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Recently (as in the last 3 months) I saw this article/opinion piece on the local newspaper's website about how cursive handwriting is apparently a dying art, and not really needed in this age of technology.
Well, to be honest, it kind of is - but only kind of. I learned it back in grade 3 or 4 - I actually recently found my cursive writing book not that long ago while cleaning up some old school papers. After about grade 5 in elementary school most of our schoolwork was expected to be in cursive. Some teachers didn't care, others did. High school on the other hand, was a different story. They wanted it all typed. In-class work could be submitted in LEGIBLE hand writing - if the teacher couldn't read it, they docked marks -which I felt was only HALF fair. We *could* have been offered the option of taking it home and submitting it beginning of the next class, provided it wasn't an in-class essay etc. If it was an in-class essay, and you knew your writing was only legible to you, they would make arrangements for you to type it, but no internet access etc was allowed obviously. Some teachers would say so long as your writing was legible to people other than yourself, you could submit hand written essays etc, so long as it followed the proper formatting.
My cursive handwriting is mostly legible, though I often did, and continue to use the computer for school assignments, as well as most other things. I have horrible posture, and I write too quickly, which causes my letters to be deformed and smooshed. Also, if there are no lines on the paper my sentences will form a curve up and to the right. My typical writing is a mixture of printing and cursive. It takes me a looong time to neatly construct a whole letter in cursive writing, and I often forget things I was going to jot down or switch words and what not.
Shortly after seeing the above article my mom and I were over talking to my neighbour who also brought up the fact the younger generations don't have nice handwriting - printing or cursive - in a discussion about the younger generations inability to do math in their heads (which she doesn't hold against us, we were taught in school to do pretty much everything via calculator.) It was this time I mentioned I've been thinking about practicing mine again, and trying to clean it up. I don't know if cleaning it up will happen, but maybe with time.
I suffer mostly from my starting of letters, and a lot of them looking the same. My capital Y, Q and Z all look about the same, hence why I created a bastardized printed cursive versions. But I have a plan. I shall work a bit on just doing repetitions of the letters (probably by printing off some of those lovely free teacher worksheets on the internet) and then maybe going through the dictionary and doing 10-20 words a day... which also may help increase my vocabulary hahaha.
I may also start looking into penpals. Maybe. Snailmail can be fun! I also think I might take up calligraphy... when my writing has improved haha.
So it's been a few days, I've been working on stuff for this, brainstorming ideas etc, but since my sleeping habits have once again shifted to the strange and unusual (read: I've royally fucked my bedtime and having a lot of disturbing dreams. It's rather like being jetlagged all the time.) To counter this, I have watched almost all 3 seasons of Due South, I've watched Passchendaele, and Men With Brooms. As soon as I have finished Due South I will be starting in on Slings & Arrows. 10 points and a cookie to the person who can make the connection between all of these hahaha. Also - WATCH THEM. They are AMAZING. DO IT! NOW!
Speaking of strange dreams, that's what I've been working on for this, however, it may have to be a series. It's getting longer and longer with every day that passes and the more I think of and remember.
I also broke myself again... Twisted my ankle, but then I think those of you that follow my blog already know this, so I'll skip the details for now. It's still a bit achey, depends on the shoes, the ground, and how I walk. Hurray for it being my driving and sewing foot, bleh.
Anyhoo, I'm heading to bed for now. I can feel my brain stalling as we go here. And this must be a good thing because this is over an hour earlier than I've been going to bed for the past week *sigh* Who's willing to bet I'm going to lie in bed for hours now? :p
This may be a title I use often, as I always enjoy finding little tips and tricks for around the home and garden. As I was cleaning some stuff in my room I came across a huge pile of old schoolwork and other mixed papers. Most of them will be shredded and then recycled, but I kept a few. One of these is a sheet I put together as a freebie hand out for a fundraiser we did when I was still keeping involved in my parents' church (Mainly to keep up appearances, as well as to get my volunteer hours for high school), and they're all little home and garden tips (it was a plant sale and recipes-in-a-jar sale) that I belive came from an old Farmer's Almanac tip-of-the-day desk calendar. I love farmer's almanacs. I bought one this year, but I'm not sure where it disappeared to... I really need to use the hole punched in the book and hang it from some string hahaha. Onto the tips!
