Saturday, October 31, 2009
Friday, October 30, 2009
Walking
Today is the day when Geneva decided that crawling is kinda stupid, and walking is really the thing to do. This happened some time at daycare because in the morning she was a crawler, and this evening she was walking everywhere. Still kind of spazzy and falling down, but clearly preferring it to crawling. It's crazy how it's really like a switch. So many baby development things were.
Also, I have some nice photos from our visit to Lynchburg for everyone. Click below to see them.
Also, I have some nice photos from our visit to Lynchburg for everyone. Click below to see them.
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| Lynchburg |
Thursday, October 29, 2009
Squeaky shoes and sliding
Here's a couple of videos.
First, Geneva in her squeaky shoes. This video just cracks me up. Make sure you have the audio on your computer turned up.
Second, Geneva sliding by herself! This is hot off the presses since I just took the video last night and before that we had to hold her on the slide.
First, Geneva in her squeaky shoes. This video just cracks me up. Make sure you have the audio on your computer turned up.
Second, Geneva sliding by herself! This is hot off the presses since I just took the video last night and before that we had to hold her on the slide.
Monday, October 26, 2009
Friday, October 23, 2009
Early highlights
Hello from Virginia. We went yesterday to an apple farm and picked so many apples - you wouldn't even believe. More photos of that later. Today we just hung out, the cousins played, and I played with my brother-in-law's nice camera. Enjoy!
Thursday, October 22, 2009
Wednesday, October 21, 2009
Saturday, October 17, 2009
Thursday, October 15, 2009
Sunday, October 11, 2009
Saturday, October 10, 2009
Garden and hobbies
So, believe it or not I've actually had some time to pursue hobbies in the past months, I just haven't made much time to write about them.
I've restarted taking Middle Eastern dance classes, which is really fun. There's a teacher in Sunnyvale who is the best I've ever taken from (and I've had maybe 6 instructors?). Whoever you are, if you come visit me, you should have me take you to the restaurant where she dances and we'll eat amazing food on the floor and watch some really fun dancing. Anyway, I had taken from her for about a year when I got pregnant and barely had energy to get out of bed, much less dance after work, so now I'm getting back to it, but unfortunately there are no public performances for another year, so Chris has still never seen me dance. And I'm sort of good (not absolutely, but just relative to what you would probably expect given that I'm some nerdy engineer).
My work has been sponsoring a yoga class during lunch once a week and I've really been enjoying that. I've had a lot of instructors mock me for my lack of flexibility (!), but this one is really good at instructing for lots of different levels. Her way of breaking things down in terms of what is most important for each pose is really helpful - so if I can't touch my toes and keep my knees straight she'll say "touching toes is most important, do that and then work towards making your knees straight at the same time." The end result is that I feel like I'm really improving. Also I'm starting to notice that I think I'm not really inflexible (as I previously thought) rather I'm just average flexible and have really long legs. So if there's something that requires me to touch my toes, for example, I'll have a hard time because they're so far away. But if there's something that is easier with long legs (like plow pose!) then I'll seem really good at it. This is all very reassuring and makes me like yoga more, now that I know I'm not destined to be horrible.
I've still been knitting, although on a very time consuming secret project for a reader of this blog (! who! is it you??), so I can't post anything about it here. I finished the socks in the picture below ages ago, but am just getting around to showing them. These were sent to Australia as a sort of wedding present for a knitterly friend of mine from way back in junior high.
These socks were assembled from the wreckage of the crazy knee socks, which were never to be. The socks above are actually called the "hidden passion" socks and are an example of illusion knitting. From one angle they just look like stripes, from another, XOXO! This was an interesting (and very simple) technique to learn, and it has a neat result. Anyway, I'm almost done the secret project, and once it reaches its owner, I'll post some lovely photos.
A coworker of mine is the owner of a couple of alpacas, and brought in a couple of fleeces for me to see if I can do anything with them. So I washed them, took a carding class, and now I've been taking a spinning class. I'm not sure why, but my mom wanted to see a video of me spinning, so here it is.
Once I get a little more practice I'm going to spin up the alpaca and hopefully make the Yarn Harlot Pretty Little Thing cowl. I had wanted to make a hat but my spinning instructor said the alpaca would spin up thin and therefore lend itself better to lace. And then Yarn Harlot published her pattern and it seemed like a too perfect alignment of the stars.
