Won't you be my neighbor?

So, the last couple of days have been very lovely here in Pittsburgh, inspiring me to ride my bike around and take some pictures.

Now playing: 10.17.2011

Reading: I decided to switch gears from China Mieville's Perdido Street Station (which, while having a lot of interesting aspects, has failed to keep my attention very well), so I started in on the second book in the A Song of Fire and Ice series. I imagine I'll probably switch back and forth between the two books as needed. I'm really not this bad at reading books (I have a infrequently used B.A. in English from an average Ohio university to back that up, thankyouverymuch), but lately I've been taking on some books that are outside of my normal genres of interest, and sometimes it's been a little bit of a struggle.

Eating: Last night I made a banana oatmeal walnut bread using a recipe from the internets that sadly I can no longer find. It turned out pretty tasty, although I wish I had used maybe one more banana (I like my banana bread to be extra banana-y).

Crafting / Watching: As I've mentioned, a large percentage of any type of free time that I have lately is going towards making things for Handmade Arcade. So here's a cute little deer that I just recently finished, along with The Wonder Years. Thanks, Netflix.

Doing: This past Saturday, the Steel City Derby Demons had their season-closer bout and I was asked to announce. I've announced at scrimmages in the past, but never in front of a ton of people, so it was a bit nerve-wracking. I rustled up an appropriate Moxie Crimefighter costume (a lot of it is my Batgirl costume from last Halloween) and did the best I could. If there were awards for this sort of thing, I would probably win "Most Awkward Announcer Ever" but apparently I pull off awkward well (or probably people are just nice), because I got some kind words from people after the bout. It was a super awesome time too, with double wins for the SCDD.

A visitor

Today someone came to hang out on our back porch...

... the biggest praying mantis I've ever seen in my entire life!

She was surprisingly relaxed with letting me get up close for some glamour shots.

In fact, she was actually very curious and kept leaning over the railing to wave her creepy saw hands at me.

And then we had a party!

(seriously - look how big!! eep!)

Sunday adventures

So today Eric and I had a rare day off together and it was a lovely day, so we went out to enjoy the city.

First we went to our local watering hole, Remedy, for some lunch and to watch some of the Steelers game.

Jagermeister has an awesome logo, it's too bad it's so gross.

By halftime it was pretty obvious the game was in the bag, so we took the bus down to the Strip District. My shoes have fake blood on them from a Halloween party I went to last night.

We decided to go to the Heinz History Center, because I had never been before.

There we learned all about the cultural importance of ketchup,

saw this amazing Terrible Towel made out of t-shirts and trading cards and iron on letters and all sorts of awesome stuff,

played some mini golf,

saw not one, but TWO clearly excellent cats,

blocked some goals, and..

... wait, who is this?

And then we walked over to The Beerhive where I enjoyed a very delicious Founder's Breakfast Stout. Hooray!

Pop-in

Hello hello! Sorry it has been all crickets n'at around here, lately if I am not at work I have been crafting my butt off. I have been spending a lot of my free time just trying to make stuff to sell at Handmade Arcade. Like this little diptych I made:

I found some images from a book about making shadow puppets, and I thought they would look great as an art piece.

The hand features a rarely-seen second stitch: satin stitch (pretty much everything I do is in backstitch). The shadow is an applique that I stitched around the outside. Also, how hard is that hand position? I tried to show it to my girls at work today and they were all, "What is that?" And then one of them made her shadow puppet monster mouth eat the poor bunny.

PS: Totally unrealted to my own crafting, but check out this amazing quilt I found at the thrift store the other day:

I love the bright pink on the white, it's so punchy and high contrast. Also, it features some really lovely hand quilting (click that picture and check it out really really big - it's a very neat design). It always bums me out a little bit to see something so awesome that was obviously handmade by someone with a great deal of love and care at the thrift store. Sadly, it was $100, so it was out of my budget.