Outdoor Antiseptics
Need an effective anitseptic while you're out camping? Look for dogwood, witch hazel, oak bark, or sphagnum moss. Boil the bark or moss in water, cool, and apply as needed.
No Topsoil?
If you're gardening with less-than-ideal soil conditions, try these perenials that easily tolerate subsoils:
- Baby's breath
- Coreopsis
- Cushion spurge
- Geranium
- Purple cornflower
- Red valerian
- Thrift
- Yarrow
Bee Stings
Apply the juice of chamomile stems, honeysuckle vines, rue, or aloe vera. If the kitchen is handy, use vinegar or garlic juice. (Also, not from this calendar but the Almanac website - Place a penny on the sting, and hold it there for 5 minutes. My mother also usually hands people a tea bag soaked in warm water, has something to do with the tannic acid I think.)
Bug Bites
Regular flavored toothpaste, when applied to an insect bite (especially fire ant bites) will immediately relieve itching. Or make an “X” with your fingernail on the bite. It helps alleviate the need to itch.
Ants? Serve Coffee.
Mix used coffee grounds with water, and pour down anthills in the yard. Ants will relocate after a dose or two. (Another idea is to put cornmeal on ant hills etc, as the ants think it is food, but cannot digest it.)
How To Mow
If you're removing the grass clippings after lawn mowing, you're depriving your lawn of much-needed nutrients. Scientific studies have shown that leaving the clippings on the lawn produces a healthier lawn - even if your mower is not one of the newer "mulching" mowers.
Sweet Substitute
Out of confectioner's sugar? Simply put granulated sugar into your blender and pulse at high speed until you have the consistency you desire.
Homemade Plant Spray
For an organic alternative to a chemical spray to ward off chewing insects, try
3 cloves garlic, minced
1 teaspoon liquid detergent
3 teaspoons vegetable oil1 tablespoon cayenne flakes
2 cups water
Blend ingredients, place into a spray bottle, and spray onto plants. Reapply after rain.
A Few Handy Tips
A funnel makes a handy string or twine dispenser for the garage or workshop. Just thread the leading end of the string through the small hole of the funnel, letting the ball sit looseley in the larger cup. Hang the funnel from the wall, with a pair of scissors nearby.
Add a few coloured marbles to the birdbath to attract birds.
Always water gardens (and mow lawns) during the coolest part of the day. To conserve water, weed diligently, mulch well, and use rain barrels or drip irrigation instead of sprinklers.
Soak kitchen sponges in cold salt water to freshen them.
To make your cut flowers last longer in the vase, add a tablespoon of sugar to the water before you arrange them.
Featured above is an image of 3 of my pots of herbs on the front deck. The blue pot is spicy globe basil (which to me really tastes like black licorice, eww!) The first box is 3 types of sage, and the second box is oregano.
It's that time of year again - the rains have tapered off to typical summer thunder showers, but they're not the cold drizzly downpours of spring. House hunting weather. Living in a rural area, it's not horribly often that I see houses for sale. And oddly enough, the ones usually for sale are the ones that the owners have lived in for decades, and now live alone and are too old to do the upkeep of a large house by themselves, OR they're the city people that moved out here, but can't hack the country life. As someone who has spent all of the almost 21 years of her life living in the same house in a rural area, I hate it when city people move out here. Some I don't mind, but those are the ones who learn quickly. It's the ones that learn and adapt slowly I have issues with. Some days you really just want to take bets on how long before they move back into the city. Now then, what spawned this thought process turned blog entry? Another house a few concessions over on our road has also been sold. This just caused some reminiscing of other times houses were bought in the area. I'm not saying city dwellers are bad people, or overly stupid, just sometimes they need to get a clue. Here's a list of advice, grievances, and random things that I have for when city dwellers move to the country.
