Bathingsuit Body by October?

Probably not. But, it would be nice to loose a few pounds before our impending vacation. Fortunately, my fantastic fiance ordered an exercise bike from Amazon over the weekend (we've been looking at them for almost a year!) and I'm putting it to use already.

It's sweet.

I read this book a few years ago, where the girl, who incidentally was a witch, tracked her miles on an exercise bike and plotted them on a map so that she could pretend she was biking across the country. I don't really remember the particulars of the book, but that detail struck me as a good idea. I rode for half an hour after work last night and half an hour this morning. I'm heading west right now, but I might retrack it toward the south and see how close I can get to Florida before we go there for real in October. As it stands though, I'm 16 miles out already! Fun stuff!

I like how Google maps lets you create your own maps. I can even add a new line for each day and save it as the date to show progress. Super neato, as long as doesn't decide to crash my Vista "infested" laptop. Oh, and I can also play DS or read or knit while I ride, which is even more awesomeness. I played Tetris both times so far, and found that when the pressure is on, I pedal faster. I need a life.

Back at it

I've been buying a lot more crafting crap than I've been using lately. BUT! I have been getting some things done...

I made this necklace (again) with a little twist. I added green pearls. I like it, but I think the first one is my favorite.


I put this necklace together tonight for the third time, and I think I finally like how it looks. That's how it usually goes for me - it takes a few tries to come up with something I like.


This silly little bracelet is something I made with some beads that came in a kit. I think I'll give it to my cousin.


Finally, Nick and I looked at chain mail at the Irish Fest a couple of weeks ago and decided it's pretty cool, so I checked out this book from the library, ordered the jump rings and made this:

It's an anklet, which I may never wear, but it was a lot of fun to make and I'm definitely going to try some harder chain mail projects soon. We're even talking about winding our own rings which would be cool, but I'll just add it to the ever growing list of things I want to do.

(On my rough looking leg, with the handsome Simon cat looking on)

Oh yeah, and I made some quick stitch counters too.

I found a bunch of the rings at Big Lots for a super good deal, so I have enough to make a few sets. It's an easy task, when I'm in the mood :)

Submersed

There's something really cool going on out there, in the world of publishing/podcasting/social networking. I think it's probably the way entertainment is moving, in a big way, and it both thrills and frightens me.

I know that movies and video games have been using various mediums to promote their work for a pretty long time now (websites for fictitious companies like Lacuna Inc. and The Hanso Corporation, "leaked" video footage, fan sites on Facebook, fake television commercials, even messages in bottles!). It helps to draw users in and make them feel like part of the experience.

Now, some of my favorite podcasters are taking this approach even further, creating whole online personalities, side stories and interactive contests and games to immerse their listeners or readers even deeper into the worlds of their fiction. I recently finished J. C. Hutchin's "Personal Effects: Dark Arts", which is the journal of an art therapist working on a very dark and paranormal case. The book comes with "personal effects" (death certificates, photos, IDs) and is laced with websites and phone numbers that provide more meat to the printed story. The lengths that Hutchin's has gone to to create a very real-feeling world for his characters and story are amazing and create an entirely new entertainment experience.

Phil Rossi's "Harvey" is a podcast only novel that began in early July. This is Rossi's second full length podcast novel. His first, "Crescent", went to print earlier this summer and is a must read for any horror/science fiction lover out there. In "Harvey", Phil is also taking interactive universe approach. He has created websites, twitter accounts and even music files to correspond with the story. The amount of energy and creativity being put in to this work is phenomenal. I find it all very interesting and exciting, but also a little troubling.

While these fake websites and social networking accounts do create a very "real" experience for the reader or listener, I have to wonder about the integrity of putting all this fake information out on the internet with no disclaimer. I know that most people today understand that the internet is FULL of bogus information and we usually monitor and judge what we read before taking it as fact. But what about PixelVixen707, one of Hutchin’s characters, who hosts a gaming blog and also posts articles on Suicide Girls? Is it misleading for these authors to create characters and interact with people outside of their fiction? I suppose that as long as the information posted is true, it’s not really hurting anyone and I also know that people make up fake accounts all of the time, but there’s just something about it that makes me feel a little bit uneasy. This doesn’t mean that I’m going to stop following these kinds of projects. I still think they’re freaking awesome. I just worry more about being had by the internet, being tricked into thinking something is real when it’s not. On guard.

