Cloud view

That's the view from my window seat on an early morning flight the other day. The pretty sky kinda-sorta-almost made up for the fact that my flight the night before was canceled.

Love Maze

I made a little painting for a friend who's been having some romantic troubles:



It's kind of hard to see, so here's a close up of a piece:



And another piece:



Basically, the idea behind it is that love is a really complicated thing, but sometimes along the way, you find other stuff that's lots of fun (like random boys, or roller skates, or a vintage dress, or a mix CD).

I don't love how it looks in the scan, but I keep telling myself that it's cuter in real life.

Dear Carmen,

Look, I posted! Here's a scan of one of my only recent creative projects. My friend's sister wanted a painting, and she likes white blobby art, so I made her a painting of a white blob who lives in a mobile home. (I think maybe things got muddy and the whole trailer park is slowly sliding down a hill.)

Your future, night-flowering

That's the subject line of a spam message I got this morning. I think it's the prettiest, most romantic phrase I've heard in a long time.

Voodoo cell phone

I recently found a little note to myself that says "Make a tiny voodoo cell phone (knitted) for Kait." I think I wrote the note sometime last year, but I don't have even the vaguest recollection of why I wanted to do such a thing.

Normally, I'm into happy, unthreatening technology (like cute robots), but I thought the idea of a voodoo cell phone was funny, so I figured I'd make one, send it to her as a surprise, and see if she could offer an explanation.

Here's how it turned out:




And here's the back of the tag, because of course a voodoo phone has to come with little pins:



It's only a few inches tall, which I guess you can tell by looking at the height of the pins. I made the blue screen and the buttons with the leftover yarn from the sparkly fringe on my scarf.

The sad ending to this story is that Kait got the voodoo cell phone in the mail today. She seemed to think it was funny, but she had no idea why I had wanted to make her one. I guess from now on, I'll try to include more detail in my notes.

Nano costume

Now that the weather's getting too warm for the nano sweater, I decided to make my little guy a new outfit... that's even warmer. Today I used some of the yards and yards of neon fleece I have lying around (from back when I was planning to sew a person-sized robot to watch TV with me) to make this:

As soon as I put the outfit on my nano, I realized it feels sort of Kelly-inspired, which makes me happy because I like her art.

It was originally going to be a robot costume, with little blue arms and legs, but then I thought, "What's the only thing cooler than robot arms? Robot butterfly wings!"

Yes, I know they look like ears. But they're wings.

The fleece was so thick it was hard to sew, but I guess the thickness will help keep my ipod safe. I used a little bit of clear vinyl to make windows over the display and the controller wheel so they won't get scratched up in my bag. The little costume opens at the bottom and has a tab of fleece that wraps around the back. I know I saw some velcro lying around my apartment the other day, and as soon as I find it, I'll be able to velcro the tab closed.

Yay!! I haven't had time for a craft project in so long. And this one is so soft and cute! I think I want the next costume I make for my nano to look more robotic, but I'm happy with how this one turned out.

NOTE: I just remembered my plan to dress like my nano. I think that's on hold for now. I don't look good in neon green.

Amazon women on my monitor

I bought some bras on Amazon.com a month or so ago, and now my personalized Amazon homepage is all sexed up. This lovely lady was today's featured image.

While I appreciate the idea of customized shopping pages, that "Long-Sleeved Mesh Sleep Shirt and Matching Lace G-String" really isn't my style.

But yeah, if you want to see sexy ladies on your Amazon homepage every time you login, order a bra through the site. I feel like I'm shopping for books at Frederick's of Hollywood.

(Note: I'm not actually shopping for books. I'm doing research on Jesse McCartney for work, and it's starting to hurt my brain.)

Sadness

I bought organic blueberries at Whole Foods today and they were 4.99 for an eency-weency container. I almost bought two containers, but then I realized that would involve spending $10 on what amounts to a handful of blueberries, and I couldn't do it.

I just opened the package and ruined my night. They are bland and mushy and kinda crushed (just like my blueberry dreams). Note to self: Stop buying fruit out of season, no matter how cute it looks in the store!!

I think he won a goldfish

Yeah!!

Lately my posts haven't been publishing, but I think I finally fixed the problem! (I'm using SFTP now, which involved changing a bunch of settings.)

