What someone did with one of my calendars. Wowza.

Been a while since I did a Sunday-Somplace-Else.  I happened to see a few visits to my blog from a site I had never encountered before.  I decided to follow the link, as I often do, and was totally blown away by her project.  I just love it.  To be fair, my calendar is only a VERY small part of it, and I would encourage you to visit the site to see all the photos cause it is well worth it.

Isn’t that just fabulous? I have to say I love the Translate function.  It tells me the blog title is Smile.Live.Scrap and I loved everything I saw.  Not quite tutorials, but total eye candy for sure.

If you are inspired, do pop to her blog before you Pin the image.

French Project Life Printables – sort of an SSE post

This is a Sunday-Someplace-Else post with a twist.

I wish I could remember exactly how this came about but I can’t.  I think Opsite linked to my French calendar printables and I emailed her or commented back to ask if they were really OK and she got back to ME, and we chatted, and eventually decided it might be fun to work together.  She would do the translating of the text on some of my printables and I would re-do them and offer French versions. Apparently there aren’t a lot of people doing FREE French language printables, although there are some offered for sale.

It has been a really interesting process.  Some things just DO NOT translate at all – the classic (in the USA anyway) GOT MILK? ads have never been seen there, so Got Yarn? on one of my printables, with a little crochet image just didn’t work.  From the same set, Knit One Purl One translates, not exactly, but in the same spirit, to Une maille à l’endroit, Une maille à l’envers.  That is a LOT more words.  And don’t even get me started on the accents!  90% of the fonts I use are freebies, often pretty quirky ones, and often not made to the same standard as a commercial font.  They don’t even HAVE accented characters, so I have to fake it, sometimes pretty creatively, using little bits of letters or characters from different fonts.

Thank goodness she offered a translation service.  Honestly, I was on edge for days after tossing those French calendars out there.  And it could have all gone horribly wrong.  Let me share with you a little exchange we had over a quilting printable:

Quilt in french is translated to patchwork. …   I decided to change it as “born to sew” which in french translate as “née pour coudre.”  But it is more elegant to put “couturière née” because it means that you love it and you really have raw talent for it.

Eek. All those accents! I suggested an alternative that the BING translator gave me, COUETTE, and paired it with a word I did know, AMOUR as in Love.

As for quilt means couette, this is also true but couette as comforter. And for the translation “amour à couette” it literally means “my lover with pigtails”…

LOL!  Can you see the pitfalls?

Anyway, I will add a bit of a bio for Opsite, probably with the next set of printables.  I am not abandoning English ones, don’t worry.  But HERE is a set of French translations of my Quote/Unquote printables. I hope they are useful.

If you DO find them useful, please let me know.

I have also been unable to maintain my internet connection for more than about 5 minutes at a time, since Thursday.  All the second engineer was able to do is tell me that the person who told my ISP that the faulty cable had been replaced was…let me be generous here….”mistaken” when they said the work was complete.  I have ALWAYS had issues with the connection when it rains. It rained.  I guess it has dried out a bit now and the connection is better.  Not GOOD, but better – I managed about 2 hours in a block a couple of times.  At the moment I have been connected for 42 minutes! With the start of a new workday tomorrow I will hope to get some more info.  My ISP said:

I have been unable to confirm when the cable replace will happen so far although have been advised it should happen within the next 7 days.

There seem to be some system issues that are preventing the case from progressing properly, which is why it is proving difficult to get updates.

I have raised the level of escalation once again and will relay any further information as and when it is given to me.

{sigh}  Sorry if I seem to have disappeared.  I’m hoping it will all get back to normal soon.

Sunday SOMEONE ELSE

Hello all!  Still have too much to do to get DS off back to Uni.  His birthday today.  22.  How did that happen?

Anyway, I want to say thanks to all my new followers.  The calendars seem to be the draw.  And with that in mind, I want to share something I got via email.  Tina, in Germany, found the German language calendars and created this little project.  I thought it was a real outside-the-box version.  As you can see, the Project Life printable I made is there on the right.  But let me share her words (with permission granted, of course)

…

I followed your tutorial for the calendar stand and took a wire spiral which I recycled from an old calender to hold my sheets…then I cut your monthly sheets and so I had the size for my months and days.

