Harry Potter, and misc. crafts

I am dying to see the new Harry Potter movie, and there's a new trailer out:



(Oops, I thought I was grabbing the low-res version, and it looks like they have substituted the high-res version instead. So you probably want to click over to YouTube or The Leaky Cauldron so you can actually see the whole thing!) (I am either going to have to figure out how to post video so that it sizes correctly on my narrow format, or quit attempting to embed video. Or change my format, but then that's another whole kettle of fish.)

In craft-related news, I went to Michael's yesterday to get clear embossing powder, which we needed for Claudine's class, and I came out with several wooden items which I did not intend to buy. But they had the most adorable sort of retro-looking rockets - I think they were actually supposed to be birdhouses - and I have several very small children on my Christmas list who I never quite know what to buy for, so my mind immediately started clicking when I saw these. (They were marked down about 60%, too - I'm not sure if they were marked down because birdhouses are "summer" items, or if it was part of the general markdown of all the summer children's craft stuff. But that makes it a seasonal markdown either way, doesn't it?) First I picked up one, thinking of the one little boy on my list, and then I thought, Wait, why can't girls have rockets? and I got one more. Now I'm thinking I might wish I had at least one more. As I recall, the little girls in question have rather violently pink color schemes in their bedrooms, but hey, I think a pink rocket sounds kind of adorable, actually!

Oh, I'm still working on my "grid project" but I have one more color mixing result:
Every blue-ish color in Claudine's paint line (which means Sky Blue, Smidge of Blue, and Classic Teal) mixed together = Turquoise. Which was not at all what I was expecting.

"Upception"

This is really brilliant. (I suspect you need to have seen both movies - "Inception" and "Up", that is - to really appreciate it, though.)



What's amazing is how well it all fits. Who thinks of this stuff?

(I've seen "Inception" twice, by the way, I loved it. And I love "Up" so much I've watched it repeatedly on video, which is something I don't do a lot.)

Hmm, I think my super-narrow format is going to cut off a good bit of the video. You may want to click over to the original source.

New books #1: fabric beads

I have several new books I haven't talked about yet. (I may put them into several posts because more than one Amazon link per entry tends to get wonky.)

Fabulous Fabric Beads: Create Custom Beads and Art Jewelry
Kristal Wick didn't invent fabric beads, but she does seem to have perfected a technique for making them. I have plenty of fabric to play with, so I really should try this. (I kept looking at the pictures and thinking that they were made on some kind of form, because of the black "showing" at the top and the bottom. But it turns out that what the author does to achieve this effect is dip the top and bottom in black paint. See, the things you learn when you actually read the book!)



Bonus link:
If you feel the need for more Twilight jewelry, Alphastamps has a cute Twilight-themed bracelet.

One more thing about Twilight

I knew this existed, but I was too lazy to look it up, and then Cleolinda did the work for me by providing  links right on her Twitter feed: Twilight in 15 minutes. She actually linked to the new one (Eclipse in 15 Minutes), of course, but there were helpful links right there to the others, so I'm golden. And it is, as usual, very funny.

If you've never read any of Cleolinda's parodies, she's been posting them on Livejournal for years, and she even has a book, which has completely different parodies than the LJ ones, although it's now out of print (but I'll post an Amazon link anyway). (She also writes this almost unexplainable thing called The Secret Life of Dolls which I totally adore, and wish she would write more of. Cleolinda is totally to blame for me ever deciding to watch Twilight in the first place.)

Added: At my husband's suggestion, we checked out one more piece of Twilight mockery after I wrote this: Rifftrax, from the Mystery Science Theater guys. It's downloadable audio which you then synch up with the video - the effect is like MST3K minus the robot silhouettes. It was the first time we'd tried it but it worked quite well. For $3.99, it was a fun bit of entertainment.

