Craftsy

Are you a fan of Craftsy? I’ve spent enough time on there to warrant the full expression: fanatic.

I’m sure I’ve mentioned my lust for learning: the multiple 4-year degrees that I dragged out to 6 or 8 years just for the joy of taking classes, the online writing courses, the annual art retreat… those were the days. Unfortunately, education is exceedingly expensive, and taking classes just for fun has gone beyond the reach of my fixed income.

 

Thankfully I can afford Craftsy. As you can see from my course list, I’ve gone a bit overboard in signups. Mainly because they keep having sales!

 

I've managed a bit of weird, wobbly crochet, thanks to talented instructors Vickie Howell and Linda Permann.  

I know, I said I did not need any new hobbies! I was wrong. Between crochet and quilting, I’ve had a nice break from sewing.

 

Katrina

The Cobbler’s Children Go Unshod

Doctors make terrible patients and carpenters never fix their own homes. These are ridiculous generalizations that I personally know to be untrue, but I’m bringing them up in the hope of explaining why I, as a CPA with years of experience, postpone the chore of tax preparation until April. When I finally sit down to do what should be a straightforward task, I thrash through it, screaming and crying as though it were a medieval torture.
 

the original Form 1040, from 1913

Anyway, for the past week, I’ve been sitting at my desk, working on taxes.

Ha, ha. Just kidding. For the past week, while I wallowed in self-pity and pretended to do tax stuff, I was actually finishing the jeans I started in February.

 

I also spent hours looking out the window at the spent winter vegetables that need to be composted, poking around on Pinterest, reading (Little Heathens by Mildred Armstrong Kalish), and doing pretty much anything other than taxes.

 

I hope you were all clever enough to get your taxes done early and/or by someone else.

Katrina

Must Watch TV

I’ve fallen in love with Bomb Girls, only to learn that there are only six episodes! Although the program was renewed for a second season, production has just begun, and there's no telling when the new episodes will be shown in Canada, much less here in the US.

This Canadian show is set in 1941 Toronto, where women have taken over the work of building bombs at a factory since most of the men have gone to fight in WWII.  

Waiting for their shift at the factory

Although I was drawn to the show by the promise of 1940s wardrobes and hairstyles, music, dance and period lingo, I was immediately impressed by the presentation of daily life for women of the time. Yes, it is somewhat glamorized for television, but the grim reality is there too.

My almost-twin, Meg Tilly (we were born 24 days and 400 miles apart) as the stern matron

Women dealt with shortages of food, toiletries, clothing and every other item we take for granted, and they were essentially single mothers raising their children. They lived under a constant burden of fear for their husbands and sons who could die far away. At the same time, they went into unfamiliar workplaces where they learned technical skills, performed dangerous jobs, and kept manufacturing going throughout the war. Through all of it, they were subjected to mean-spirited chauvinism by the male bosses and harrassed and undermined by the few male coworkers. Moments of joy came from family time, camaraderie with their coworkers, and the occasional flirtation with soldiers at the local pub.

the dresses!

The wardrobe designer did extensive research in the Canadian archives, and the GlobalTV website has some very nice photos of women at work and in everyday life during the war years. Yes, the wardrobe is fantastic. Every time I watch an episode show I jump and twitch with each scene change, coveting the incredible dresses and blouses. I’ve already got a mental list of styles I want to recreate.

All photos from Reelz channel

 

 

 

 

Bomb Girls is definitely worth watching if it comes to one of your television channels or if you find it on DVD (I don't know if it is available yet).

Katrina

Project Runway Hunger Games

I watched the Hunger Games movie and several episodes of Project Runway in quick succession last week, so it’s no surprise that I had a dream in which I was selected by lottery to participate involuntarily in a Project Runway-like design competition. In my dream we did not have to kill each other, but we might as well have, since the regimentation of the “games” pretty much squashed all the joy out of the creative process.  

Hunger Games source

Which, if you think about it, is what Project Runway does anyway. Sixteen creative personalities are thrown together in a fishbowl, with various unnatural pressures applied, to see what they will do. Who will explode in a rage? Who will break down in a sobbing confession? Who will be rushed to the hospital?  Who will break their contract and disappear in the middle of the night? I don’t think a single one of the contestants enjoys designing clothes while they are on the show. They are just trying to survive.


Project Runway source

I can’t stand Project Runway’s focus on the arguing and sniveling among competitors when all I really want to see is how they come up with a design, and how they drape it, cut it, sew it, and fit it. I guess the producers don’t think that’s good entertainment. Sometimes I just skip the first half of the show and watch the finished looks go down the runway. 

could be either Project Runway or Hunger Games?

Generally I avoid reality TV, since it seems to have degenerated from an interesting and educational concept to a spectacle in which people are subjected to pain, fear, or humiliation for the viewers’ enjoyment. We’re not that far away from Hunger Games. Is this really what the majority of viewers are interested in? I don’t want to believe it.

Maybe there are still some positive, interesting reality shows out there and I just don’t know about them. I do like shows about history, science, etc, pretty much anything where people aren’t competing. So I guess it’s the competition and the associated viciousness that I can’t stand to watch.

