Design wall/floor

On the family room floor. Photos taken for blog and also in case a catornado whips through and scrommels up the blocks before I can stitch them together.

UPDATE: The catornado happened.

Nerd War

They're both in their places, with bright shining faces...

First day of school, August 19, 2010

Yeah, right.

Anyway, they are off for another year of learning great things.

Poor Ames...

VJ Day: Crossposting from Iowahawk

VJ Day, Honolulu Hawaii, August 14, 1945 from Richard Sullivan on Vimeo.

I'm amazed by the quality of the film on this.

A good day for a good read

Of course I have to work today, but if I had my wish, I'd be curled up on the front porch, simultaneously watching the storms and reading Flood  by Stephen Baxter. It's a near-future sci-fi book about the rising, warming oceans, and what would happen if global warming took on a life of its own (which is what some climatologist think would happen) and the seas began rising precipitously, as in, sea level rising 3 cm a day and increasing exponentially from there. Where would we all go? How would the governments of the world ever deal with their hungry populations when everything is shutting down? It's a perfect thing to read as the rain is bucketing down outside and the ground is getting soggier and soggier.

I understand there's a sequel out too, Ark. That will have to go on my list for future reading.

<===== See that linky thing there? See the best price link? I never used to buy used books off Amazon but lately I have been doing so and have been extremely happy with the results. The only bad deal we got, Amazon refunded very quickly (it was a college workbook for Barry - the seller didn't bother to say that it had been mostly filled in, in ink). Good deals to be had.

For Iowans (may work elsewhere): My strategy with paying college bills

1. Open a College Savings Iowa account, with the beneficiary being the student. 
2. Make an online payment to the college for tuition or other required student fees using your Discover card. The college probably has someplace on its website where you can do this from home.
3. Immediately deposit the amount that you just charged from your checking account into the College Savings Iowa account.
4. When the Discover bill comes (but no sooner than 10 calendar days after the CSI deposit), withdraw the amount from the College Savings Iowa fund and have it put back in your checking account.
5. When the funds clear (usually about 2 business days), pay the Discover bill.

What this does for you is

1. Makes the tuition or other required fee amount a deduction on your Iowa state income tax for that calendar year, and
2. Earns you a bit of Discover Cash Back Bonus money.

Scrappy baby quilt for Kristine and Willie's little one

This is a baby quilt for a little boy who may be born already, I'm not sure exactly when he is or was expected. We know his parents slightly and his grandparents quite a bit better. I made it mostly of scraps of flannels and from recycled men's shirts (all those woven cotton plaids, yum) and backed it with a piece of red flannel print from my stash. I quilted it in my own rather inept fashion with an all-over stipple pattern. It should be cuddly and sturdy.

The backing.

The border, featuring my patented 4-sided (and sometimes 5-sided) triangles.

The pattern was one of those freebies the quilting magazines like to send in the mail to try to convince you to subscribe. In this case, it was Love of Quilting magazine, and the original design came from an antique crib quilt in the collection of the International Quilt Study Center & Museum in Lincoln, Nebraska. They just called it a "strippy crib quilt." It's kind of busy, but I like it, and I can imagine it getting dragged around the house by a toddler, or used to make a blanket fort, or having Legos scattered all over it.