought the whole thing was pretty funny. That is until I discovered that miniscule black cinders had made their way onto every exposed surface in our kitchen (and several cupboards were open), My sense of humor was greatly diminished when, several hours later, I was handwashing the fortieth sinkful of dishes. And our house absolutely reeked.
On the plus side, I discovered that death by Fimo cancer was unlikely, since even flaming Fimo is not carcinogenic. Sheesh, if I had known that, I would have saved the detergent and dishpan hands and just waved the dustbuster in the vicinity of our dishes and called it good.

Fab Film Friday

2007-01-05T00:19:00.000-05:00

Petula Darling is pleased to announce that Fridays (not all Fridays, necessarily.... maybe just a couple....or, you know, only this one) are now dedicated to the promotion of films of the highest cinematographic caliber.

Today's masterpiece of the silver screen: Barbarella

Barbarella, released in 1968, is a visionary tale of the future. It features Jane Fonda as a five-star double-rated astr0-navigatrix whose mission is to save earth from destruction. Her skill lies mainly in her ability to change outfits more often than logic should allow.

I can't believe I hadn' t see this movie until just recently - it's so much fun. The costumes are great (well, not exactly "great" in an "I think I'd like to get one of those numbers to wear to the theater" way, more "great" as in "I didn't know fabric could do that"), and it must be said that Jane looks amazing in them. The visuals are incredible - you can't really tell from the preview but the sets and the colors are spectacular.
The storyline? Well, that might be a tad weak (ok, it's pathetic). But it is quite funny - both intentionally and not.
I should mention that this film is likely to present some challenges for those attuned to feminist issues (I won't even try to go into them, there are so many issues here). However, I think most women will end up feeling empowered after seeing it, due to the realization that even without training most of us would make far better astro-navigatrixes than Barbarella. Seriously, it's one of those movies where you can't help but joyously yell, "What are you thinking?!" numerous times at the screen.

Forced Out Of Isolation

2007-01-02T11:03:00.000-05:00

I'm not much of a Whoopie-It's-New-Years kind of a gal.
I used to partake of the festivities; going to multiple parties in one night, dodging kisses at midnight from unattractive strangers, throwing up behind dumpsters... All the usual stuff. But despite how fun all that sounds, I was always left with a feeling of disappointment. Since my mid-twenties, my main goal for the holiday has been to make it as unexciting as possible.
This New Year's Eve was no exception. I had big plans to spend the evening doing some corrective haircoloring (Miss Clairol and I had a bit of a tiff earlier in the day), while parked on the couch eating junk food and watching a slew of films.

All was going well. I was dressed like a lumberjack in my I-don't-care-what-crap-gets-on-this-thing flannel, my head was covered in purple slime and topped with a plastic bag, and I was watching In Good Company. I couldn't have been happier.

All that ended when Davis came in and announced that two acquaintances had just arrived. Despite my pleas to tell them it was not a good time and that they should just go away, he gregariously invited them in. I did what any sensible person in my situation would do. I ran and hid in the bathroom. For what seemed like an eternity. Not only was my fine mood dampened (to put it mildly), but I ended up putting an end to my hair remedy about an hour too early.
When I awoke the following day with my still-peachy head of hair, I swore that correctivus- interruptus would not happen again. Davis was away at work (unable to let the marauding hordes in, should they arrive), so I locked the doors, pulled down the shades and donned the purple slime once again, this time while wearing my yellow and red flowered flannel pjs.
Nothing would stop me this time!
I was about half an hour into the coloring session when I heard sort of a clanging. I opted for the time-tested ignore-it-and-it-will-go-away approach. When it happened a couple more times, I readied myself to kick some rabbit butt (who else would be causing such a noise?). However, when I peered out of my studio they were both quietly sitting side by side under the Christmas tree.
The clanging happened again. This time I thought it sounded like it was coming from the basement. I went to the top of the cellar stairs and called out a nervous "Hello?......" When no burglar answered back, I ventured down the stairs wondering what rabid creature was lurking in the depths. This was what I found:

Poor little guy. He was pretty calm about it all, although I think he would have preferred it if I hadn't brought out the camera. It's thought that he fell down the chimney (he's like Santa - only he's rather late and a bird). All of the windows down there were sealed from the outside, and since I couldn't very well send him back out the way he came, I was in a bit of a quandary. Have I mentioned how ridiculous I looked? I finally decided that his well being came before my fears of humiliating myself in front of the neighbors. I tucked my pjs into my rubber boots, put on a long coat and an expendable hat and went out into the yard wielding a drill. I like to think I pulled off the look with a certain panache.
Neighbors and passers-by seemed to instinctively fear me, so I wasn't forced to engage in any chit chat while on my mission of mercy. It took a bit of window wrangling, but the bird was eventually set free. I'm happy to say that it all ended well. Except for my hair, which still looks like crap.