Those sparkly vampires

I'm doing something I never quite thought I'd do - I'm watching Twilight. It's not really my thing, but I was curious. It's become such a pop-culture legend, you know? And I guess I can see why the teenage girls are all into it - it's that whole doooooomed romance thing, I think. I might be more into it if Robert Pattinson was more my type, but he doesn't really do it for me. I don't know why, exactly, because I do think he's good-looking. I think it's partly that I think his hair is stupid. Taylor Lautner comes closer, but I think that may also be the hair, because I'm well aware that I have a thing for long hair (which in turn shows my age, I think - I hit adolescence in the  70s, when long hair on guys was all the rage). (Then I looked the movie up on IMDb, and now I feel like a pervert - Taylor Lautner is eighteen. He was born in 1992, for god's sake. Which means he was, what, 15 or so when this was filmed. But like I said, I think it's the hair. Teenage boys are usually not my thing, not at all. And it's not like I'm ready to go join Team Jacob or anything. And anyway, I think he loses the long hair in later movies, doesn't he? I don't remember ever seeing pictures of him with long hair at all, although I'm sure I just didn't pay attention at the time this came out.)

Anyway, I am trying not to mock the movie overall - it's really not as bad as I expected. Even the part where Edward sparkles, which is probably the most obviously mockable part, was done in a relatively subtle way, somewhat to my surprise. And the sparkling is in the book, right? so they pretty much had to have it in. I did sort of enjoy this, and I'm not entirely ruling out watching New Moon someday, but I'm pretty sure I'm not masochistic enough to read the books, still. So I am gonna have to rely on other people to tell me what's in the books. -- And if you're a huge fan of the books, don't hit me, okay? I'm just pretty sure that would be too much of Bella moping for me to take.

I'm sure this is a surprise to absolutely nobody, but there is, of course, Twilight jewelry. I had to look. And I saw a very clever Twilight card tutorial the other day, if I can remember where I saw it. (Aha - here.) I know there's Twilight merchandise out the wazoo, but that's as far as I'm willing to look. I'll go back to my book now. (Which The Pillars of the Earth, if you really want to know, but I just started it so I have no real opinion yet. I've had it for ages and keep forgetting about it.)

Made by the Na'vi

I found another example of movie-branded jewelry: Avatar. (Figures.) I kinda like the armband, although I would never wear such a thing - seems like it would be uncomfortable, somehow. Plus I didn't really even like the movie that much. (Very pretty to look at, very short on plot.)

Generations

You really need to read 2012 in Fifteen Minutes. (And by "you" I mean "everybody". Because it's funny, and especially because it may save you from actually having to see 2012.) Also, in other movie news, we went to see Pirate Radio last weekend, while everybody else was apparently going to see the aforementioned disaster-of-the-month thingamajig, and I really liked it. If you hate 60s music, you will probably hate it. Otherwise, it's not a bad way to spend a couple of hours.

I am "of a certain age," as they say - ok, I am 49 and I was born in 1960, to be exact - and so I have a fondness for 60s music that I don't think I'll ever lose. It's the music of my childhood. I've never really identified as a Baby Boomer even though I technically am one, I guess - possibly I'm not the only one who feels that way, because lately I have heard "Generation Jones" as a name for the in-between ones like me, sandwiched between the Baby Boom and Gen X, although I'm never sure quite what that's supposed to mean, exactly. (Huh, Jones as in "keeping up with" according to Wikipedia.) Since I was born in a nice round year, for me the 60s were grade school, the 70s were junior high though my first couple of years of college, the 80s were my 20s, and so forth. Regarding music, I think I'm pretty eclectic - if you look at my iTunes list I think you might have trouble figuring out what I like, exactly, because it's all over the map. I have country and rock and all kinds of stuff from "American Idol" and soundtracks and - well, like I said, eclectic.

I don't know much about how generational differences intersect with people's taste in jewelry - I'd like to know more about that. (I clicked from Wikipedia over to this page, and I was watching one of the videos there, which said that Gen Jones is "more persuadable" than Baby Boomers or Gen X - which is interesting. I know that I put more of a premium on being open-minded than a lot of people I know. Maybe that's part of the same thing!)



I'm still making donuts - it's an obsession. I made a siam one (with the chocolate Delicas) and then a padparascha one with gold Delicas, which was really glitzy. I'll probably be making more with the gold ones, but meanwhile I picked up some "vintage rose" bicones, which are really pale and I'm trying them with white Delicas instead.