- Talk to your neighbours/people on the road. We're not going to kill you, and in some cases it could save your life, keep you from getting robbed, or just be good if you have any general questions about things and how they work. Introduce yourself, talk a bit. Out here, if anything happens, it's going to take a bit of time before an emergency service arrives in response. When our neighbours started renting the house to the west of us, they introduced themselves, chatted a bit, and eventually, after a couple months we had all agreed to keep our eyes open for suspicious activities, strange vehicles, etc at each other's houses.
- DO NOT act like you are better than your neighbours because they're JUST farmers, so they must be country bumpkins, and dirt poor. Why would you act like that with anyone? (Unless they REALLY deserve it, but usually, most people don't.) Also, without farmers, what would you eat? I once had a substitute teacher when I was in high school, it was still kind of early in the year, probably end of October, beginning of November. She usually taught at a city school, she was a city girl, she really didn't know anything about farm area (to the extent of "It took me FOREVER to get here from ____!! I thought the drive would never end!" Um, okay, that's a 15 minute drive. 15 minutes. If THAT is a long drive I hope you never have to drive all the way across the city from here.) Now then, add the time of year together with a school in a farming community and the fact this is Ontario, Canada. Yes almost a third to half the class is missing. To us students, the answer was simple. Harvesting. To the teacher, it made no sense. "Don't their parents care about their education?! Why would they keep them home?! Don't they want their children to have an education?! To succeed?!" Um... because once they're done here the majority of them will be earning their livings as a farmer...? As for how long they'll be out of school, if the weather holds, 3 or 4 days. A week tops. If it rains, they'll be back until the weather's good again. Also... why would you assume they lack an education? Why would being a farmer not be succeeding? She didn't have any answers to that, and she very quickly got back on track with the work our teacher had left.
- If you don't like the rural area, why did you move here? If you didn't like the city, maybe you should have tried one of the suburbs between the north edge of the city, and here. Still out of the main city (you can't take a bus from there unless you walk the 5-10 minutes down the hill to the mall to catch one) yet not quite into the country to require you to drive everywhere.
- No matter how much literature your real estate agent gives you, it will NEVER cover everything you need to know about living out here.
- Yes, you pay a small fee for (basically unlimited - the city has a limit of 4 bags per week) garbage and recycling pick up in your land taxes. Apparently you thought this was a great deal, and didn't bother to read the rest of the pamphlet. They will not take your garbage unless you put a garbage tag on it. These can be bought at the convenience store in Ballymote for something like $1.75 each. Also, you smell smoke, you see everyone burning their leaves, no one else has leaves in bags down at the road that haven't been picked up on garbage day... mainly because we don't have yard waste disposal, for rather obvious reasons - You now live on an acre or more of land, covered with trees that lose their leaves... you getting the picture yet? Compost it, burn it, or leave it alone. Those are your choices.
- If anything is left at your driveway on garbage day, it could be that you put your stuff out too late, or something is wrong with it. This usually happens with recycling. DO NOT leave it at the road to get blown into the road, hit by cars, spread everywhere by animals etc etc. Take it back to your house, fix it, put it out next week.
- On this road, your garbage goes on the SOUTH side. If you look around, yours is the only garbage on the north side. The problem as to why your garbage is not getting picked up is rather obvious, isn't it?
- Stop freaking out about power outages. They happen. Espeically in this area. Particularly in bad weather. It will come back on eventually, it takes the hydro crews a little bit of time to locate the problem and get a team out here. If it bothers you that much - buy a generator.
- Stop whining about a lack of cable, and cable based internet. We do not have cable out here. Get satellite or shut the fuck up. No, living here does NOT mean "dial-up only." I should know. We've had high speed/DSL for a while now. The trick is finding a supplier that offers service in our area. There's about 6 that I know of for sure. Ask your neighbours, they would know.
- In the winter, I WILL laugh at you (not to your face though) when I see you out shovelling your very long laneway. Mainly because yours is one of the few laneways not cleared. Why don't you just arrange to have the farmer down the road plow your laneway like he does everyone else's? I know people have told you about him before. It's not all that expensive (he only charges about $10 to $15 per time, if even), and doesn't need to be done all that often unless the weather is horrible.
