I've been working on an ambigram for HG, since I haven't seen her in a while, and her first and last names make a pretty natural ambigram—except for the whole i/n issue. Not sure my approach is a particularly good solution, but it's the best I could come up with that harmonized with the rest of the letterforms:

Holy bumper crop, Batman! JD and I picked for about thirty-five minutes and hauled in about 3 litres of blackberries. Sure makes up for last year's crap harvest.

This is about a third of them:

We made them into a delicious pie for dessert.

I don't ever remember shedding tears over the death of a politician, but this morning I blubbered like a baby. RIP, Jack.

CL: "What's he doing?"

NM: "He's trying to wink."

CL: "Oh. Good winking, buddy! Looking a bit constipated, but..."

Lil' Dude's "wink" currently consists of his squinting and scrunching up his nose. One eye is completely closed, whereas the other one is about 95 percent there.

And so it begins...

Actually, it began in January, when Lil' Dude was enrolled in an art class and brought home his art projects each week. I had the, "Shit, what am I going to do with all the stuff he brings home?" thought. Fortunately I could put off thinking about it for a while, because he made mostly paintings in his art class, which are pretty much two dimensional and not that hard to store.

In his one day of daycamp today, he brought home a bracelet he made. I shudder to think of all the crafts he'll fill the house with when he starts preschool in a couple weeks.

My strategy is to take photos of them and post them here so that he'll have a record of them and maybe won't be too heartbroken to part with them. This one, of his bracelet, is unfortunately a shitty take, what with the low light and out-of-focusness and all. Maybe I'll try again tomorrow in better light.

Both my sweetie and I had had the same idea a few weeks ago, when Lil' Dude went to a barbecue hosted by a local organic market and made this head out of a tomato. We'd both taken photos of it before it became encrusted with fruit flies. It's in the fridge right now, but it looks as though Lil' Dude's finally forgotten about it and we can throw it out soon. I'll dig up those photos in the next couple of days.

There. I've finished my first attempt at amigurumi, based on the pattern by June Gilbank:

The stuffing shows through the midsection, and there are a couple of looser loops. I hope I'll progress to the point where I can look back on this and say, "Geez, look at the crap I used to make."

Apparently the hardest thing about freelancing is to remember that, yes, even at home, I need to drink water to survive.

What the fuck is wrong with me?

My sweetie, Lil' Dude, and I went kayaking to the smaller of the Defence Islands. We camped there Saturday night, alone except for a mother seal and her pup, who would occasionally poke their heads out of the water to see who the fuck was on their rocks. I misplaced my new hat, but otherwise it was a lovely weekend.

FREE-lance!

I made a couple of tweaks to the g. Wonder if it's better now. Our non-native-English-speaking nanny can read it; I'm calling that good enough.

Tried another ambigram—for yet another baby:

 

I don't know if my goal of making squint-free ambigrams is going so well. LC saw what it was supposed to be, but when I showed it to my sweetie, he said, "Mesaw?"

Sigh. Don't know now whether to go ahead with making it into something more substantial.

I am frustrated by both evolution and physiology that I can be woken up in the middle of the night both urgently needing to pee and also desperately thirsty. Why the fuck can't my body be better at redistributing hydration where I need it?

I put Thai basil on my pizza, and it was fucking delicious.

Lil' Dude still hasn't figured out how to pedal. I tried to get him to ride his trike to the playground yesterday; he basically Fred Flintstoned his way there and Fred Flintstoned his way back.

So I designed an ambigram for S&A's baby:

That was what I was cross-stitching:

S&A seem pretty pleased with it, so that makes me happy.

My goal in ambigram design: to create typography you don't have to squint to decipher.

Cross-stitching notes to self:
•Use masking tape over the piece edges to prevent fraying. Otherwise you will constantly catch your thread on the edges and drive yourself mad.
•Cut off loose ends as soon as the thread is secured. Again, to prevent insanity.
•If you are not stitching over the centre square, mark it with white floss. Coloured floss will stain.
•Don't use a thread longer than a metre. It will get frayed and shredded as you stitch.
•Don't try to use regular embroidery floss with 22-count evenweave. It will bunch up the surrounding stitches.
•When using 18-count evenweave, don't assume there are actually 18 pixels per inch. Actual pattern turns out much larger, for some dumb reason.
•Don't start a cross-stitching project unless you have infinite time. Three-year-olds are not much interested in sitting patiently and watching you stitch.

When I was cleaning out my crap at my parents' place, I came across old flower looms: a round one and a square one. I did a bit of online research to see if I could use them to make something that wasn't gaudy and hideous, and the results are a resounding no.

Last night I spent an hour cleaning orange juice residue from twelve of my keys. Thank God for the keyboard condom I got after the last time Lil' Dude spilled a drink on my computer; otherwise it could have been way worse. I really should back up my data...

"No eat the pine cone?"

"That's right. We don't eat pine cones."