Are there any reality television programs out there that you find interesting or enjoyable?

Katrina

It Seems Like Forever

Wow! I was only away from blogotopia for ten days? It seemed like a month, at least.

It all started when I made a very stupid mistake with one of my medications. I miscalculated my remaining doses, ran out completely, and had to wait more than a week for delivery of more pills. Has this ever happened to you? With hindsight it appears that I am a moron, an idiot, the stupidest person in the world – pick your description – but at the time I was sure that my prescription service would deliver in a day or two, based on past experience. Well, not any more. It took nine business days.

Of all things, I had to pick an anti-anxiety medication to learn this lesson on. Ironically, I wasn’t even taking it for anxiety, but if you ever want anxiety, try undergoing the sudden withdrawal symptoms. This is an experience like nothing else. I was dizzy, twitchy, irritable and weepy. I hallucinated big black shadows moving around and loud crashing noises right next to me. Electric currents buzzed through my head (this is so common it even has a name: “brain zaps”). Five pounds of my body weight mysteriously disappeared. Don’t worry, they came right back. J

Seriously, do not run out of your prescription medication. It is not fun, plus it can be dangerous. I monitored my symptoms and made sure I didn’t experience anything that was actually life-threatening. (Also the Piemaker was hovering constantly, which was mostly aggravating but did result in a delicious sweet-onion quiche and a new twist on Grasshopper pie. Pics later.)  I did finally receive the medication, restarted my daily dosage and am feeling pretty “normal.”

So with all of that, the beginning of my non-blogging week was a bit dull since my vision and my coordination were way off. I stayed far away from sharp objects and heavy equipment, but read some books and watched lots of TV.

I finished a fun series of books by David Rosenfelt about a defense attorney who gets involved in solving murders.   

(first in the series)

The main character is very funny, the writing is clever, and there are several nice dogs who feature prominently in the stories.

I also read an amazing book called Tales of an African Vet by Dr. Roy Aronson.  

Aronson worked in clinics, zoos, and in the field in South Africa and other countries for twenty-five years, and you get the sense that the stories he shares in this book are just a small fraction of his amazing experiences. Great book, worth reading just for the bit on the rhino that knocked its horn off.

A few of my favorite series are back on television, but they’re not making me too happy right now. First, there’s True Blood, which I simply adored in its first season, loved in the second season, and since then have just been waiting for it to return to its former glory.

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I admire Alan Ball’s genius and the way he recreates our world in TB, but either his writers have lost their spark or I’m getting jaded or both. I just haven’t felt very inspired by either the existing characters’ storylines (completely different from the originals in the Sookie Stackhouse books) or the endless parade of new characters in the last couple of seasons. Still, Anna Paquin remains my greatest girl crush of all time so I will keep watching this program for as long as it is on.

Next is The Closer, and I swear my heart rate actually goes up whenever I see one of those “THREE. SHOWS. LEFT.” commercials on TNT. (Only two after tonight!)

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I know it’s silly to get stressed out over a television program, but I am scared for Assistant Chief Brenda Leigh Johnson of the LAPD.

I don’t know whether she is headed for some sort of breakdown, or if she is putting on one of her performances in order to take down a serial murderer, but the whole thing is freaking me out. And obviously we know that in three weeks she will be gone, so something momentous is going to happen.

One of the things that viewers of The Closer will miss forever and ever is the magnificent vintage wardrobe, brought to us courtesy of Greg LaVoi. The man has a historian’s love of clothing, an insider’s knowledge of where to get the best of everything old and new in LA, and on this show, he fully utilizes his opportunity to see magnificent vintage suits and dresses in action on the gorgeous Kyra Sedgwick.


A sample of the vintage delights, source

Mr. LaVoi blogged the wardrobe planning for each episode. There are fascinating insights into how the storyline feeds into his costuming decisions, and how the clothes in turn help the actors develop their characters.

Finally, there is Breaking Bad. 



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This is another program that had me enthralled during the first couple of seasons. The cinematography (does anyone still use that word?) was incredible, with shots so long you had to look away from the discomfort of the actors, cuts so fast you could barely follow the action, scenes composed with the balance and light of a Renaissance painting, and stark, angry shots of sheer ugliness.

The story was like an ongoing ethics argument – what would you do or not do to protect yourself or your family in dire circumstances? The characters and their actions were believable, and you could understand their “bad” behavior even while disagreeing with it.

Then at some point the tone shifted, and now the characters seem to be bad for no good reason, and I can’t identify or sympathize with anyone. I know, that’s the whole plan of creator Vince Gilligan, and I’m sure he’s going somewhere with this. Still, it is a curse of my personality type that I always need to know why, why, WHY people do things. Even if they are only TV characters.

That was quite a lot of entertainment, so when the freakish drug withdrawal symptoms dissipated somewhat, I ventured back into my creative space and decided to catch up on a few things. I did some pattern archiving, had a conniption fit at the vegetable garden and pulled out the mostly dead plants, and worked through a couple of sewing remakes and repairs. I’ll share all that in some of my upcoming posts!

In the meantime, I’m going to start catching up with all of you, and see what’s been happening out there.

Katrina