Cozy

A stop-motion camera and a whole lot of yarn. K sent me a link to this neat commercial, via Metafilter. It's got wool. And a cat.

There's also a making-of video.

Happy October! Time for
strawberries?

It's been a very odd harvest year. To be fair, that picture was taken a week and a half ago, and last week's farmer's market was the last one for berries this year. It is now firmly in apple, pear, and squash season, with a big sideline on all kinds of greens. They love this weather - rainy and cool. I'm going to have to start mowing the grass again. bah.

So, how're you doing? I fell down the stairs this week. It's okay, it was just half of the stairs, and I landed about as well as could be expected, mostly on soft parts. The butt bruise is quite spectacular and no I'm not showing it to you. The ones on my shoulder blade and forearms aren't nearly as entertaining. It seems to be matching all my dyeing lately - everything is coming out shades of purple. I blame the cruddy weather.

Otherwise, K got that stupid aerator off and cleared out in less than 10 minutes. The tool of choice appears to be the vice grips (although he scratched it up even more - the masking tape/electrical tape/rag trick doesn't work at all, it just makes the rag spin around).

Why I am not a professional handyman

We are in the middle of taking care of some house repairs that we've kind of let go for a while now. The fence is starting to fall down in places. The stucco on the foundation was cracked and you could remove big hunks with your hands. Our house is elderly and some of the windows are original single pane sash-hung. And the paint is peeling in places since the lovely people who owned this house before decided they would only paint *2* of the 4 exterior walls. WTF? Oh yes, it's the 2 most visible ones.

So I've been going through this parade of contractors, and getting in the house-painting queue (extremely tight this year, and there wasn't much sunny summer weather).

I am not entirely helpless. I can strip and paint a wall. I know how an electrical circuit works. But I have this curse; when I try to do even the most simple things, it doesn't work. This morning I tried to unscrew the bathroom sink aerator to clean it. Now how hard could that be? Pliers wrapped in masking tape, then electrical tape, then a bunch of scratches to the metal later and I still have not managed to budge the thing. Bah. The Love Monkey gets to cope with this one, because I am NOT calling a plumber just to clean out a stupid aerator. Or better yet my OH SO HANDY father-in-law can fix it when he next comes through town. Grump.