- Yes our road is only half plowed. This is apparently called a "traffic lane" or some such. It means the road is clear enough for one vehicle to drive on the whole clear area, or for two vehicles to pass on the road, with at least 2 tires in the clear area. And by two tires I do not mean the 2 front tires of your car will be in the clear while you force me into the ditch. Fuck you. Move over.
- The township will plow the road completely when they have time. I remember it wasn't long ago when this road didn't get plowed AT ALL.
- The people parking their cars at the road end of their very long driveways are not stupid. They are not snowed in. However, I notice you are.
- Yes, snow is blowing into your yard from across the road. You live across the road from an open field, what did you expect?
- Keep. YOUR. Goddamn. Dog. OFF. MY. Property. You live like six houses down. That's almost 1/4 of a mile or more. Your dog had to cross both bridges and then some to get to my house. And then he shits all over my yard. My neighbours' dog is better behaved than that! And there's no fence around part of our property between theirs and ours. That dog only comes over if one of his owners comes over. And even then he doesn't shit in our yard. Next time I see your "precious purebred supposedly impressivly pedigreed hunting dog that you don't hunt" with in my yard, I'm calling animal control. Enjoy your fines and expenses for breaking the by-law. Side note: I don't really mind letting your dog run loose, SO LONG AS it will come when called, and doesn't wander too far from home. Even my neighbours' cats only wander around the few houses in our section of the road. They don't cause a lot of problems, and they help control the pest issue. But some people let their animals run wild, causing damage, injuries etc. I don't want to go knocking door to door going "Do you own a dog matching this description? You do? I'm very sorry to tell you I hit it."
- It's farm country, it's going to smell like animal poop occassionally, get used to it. And yes, there will be farm equipment using the road - learn to share the road.
- You live in an area without municipal water or sewage systems. This means you have a well, and you have a septic tank. I suggest you learn about these - where they are, what they do, how they work, and who to call when something goes wrong. Asking your neighbours also helps because they may be able to tell you quite a bit, even about your own property.
Thus ends a semi-pointless to the majority of people that will read it rant. No one said my blog had to have a purpose :p
Above: Random photo looking up my road at sunset Yes, I'm aware there's snow lol.
First off - Happy Canada Day!! We're 142 years old! Beauty, eh? Go Canada! Get your McKenzie on! One thing I would like to clear up from another Wikipedia article is this... '"The sign Mind the Gap is used in subways and train stations in Canada, as in the U.K., whereas the U.S. signs commonly read, "Watch your step"' - I have never seen this... now mind you I don't take the subway or train very often, but when I have, I've never seen that. Then again, I've never even noticed the majority of stuff they talk about lol. I will say though, I've had people go "Oh, you must be Canadian!" when I asked where the washroom is. Typical answer - "Yes, I am, and a Canadian who needs to pee at that, so where is it?" I'm also very saddened by the fact no one understands how back bacon (aka peamale bacon) should REALLY be cut, or how it should look :< (You make the Canuck cry)
Oh and especially for Canada Day since this shocks the majority of people... Yes, our milk comes in BAGS. ZOMGWTFBBQ?! So does milk in South Africa! lol. You get 3 quarts (the small bag) in a big bag. And to anyone wondering how the hell you handle that to pour, we have milk pitchers
Mmmm homo milk... (aka Homogenized, or whole milk.) And by the way, 1% milk tastes like water.
So onto what the title is about - Quilting hoops.
I bought an 18" or 20" round quilting hoop because I got fed up of wrestling with a 10" embroidery hoop. While I loved the sheer size of the 20" hoop and not having to move it around as much to keep quilting, it was too difficult to hold and work with - it may be better when it's attached to a stand and you don't have to hold it etc, but I found it hard to work with for lap quilting. So we took it back to the store and I picked up a 12" x 20" oval quilting hoop. This is working much better for me, in many ways. It's wider/taller than an embroidery hoop - where as the embroidery hoop is about 1/2", a quilting hoop is about 1" and has bigger blocks for the wing nut and screw. I'm not wrestling to get the quilt into this hoop like I was with the embroidery one - it kept popping off and making me wish I had about 4 extra hands. The other plus was that I misread the labels on the peg board where these were hung in Michael's. The big round hoop cost $26.99 + tax, and I thought the oval was the same, but it was actually only $8.69 + tax or something like that. It's not a super high hand carved from solid hardwood ring, but it's not cracked etc like the small embroidery hoops get. It has a few rough spots here and there on the edges, but that's nothing a quick rub with an emery board won't fix.
