Every Inchie Monday: Brief case

Hello fellow space travelers,


(Well we are on a planet traveling through space)

Briefcase: Another tricky one to find.  It has to do with Deep Thought, the smart computer built to answer the question of  'Life, the Universe and Everything'.  "On the day of the Great On-Turning two soberly dressed programmers with brief cases arrived..."  This evolves into a discussion of whether or not Deep Thought is the smartest computer ever made, which, even though it has just been turned on, apparently it isn't.  All confusing and very Douglas Adams.


I can't find anything interesting to do with briefcase.  I once found a gorgeous grey leather briefcase In perfect condition  in a thrift shop for under $10 -- It must have cost ten times that new.  I used it for a while when I was teaching, but it turned out to be both too heavy and too small.  Similar story:  I once bought a beautiful hand painted leather purse, but it too was too heavy to use on a daily basis.  I get it out every now and then, use it for a day and then put it away with a sore shoulder.

So instead of a picture of that grey briefcase (mainly because I can't find it) I've chosen to go with a briefcase/portfolio that I would like to have.  The only ones in my local art store are black and boring.

I'm a little more pleased with my quilling inchie:

On the kitty front, Kaliko is a little better.  The vet gave her some anti-depressants to  make her eat (and make her happy) and they have worked.  She is eating and has resumed some of her annoying behaviours such as walking on my chest in the early morning and knocking things off of shelves.  I really thought I was going to lose her last week.  I know she is still sick and old, but it's nice to see her happier.  If only it were easier to make her swallow those pills -- anyone have any suggestions?

Every Inchie Monday: Infiinity

Hello Folks

Well according to Douglas Adams "Infinity itself looks flat and uninteresting.  Looking up into the night sky is looking into infinity -- distance is incomprehensible and therefore meaningless."  [chapter 24]

Another word not easy to draw.  But the first thing that came to my mind was Buzz Lightyear and his cry of 'To Infinity and Beyond!'

The only thing I could think of to quill was the symbol for infinity:

I'm a little late this week as I have a very sick kitty - she's 16, has renal failure and is not eating much.  I love my little fur baby to pieces.  That's her picture on my icon -- her name is Kaliko.  So sad. 

Every Inchie Monday: Sky

Hello Folks,

I found two references to sky (this week's word for Every Inchie Monday) in this part of the book Hitch-Hikers Guide to the Galaxy.  Believe me - it was not easy.  The first is to the song Eddie sings -  "When you walk through the storm, hold your head up high....At the end of the storm is a golden sky" and the sweet silver song of the Lark (if memory serves).  This is the same song the word rain came from.  [chapter 17]

A little bit farther back in the book [chapter 16], The Heart of Gold is descending towards Magarathea  where "the suns now stood high in the black sky, the pyrotechnics of dawn were over, and the surface of the planet appeared bleak and forbidding...."

There may be another reference farther along in the book, but I couldn't find it.

When I was growing up, my father had me totally convinced that there was another colour called sky-blue-pink.  It was a sort of family joke and is very descriptive of the sky at sunrise or sunset:

Quilling skies are hard to do - so this time I have a bird flying in the blue sky with the sun, (or moon - it is a white button) in the corner.

Hope you all get the chance to see a sky-blue-pink sky this week.  They are truly beautiful and for me bring back such warm memories of my dad.

Lately I've been into crocheting amigurumi - small crocheted creatures.  They can be people, animals, fantasy, plants, inanimate objects - anything you can think of.  Here are a few of my early creations.  Most of them are for friends or family.

 Teal hungry hungry hippo with my helper.  She is eating cat food - mostly because this was the first one I made and I hadn't figured out yet how to make a heavy head stand up.

Squirrel with acorn.

Koala with green bow tie and fuzzy ears.

Purple variegated elephant.

More to come later as I get them all photographed.

Every Inchie Monday: Mice

Hi Folks,

Well everyone who's read The Hitch-Hikers Guide to the Galaxy remembers the white mice.  Trillian keeps them in a cage on the Heart of Gold and they escape on Magrathea.  It  turns out that the mice are "hyperintelligent pan-dimensional beings," not  "little white furry things with the cheese fixation and women standing on chairs screaming in early sixties sit coms," as Arthur thinks. 

 All this time it was the mice who had been running the experiments and who had commissioned the Magratheans to create the Earth in the first place.  The Earth was destroyed by The Vogons 5 minutes before the experiment would have come to fruition, which necessitates the creation of a new Earth. [chapter 24]


I started making Inchies this year before I realized the words were all from HHGG, otherwise I would have made my mouse white:

Even my quilled mouse is grey.  I think he's kind of cute.  I'm not sure why he has a red nose.  Maybe he's a Christmas mouse and wants to guide Santa's sleigh.

