Sunday, November 29, 2009

WIP: Redwork portrait of David Attenborough

Here it is after 45 minutes:

I'm doing his hair in split stitch using six strands of floss.

Close-up of the face
Here is the photo I used. My original choice was this one of him with a frog, since he looked particularly smiley and kindly (and duh, he had a frog!!) but the Photoshop process reduced the frog to an unidentifiable lump of lines.

If this thing turns out well, it will thrill me to the marrow!

Be seeing you.
--Sylvie

Friday, November 27, 2009

Birdwatching in Britain

  • I just read an article, in the November 22, 2009 issue of The Observer, on how birdwatching is becoming even more popular in Britain. The article includes interviews with a number of birdwatchers, including some famous ones. Alison Steadman's enthusiasm is so genuine and may I say, adorable. And, it was nice to hear about another black birder, David Lindo.
  • Mackenzie Crook, of The BBC's The Office, is a birder (and a nature-lover in general). He bought a woodland instead of a Ferrari. See this article from the Winter 2008 issue of Tweet, from the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds.

Monday, November 23, 2009

Felt Crow


I made this felt crow a few months ago. I used one of my photos of a crow as the pattern. It is made of 100% postconsumer content craft felt, and its back is gray.

I used silver thread to make its bill snazzier.

Good night,
Sylvie

Wednesday, November 11, 2009

Pure Nerd

Here are the results from my The Nerd? Geek? or Dork? Test. Well, I'm a bit of all of the above, but since I "scored better than half in Nerd" (65% Nerd, 26% Geek, 43% Dork; obviously, this isn't additive), I earned the title of

Pure Nerd.


The site provides the following definitions:

A Nerd is someone who is passionate about learning/being smart/academia.
A Geek is someone who is passionate about some particular area or subject, often an obscure or difficult one.
A Dork is someone who has difficulty with common social expectations/interactions.

Be seeing you.

Monday, November 9, 2009

Sugar

Gum: Bazooka Joe has new characters, including a nerdy black kid who likes reptiles! When you get to the Bazooka site, click on "Comics."

Cookies: We had Tim Tams (Arnott's) in Australia (one of our tour leaders loves chocolate, sugar, and fat, and he loves to share, so each day on the bus he gave us soda and cookies). I saw them at the grocery store on Sunday; the American version is made by Pepperidge Farms, not Arnott's, and I found a detailed comparison of the two versions here.

Sunday, November 1, 2009

Back from Australia, or I heart Solo

We returned from Australia (New South Wales and Queensland) on Friday, and I'm not sure if I'm over the jet lag yet. We took a nap on Friday afternoon, and at about 7:30 that night, my husband woke up and microwaved some burritos for us; after eating, we went back to sleep and slept for 13 hours straight.

Because of my collapsed lung, I didn't know if I would be able to go, but one week before we left, I got the go-ahead from my doctor. Flying with a collapsed lung is a very dangerous thing to do, but mine had "fully resolved." After an incident-free 15-hour flight there, I felt like I really was in the clear.


Highlights include about 300 species of birds (most of them new), including Birds of Paradise, Bower Birds (and their bowers!!!),
Cassowaries, Emus, rainbow-colored everybodies, and pied everybodies; platypuses, koalas, wallabies, kangaroos, bandicoots, dragons (forest and water), battling monitor lizards (goanas), green sea turtles, and the rainforest. I might have seen a flying fish. I also fell in love with lemon squash, specifically Solo, the thirst crusher. I must find something like it here.

My husband and I caught a cold a few days into the trip, but the wildlife and landscapes were great distractions from the pounding sinus headache and coughing (I was constantly afraid that I would cough at the wrong moment and scare away some much-desired bird). Our tour group included 12 participants and 2 leaders, and 6 people came down with the cold.

I took an enormous quantity of crappy photos (the rainforest is dark).

My biggest disappointment is that the pelagic trip was canceled because of bad weather, and we could have seen heaps of albatrosses (one of my favorite groups of birds). We'll just have to go back :-) And, I really want to see flocks of wild budgies, and they are found west of where we were on this trip.

OK, enough of the stream of consciousness.

Good night,
Sylvie