2008 August

A Series of Stupid

Posted by Nikki on August 30, 2008 Leave a Comment

This story brought to you by Kentucky, specifically Covington, and once you read the dumbness you’ll have no problems believing it. In Kentucky, where education pays, a man walks into a bank and hands the teller a note asking for money. Well, apparently penmanship does NOT pay in the Bluegrass state, as the teller couldn’t read the man’s scrawl. She had to ask him what the note said, so then he was on camera asking for money. No wait, the dumbness gets better. Then the man’s sister is in the parking lot in the getaway car. Now the employees have all had a good long stare at the license plate number. So, when police found her hitchhiking on I-75 after the car broke down (I’m imagining a rusty old Oldsmobile for some reason) they easily picked her up and found her brother in Covington. Oh Kentucky, keep breeding, it makes me feel better about myself.

What’s more dumb? Two guys in South Carolina managed to blow up their own car thanks to their addiction to huffing. Perhaps I should say their addiction to dumb. Let’s see: two cans of compressed air? Check. Cigarettes? Check. Lighter? Check. Which of these things should NOT belong. After a fun 10 minutes of huffing, one genius went to light a cigarette, the compressed air ignited and poof! There went the car. Both men are still alive (according to the news) and have unhappy, second degree reminders of their brilliance.

Now for some football dumbness. Baltimore Ravens coach John Harbaugh still can’t decide who his starting quarterback should be. Unless Troy Smith is dead, what is there to think about? I remain largely unimpressed by Joe Flacco, and Kyle-bot should’ve been traded three seasons ago. Currently the bot is “nursing a serious shoulder injury” according to NFL.com. By serious shoulder injury do they mean, “he sucks”. Meanwhile Troy has tonsillitis. You don’t need tonsils to throw a football! Why don’t you just bring back McNair?

Filed Under: Life in Cincinnati, News From All Over, Sports | Tagged:

The 3835 Bandwagon

Posted by Nikki on August 26, 2008 1 Comment

For quite awhile the Simplicity 3835 Built By Wendy pattern has been quite popular. If you don’t believe me, check out Flickr. Just search Built By Wendy 3835. After two unsuccessful attempts at the shirt pattern (due to my attempts at altering the pattern without any forethought), I decided to follow the directions this time and make the dress. Lesson learned: Just follow the directions next time. The dress turned out a million times better than either of the shirts, which means it didn’t go directly into the garbage before it was finished.

I used a linen/rayon blend from Jo-Ann’s. Basically, I chose a linen blend so it didn’t have to be dry cleaned. No since in that. I added a contrast band to the bottom out of Amy Butler’s lime full moon dot from the Lotus collection. I cut out view B of the pattern from my main fabric, traced the bottom (view A) for the contrast band and it worked perfectly. Originally I was going to put a trim of the lime polka dot on the sleeves, but that turned out to be a less than fun idea. Thus, I have boring sleeves. I know, the horror!

The upsides, this pattern is pretty simple to follow. The only difficult part comes with the gathering, as I had problems with my thread breaking. Thank heavens for the internet. I used this tutorial from The Digital Thermos, and I found that her suggestion of gathering at each seam worked better for me. Also, I didn’t like the overlapping zipper idea, and went for an invisible zipper instead. I used this handy tutorial from Etsy Labs for inserting an invisible zipper, as this was only my third zipper and my first attempt at an invisible zipper.

Overall I’m very pleased with this dress. I read numerous reviews about the tightness of the sleeves in this pattern, so I chose to go with a size up from what I thought I needed. Well, I think the dress fits well through the shoulders but needs to be a bit smaller through the body. If I make this again, I’ll probably make it a bit more fitted through the sides so it looks more dress-like and less potato sack like.

I’m still amazed that I’ve had this much time to sew with my Wee One here.

Filed Under: Clothes, Sewing For Me | Tagged:

Something Important……And Other Tragedies.

Posted by Nikki on August 25, 2008 Leave a Comment

So last week a woman left her kid in the car, all day, in 90+ degree heat (outside). Yeah, you know how this ends. No, I’m not going to heartlessly cast stones at that poor woman, give me some credit. However I wish I could literally cast stones at the person at News 5 who came up with the fantastic tips to help the rest of us avoid this same tragedy. One of those tips was, “put something important in the backseat so you won’t forget your child.” Huh? Put something important back there….you mean something more important than my child? And what, News 5, do you suggest I put back there? I mean, if my child isn’t important, what is? Perhaps no one informed the writer of this “tip” that its all in the delivery and this line was poorly delivered. LAME.

In other lameness, you’ve seen the Bengals pre-season, right? Ugh. Thankfully the Olympics spared me from that tragedy. I mean, when one chooses to watch synchronized swimming and men’s platform diving it says a lot about the state of affairs with one’s football teams. I mean they brought back Chris Henry for pity’s sake! This can only mean one thing, Go Dolphins!

Filed Under: Life in Cincinnati | Tagged:

Another Bag..

Posted by Nikki on August 23, 2008 Leave a Comment

With the new baby here let’s face it, the Weekender Bag requires too much attention and it might be awhile before it makes it’s way back to my sewing table. However, Favorite Things Annie’s Tote was a nice fit for my current free time. I had cut this pattern out a couple of months ago, and then hung it in the closet with the intention of using it as a diaper bag if the Weekender didn’t turn out well. Here’s what really happened: I finished neither the Weekender bag nor Annie’s Tote and ended up using the Nappy bag. You know, the bag I said would be a horrible diaper bag? It’s really not that bad. However I did want a bag with a zipper. This bag overall only took a few hours, spread out over 3 days.