Gifts for birthdays (and for me!)

I've been wanting to make this necklace for a while now. In fact, I bought the pearls at a thrift store some time last summer, with something like this in mind. So, when my pearl loving friend's birthday came around this year, I knew just what to make!

The set...


Necklace detail


Earrings.

Also noticed that the lighting/my camera suck for these. Bummer.

And here's what I made for myself:

They all look much better in real life. :)

Finally, just because... my future sister-in-law showed me some sweet stitch counters she got on Etsy, and the obvious dawned on me, and I happened to have an adorable glass bead I'd been holding on to for no particular reason, and because I'd been using a small piece of blue yarn to mark my stitcues instead, and because... oh, bother... I made these:

(gotta start taking nicer photos)

Mmm baby!

Cupcakes! For Easter, my friend and I attempted to make Bakerella's super sweet cake balls. We failed pretty miserably (baking + drinking = ugly baked goods). They were still tasty, but not cute by any stretch of the imagination. A couple of weeks ago, I got ambitious again and decided to try cupcake bites instead. They basically consist of cake & icing, mashed up and then covered in chocolate, to look like miniature cupcakes. Sugary, sweet and yummy! Four hours of baking, melting, decorating, swearing, and washing my fingers after licking them later, I wound up with these little guys...

Tiny!

Next time, I will buy more chocolate molds (I had to make 11 at a time!) and, for sure, I'm enlisting help!

Mother's Day

I made a couple of bracelets for Mother's Day. I also exceeded my Flickr account with Nantucket photos... sooo... here are the two pictures I managed to squeeze in there!


Blue rose bracelet and earrings for Nick's momma


For Grandma McG, "Inspire" bracelet


"Wish" bracelet for Grandma S

Landscapes

Because my friend Rach is a science nerd, and because she's led camps and participated in research and is apparently a sponge for knowledge, she was able to give me a very comprehensive tour of the island of Nantucket. On the afternoon that I arrived, the sun was trying to shine through the clouds and the weather wasn't terrible, so we dropped my bags off at the house (more on that later), and headed out to see some sights.

It's kind of hard to tell in the pictures that I took - looking back at them it seems like the entire landscape is brown, gray and occasionally blue - but as we were driving around, it felt like every direction I looked, something different was taking place.



This is the view toward town, from the site of the "Oldest House" - the longest inhabited home (now owned by the Nantucket Historical Society)


And, here is the Oldest House. I guess they give tours in the summer, but I had to make due with peeking in the windows.


Here are some of the homes? Hotels? Places to stay on the island. I had a hard time telling buildings apart, as the majority of them are finished in those cedar shingles.


I was anxious to get down to the beach, but this was too pretty not to snap.

We walked along the beach on the west side of the island. There, the water was pretty still and the sand was littered with shells. Rachel gave me a guide to the shells of the island and I filled my pockets with a few (I should probably bleach those soon... my carry on bag probably smells pretty bad). Next, she drove me to the eastern facing side of the island, where the beach was soft sand and the waves were very choppy. It was also considerably colder. I found it amazing that such a short distance could yield such different climates.

Rachel explained to me that the island is always changing. It was created by the glaciers and is essentially a big pile of sand and rock. She said that a couple of years ago, two homes on this beach were washed away after a big storm.

To round out my tour of the island, we headed out to Siasconset so that I could see the pretty homes and beaches there.


Pretty, beach facing homes that may or may not still be there in a couple of years.


"Evil cliff" that is threatening homes in previous image (interesting politics).


We stopped off to see the Sankaty Lighthouse before heading back to the house to get ready for dinner.