I stamped and heat embossed the name of every month and the daily numbers and then I had a little fun with my stampin’ up stamps and inks…

I think it turned out very well and I wanted to let you know, that all your work is so amazing and helpful and thank you very much for your printables!

I just thought it was such a cute idea!  You could even make one of the sections grid or lined paper, for adding appointments or birthdays.  Maybe make one section photos or monthly affirmations or meditations or Bible quotes, if that is your thing. There are just so many ways you could change-up the basic idea to suit you.  I just love it when people share their projects with me and when they allow ME to share it, so much the better.  Thank you for that, Tina. I love it and may have to make one for myself!

Normal service will resume soon.  Life has to get back to normal sometime, doesn’t it?

Kitchener stitch? HA! A Sunday-someplace-else

Well, it has been AGES since I did a Sunday-someplace-else post, where I blog about something I found elsewhere that I loved, for one reason or another.  Blogging has been tricky recently, what with the in-laws extended visit, now DDs 18th just gone, and with Thanksgiving and Christmas around the corner, and with me trying to learn something new (at the expense of a whole pile of WIPs/UFOs.) But I found something that made me so happy I could squeal.

Remember that I made that pair of socks? the ones I quite casually said had languished, totally complete for four years except for the grafting of ONE of the toes?  And remember how it actually turned out to have been more like seven years, based on the layout I had done for SI? Clearly I am a woman who does not like the grafting of toes.  I just struggle to wrap my head around it.  But then I found THIS short video, which shows how to KNIT the toes closed rather than sewing them.  And I was sceptical, frankly, but by god IT WORKS.

OK, so I am still chanting in my head purl front pull slide, knit front pull leave … knit back pull slide, purl back pull leave... but really, the toe is a thing of beauty.  My photos of it are rubbish, but I would say if you knit and if you hate grafting the toe of socks, give this a go.  Really.  I will try to get a good shot of both toes once sock two is done. I got the whole ribbing and a dozen rows done in the car to and from skating this AM so I am well on my way. I still have the second of the striped socks to finish, now I have the circular needle I needed, and I have two using the cheap Tiger yarn on another circular and got the ribbing on those well underway.  SOMEONE might be getting handknit socks for Christmas, once I feel confident in both the method (on circulars, yes, but one long one, two at a time? or two circulars, two at a time?) and the pattern and the weight (LOVE the thick worsted weight ones on 3mm needles but the find sock yarn ones are more reasonable in shoes…

Next item to research is blocking of socks – do I have to buy a sock-blocker or is there a home-made solution?

Happy half-term!

Oh and sorry to my WOYWW mates – I am determined to do my visits tomorrow!

Sunday-someplace-else – really SOMETHING else

I just had to share this.  I get a lot of email newsletters and one of them is Quilting Daily, from Interweave.  Usually, I just have a quick glance thru it and move on, but this quilt captured my eye.  I just adore the view, as if from Google Earth..

Details of “Canal Country” by Alicia Merrett,
photo by Alicia Merrett (April/May 2012 issue Quilting Arts)

Isn’t it fab? If the view of my own house was slightly more interesting I would be tempted to make a similar quilt, but the current view shows mostly brown fields.

Sunday-someplace-else (funny punctuation marks)

My FIL sent me this link and it made me smile.  I was quite busy yesterday , working on something that at least one WOYWWer will be pleased to see (I wonder if she will twig?) and have more of that to carry on with (slightly dependant on what the weather does, as I find I need something from town before I can progress much further)

I’ll just add a link to the funny:

Personally, I love the Morgan Freemark one.  Sometimes things in my head already sound in his voice – it’s so distinctive.  And certainly the “I’m not angry” mark would help with forum posts.  I can be brief,  just the facts, Ma’am, sometimes and the number of time people have misinterpreted that for something else, never intended, surprises me.

Lots to be getting on with – it seems hard to remember the days when Sunday was a day of rest…..

Snow Quilts

Artist Simon Beck  walks along the frozen lakes of Savoie, France in snowshoes to create these snow art “quilts.” It takes him 5-9 hours a day, and each one is about the size of three soccer fields! He says The main reason for making them was because I can no longer run properly due to problems with my feet, so plodding about on level snow is the least painful way of getting exercise. Gradually, the reason has become photographing them, and I am considering buying a better camera.