Happy Holidays from the Darling family!

2006-12-24T00:46:00.000-05:00

Holiday Haiku*

2006-12-22T09:10:00.000-05:00

I liked Christmas best
when Santa did all the work.
Is it over yet?

I hate feeling like I'm too busy to really enjoy the season. I keep putting notes in the suggestion box saying that Christmas should really be scheduled for February when I have time for it, but so far no response.
The busyness is extra aggravating when I have blog fodder but no time to write the post. Oh well, 'tis the season and that. Hopefully holiday tales after the 25th aren't as repellent as the thought of eating more turkey after Thanksgiving, because that's when I'll probably manage to write about them.
I have to work through the 23rd, but after 5:00 on Saturday I plan on many hours of mangling Christmas songs and watching Rankin/Bass holiday specials as I wrap presents and wallow in the spirit of the season.
Happy Holidays everyone!

*sponsored by Jungle Dream Pagoda

edited to add:

1) The above picture shows the fabulous Snow Miser and his minions from the 1974 Rankin/Bass Christmas special. YouTube has a clip of his song and dance number here.

2) Believe it or not, my tree STILL isn't fully decorated. It has lights and strung balls, and I have to say it does look kind of awesome, but without the sentimental ornaments it doesn't seem complete. We'll see about a photograph, but I'm not promising anything. Mary did such a great job with her tree that I'm suffering from performance anxiety.

Miracle on Pleasant Street (part II)

2006-12-13T11:51:00.000-05:00

Previously on Petula Darling:
We learned that Petula has a long history of becoming overwrought while gathering the annual Christmas tree. She also has an annoying tendency to sing narcissistic rewrites of songs. A pledge was made stating that she will never go out tree plucking again, but, alas, no such promise was made about the singing.

So what were we going to do about the following Christmas? To be honest, I was just planning on going to one of those makeshift tree stands that get set up in supermarket parking lots. Maine is known as "The Pine Tree State", so fake trees are something of an anathema. Then lo and behold...

It was little after Christmas last year; I was siting on the couch gazing at our less-than-spectacular looking tree. I decided to put off doing any post-holiday cleanup in favor of remaining on my butt and surfing the internet. Ahh, excellent, the holiday aprons were finally up over at Tie One On, so I settled down for a long winter's procrastination. And look at what I found:

Mary, from My House is Cuter Than Yours, had submitted this amazing photo of her handmade apron. Not only was I bowled over by her incredible photo-styling (and, of course, the great apron), but look at that tree! I had never seen such a fabulous thing. After adding her blog to my bookmarks and perusing its archives (something I highly recommend - so much kitschy goodness!), I set out to find a tree like that.
I googled every combination of terms I could think of (fake trees, artificial trees, vintage trees, feather trees, fluffy fabulous white trees) for much of the year, but I couldn't find anything like it. I came to the conclusion that it was one of her amazing vintage finds, and, since there were probably only three of them left in existence, I should just give up the dream. I decided to write a post about my failed quest, and I wrote to her asking for permission to use the photo. "The white tree?" she asked. "That tree is from Kmart."
Ha! Turns out it's from the Martha Stewart collection and it's called a "Snowbird Mountain Tree" (I will admit that's a term that I neglected to use in my googling). I renewed my quest with great fervor. Kmart was sold out, so I turned to eBay. Once again, the online auction house came to my rescue - I won an auction for one and it just arrived. Yay!

Miracle on Pleasant Street (part I)

2006-12-10T22:26:00.000-05:00

FADE IN:
Ext. Tree Farm - Midday - Winter 1978

A young Petula (nee Stacy) intently studies a potential Christmas tree while her family does embarrassing stuff on the periphery. She pulls out her Bonne Bell Lip Smacker(watermelon flavored) and applies it, as she concludes that the tree before her is indeed perfect.

Stacy: Oh Mummy! Daddy! Precious little brother of mine! Come quick, for I have found the perfect tree.

The family trudges over at a rate that's so slow they'll be lucky to arrive before New Year's.

Mother (in a voice that is clearly meant to be vexing): No sweetheart, that one is too large. Our ceiling is ten feet high, and that tree is easily fifteen feet tall. How about this nice one over here?

Stacy (reasonably): Your tree is stupid and ugly. I hate it-I hate it-I hate it.

The Lip Smacker-induced headache kicks in. Stacy starts to cry.

EXT. - A Bucolic Snow Covered Wood - Winter 2005

Stacy, having grown into a stunningly attractive woman, is walking into the woods with her husband to cut down a Christmas tree. She's wearing a handknit hat with bells that jingle as she walks, and she's aglow with holiday cheer.