New button

Last night I went to see Say Hi to Your Mom, and bought this cute song-lyric button:

They played a bunch of songs I hadn't heard before, but it was still a fun show. I wish more bands sang about robots and technology and video games. I just reread the post I wrote about Say Hi to Your Mom a year ago, when I lived on the other side of the country. When I wrote it, I never suspected I'd end up moving back to Brooklyn and living near the very subway stop mentioned in the lyrics. Weird.

Yet another sign that I'm spending too much time on my computer

I just tried to squeeze some honey out of a bear-shaped dispenser into my tea. The honey is kind of old, so it's starting to develop grainy chunks. My first thought was, "Why is my honey getting all pixely?" Then I realized that honey does not get pixelated, it gets granulated. Unless you use Photoshop on granulated honey, in which case it can be both:

I should've known.

The DVD player in my computer has been screwing up like crazy. I had to watch a movie tonight for work, and it stopped halfway through and wouldn't start again. I opened up the DVD drawer to see if there was something wrong with the new DVD, and it looked fine. Then I started blowing on the little tray, thinking maybe it was dusty (the old-Nintendo-cartridge school of computer repair). While checking for dust, I noticed that one of the circular parts had a long pink hair wrapped around it.

I pulled the hair out, tried again, and the DVD played fine. This is the first time my hair has sabotaged my computer. Usually it just breaks vacuums.

Cotton candy robot

Here's another little part of the carnival thing I'm working on:

I wish I could give him a hug. He looks like he needs one.

my favorite new expression

The first line of a spam message caught my attention today:

Sony skateboard her eyes were so fucking sharp!

I think I should start all my sentences with the words "Sony skateboard." I like the emphasis it adds.

For example, I could say: Sony skateboard, does Blogger suck! I keep writing posts, but they never show up on my blog. I guess I should get the Wordpress thing figured out sometime soon.

tic-tac tip

Don't keep tic tacs on your desk. One tic tac is nice, but if you eat a bunch of them at once (which you will, because you'll be too busy working to realize you should move them out of arm's reach), you will soon feel TOO minty...which is even worse than not feeling minty at all.

Robot merry-go-round

Here's a robot merry-go-round I painted for a little project I'm working on:

My favorite part is that green blobby animal in the back. I also like the blue moose. Since the robots aren't very roboty, they're the least interesting part. The painting is probably bigger on your screen than it is in reality, so that's why there's not much detail.

Swimming pool scarf

I bought the yarn to make this scarf a few months ago, when I still lived in L.A., but was already planning to move back to New York. When I walked into Yarn Garden (a great yarn store on Tujunga Ave. in Studio City), they had an example scarf on the wall made out of these yarns. The sparkly aqua fringe reminded me of my swimming pool, so I decided I'd buy some and knit the same scarf. The yarn was seriously pricey, but I thought it would be nice to have as a wearable tribute to my time in Los Angeles.

It could've been a quick project, but I've been so busy with moving and working that I didn't finish it until yesterday. This morning I put it on and discovered that the fringe feels a lot sillier than I expected. It reminds me of the fluffy stuff used to make cheerleader pom-poms, so when I wear it, I feel like I should jump around a lot and spell things out loud. If this scarf-related perkiness starts getting on my nerves, I guess I could always trim the fringe shorter, but for now it's kind of fun.

Dear heart-shaped candy,

Thanks for the compliment. Usually bad grammar drives me crazy, but since you're so sweet, I'll forgive you for mixing up "your" and "you're." Your all-caps font reminds me of an old dot matrix printer, which is appealing in a geeky way, and I love the hot pink ink. I also love that you taste like bubble gum.

You're cute, tasty, and a little bit dumb... wanna be my Valentine? (Oh, damn! I already ate you.)

I knew it would happen.

For the first time ever, I just talked to my Roomba as if it has a mind of its own. It was running in the other room while I worked at my computer. After a minute or two, I heard a horrible noise, so I ran over to see what had happened. It had sucked up the cords for my blinds and was caught inside a plastic bag I had left on the floor. Here's the conversation that followed:

ME: What are you doing?

ROOMBA: [silence]

Nature-y cuteness

My artist friend Kelly Newcomer is making $1 drawings of anything you want for the sketch-it blog today. Below is the one she made for me. I like all of Kelly's art, so my instructions for the drawing were pretty vague: "Please draw something nature-y. (It's fine if it involves technology, but I also want it to involve nature.)"

Here's what she came up with. I love it!