How amazing are they?

Someplace Else, but not on a Sunday!

I am still finding it impossible to sit at my desk for any period of time, so no crafting for me. Bummer.

But I did finally manage to catch up with something I knew was coming and had on my list to check out that I will share. It’s called SockPuppet Theater.

In a nutshell, it is actual posts taken from various online forums, Facebook, YouTube comment threads, etc. which are turned into scripts then acted out by sock puppets.  The voices are hysterical.  April Winchell, who runs the Regretsy site, is a famous voice-over artist.  She has done MANY well-known character voices, including Miss Muriel Finster from Recess and Clarabelle Cow from Mickey Mouse Clubhouse.  She also did Cruella DeVille from 101 Dalmations (the series, not the movie) and Rob Paulsen is perhaps best known as the voice of Pinky from Pinky and the Brain.  Rob also starred as Raphael in the original Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.  There are others but those two are perhaps the best known. Regretsy always makes me laugh so I suspected SockPuppet Theater would as well.

Why? I’ve seen it happen, with no rhyme or reason, all over the internet.  I read what starts out as a seemingly innocuous forum thread, or comment string, or blog rant and all of a sudden my jaw drops, my brain spins, and I am thinking well, how the heck did we get HERE from THERE?? Check out the otter video sample in the FAQ to see that devolution in action.

Watching people dissolve into frothing rage over otter videos and pie recipes is some of the best human comedy around.

And there is no shortage of material, because the internet’s biggest commodity is your ire. The more upset you are, the more you post. The more you post, the more you click. The more you click, the more money the site makes. As long as the internet keeps getting rich by pissing you off, there will be bullies and meltdowns and flame wars.

And we’ll be here to put a sock in it.

Warning:  It is not for the faint of heart and if bad language offends I accept no responsibility if you ignore the warning and are, in fact, offended. BUT, some of the videos are on YouTube in a no-bad-language version so you can check them out there to get a taste of what it is all about if you can’t stand not knowing. Although the TOPICS may still offend, so keep that in mind.

The videos aside, I am in love with the puppets.  I love their wonky eyes, yarn hair, and the personality the voice artists give them. I love the way you can often see a puppet in the background, as if they had just wandered in to shot while going about their puppet-y business.   It makes me laugh, and I need laughs at the moment, cause I am trying to take as few painkillers as I can and it’s still painful.

Roll on Friday!  Can’t wait for the new episode…..

Sunday-someplace-else (Foldify)

If you read my blog with any regularity, you know I am a huge fan of 3D paper sculptures.  And now, there is a App that lets you create your own!  It is simply the coolest thing I have seen in AGES. It’s called Foldify. It launched in the App store just a couple of days ago and is priced at $1.99.

There are a handful of templates which can be used to create some interesting projects from simple shapes.

Some of the sections have “stamps” that you can simply drag in and resize – eyes, mouths, etc.

I wish there were something as easy for my desktop – there are a few (like Sketchup) but they don’t look anywhere as easy as Foldify.  One, Pepakura, actually has a Cameo/Silhouette plug-in that looks interesting.

I think this is something well worth playing with and could be a fun thing for the kids over the holidays.  Check it out!

(well that was interesting!  WordPress has changed how it handles embedded video and it took ages to work out how to do it because how they SAY works is not how it works! Sorry if you were viewing the page and it was weird)

Sunday-someplace-else (3 eyed bear)

I stumbled across 3eyedbear at some point and was totally charmed by the little printable models.  There was an old calendar (sadly no longer available) that I thought was so cute but in exploring the site, I found the Snorfs and fell in love.  They were so whimsical that I just wanted to do SOMETHING with them.  They would be adorable as a little cluster on the mantle, like elves from Santa’s Workshop. but the mantle is actually getting pretty crowded so that isn’t going to work.

They are small enough to hang on the tree, really, but that seems a little pedestrian.  What I really want to do is make them into an Advent calendar, but there are only 15 of them so they would have to be repeated for the full month.  I have an idea that I may explore further.  It could be fun, we’ll see.

There is a LOT to explore there.  So many paper models, it might be something to bookmark for the kids over the holidays.