math in the movies

a few weeks ago randy and i saw the tourist at the dollar theater for one of our dates. it was entertaining, but probably not one i am going to see again. especially because angelina jolie's eye makeup killed me the whole time. nowhere in the movie is it anywhere near as lightly put on as in the poster above. i realize that i am on the more conservative end with my makeup, but seriously, this was just too much. no one wears their makeup like that. no one.

that's not the point.


in the movie, johnny depp's character is a math professor at a community college. there is a point in the movie where he needs to open a safe (to which he does not know the combination) under a tremendous amount of pressure. there is a long period of time leading up to when he is supposed to open the safe and the whole time i kept hoping that the combination would be the answer to some mathematical puzzle that he had solved based on subtle clues he had picked up along the way. you know, some constant, or a geometric series, or a formula. something like that.

it wasn't. and i was a little disappointed that they didn't go that route with it.

i guess we all have our own superheroes. apparently the script writer's heroes like to use guns and brute force instead of math. whatever.

quilt top finished

i got my sampler quilt top finished a few weeks ago and am just now getting around to posting it (notice a theme?). this is actually not how i planned to put it together. i wanted to have strips of sashing fabric between each square to make each one pop, but after an hour and a half in the fabric store, trying to find sashing to put between the squares, it just wasn't happening. none of the fabrics worked. i decided that even though i wanted the squares to stand out more, i would rather have it be a little mushy than have sashing fabric that i wasn't happy with.


so here it is. all put together. now i have two quilt tops that i need to pin and quilt. one of these days.

skirt project fail

i promised a while ago that i would post about a failed project that i had completed. i'm finally getting around to it. my niece has a really cute skirt that i decided i could replicate on my own (i should have a picture of it, but i don't). it is a reddish wine color and has three different fabrics in ruffly layers. very cute. i went to the fabric store and couldn't really find three different fabrics that matched in color, so i decided that i would just do it in white and dye it when i was done.

skirt production did not go as planned. satin is a pain to work with (renew my vow never to work with non-cotton fabrics), especially to ruffle. the layers turned out shorter than i intended and i actually ended up going back and taking out a couple layers to fix them later. there were some other major mistakes that i won't point out, but it was bad. i got fed up with the skirt pretty quickly. 

but. beth urged me on and i finished it and i was actually okay with how it looked (from a far) as an overall product. i figured that it would still be a fun skirt for her to wear, even if it wasn't perfect. 

and then i dyed it.

i don't have a picture of the whole thing, but this is it close up. it is supposed to be red. and trust me, i left it in the dye for a LONG time. much longer than the instructions. now, i knew there was a chance that the satin would take the dye differently than the cottons, but not that differently. and the cottons aren't even close to red. can we say coral?

needless to say, this project was a flop. fortunately, i had priced it out beforehand and decided that even if it did flop, it was worth trying, but it was still disappointing. especially with how much time i ended up putting in to it. madeleine still loves it though, and dances around the house in it like it's the best thing in the world. she still doesn't understand why i don't love her going out in public in it.

too long since pictures

probably not a great one to start with, but they're chronological. this was back when diane was really sick a few weeks ago. this is how she looked for over a week. constant glisten beneath the nose, red, swollen eyes, and just generally miserable. not fun for anyone. 

i believe that this was during the recovery process, when i was just happy for her to be eating anything. i didn't really care where it was happening. 

i was trying to snap this without waking her up. she had just fallen asleep sitting on my bed. i'm pretty sure that i woke her up and the picture is off. 

doing much better here.

a great picture for a couple reasons: one, it showcases diane's awesome hair right now, and two, you can see her nice head wounds.

her hair is in that bad stage where i just have to let it grow, but it looks pretty ratty in the process. plus, she likes to put food in it at every meal, so it is usually really lovely by the end of the day.

the head wounds occurred within a couple minutes of each other. that always seems to be the case with my kids. the top one is from a run-in with the couch where she fell and hit the corner, causing a goose egg from the impact and a rugburn on top of it from the fall against the couch. under that one is a nice bruise from running into a chair a couple minutes later.

we have been spending tons of time outside (hence, less blogging), and enjoying the sunshine. it is not always warm, but it is getting better.

carl bloch exhibit

 

byu's museum of art has a carl bloch exhibit going on right now. randy and i have been meaning to go for quite a while now and finally made it a couple weeks ago. it was an amazing experience. 

 

byu has had bloch's "christ healing the sick at bethesda" for a while now. they actually acquired it during my freshman year and the painting has always had a special place in my heart. but this year, the museum has several of bloch's other altar paintings on loan from denmark in a special exhibit that will be in the museum for a short period of time. 

randy and i went on a saturday night and it was pretty crowded. the museum has ipad rentals with information about the pieces that you can walk around with and randy and i were going to rent them, but decided that the line was too long. i was actually really glad that we didn't have the ipads. i think that they would have detracted from looking at the actual artwork. i only wish that it would have been a little less crowded and think that i will try to go back again during a less busy time.

i've tried to write about art before and i'm just plain bad at it. so, i will refrain from detail. but the artwork was beautiful and moving. his depictions of the savior are really incredible.

as you walk into the exhibit, there is a quote from a danish writer that says, "he dipped his brush in his heart." i think that is a perfect way to say it.

chopped

last week, i got my hair cut by a man named patrick. he has large, colorful tattoos on his forearms and a walrus mustache. i am a sucker for the sleek, modern lines and beautiful sunlight in his salon.

i used to get my haircut by a woman named pearl. her salon was in her basement and decorated with large, fluorescent colored flowers. hippie style. it suited her well.

i didn't switch hair dressers for any of the aforementioned characteristics, although reading back, it sounds like a comparison. in which pearl might lose. but no. patrick lives closer to me.

i was going to grow my hair out, but i got fed up with it and decided to cut it shorter again. this is what usually happens. i get sick of the grow-it-out phase and suddenly decide that i must get my hair cut. immediately. that day if at all possible. actually, that is another reason i switched to patrick. pearl was always booked out for weeks.

anyways... i really like the haircut. and i really liked how patrick styled it. which is rare. not for patrick, but for hairdressers and me in general. only problem is, i can't really recreate how he did it. because i am a hair styling dunce. i've tried. not that hard, but i have tried.

all that is to say, don't expect it to look like this too often. expect more of the messy, undone look.