*snif*

"You know, when I was a kid, I always thought I'd grow up to be a hero."

- Butch Cassedy

Things I am doing this weekend....

1. Watching the presidential debate (or maybe just Obama talking if that other guy doesn't show...) at Lord Malsbury's Plen Aire Moving Pictures (sadly indoors due to the rain).

2. Going to the League of Women Voters Annual Booksale.

3. Brunch at the Bean

4. Doing something with those apples I bought last weekend.

5. Making Chocolate Cake in 5 minutes.

6. Working on the perfect fall sweater.

7. Watching this over and over again.

Hometown pride

I've got a bone to pick with my old friend Kristina. We've known each other since the first day of first grade and you don't even think to send me an email about this? I have to hear about it from my aunt who read about it in her local paper in Maine?

Whatever...

Your dad is the bee's knees. But how come your mom didn't get a cameo?

Mama's Votin' for Obama:

Lush and Lacy

I was supposed to go away with my mother this week, but decided I'd been away too much lately and stayed home. I still took today off work though. I spent the morning cleaning out the fridge and the pantry (sorry about that Kevin...). And the afternoon finishing a sweater.I started this sweater back in late May/early June and it knit up super fast. This is my third Sweaterbabe project and I adore them - easy to follow and a good range of sizes. Katherine is a tiny woman, but she knows how to design for the more curvy among us... The yarn is a scrumptious blend of silk and wool that had been burning a hole in my stash for a while. It's Reynold's Rapture that I scooped up at Webs when it was (sadly) discontinued.
The Pattern is the Lush and Lacy Cardigan. I was not convinced until the knitting was done that this was even going to work on me - a short cropped cardigan in bulky wool is not exactly the best choice if you don't weigh under 115 pounds.The sweater was knit and blocked weeks before I found the perfect vintage glass buttons on Etsy. But the buttons proved to be too heavy for the fabric and pulled the whole front out of shape. So the sweater sat for another month.
Finally this week, craving a sense of completion (and the weather has turned fallish and I want to wear the thing....), I brought it into town on a quest for the perfect ribbon. I fortuitously ran into Rue on my way. Rue has a way with this sort of thing. We went straight to Essentials (where they have all sorts of tempting things) and, after some searching (if only that eiffel tower ribbon had been wide enough...), found the perfect ribbon. It goes with the buttons and reflects the diamond pattern from the sweater.
It took most of the afternoon today to sew on the ribbon. Sewing is not my strongest suit, and I was afraid to do it on the sewing machine, so I hand sewed it on. I'm really pleased with the results.

Nobody does.

The other day I was at a craft fair with neighbor Pete after work. As we strolled past a table selling scratch-'n-sniff clothing, Pete suggested that I should buy myself a pair of the underwear. 'There's a muffin scented thong,' he said. (In my defense, I had not eaten much all day and was in the process of quickly sucking down a beer which was going straight to my head...) I replied, very loudly in a small crowded space, 'NOBODY WANTS TO SMELL MY MUFFIN!'

Thinking this over later, I wonder about the saleability of scratch-'n-sniff underwear. Is that really an area you want to associate with scratching? Scratch, scratch, scratch... 'Mmmm, smell this!' 'No really! It smells good! I promise!'

Promise vs. Fight

HuffPo has an article today comparing words used at the DNC and RNC conventions. They've got a pretty good visual, but I thought I'd wordle some of the speeches to see what words the individuals used most. In wordles the words are sized based on how often they are used in the selected text. Looking through the galleries on wordle, I realize I'm not the first person to do this, but whatever...

Let's start with the wives. Here is Michelle Obama's speech. The words that stand out are 'Barack', 'work', 'world' and 'people'.In Cindy McCain's speech you see 'John', but 'Country' instead of world. Interesting...
The VP Candidates starting with Biden... 'Barack Obama Change' clearly stand out here. And he mentioned John McCain more often using his first name than his last. Sarah Palin used McCain's surname more often (she is his junior after all and has not claimed - like Joe Biden to be his 'friend'). She also used the word 'Man' quite a bit. I feel like if this was Hilary Clinton or anyother female politician making a VP acceptance speech that would not have been the case.

Then we come to John McCain's speech inwhich his most used word was 'fight' (is anyone surprised by this?)....

In comparison Obama's most used word was 'promise'. And I believe he does.