I've been debating about doing a video on how to hide knots, but there's tons of them on Youtube and I can't do the "secret knot" anyways lol. After I wrap the thread and start pulling the needle and thread through the wrapped bit it unravels *shrugs* I also can't get the hang of using a running stitch for quilting, and mom is nitpicking the fact my stitches look a bit messy on the back. But the ones that AREN'T messy AT ALL are almost too small to see the individual stitches lol. Looks pretty good on the front though. I *do* need to work on keeping the sizes consistent though lol - I have stitches that are small by majority's standards, and then there's the ones you can barely see.
I believe that is all for now. Maybe next quilting post I will post pics of my current quilting project!
The following poem is the result of an exercise in my grade 12 writer's craft class. We had to read this poem by Margaret Atwood called "This is a Photograph of Me." Anyways, the purpose was to write a poem about ourselves or something... basically if someone found a picture of you, what would it look like. Or something like that... Anyways, I FINALLY found the poem I wrote for it, and thought I'd actually post it. And with a picture too, because I like pictures - blogs without pictures just aren't as interesting :p Also, I ganked the image from some iPhone website lol. Credit to the original artist and all that. Beautiful piece. I wish I knew who the artist was, actually. Eeeee horsie! lol.
The Image of I
by Lore Challis ©
At the bottom of a puddle lies a picture
I guess it fell out of someone's belongings,
As they rushed into the great unknown
They happen to inhabit.
It's somewhat faded
And lines cross the surface of delicate paper,
Evidence of abuse and discare.
And along one edge is wear of teeth and burns.
It's an image hurt, and beyond repair.
Removed from the puddle
The image shines with an inner brilliance...
An inky black mare,
Rears against a threat in proud defiance,
And what the threat is, is pushed aside.
The invasion of humanity, a threat to life itself.
Tall buildings enroach on her land,
Reminders of the scaring capture,
Where abuse lives in their hands.
A silent killer lurks towards,
Pollution clouds to clog her lungs,
Like words to bury in the head,
Abuse from those that are on top.
The threat has stilled, she turns and runs
Avoiding the fight if she can.
Unworthy opponents they are all,
Yet the most dangerous, sadly.
A streak of black on jewelled tones
Her hooves are thunder's rings
She sticks out, but no one sees
The caution flaming in her eyes.
None dare approach without their warning
For she does turn with short hesitance to attack
Striking friend and foe
A loner from all she knows
There's no where to fit in.
And so she moves,
Alone and lost
She's moving through life
Awaiting the day when
Humanity will take her life away.
*Poem may not be reproduced in any form without the written consent of the author.*
Okay, so this post will be a shorter one, as I don't have a lot to say.
Online fabric stores - while I haven't used them (yet), seem to be a pretty good alternative to fabric stores or a lack thereof.
So basically, just google them, find one that looks good, has what you want, lots of selections, etc. I looked at a few, and these two looked pretty good
http://www.fabric.com/
http://fabricmartfabrics.com/controller/index.php
Now before buying from these stores I suggest you know EXACTLY how much you will need. And then maybe add 1/2 to a full meter of extra just in case. Because it would really, really suck, if you need to order more and they don't have it. Which leads me to also mention that most of the online stores will (and should!) list how much of the fabric is available for sale. Although DO NOT count on that being exactly correct, because I don't know how they update that etc.
So that's about all I have to say about online stores, if I use one at some point I might do another post on it, but yes, there it is.
Maybe my next post shall be something more interesting for the people who don't read this for the sewing stuff lol
