Tag Archives: tv

Website Wrangling and the Novelty of TV

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I’ve been working really hard this week developing a new website for Nut and Bee, monkeying with HTML and CSS and Liquid templates every spare moment in the day, and for hours each night after Willow’s bedtime. I moved the site over to the Shopify platform, which gives me much better management behind the scenes and the opportunity for some new features for my customers. The customisation was more complicated than I expected – or perhaps I have simply left some of my brain behind over the years – and it took a long time to load all 502 (!) products into the database, but I’m really pleased with the results.

New Nut and Bee site

All that effort has meant very little time for anything else, so after I launched the site yesterday I rewarded myself with an evening off, playing with th’bean and knitting and watching our new Sky TV connection. Yes, we have been lured in again! The broadcast reception here is virtually unwatchable so we’ve been thinking about it for a while, then when we heard about an offer for free installation and half price subscription for a year we decided to sign up. I am really happy as I missed the Living Channel so much :) I love having all the documentaries too, and the music videos are nice to flick on as a distraction while doing housework or other boring stuff. Plus there’s some good kids shows, Willow and I had an excellent Yo Gabba Gabba dance party this afternoon!

The other shows we’ve been watching recently have been the Three Men in a Boat series, with Dara O Briain and Griff Rhys Jones and Rory McGrath taking various boating journeys and looking around England and Ireland. Fresh fuel has been provided for my little crush on Dara. Twinkling eyes, sturdy figure, man of science, quick wit, what more could a girl want?! I also re-watched his stand up DVDs, hee hee hee. Charming fellow.

I’ve nearly finished the body of my Sweet Sparrow Cardigan and I’m really eager to try it on, so I’m going to go for it tonight, and perhaps tomorrow there will be photos! By my reckoning the sleeves and hood are about the same amount of knitting as the body, so I’m close to the halfway point.

Office Shuffle

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Today I got tired of yelling NO! at Willow every time she picked up things from my office shelves – things which were at her height and enticingly colourful and shiny, geez, what did I expect from her? (It’s like when I try and do crafting I know she’s going to interfere with, and she interferes with it, and I get cross. I am not very good at this parenting thing.) So at JSR’s suggestion I moved those shelves behind my desk, rearranging all my supplies using just the accessible top parts, and brought in a third shelf from the garage to make up the extra space.

My office

My main work desk. My computer desk is on the opposite wall, and there’s more shelves where I stood to take the picture.

Even in winter moving furniture is HOT WORK! And the garage has spiders. I’m not just being a worrywart, I saw some in there. Brrrr. But the result is well worthwhile as Willow can’t reach anything except a few empty boxes she’s allowed to play with, and already I feel less strained about getting through the day. I should have done this a long time ago, it would have saved so much grumping. I try not to be on the computer very much while Wil’s awake, but since she only sleeps ~3 hours a day more than I do keeping up with business sometimes demands a bit of office time.

I know I am officially the Last Person To Watch The Wire, but seriously, I’ve just finished season one of The Wire and it was so good. It took quite a while to get into, but friends assured me it was worthwhile, and near the end I had two very late nights because I had to watch just one more episode before going to bed. And there’s four more seasons! At the moment JSR and Willow both go to bed around 9pm and I have a couple of hours on my own each evening, which is perfect for curling up on the couch under a blanket and doing a little TV knitting. Perhaps I will start season two tonight :)

We’ve also just finished a BBC series called Mastercrafts, which introduced novices to six traditional English crafts – green woodworking, thatching, blacksmithing, stained glass, weaving and stonemasonry. There was a little too much focus on the lives of the participants for my liking (not a fan of reality TV!) but we also got to see lots of the techniques and skills involved in each discipline which I found fascinating. I’m pleased that these crafts are still being practiced, even if it is primarily as artisanal novelty.

I haven’t filled in my discretionary spending log for a while, so this is for the last month or so:

* I subscribed to the digital versions of Entangled and Interweave Knits magazines through Zinio. Each was $25/year and I love being able to read them easily on my iPad, with a bonus of not cluttering up the house with magazines. Digital media is really winning me over. And you should check out Entangled if you like yarn and fibre crafts, it’s locally based and I’ve been really impressed with the articles so far.
* I bought a bee outfit for Willow. This was a slightly ridiculous way to spend $29, but I got the 18-24 month size so it will be her Christmas present. It’s not a costume, it has a little stripey top and ruffled pants and a sun hat, so she’ll be able to wear the pieces separately as regular clothes or all at once for adorable bumble action.
* More yarn. I know, I know. I needed one more skein of apple green to finish the border of my African Flower blanket, and Webs was having a sale, so I ended up also ordering three skeins of Valley Yarns Huntington in pale grey Sea Gull to make a little tunic-dress for Willow, and eight skeins of Cascade 220 heathers in mossy green Sparrow to make a hooded sweater for me. $110 all up, but at least I’ve stopped my former habit of buying single skeins just because they looked pretty, and now only acquire with specific projects in mind. That’s an improvement, right? Right? No more for a while, anyway.
* About $10 on iTunes, a couple of songs and a couple of apps.

Otherwise my only transactions have been food and bills. Bills bills bills. I have to do my tax return soon and I’m going to owe some money there too, though hopefully not much more than I have in my tax savings account. (I’m so glad I set that up last year! Tax used to be a nightmare, now I put aside a little every week and usually have my payments covered by the time they roll around. It only took me, what, five years of being in business to get organised? At least I learned eventually.)

Scary Papa

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More pictures of our lovely beener-weener:

Willow, Thoughtful
Looking thoughful, with her beautiful eyelashes.

Willow, Multi-tasking
Some sunny morning multi-tasking with a book and my iPad.

Willow, Master of Noodles
Noodles are serious business.

Willow, Bathing
Everyone gives their babies comedy shampoo hairstyles in the bath, right? ;)

I recently complained on Twitter that we couldn’t opt out of phone book deliveries, and ours would be going straight from letterbox to recycling bin, but I’ve since seen a couple of good ideas for using them. @FitzMojoBob suggested that they are excellent for glue-sticking – using a fresh page for each piece would prevent getting residue on the front sides! – and @venzann mentioned his son would be making papier mache with theirs. I’m tempted to fish our ones out of the recycling bin again now, torn between the creative possibilities and the desire not to hoard stuff! Any other good ideas to sway me?

I’ve been watching lots of episodes of Mock the Week, and when I say lots of episodes I mean seven seasons. I have subsequently developed quite a crush on Dara O’Briain. Sparkling eyes, huggable build, an utter disdain for homeopathy – I am fanning myself as we speak! I previously only knew Dara from his appearances on QI and haven’t seen any of his other work, so I’ll have to keep an eye out for it.

Now I need a new show to work my way through. I’m not a very dedicated TV watcher, but I usually have something on the go to turn on for a few minutes here and there when I’m crocheting, drinking my afternoon coffee, etc. I’m trying Alias, since we have a good chunk of it, and I’m only halfway through the pilot so far but it looks like it should be interesting enough. I think I missed the last season of Arrested Development too, which I’ll re-watch from the beginning when I pick it up again, and I’ve heard good things about Veronica Mars but have never seen any. Hmmm, I’m not short of options!

This afternoon JSR got a hair cut and trimmed his beard in preparation for upcoming job seeking, and when Willow saw him her bottom lip quivered, she whimpered a little, and frantically crawled over to me on the verge of tears! It was one of those sad/hilarious moments babies excel at. He won her back over with some head-snorfling and verses of Pop Goes the Weasel, but for a little while he was a big scary stranger. Poor beans ;)