Lastly, the garden is still going strong. I planted all indeterminate varieties of tomatoes this year, which I hadn't really thought anything about at the time, but it means that they just keep producing until it frosts (elsewhere in the world) or you get sick of their ugly ways and rip them out (California). The nice thing is that I've actually managed to eat most of the tomatoes this year. The cherry tomatoes have almost all become "fire slaw", a.k.a. Lime & Peanut Coleslaw. The larger tomatoes have become pasta fresca (which is nice because it uses a huge number of tomatoes in a pasta sauce that you don't have to peel the tomatoes first because you just stick the whole thing in the blender), tomato toast, caprese salad, or just plain tomatoes with salt. I also planted sunflowers - the kind where you eat the seeds. I planted them too close together though so they were spindly and fell over in the first big wind. Then I saved the seed heads but it was so much work to get the seeds out that I decided I'd just let the squirrels have them since I don't really eat too many sunflower seeds anyway. I planted green beans but I'm not sure what the deal was with those - they just didn't taste very good. I got lots of beans, but didn't eat them for that reason. I'm not even inspired to save the seeds because why would I want to plant those again? I planted lemon cucumbers because they looked interesting in the catalog, but actually they're not that tasty either, so I haven't been too worried about the fact that the plants don't make many fruits. I think I may plant more cucumbers next year and make bread and butter pickles. We'll see.
I've restarted taking Middle Eastern dance classes, which is really fun. There's a teacher in Sunnyvale who is the best I've ever taken from (and I've had maybe 6 instructors?). Whoever you are, if you come visit me, you should have me take you to the restaurant where she dances and we'll eat amazing food on the floor and watch some really fun dancing. Anyway, I had taken from her for about a year when I got pregnant and barely had energy to get out of bed, much less dance after work, so now I'm getting back to it, but unfortunately there are no public performances for another year, so Chris has still never seen me dance. And I'm sort of good (not absolutely, but just relative to what you would probably expect given that I'm some nerdy engineer).
My work has been sponsoring a yoga class during lunch once a week and I've really been enjoying that. I've had a lot of instructors mock me for my lack of flexibility (!), but this one is really good at instructing for lots of different levels. Her way of breaking things down in terms of what is most important for each pose is really helpful - so if I can't touch my toes and keep my knees straight she'll say "touching toes is most important, do that and then work towards making your knees straight at the same time." The end result is that I feel like I'm really improving. Also I'm starting to notice that I think I'm not really inflexible (as I previously thought) rather I'm just average flexible and have really long legs. So if there's something that requires me to touch my toes, for example, I'll have a hard time because they're so far away. But if there's something that is easier with long legs (like plow pose!) then I'll seem really good at it. This is all very reassuring and makes me like yoga more, now that I know I'm not destined to be horrible.
I've still been knitting, although on a very time consuming secret project for a reader of this blog (! who! is it you??), so I can't post anything about it here. I finished the socks in the picture below ages ago, but am just getting around to showing them. These were sent to Australia as a sort of wedding present for a knitterly friend of mine from way back in junior high.
These socks were assembled from the wreckage of the crazy knee socks, which were never to be. The socks above are actually called the "hidden passion" socks and are an example of illusion knitting. From one angle they just look like stripes, from another, XOXO! This was an interesting (and very simple) technique to learn, and it has a neat result. Anyway, I'm almost done the secret project, and once it reaches its owner, I'll post some lovely photos.
A coworker of mine is the owner of a couple of alpacas, and brought in a couple of fleeces for me to see if I can do anything with them. So I washed them, took a carding class, and now I've been taking a spinning class. I'm not sure why, but my mom wanted to see a video of me spinning, so here it is.
Once I get a little more practice I'm going to spin up the alpaca and hopefully make the Yarn Harlot Pretty Little Thing cowl. I had wanted to make a hat but my spinning instructor said the alpaca would spin up thin and therefore lend itself better to lace. And then Yarn Harlot published her pattern and it seemed like a too perfect alignment of the stars.
Lastly, the garden is still going strong. I planted all indeterminate varieties of tomatoes this year, which I hadn't really thought anything about at the time, but it means that they just keep producing until it frosts (elsewhere in the world) or you get sick of their ugly ways and rip them out (California). The nice thing is that I've actually managed to eat most of the tomatoes this year. The cherry tomatoes have almost all become "fire slaw", a.k.a. Lime & Peanut Coleslaw. The larger tomatoes have become pasta fresca (which is nice because it uses a huge number of tomatoes in a pasta sauce that you don't have to peel the tomatoes first because you just stick the whole thing in the blender), tomato toast, caprese salad, or just plain tomatoes with salt. I also planted sunflowers - the kind where you eat the seeds. I planted them too close together though so they were spindly and fell over in the first big wind. Then I saved the seed heads but it was so much work to get the seeds out that I decided I'd just let the squirrels have them since I don't really eat too many sunflower seeds anyway. I planted green beans but I'm not sure what the deal was with those - they just didn't taste very good. I got lots of beans, but didn't eat them for that reason. I'm not even inspired to save the seeds because why would I want to plant those again? I planted lemon cucumbers because they looked interesting in the catalog, but actually they're not that tasty either, so I haven't been too worried about the fact that the plants don't make many fruits. I think I may plant more cucumbers next year and make bread and butter pickles. We'll see.
Wednesday, October 07, 2009
Tuesday, October 06, 2009
Geneva's balloon
I just got a new iPhone and it's amazingly easy to take video with it. It even lets you trim the videos - why hasn't this been easier before?? Enjoy my test video.
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