Laura's birthday book

For the past few months, I haven't done much of anything except put together this gigantic photo album/scrapbook tribute to my sister for her 30th birthday, which was Nov. 26.

I have to admit, I can see why people really get into scrapbooking. There are about three huge aisles of stuff at A.C. Moore, and although I started out planning to do everything by hand, I ended up finding some neat ready-made stuff that made things go a lot faster.


The book is an alphabet of things that have to do with Laura: Childhood memories, favorite actors and baseball players, etc. So there were a lot of inside jokes from when we were kids, including excerpts from Colin McNaughton's obscure 1970s alphabet book, ABCs and 123s. I also had a lot of fun making little clip art in Microsoft Publisher.

The front cover is a painting in acrylics and it's supposed to look like "The Castle in the Pyrenees" by Magritte, because for some reason I thought he was Laura's favorite painter. (Turns out I was wrong, but at least she liked the clouds, I think.)

The back cover is also painted and it depicts the constellation for Sagittarius, which both Laura and I were born under.



The "Happy Birthday" scene at the end of the book has Brak, Zorak, Jimmy Fallon from Saturday Night Live, some Smurfs, a Muppet, and two Giants baseball players -- Barry Zito and Tim Lincecum -- having a birthday party for Laura. It is loosely based on a dream she described to me, but apparently Jimmy Fallon did not appear in the dream after all.

Actually, I just liked the picture of him playing the guitar.

Geeks rule

Over at SearchNetworking.com, we just launched an editorial blog, which has been consuming massive amounts of my mental space this week. You can read my first "real" blog post about geeks or check out the latest IT Guy cartoon.

Bee-otch

After hearing that bees are disappearing from the planet, a condition that may ultimately spell our doom, I was inspired to create this happy little bee hat. C'mon, bees... time to rally! I have some Honey Nut Cheerios here...

Cable pillow

This is a pillow I designed as a present for a friend (pictured in its new home). The yarn is Malabrigo in Pearl Ten; the cable stitch pattern is called "arm in arm" and is found in the Vogue Stitchionary Volume Two.

For knitters out there: I discovered a neat way to join the front and back sides of the pillow, since I hate seaming. I used a crocheted chain stitch, inserting the hook into a stitch from both sides on each stitch. I did this with wrong sides facing, so the resulting crochet chain makes a pretty trim.

Cutest baby ever!

Introducing Evie, "Cutest Baby On Earth." That's her Uncle Jason in the background. Oh, yeah, and she is wearing a pixie hat I knitted for her from Knit Wit by Amy Singer.

More or less Martha Stewart

I made these fancy canapes from "Martha Stewart's Hors D'oeuvres Handbook" for a yacht club-themed birthday party thrown by the excellent Dana Brundage. (We weren't really on a yacht; we were in JP, and I can only imagine what the neighbors thought of our outfits.)

Anyway, what's more yacht club than Martha Stewart? And since this is the only time I've dared attempt anything from this book (most recipes require a Japanese mandoline, caviar or a lot of technique), I just had to show off.
Top: Roasted red pepper hummus
Bottom: Tapenade and goat cheese

New cartoon posted

Here's the latest "IT Guy" cartoon link: IP addressing cartoon

animal hats

Yes, more hats. Well, what did you expect? These two were a hit at the Millennium craft fair, where I sold some knit and jewelry items back in December. The panda (100% wool) is still available!

More geeky stuff

"The IT Guy" now has four cartoons online. I think these show a lot of progress in my cartooning abilities, although it is a challenge to be funny and appropriate for corporate use at the same time. If you look at the links on the page, unfortunately, the cartoons appear very small because of TechTarget's format with the large ad column. To view a larger version of the cartoon, you can download the PDF version (which includes a checklist for earning networking certifications, and although that may not thrill everyone out there, I'm sort of proud that I formatted all the content for this PDF. Maybe not very interesting graphic design, but at least it is something different to do at work.)