etc.

  I’m in love with this palette! Can’t tell you what I’m knitting, but I can show you the yarn. (click for notes)

I tell you, I’m a bit tired of taking pictures around the house. Problem is, I haven’t worked up the courage to take the camera out with me yet. The mister & I had a lovely day downtown yesterday, there was strolling, and interesting shops with kitschy little things, and stalls filled with colourful jewellery, and a most photographable lunch at a Korean barbeque. And, oh, how I wished every minute that I had my camera with me, but even if I did, I probably wouldn’t have pulled it out of my bag. Why? Because it’s a big, black thing (you can’t miss it), and I feel like a big dork going on urban adventures with my camera in hand. And pulling it out in shops? Never! What if the shop person asks me why I’m taking pictures of their stuff? I just don’t think “it’s for Flickr” is a sound answer. See what I mean? No courage. I suffer no such encumbrances when I’m a bona fide tourist, but in my own city I just can’t do it.

How about you — do you brazenly wield your camera with reckless abandon wherever you go? Got any advice for a bashful photographer?

  Friday night, good dinner & wine with my sister & her mister

  Saturday morning, tea (in my favourite but cracked mug) & a magazine on the deck

  Sunday, quilt mending on the couch

It’s Wednesday and I’m still thinking about last weekend. Nothing major, just a whole lot of not-working (mostly — I checked email once, bad me) and plenty of great, big expanses of chill-time. It was perfect. I bought that magazine during that week of almost-vacation in August, but I didn’t actually pick it up until this weekend, when I spent a luscious hour with it on the deck on Saturday morning. Magazines are a weird little indulgence for me — I hardly ever buy them, and when I do, I tend to lose patience with them in a hurry. A quick flip-through, ahh look at the lovely pictures, and then it’s on to something else. Compare that to a book, with which I can spend hours upon hours, all strung together. So, reading that issue of Blueprint, cover to cover, was nice, in an unexpected, uncharacteristic sort of way. And the quilt mending was successful too. We bought that quilt (from a store! I know!) a couple of years ago and have managed to wear it out well, with relentless machine-washing and drying. It was clean-linen time this weekend and I had visions of opening up the washing machine to an unraveled mess, tufts of batting everywhere, bits of threadbare cotton stuck to the drum (a bit melodramatic, perhaps). I knew I’d have to mend all those tiny unraveling seams before committing this quilt to the washing machine one more time, so that’s what I did on Sunday. It went well. The mended bits are sprinkled unevenly and quite obviously all over the quilt, but whatever, I’m telling myself that I don’t care. It will probably nag at me long enough to finally get me working on a quilt for our bed (the mister has been asking for one for ages), and that can only be a good thing.

Hope you’re all having a good week, my sweets!

  Wednesday, working

  To-day, presenting (not the same pants, I promise!)

It’s feet week over at Mecozy and bloggers everywhere are photographing their feet. Such fun!

Wednesday’s shot is in our pathetically crumbly carport (where, as you can see, the weeds are flourishing nicely); the shoes are a few summers old and looking plenty worn by now, but the soles are still beautifully springy, and, well, there’s just something about blue shoes, isn’t there? (is it just me?). I suppose I could slap on a coat of polish/protector to spif them up a bit. To-day’s shot was hurriedly snapped on the deck, on my way out to give a presentation to a bunch of health/medical librarians (who were awesome). As soon as I took the picture, I looked down at my dusty black flats, which I love, and realized that they’re probably not presentation-appropriate. So I switched to Wednesday’s blues (I’m unsure as to how presentation-appropriate they are as well). I really need some shoes that are confidently presentation-appropriate. Oh, and, did you see that fallen leaf? Yeah, Fall. I’m thrilled.

I think I’m taking this weekend off from work, all work. No work email, no presentation-prep (I’ve got a few presentations over the next 8 weeks that need writing), no tinkering with my to-do lists. I’m tired, yo.

  birch bark

I’m obsessed with trees at the moment, particularly the textures of tree barks. I’m getting all up close and personal with them, lens first. The mister put his old 28-90 mm lens on the camera, and I’m having all sorts of good times figuring it out. I can mostly find my way around a viewfinder, but I don’t know much else about photography. But, boy howdy, there’s fun to be had in figuring it out!

In networking news, we traded in our old (so old!) D-Link router for an Airport Express and the increase in speed has given me the interweb equivalent of whiplash. I’m now surfing through your blogs at breakneck speed, friends! I feel so much more efficient! Faster is better, don’t let anyone tell you otherwise.

The surge in speed and productivity has come at a good time too. As soon as August’s page fell from the calendar, my head switched gears and all I can think of is the students are back, the teaching resumes, the Fall conference schedule looms, and I’ve got to get things done done DONE. My first library/tech-related talk is this Friday, and I’d be lying to you if I told you that I wasn’t at all regretful to have spent part of the last long weekend of summer with my nose in my laptop, writing, researching, and polishing up a presentation from last year, readying it for a new audience. At least I did most of it out on the deck, under an umbrella, with the trees swish swishing above, and ice in my glass.

Everyone I know loves Fall, but me? It just makes me sad.