I've always wondered why anyone would think women would stand on chairs screaming, terrified of a little mouse.  Or think it was funny.  Stereotyped behaviour invented by men, I'm sure.  I was raised in the country where mice were not uncommonly to be found in the basement or garage.  I was told not to touch them but never was afraid of them.   

Now insects of any kind, on the other hand,  do have me screaming hysterically (well maybe more cringing than screaming) - I simply cannot abide bugs, or anything creepy-crawly  - or slimy!  Yup, definitely phobic.  Maybe I should be more sympathetic towards the mouse-phobic. 

On this pleasant note, enjoy your week.  What are your phobias?  

Every Inchie Monday: Petunia

Hi Folks,

I can't currently find my HHGG so I'm going to have to wing it this week.  I do know the Petunia, this week's word at Every Inchie Monday, is like the whale - one of the things the missiles morphed into when the improbability drive was turned on.  There is no long conversation from the Petunia - it  just says something like, 'Oh no, not again'.  The narrator thinks this might have been something quite profound if they could figure out what it meant.

Now I can draw flowers but chose to go off centre again this week.  Did you know Porky Pig has a girlfriend?  Yes, you guessed it, her name is Petunia Pig.

My quilled petunia was made very early on in my quilling journey and hence is quite simple.  I used a seed bead for the centre.   (Sorry it's a little out of focus.  I'm late enough this week and don't feel like going back and rephotographing it.)

[Edit - today is not a holiday and Labour day is next weekend]  On to my cable story -  when my cable TV went gaga - the picture was pixilating - the company sent someone out to fix it.  But as is always the case, when the tech arrived, it wasn't pixilating.  He stood around and looked at it and as he had already checked signal strength and some other things, he couldn't do anything.  Ten minutes after he left, it started pixilating again!  So I called and he came back and this time he could find what was wrong and fix it.  Nice guy to be so patient.  I felt like a total idiot.

But on the good side, I now also have faster internet connection - woohoo!  Love it.

Have a nice week and stop to smell the flowers.

Every Inchie Monday: Dolphin

Hello Folks,

The Dolphins (this week's word for Ever Inchie Monday) have an entire chapter [23] devoted to the in The Hitch-Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy!  It turns out they are more intelligent than people and had known about the upcoming destruction of the earth in time to leave before it happened.  They are famous for their parting words to the people of the earth which were misinterpreted as "a surprisingly sophisticated attempt to do a double-backwards-somersault through a hoop whilst whistling the 'Star Spangled Banner.'  What they actually meant was that now famous phrase, and title of the fourth book of the Hitch-hikers trilogy, "So long and thank you for all the fish."

I didn't go very far afield this week in finding things to depict for my inchies.  My first is simply a dolphin (wish I'd thought to put a hoop in the picture and have it singing):

You can tell that at some point in my love affair with quilling I also fell in love with googly eyes:

Last thoughts.  Think about the Adams' dolphins who thought they were more intelligent than people.  Mankind felt they were smarter because they had created "the wheel, New York, wars and so on."   The dolphins had only "muck[ed] about in the water having a good time," which the dolphins felt made them the more intelligent species.

Let's all muck about in the water this week.

Every Inchie Monday: Fjord

Hi Folks,
  
Fjords, this weeks word for Every Inchie Monday, are one of the things in HHGG that for some reason has always stuck in my brain.  Maybe because it is associated with Slartibartfast.   He's the old man who was responsible for designing part of the earth:  as he says "used to have endless fun doing the little bits in fjords."  [chapter 22]

I had to do quite a bit of research for fjords.  Certainly I know what they are but unlike Slartibartfast, I'm not very good at creating them.  So I dug farther and discoverd there is a horse called the fjord horse.  This is "a relatively small but very strong horse breed from the mountainous regions of western Norway.[Wikipedia].  Furthermore they are always dun in colour, so that is what I have drawn.

So if I couldn't draw a fjord I certainly couldn't quill one!  Again Google to the rescue.  This time I came upon a company which makes boats called, of course, Fjord boats.  So here is a little boat.  I suppose you might find one in a fjord.

Can't think of anything clever to say about fjords, so enjoy your week.  

Sorry if I didn't comment on your inchie last week.  Blame the Olympics!  Hope you are all watching the Olympics and enjoying them as much as I am.  Canada doesn't win a huge number of medals, so we warmly celebrate every one of the winners, and all of the competitors too.