Stacy (singing): Here comes Stacy Claus, here comes Stacy Claus, right down Stacy Claus lane...
Stacy (clearly unable to come up with any more lyrics): Here comes Stacy Claus, here comes Stacy Claus, right down Stacy Claus lane...

After fourteen choruses of this they come upon a clearing and look around. And then they continue on further because all of the trees look like crap. This happens three times.

Davis: Here's one that's not too bad.
Stacy: What? Do I look like Charlie Brown? That's a pine-scented twig.
Davis: Sigh.

More trudging.

Stacy: Hey - how about this one? I think it's perfect!
Davis: Sweetheart, that one is too large. Our ceiling is ten feet high, and that tree is easily fifteen feet tall. How about this nice one over here?
Stacy (reasonably): Your tree is stupid and ugly. But I am mature now and we can discuss a compromise.

Negotiations ensue.
They go with a fourteen foot tree that Stacy insists will fit, despite the obvious fact that it won't. The ever-handy Davis pulls out his trusty saw and cuts down the tree. He takes the trunk and the lead as they set out for the return trip.

Stacy (whining): My hands are cold.
Stacy (whining): My feet are numb.
Stacy (whining): Hey, this stupid tree is making it so I can't see where I'm walking.
Stacy (whining): Are we almost there?
Davis: Sigh.
They reach a small stream and start to carry the tree over a beaver dam.

Stacy: Have I mentioned that I'm freezing? Hey - slow down!

Stacy's foot slips through the dam and plunges into the icy water. The hypothermia kicks in. Stacy starts to cry.

INT. - Living Room - Later That Day

Stacy and Davis are on the couch eating Drake Funny Bones in an attempt to recover from the events of the day.

Stacy and Davis (in harmony): Let's never cut our own Christmas tree ever again.*

END PART I

Voiceover: Tune in next time to see what our plucky heroine is going to do for Christmas 2006.

*Ok, technically, Davis may have said something more along the lines of, "Maybe you should stay home and I'll just get the tree myself next year." But there's really no need to nitpick.

Audio Entertainment

2006-12-09T00:39:00.000-05:00

I was listening to NPR a couple of days ago, and they had a very funny interview with Daniel Handler/Lemony Snicket (and a few words from Stephin Merritt) to promote the release of "The Tragic Treasury", an album intended to go along with The Series of Unfortunate Events. The music is by The Gothic Archies (basically an offshoot of the fabulously postmodern Magnetic Fields).
Now I can't stop singing, "Run, run, run, run, run, run, run, run, or Die, die, die, die, die, die, die, die" over and over to myself. It's strangely catchy. I stopped myself mid-drone from singing it to one of the bunnies, as that just seemed so very wrong.

Another little gem gleaned from NPR this week was a story about the lonely hearts column in the London Review of Books. The ads are far more entertaining than the usual I-like-sunsets-and-walks-on-the-beach variety. My favorite one starts out: "I like my women the way I like my kebab. Found by surprise after a drunken night out, and covered in too much tahini. "
If I weren't married...

Zippy the Pinhole (camera)

2006-12-08T13:01:00.000-05:00

My newfound love of lentographs has reminded me of my old love, pinhole photography.
I was never a big fan of the popular oatmeal-canister camera, due to its being a pain in the ass and darkroom-dependant, so I constructed a variety of pinhole cameras from old Polaroid cameras. The advantages of the Polaroid-pinhole-cam were many: no need for a darkroom, you know whether you got a decent exposure within minutes , you can take 10 pictures at a time without the need for a light-safe bag, and you can work in color.
In bright daylight, you can get an image with Polaroid's typical retro-looking colors. However, the longer you need to expose the image for, the wonkier the colors get.
You may be wondering why anyone would want to do pinhole photography, since it's not like it's hard to get a regular lensed camera. Well, the cool thing about a pinhole lens is that the aperture is so teeny tiny that it gives you an almost unlimited focal range (something inches from your camera will be just as in-focus as something 20 yards away). If you're willing to do some math, it's possible to calculate the optimal pinhole size for your camera which will allow you to take incredibly sharp pictures. I do have one that can take near-perfect photos, but I seem to have misplaced my most favoritest image from it, so I'm showing you these less-spectacularly focused ones instead.
The drawback to Polaroid photography is that it's pretty expensive, and the difficulty in judging pinhole exposure time means you often need to take numerous practice shots to get one decent one. I haven't taken any pinhole pix in about 5 years, but my dream is now to have my very own digital pinhole camera. This is really easy to do if you have a camera that allows you to swap out the lenses (it doesn't hurt the camera at all), but I don't have one like that. So now I've taken to contemplating various camera hacks that could work on more basic digital cameras.

I'm especially enjoying gazing at the Maine summer shots below (featuring a real Maine outhouse), since the view out my window today is of a sudden dump of snow, and I reeeaaaalllly don't feel like going out and shoveling.