Do you knit? You NEED this caplet. You need it! (Celebrating Ms Casapinka)

One of my favorite blogs to read is casapinka. She's a doctor * creative (and currently full-time) mother of two * wife * knitter * knitting designer * her-home decorator * lover of all things pink * and all-around witty lady. The way she writes about her the weirdness of kiddos amoozes me greatly, so I get to enjoy child-rearing at arm's length.

She makes so much effort to bring out their creativity, and it always feels like her children have plenty of breathing room to blossom into their Own True Selves--whether that means her son wants to wear Hello Kitty socks and carry a baby doll named Tom, or her daughter wants to skateboard while on a royal-wedding-weekend-getaway.

 

She also makes the funnest sewing and knitting projects like her son's "Japanese surfing trousers"

 

And she has the same can-do attitude as the women-folk in my family. When confronted with tinted car windows that would prevent her taking her driver's test, and the impossibility of having the tint removed before six months, she wrote (in re her husband stressing out):

"I, however, love problems like this. These are the challenges in life that don't really matter and are just begging to be solved creatively."

Yes. Some challenges don't really matter.


Pink also takes beautiful photos...
 

And is just so durned quirky, sarcastic and down to earth, that though you'd love to hate her for being so talented, and such a great parent, and having such great taste... bahhhhh you CAN'T!!! Look at her! Cute! Quirky! She made a sweater with pom-poms on it!!
 

And speaking of talented, the reason for all this netluvs is that I wanted to celebrate her publishment: Her pattern for a bridal caplet was published in Love of Knitting magazine. Yays!!! <--I don't make knitting patterns so I can afford to be generous and unjealous. Yays!!!

But I don't knit, so I can't run out and buy the magazine and be supportive. So I'm posting it in case it inspires someone else. I presume one can change the color and--amazing!--no longer just a bridal caplet. Eez cute non? Eez cute.

Baby cheeses it's good

My bettybuddy[see other blog] in Australia turned me onto this show, but now I need to find a source for episodes! Amazon only has the US version of the show.

Arthur and The Rightness of the Couple

I finally saw the original Arthur movie. Aaaaat laaaaaaast myyyy looooove haaaaas come aloooong. Where has it been all my life??

If you haven't seen it, the basic plot is: Arthur = spoiled millionaire child of a snobbish and distant father. Drunk most of the time, but you understand why when you see his family, and the woman he's expected to marry. She's the most wonderful Wrong Person Hero Is Engaged To I've ever seen. Unconditional love of the most stifling and horrifying order.


Her father abhors Arthur, but will force him to marry Susan, only to please his little girl. One of my favorite bits of dialogue in the movie is where Susan's father manfully says to Arthur: "When I was 11 years old, I killed a man."  Terrified, Arthur replies understandingly: "Well, when you're 11 you probably don't even know there's a law against that."

Arthur will be cut off from all monies if he doesn't marry Susan, and having no useful skills he resigns himself; but then he meets Linda. He sees her shoplifting a tie, and when the guard follows her out of the store to arrest her, Arthur follows them out and saves her. Here's where I decided the movie was perfect, because in the five minute scene of him saving her with lies, and her going along with his lies, and then the first flirtation between Arthur and Linda, followed all the while by Arthur's butler, and then the first witticisms exchanged between Linda and the butler... you know that Arthur and Linda are meant to be together. [The scene isn't online, but here's a later scene from the movie.]


Sometimes you go an entire movie or novel not quite convinced that a couple is meant to be together. Once you're sold on this, you're sold for the rest of the movie (and the sequel) because you're rooting for them. They were so good together, they're one of the few movie couples you could imagine hanging a series on, like Nick and Nora Charles.


Billy Mernit, who writes about romantic comedy, agrees about the importance of being convinced over the rightness of a match: 

"Romantic comedy writers all too often put way too much emphasis on figuring out ways to keep their leads apart.  But conflicts and obstacles are actually the easy part of romantic comedy screenwriting.  The harder task lies in creating what I call a chemical equation for your protagonists - presenting the clear, vivid and genuinely convincing evidence that because he's like this and she's like that, they absolutely, positively must end up a couple." (In his review of Just Go With It)

Georgette Heyer was aces at this too.

Oh my days, that last post was supposed to be posted on my comments blog, upon which I was fixing technical problems. I hit post, went to look at it, and then face-palmed. I feel like a moron this morning.

Cutetube is ruining my life

The Cutesie Video


The Best Comment

The Case of the Disappearing Ants

Ants Part I
Ants Part II
Ants Part III
Ants Part IV

No ants tonight, but the little pile of dead bodies is gone (and not left in front of my cat box.)

All's Quiet on the Antsy Front

Ants Part I
Ants Part II
Ants Part III

It's been quiet again on the ant front. I always take credit when the ants disappear, but now I realize it's because they stop being active around midnight (I've been researching again.)

Apparently ants take dead ones away to the trash heap to keep from cluttering up the hallways, or from bacteria/fungi forming, so I guess the dude I saw just happened to be a Janitor Ant. He decided the cat box was far enough away from where the other ants were working, and he'd done his duty.

God I'm gonna dream about ants tonight, I know it.

I've also learned that carpenter ant workers are females--female eunuchs. So these have been femdudes I've been killing.

I also need to take a closer look at their thoraxi to be really sure their carpenter ants. [Feels disrespectful as she checks dead body.] Yes, they are.

Bugs are so interesting. I wish we didn't have to fight. And I wish I wasn't squeamish about them. Being a bugologist is the only science job I could imagine being interested in. But then you end up having to be a forensic entomologist. (I know someone who got that far, and then realized he could not work with dead bodies. He works in publishing now.)

By the way, Medieval Days and Ways is a book, in case I didn't make that clear. My brother thought it was a wonderfully named bug spray.