Archive for the 'Memes' Category
About forever ago, four lovely bloggie girls tagged me with stuff, and I am terrible at playing tag (always was bad at sports!) and haven’t quite got around to my responses yet. So without (much) further ado, here is the mother of all meme-posts…..
Leechbabe Marita tagged me with an interesting ‘Favourite 5′ meme. I have to give you links to five of my previous posts, relating to 1) family, 2) friends, 3) myself, 4) my love, and 5)anything whatsoever. Hmmm, let’s see:
- Family: My babies… say ‘awwwww’.
- Friends: new and old ones.
- Me me me: Geez, pick a post at random. They’re all about me!
- My Love: Well now. It appears that I well and truly don’t write much about Dermot on here. That’s half intentionally, at least. How about a link to a post he wrote?
- Anything: I did love it when the 3-and-a-half year old learned to read. Ha!
(Going back through my archives made me realize that not only are many of my image links broken because I am too busy lazy to fix the mess made after a recent domain switchover, but also there is even more crap blogging here than I thought. Gah!)
That Rebel Rebecca tagged me with that 7 things meme that’s been thrice round the blogiverse in the last several months. Seven “weird or random” facts about me? Well hey, I’m no weirdy, so let’s just go for random:
- I like words with pleasing or unusual letter combinations. Like ‘-esce’ (mmmm, fluoresce, effervesce) or ‘ae’ (some of you know me as ‘chimaera’ elsewhere on the web. Encyclopaedia is another). Ooh, I like ’subpoena’. An old party trick of mine used to be the ability to spell ’subpoena’ whilst inebriated. (Ok, so I am a weirdy. And very very sad).
- Once upon a time, I briefly had a black belt in Karate. Actually, Zen Do Kai, which is not technically Karate, but an ‘open martial art’. I say briefly, because not long after obtaining said black belt, I moved from my home town to Melbourne to go to uni, and discovered boys and booze. And that, as they say, was that. (I did actually look for a new club but wasn’t really happy with the local club, or my after-dark transport options for getting to- and fro-. Going down the pub was far more appealing)
- My Honours degree was in Pharmacology. My thesis concerned Phenylketonuria (which I probably cannot spell whilst inebriated), and involved the dissection and sectioning of a lot of mouse brains. Mouse brains are really really cute.
- The only non-Australian country to which I have ever travelled is China. Unless you count Tasmania (hint: you don’t count Tasmania).
- I have a tattoo above my right ankle. I am convinced that you can tell the approximate age of a woman by the tattoo she has. Tattoos run in fads - roses, dolphins, butterflies, Chinese symbols. I have a dolphin. Damn I wish I had been more original!
- Seven years ago I almost qualified as a massage therapist. I completed the entire course with the (notable) exception of the final exam. Painful ganglia in my wrists and some nasty personal-life stuff got in the way, and I never went back.
- I edited my first Wikipedia page recently. It gave me a 15 second thrill of excitement… until some other user undid my edit! Shortly afterwards my edit was restored and an apology was forthcoming. I’m not telling you what I edited though, it’s a little creepy.
Aaaand, finally, both Missy and Christine presented me with ‘You Make My Day’ awards. Aw shucks. Thanks girls 
And in passing it on, here are ten bloggers who make my day…
Soulemama
Loobylu (hooray, Claire’s back )
Pip aka MeetmeatMikes
Wee Wonderfuls
Finslippy cracks me up!
Heather Bailey
Montessori by Hand
Sooz
Dietgirl
and lucky last… and best of all
all of my stitchy friends. You know I can’t choose between you, you all make my day! Awards all round, and chocolate eggs too
Now… another random fact: I’m finally finishing this up at (OMG!) 3.08am (the timestamp is out b/c of Daylight Savings Time). I’ve been having a few lie-awake-til-the-wee-hours nights lately, and I figured getting up and doing something productive some mindless blogging was a better plan. Hopefully now I can shut my brain up and get some sleep - gotta go be a Canteen Mum tomorrow
March 14 2008 | Memes | 3 Comments »
Whoops. I have had this post in the works since Gill generously gave me a ‘You make me smile’ award. Then when I got back from the weekend (miserable with hayfever induced sinus pain), I found Missy and J Rae also bestowing awards on me. Hmmm… maybe everyone has just run out of bloggers to award?
Hey, I hope this doesn’t mean I have to give out thirty awards now? Not that I couldn’t, just that I’m lazy 
So here are my picks - in no particular order, ten bloggers who make me smile:
Suse from Pea Soup
Pip from Meet me at Mikes
Christine, in her Material World
Hillary from Wee Wonderfuls
Erin the Expounding Movie Muse
Jenna the Shooting Star
Sooz and her Big Adventure
Marita of Stuff with Thing
Karen Cheng with her Snippets of Life
Amanda Soule, Soulemama
Go - enjoy their blogs. They’ll make you smile too 
(And if I left you out, please don’t feel bad, you make me smile too 
)
October 30 2007 | Memes | 3 Comments »
I finally finished the last of my marking yesterday. I think I had just about got into the swing of it, but still, I don’t harbour any desire to do it again.
I spent much of yesterday trying to decide whether to sign up for NaBloPoMo after all. In the end, I went to bed early instead, thus missing the signup deadline, and I’m probably glad of that. Also glad of the extra couple of hours of sleep, as Niamh woke up three times again.