The fabric I used for the exterior was a green heather floral by Waverly, which I purchased at Hancock’s during a sale for about $5 a yard. The only other place I’ve seen it is at Warm Biscuit, where you can purchase your own for $30 a yard. *Warning* I don’t recall seeing “dry clean only” on the fabric bolt, however this fabric faded a bit when I washed it. Who knows. For the lining I used more of the leftover slipcover in beige canvas. Reusing fabric items is my version of recycling. This pattern calls for an 18″ zipper, however I could only find a 22″ zipper in the color I needed. I ended up thinking that even 18″ was too long, and cut my zipper down to 16″ when it was all said and done. This pattern calls for only 1/4″ seam allowance, as opposed to the general 5/8″ standard seam allowance. This tends to annoy some people, I don’t really care. I chose not to use the interlining for this bag, and it turned out just fine. Also, the directions call for leaving a hole on the side of the lining and turning, I chose to leave my hole at the top of the bag since the directions call for topstitching at the end anyways.

The only difficult things in this pattern involved the vague instructions for sewing in the zipper. Basically there’s a diagram, and if you’re like me and have only put in one zipper before in your life, you might find this step difficult. Usually a pattern calls for basting and then inserting the zipper under the basting. NOT HERE! You just line it up and sew it down. I chose to baste the zipper down, then sew. Also, sewing the bottom of the bag to the two side pieces was not as easy as I had hoped it would be, so I ended up basting the bottom to the sides to hold it together, then sewing. It worked for me.

Filed Under: Sewing Bags and Accessories | Tagged:

NBC Makes Some Poor Choices

Posted by Nikki on August 19, 2008 Leave a Comment

Can someone please explain to me why on earth Tiki Barber and Chris Collinsworth are reporting for the Olympics? Weren’t there enough washed up former Olympic athletes out there? It’s bad enough that gymnastics subjects us to Elfie Schlegel, Tim Dagget and Al Trautwig (or as I refer to him, Troutmouth). This is like a Sunday Night Football nightmare.

Wait, where’s The Bus?

Filed Under: General | Tagged:

All About Quarterbacks

Posted by Nikki on August 18, 2008 Leave a Comment

Perhaps I am the football Miss Cleo afterall! Or perhaps Eric Mangini has been reading my blog? While doubtful, Brett Favre is now a New York Jet and Chad Pennington was briefly out of a job. That is until the Dolphins realized that the only thing worse than one completely embarrassing season was two. Good work Miami, if your goal was to keep your team as far away from the end zone as possible, Chad is an excellent choice!

Speaking of really stupid quarterback choices, what is wrong with Pittsburgh? I mean, besides that it is Pittsburgh. With Charlie Batch injured, they felt the need to sign a new back up for that fat kid from Findlay. So they chose…Byron Leftwich? They could’ve had Daunte Culpepper, who admittedly has gone downhill in the last few seasons, at least he can move without breaking his ankle. Even Atlanta didn’t want Byron Leftwich? Lame Pittsburgh, way lame.

Did you hear in Baltimore they played Michael Phelps final race after the Ravens pre-season game vs the Vikings? Well of course they did. Ravens fans don’t have anything else to cheer for! It’s pretty sad when you’re at a football game and something on TV is much more exciting. The media is bashing Troy Smith by the way, about an apparently lack luster performance. It was on par with Kyle Boller. I thought Kyle-bot’s experience was supposed to lead them to the promised land? Trust me on this, go with Troy Smith and forget Kyle ever happened.

And about those Olympics, what’s going on in gymnastics scoring? In what planet is it ok for someone to have two terrible landings and win a gold medal?

Filed Under: Sports | Tagged:

I Don’t Know How Rex Ever Made It Into The NFL…

Posted by Nikki on August 6, 2008 1 Comment

That’s a quote from my dad…I find it delightful.

So I’ve been quite absent from blogging lately due to the arrival of my daughter, Elise, on July 10. A surprise induction really fit in well with my birth plan of “wingin’ it”. She is totally worth going an entire day without eating and being awake for almost 26 hours (no, I was NOT in labor that long, I just didn’t get any sleep the night before).

With the fast approaching football season, I have plenty to blog about today. First, let’s talk about Fav-Ray. Couldn’t he just go out on top of his career and be happy? Seriously, he’s just a pest at this point! Do you think Aaron Rogers is ready to Tonya Harding the old unicorn yet? Personally, I think the Packers should let him go…right to the Bears. Only because it would be fantastic to watch Brett take over for Rex and Kyle, who are the most arrogant quarterbacks in the NFL….and they are both terrible. Speaking of terrible quarterbacks, is J.P. Losman still crying?

Reason # 518 why the Ravens won’t be going to the Super Bowl: They are letting Kyle-bot start in their pre-season opener. This means that they are still giving him a chance to be a quarterback. Kyle’s “experience” earns him this honor. Experience?? Apparently John Harbaugh has never seen Kyle play. He’ll be joining my friend Brian in the unemployment lines before too long…

Eric Mangini hasn’t decided who will be the Jets 2008 starting quarterback. Dear Eric, have you spoken with Favre? I hear he’s probably going to be looking for a new team. He’s really your best option if you plan on winning games this season. Honestly…unsure who will start? Did he forget last season? Why weren’t they spending the off season QB shopping? Reason # 789 the Jets won’t be making a play off birth….