Hi There Hammy

Y’all know about that the Dead Pirates’ Wood music video I posted a few days ago? (of course you know about it, because you watched it like I told you to… right?) Well now you can download the song… for free! So cool.

These music videos feature some amazing horizontal stop motion. There is so much work going in to these and that’s part of what makes it them so stunning.

Adele- Chasing Pavements

Oren Lavie- Her Morning Elegance

Blink- Sorry I’m Late

Last year I took a class at Evergreen called “The Fifties: Fab and Fraught” with Marla Elliot and Susan Precsiso (one of my all time favorite teachers). Marla taught the music portion and, towards the end, the class sang some Sacred Harp songs. Shape Note singing uses four different shapes to denote what note you’re supposed to sing, instead of the traditional music notes and the most popular book that uses shape notes is called Sacred Harp. The songs sound wild and they feel really wonderful when you sing at full volume.

Anyway, I’ve been trying to find a good audio clip to post here so that you can get an idea of what it’s like and finally I found a nice quality but more mild version of Sacred Harp singing. After a little digging, I realized that Portland has a group that meets regularly and sings, maybe I’ll give it a go! They have some links to audio clips as well and there are some youtube videos too. Check it out if you’re interested, but I think the only way you’ll really love it is if you try singing it sometime, even if it is as a class assignment. This is from the movie Cold Mountain… you can get the idea.

What, might you ask, sparked this recent interest? I was watching a PBS special, Appalachia: A History of Mountains and People when I heard a song halfway through the second episode. It sounded really similar to shape note singing and the song was so beautiful… I had to have it! However, it’s not on the companion cd in the PBS store and the credits went by so quickly that I couldn’t read the song name, no matter how much I slowed it down. I did search after search for the clip, for extra song credits… anything that would tell me who sings that song! I got nothing. I’m still looking and it’s slowly driving me mad.

Wow, more changes! Subtle, but they’re there. A shop tab has been added. It shows everything I have up in the etsy shop and yes! You can totally buy them! More recently, I’ve added an “About” page right next to ye olde shoppe. You can read a little about m’self there. Take advantage of the new changes, explore a little, do whatever it is you do on this blog. Etc.

I’ve been going through an embroidery jag this week. These things come and go, who knows what’s next? Some of these embroideries are old and some are new, but they’re all from my pretty little fingers.

Octopiddle: These two are small in comparison to the others (about three inches wide). I think I’ll do a bunch more and have them flock together somehow.


This octopartyman is a bit bigger than his friends (about 6 inches across). I feel like he’s still missing something… but maybe less is more. I think it will depend upon how I decide to use him. I’m thinking a pillow?

This lion is still one of my all time favorites. He looks so shy and fuzzy, I think he needs to party with octopartyman and break out of his shy box. I bet he’s a good dancer.


I just finished this little lady. When I was little my dad was toying with the idea of creating little characters for a game and this chicken was one of them. She has her own little story which I’ll tell when I manage to root out the original drawing. Coming soon: a hedghog and catman from dad’s drawings. One day I’ll put up the drawings with these embroideries so that you can see where they come from.

Oh how I love this one. I’ll save her for something extra special.
Buns… I sold his friend at last month’s Crafty Wonderland so now he’s single. I need to make him a new friend and turn them into a pair. You can’t have just one bun, no sir.

These embroideries are my own, so please don’t reproduce them. I can make patterns available for sale upon request! Thank you.

Portland has been hosting an event called Webvisions for a while now (I’m thinking 8-9 years?). I’d never gone before and this year I decided/was persuaded to volunteer for two days. I got a sweet t-shirt and free lunch for two days while I monitored doors and helped set up in the mornings. I also got to sit in on whatever presentations where going on in the rooms I was monitoring.

Overall, the presentations were… ok. Some of them we’re strangely basic, along the lines of “You should blog” and “The internets is HUGE and very cool!” while others like Armin Vit and Mark Frauenfelder were amazing! Armin should have been one of the keynote speakers because he was interesting, funny and had some really good things to say. Armin is the co-founder of Under Consideration, founded Speak Up, and so many other little side projects that rock my brain. Mark is editor-in chief of Make Magazine (get hip and check it out) and founded BoingBoing. In the end I’m glad I went but I’m also glad that it was free for me. They were a long long two days and in order to get there by 7 I had to wake up at 5:30 in order to catch the Max over at Ikea (I’m really terrible at parking and I have even more trouble parallel parking so I decided to avoid that whole mess and hitch a ride on one of them fancy machines instead).

Hey man, nice shirt! You probably could have gotten away with a youth’s large though… just sayin’.

I mean, an adult small is fine… it’ll probably shrink, if you’re in to that sort of thing.

Maybe next year, eh?

I watched a bit of the first video from over Dad’s shoulder today which lead to watching more of the video and then watching the whole thing with my mouth open thinking “No WAY. She’s GOOD!” Theresa Andersson uses one of those machines that records little snippets of instruments or vocals and then threads together an entire song by layering these snippets on top of one another. At various points she picks up a violin, drumsticks, guitar, tambourine, sings and other badassery which she loops to create some pretty darn good music. Check them out if you’re in to music and even if you’re not.

Wow, go on over to Cooking With Hanzipan to see the recipe for my new tasty treats. Wow.

It’s that time again, time to check in with the garden greenery. This past week I planted the beans and parsnips in the beds. Hopefully we’ll see some action in a couple of weeks from those guys. The only seeds I have left to plant are brussels sprouts, cucumbers and squash!

The strawberries are growing dandily, they’re even starting to blush a little red around the edges and sending out runners.

Both ‘maters are doing really well, there’s a good handful of green tomatoes on both despite the crazy weather.
Oh man, the carrots have finally decided to put in an appearance. I was getting really tired of waiting.
The peas are still chuggin along. Some of them are trying to strangle their neighbors and others are climbing right up my rather unattractive trellis. Maybe some flowers will start to appear soon. That would be cool.
Inside, the basil is still popping up, doing their thing in the window.
And I even found a tiny sage plant, it took long enough didn’t it? I think so.
Our Forget Me Nots are so happy and pretty! We got a plant from one of our neighbors and found the other somewhere in the yard. The bees love them and, if you get real close, you can smell them faintly.
Potatoes grow between the roots and the top of the plant, so if you keep adding more dirt around them as they grow, it’ll creat more potatoes as the plant grows taller to reach for the sun. I added a couple of inches to the taller plants today and I think I’ll just keep slowly mounding dirt as they grow at their own pace.

I’m about to do the ferbotten by putting up Star Wars and Star Trek clips. It’s ok, though, because they’re all spoof/fan videos. Hehe.

The first two videos are mock intros for Star Wars if it had been made into a weekly series (which is a golden idea, no!?). One is set to MacGyver and the other is set to the theme music for Dallas. NICE! I can picture the kooky hijinx now. Via: List of the Day.

The two clips have a bit of fun with Star Trek. The Closer Fan video is a bit saucy so you might not want to watch it if you’re at work. The second clip sets bits of Star Trek to a Monty Python song. Oh how it fits so well! Heehee…