So Flickr has these stats. I set them up a bit ago. I check them occasionally. Until today, I never noticed a referral that wasn’t from Flickr itself.
Yesterday I got a referral from wired.com to a photo I took in 2007, from a story written in March 2009. My photo was their NuvaRing example for laying the ground rules for a “found” photoshop contest about the birth control of the future.
I drew over my surname because at the time I was trying to be slightly anonymous on the Internet. Oh, those were the days.
Visiting the photo reminded me that I’d added it, on request, to two Flickr groups a long time back: One of these things is not like the other… and Contraceptives & Other Images of Birth Control.
Between the groups and friends and that one person who was reading year-old wired.com articles, my birth control has, to date, been viewed by 2,288 people, over a period of 3 years. (Ha. Period.)
2,288 people. 3 years.
The Internet is a vagina-centric time machine.
Update: I just realized that by blogging about it I’ve completed the Internet circle. Yay.
Yesterday I had surgery to remove the hardware from my ankle, all of which was put in a couple years ago when I broke it in a really lame way.
I’m feeling really good, and have a small army of friends who are arranging furniture and cleaning up small rain-caused floods and making sure I’m fed and and making sure I’m taking my painkillers and generally verifying that I don’t injure myself in embarrassing ways in my own home.
I get the sutures out in 2 weeks, and then I have 4 more weeks on crutches. Since there are now holes in my bones that need to fill in. I don’t understand how there aren’t nanobots or Cylon goo to do this, but there you are.
And I kept the hardware.
Last weekend I went back to Pennsylvania to see my family. While there, I swung by Knoebels to see my old stomping grounds and see what’s changed over the years since I visited last.
View the full set of photos and videos from Knoebels.
While I was home I also stumbled across my grandmother’s recipe box. It is full of mid-20th century delight, including both her original recipes and those collected from friends and periodicals. Some highlights include a recipe for smoking 100 lbs. of pork, jello salads clipped from magazines, and 11 ways to make pickles. Also: white wash.
I’m currently planning to scan or photograph the cards, as well as to enter the contents into a database or XML file.
I have a soft spot for art toys. So, I gave in yesterday while at Vault of Midnight and got one of Kid Acne’s Rollin’ Stock series of vinyl dolls, distributed by Kid Robot.
It’s a blind sort set of 20 creatures in little train carts. The idea is to get all of them and construct a 3-inch-tall train of strange animals. I generally don’t buy things from sets, but I genuinely like all of the toys as illustrated on the boxes. I wouldn’t mind getting any of them. So I will probably buy a couple more, at least.
This one was a very serious deer who likes bling.
A very serious deer.
The workmanship is quite good; his little antlers came in separate little baggies, and his necklace is actually a separate rubbery piece. The wheels roll, of course. Each toy also comes with a card depicting the doll and giving its number in the series (the deer is 2/20).
I took a little trip to Detroit today to take some photos around Grand Circus Park.
The full set.
Today I went to Morgan and York with a friend for coffee and cookies. They have Easter-themed items out now.
The odd placement of the icing prompted said friend to remark that the bunny looked like it was wearing a gimp mask. Things, as would be expected, went downhill from there.
Every good gimp mask needs a mouth-zipper.
It says a lot about how awesome the folks at M&Y are that at this point the gentleman making our coffees suggested that we should put the gimp bunny back in the display case. His sentiments were appreciated, but the gimp bunny was taken away and consumed.
I’m pretty sure he liked it.
It occurs to me that I haven’t blogged about What I Did A Couple Weeks Ago.
Many were overtly or vaguely aware of a brief and harrowing road trip I took with a friend to south central Pennsylvania at the end of February. I’ve explained its purpose on my return to several people, but I think it’s summed up best with the following description, culled from a retrospective IM conversation.
him: It’s a long story, eh?
me: Well, a complex one. No? “I did a 22-hour round-trip roadtrip with my ex/best friend to pick up hundreds of dollars of military surplus storage and modular furniture from a tiny army surplus/Y2K-preparedness/gun-nut store in Bumfuck, PA, which I knew the location of because I grew up a different but similar Bumfuck, PA. And in return for signing up for another trip this summer, I got this case. Which has embroidery floss in it now.”
“During the trip we deconstructed a case of beer and stored it in one of the cases because the car was so full of army surplus furniture that there was only room for one case of beer.”
“The beer was acquired because it is not available in MI and has sentimental value. It was split in half to share with another friend who owns a $1 van which is regularly borrowed to move large quantities of free high quality furniture around, often in snowstorms.”
“Also purchased: a crowbar (for headcrabs), MINES signs, a sticker mocking people that don’t eat meat, and a variety of medical scissors and forceps.”
him: Yeah, that’s about right.
This weekend I helped a friend work on clearing out a house that belonged to a recently deceased relative. My sorting powers came to good use. As a reward, I received three cardboard boxes full of vintage sewing notions, mostly from the late 1950s through early 1970s.
Thanks to a friend with even better OCD than me, I’ve started absorbing some of the items into my own collection. But, I’m also very happy to be spreading items around with crafty friends, and some of the ways that the items have been stored make me very loath to deconstruct the ones I keep. Many items are in contact-paper-covered cigar boxes and tiny bags, or the original packaging.
There’s something delightful in seeing into how someone collected, stored, used (or didn’t use) items in their daily lives.
Last night I used my “new” Steelcase desk as a cutting table, ironing board, and sewing table to put together a new little wallet, based on this pattern.
More photos at flickr
It’s got plenty of room for cash and cards. I used the same pattern for my last wallet, which lasted a surprisingly long time, but this time I added a cotton elastic loop to keep it closed, instead of the recommended velcro. I skipped a closure last time, and suffered many a getting-on-the-bus-need-my-wallet-OH-NOES spill.
Regarding the fabric choices: I’m not usually a fan of pink, but I really, really like 1930s repro prints. I got a bunch from my mom, who teaches quilting classes, when I visited home for Christmas.
For the sewing nerds out there (there are some, right?), I whipped this up on my Janome 6260QC. Cotton thread and fabrics, of course.