In a case of “don’t count your chickens” (re. the camera purchase), my tax return arrived today, and somebody at the ATO has monumentally stuffed up, doing me out of a very substantial amount of family tax benefit. I spent an hour and a half on the phone and down at Medicare today trying to sort it out. We will get the money, but it may take another month. Grrr.
I’ve signed up for another exchange even when I told myself I wouldn’t. Hardanger. Scary.
Christmas is how close? 
And I’ve realised that I have to make Niamh a Santa Sack. Like this one of Finn’s. It’s an Ellen Maurer Stroh free design - I think I’ll use the reindeer design for Niamh.
SBQ from today:
How did you decide on the title of your stitching blog? Was it random, or does it have a special meaning to you or about you?
Erm… I think I was kind of trying to be clever. Or something. Something about “The journey of a million stitches begins with a single cross”. Let’s call it random, anyway. I’ve been considering renaming to “Stitched By Mel” to match the url, but I’m still not sure about that. I feel like this blog is less and less about stitching at the moment, so I’m not sure either the name or the address are particularly appropriate. I have therefore also considered moving the whole blog to a new subdomain and renaming it Blogged.byMel. But I’m somewhat loathe to change the address. I suspect everything will just stay the same… I’m a great procrastinator
Edit: Clearly, this entry was written back when the name of the blog was ‘Million Stitches’, and clearly, I eventually moved and renamed the blog
November 02 2006 | Blog Blather and Counted Stitchwork and Memes | 1 Comment »
SBQ: The Halloween edition
If you were to come across a sampler chart that caught your eye and appealed to you, would you or would you not stitch it if it had a morbid or “creepy” saying on it? If not, why?
This question immediately brought to mind the Monsterbubbles design Lizzie Borden. Not a sampler, but definitely morbid! I remember a bit of a hoo-hah on the BBs when this came out - is it or is it not in ‘poor taste’? Personally, I find it kind of amusing. The Monsterbubbles designs don’t really appeal to me, but I appreciate their whimsy. Anyway, to answer the question… I’m not really in the habit of stitching samplers or anything with ’sayings’ on. But if I did, I seriously doubt creepiness or morbidity would be offputting to me at all
And, because I feel like answering another, this, from way back in April:
Do you do obligation or deadline-based stitching? Why or why not? If you do, do you tend to get in over your head and why?
I have done a handful of exchanges, yes. And of course there’s the UFO round robin I’m in now. I don’t really look upon these as ‘obligation’ stitching in a negative light though. Part of the reason I join these things is to motivate myself to stitch (and more importantly, to finish!). Also, I enjoy the community aspect of them. I don’t tend to get in over my head, I usually choose only one or two at a time to join.
While we’re on the topic, I recently relinquished my membership to the stitching bloggers’ exchange board. Amongst other reasons, I felt that I couldn’t really guarantee the required amount of participation while Niamh is small. There was a waiting list of people wanting membership to the board, so I hope whoever got my place enjoys it. So to all the SBEBB stitchers reading, thanks for making my stay there a good one, and… goodbye, I guess I plan instead to take part in a few exchanges on the Rotation BB as I find the time.
October 26 2006 | Counted Stitchwork and Memes | 1 Comment »
Woah, I’m actually answering an SBQ on the day it appeared!
Which way do you stitch, i.e. do you stitch /// followed by \\\ on top, or the other way around \\\ followed by ///? Are you left- or right-handed and do you think that this affects the way that you stitch?
This has always been interesting to me whenever it’s been discussed on the various BBs I frequent. I stitch \\ then //, and I am left-handed. I taught myself to cross-stitch, and that seemed the logical way to me at the time (and still does, actually). Later, when I found out many people stitch the other way, I assumed that it was based on handedness. The people I know personally who stitch (not that many, admittedly) all stitch // then \\ if they’re right-handed, and the same as me if they’re left-handed. But I’ve seen this topic come up on the boards a few times, and the answers vary. It seems there are plenty of left-handers who stitch // then \\, and right-handers who stitch \\ then //. So who knows why we stitch the way we do, I just know that when I tried, once upon a time, to change the direction I stitch, it was a complete disaster! For the Round Robin I’m in, I’ll stitch on any UFOs which have differently directioned stitches to me by turning the fabric and chart through 90 degrees, which works fine. For Claire’s Elizabeth, I was pleased to see she stitches the same way I do, so that made my first one easy
October 19 2006 | Counted Stitchwork and Memes | 2 Comments »
SBQ-ing along again:
As we all know, stitching in the winter can really be rough on the hands. What do you do to treat your hands well in the cold winter months? Do you have any suggestions for creams or soaps? Or perhaps a special regimen that you would like to share?
Dry skin is very much an issue for me at the moment, not because of the Winter (because it’s not), but the many daily nappy changes/ washing of hands that come along with a new kiddo. My hands got pretty bad a couple of months back (when it was Winter) - it was really difficult working with silks, I kept snagging them (so I put away Dragonfly Jewels for a while, remember). I’m using QV lotion (from Ego) pretty religiously now - I use it all over Niamh, too, and on a few dry bits of Finn’s skin. Eczema runs on my side of the family, so I really do try to keep us all moisturised
I tried out that hemp hand cream from the Body Shop - OtherHalf likes it a lot, but it leaves me with too talc-y a feeling, so I don’t use it. I have a bunch of other creams and lotions too, but most are too scented or too greasy for my liking. Though the greasy ones are good to put on last thing at night before bed, I find. Like now!
October 14 2006 | Counted Stitchwork and Memes | Comments Off
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