dontcallmebecky

Kensington Metropark

My dad had been trying to get Jon and I to join him on another photo/nature walk at Kensington Metropark for a few summers, but our schedules never matched up. Fortunately, we were able to check out the park in mid-May.

We didn't see as much wildlife this time as we had last time (probably because we actually had our good cameras with us), but we had a beautiful day for a hike.

 

The funniest part of the day was when we ran into an older man who is a nature walk regular. He looked at us with all of our long lenses and said, 

"You guys are proving my theory wrong."
"I've always said the bigger the lens, the bigger the paunch."

I guess he's run into lots of bird photographers with large beer bellies?! 

creatively procrastinating

My ravelympics project was the Helleborus Yoke Cardigan from Knitscene and knit with Universal Yarns Classic Chunky Tweed yarn.  I put all of my eggs in one basket, so to speak, for the Ravelympics and things did not turn out so good. I let lots of things slip to the side as I crammed in knitting time and things ended poorly on Sunday night (poorly, as in me throwing an "I'm never going to knit anything again, ever!" tantrum at midnight). Needless to say, I did not finish the sweater in time and it needs a few more modifications before it's wearable.

After sleeping on it, I've realized that things aren't so bad and everything is easily fixable. The body of the sweater went great and I found the perfect buttons yesterday. But, I made the bottom edging a little bit too tight, so the sweater looks like an eighties sweatshirt, instead of a relaxed cardigan. The collar turned out awful too. I read about a lot of complaints about having to reknit the collar multiple times on ravelry, so I should have known that I would have to also. I'm going to add some additional short rows to the collar so that it lays flat and does not gape out so much. Hopefully I'll be able to spend some time reknitting the sweater this weekend to make it wearable.

• • •

To make things better, I did some playing around with a fun photography website that has been around for quite a while now, Tilt Shift Maker. Why I didn't try this out when I first learned about it, I don't know. But, I'm glad to have had a chance to play with it today. You upload your picture and tweak the settings and it makes your photo look like a miniature scene.

Brussels

Bikes in Berlin

Paris rooftops

Our little garden

Foliage in Ometepe, Nicaragua

Granada, Nicaragua with Mombacho Volcano in the background

My favorite garden and restaurant in Kyoto, Japan

Ryoan-ji temple in Kyoto

Shibuya intersection in Tokyo

 

adorable and quaint Bamberg, Germany

Blurb book

I put together a blurb photo book of our Europe trip and finally received the finished product.

I ordered the book from blurb and used their design it yourself templates for Adobe InDesign. This is the program that I use at work all the time, so I am comfortable with the software and the templates were very easy to use. The album I made is a 12"x12" hardcover book. I set up each page with a 3x3 grid of 4-inch blocks and then added and resized my pictures to fill the blocks. Some photos fill one block and others fill up to 6 blocks of the page. It was a little overwhelming to fit all of the pictures in the book, so coming up with a simple grid to use made the book easy and quick to put together.

I stuck with one color bar for each city that we visited and added some of the text from my blog entries and some of my own additional commentary. Friends and family are having fun playing "spot the typo." Luckily only two have been found so far!

Blurb was great to work with. I used Blurb for my parents' anniversary album earlier this summer. For the Europe book, I used the cover wrap option which turned out nicely. For my parents' album, I used the dust jacket option, which turned out nice too. Here's two tips that I discovered myself through purchasing two books and through reading Blurb forums.

1. Don't pay to upgrade from Standard to Premium paper - it's not much of a quality jump to justify the cost.

2. Don't pay $15 extra to remove the blurb logo from the last page (custom logo option). I was able to tear out the final logo page myself for free (blank white page with a tiny logo at the bottom center).

For past trips, I have just put photos into 2-up or 3-up albums and written captions and information. The scrapbooks and photo albums are starting to take over our house, so getting a photo book like this printed is a great space saver for the amount of pictures that it can include. It fits easily on our bookshelf and is only about 1/2" wide.

A coworker of mine has had great success using Walgreens for photo books, too. She came up with the best idea for creating a yearly album. She started a new book on January 1 and adds pictures to her online album layout throughout the year when she has a chance (once or twice a month). At the end of December, she'll have a complete album with all of the pictures she's taken this year included in it and won't have to scramble around to remember what she did or where she misplaced photos of a certain event. I think I'm going to try this method out for 2010.

new veggies & funny site

We enjoyed a delicious tossed salad tonight! And the best part was that we were able to eat our first batch of lettuce from our garden. All those back breaking hours of sod lifting and dirt hauling are finally starting to pay off. Looking forward to the beginning of August when everything else should be ripe for picking!

And, one of our tomato plants is starting to bear fruit...it may be small, but it's a great start!

Check out this site...it gives grades to world flags based on their overall design aesthetic...read the methodology first to see the judging criteria and icon key.

blood oranges

I am seriously addicted to these little red oranges. I have two or three a day and I've bought out most of the stock at Trader Joes. Don't let the name fool you...these blood oranges are tastier and more tart than your typical orange.

cranbrook...again

Jon and I went back to Cranbrook to see the bog and oriental gardens in all their summer glory. Everything was so much more overgrown and green than before. It almost looked like a different place. We attempted to try a shortcut to getting to the gardens, but instead ended up parking even farther away than usual - so much for my "shortcut." But, seeing as we had a longer walk, we did get to see a lot of the boarding school buildings - incredibly beautiful!

a favorite photo

still my favorite photo of the two of us...one day, one day, we'll buy different glasses...

cranbrook

Jon and I took Saturday afternoon to explore Cranbrook. We often visit each season to photograph nature and flowers and scenery. It is so relaxing and refreshing to spend the afternoon outside in the sun surrounded by beautiful things. We ventured out beyond our usual spot at the Art Museum and ended up touring the Bog Garden and Oriental Garden at the Cranbrook House and Gardens. The daffodils and tulips were in full bloom and the tree buds were starting to open. Jon and I have decided that when we either retire or both go fully freelance (whichever comes first), we will both be volunteering at the gardens on a regular basis.

yellow cake, chocolate frosting

So glad Kate brought over a cake mix and frosting container as a thanks-for-letting-me-stay-with-you gift. Just like old times at our Alfalfa Lane house. This time it's lasted a bit longer than breakfast!

mmm...I want some

Madeleine eyes my Corona. Nope, she's not getting any.