Just like "Starting Over"

I love this Wil Barnet painting. Isn't it great? And it's not just because of all the time I lie around in bed with a cat on me, looking all fish-eyed out from under whatever I'm reading. A framed poster of it is hanging up near my bed. So I was taken aback when the other night, watching this movie, Starting Over, I noticed it in the very first scene.



Burt Reynolds and Candice Bergen are breaking up in MY bedroom, basically! I mean, what the hell! Burt, Candice: Get out of my apartment and go settle it somewhere else! Damn.



Now about this movie. It's so magnificently silly and great, and so, so funny...if anything, it's a bit sad watching it, realizing, they sure as hell don't make movies like this anymore. Well, and it's hard to not think of director Alan Pakula's horribly random death on the godforsaken Long Island Expressway, too. But it's a comedy, people! A COMEDY!! I mean, Candice Bergen unexpectedly belting out crazy Carole Bayer Sager songs...a grumpy ex-husbands' support group with Austin Pendleton, Wallace Shawn, and Jay O. Sanders...

Shrugs

I made an oh-so-fashionable shrug for my lovely niece Hazy sometime in the last year or so. It turned into one of the easiest things I've ever sewn, and with the best results in terms of the wearer's enjoyment. The kid loved it!



Here's a more straightforward picture of the garment and its said owner.



For cryin' out loud, she even chose to wear it for her school picture. Brook said the morning of the school pic, Hazy put on her favorite dress and the shrug and then declared, "Perfect!"



So when I came across some bold-looking fake fur recently, I knew only one thing could be on the horizon. This time without sleeves. I guess it's actually more of a capelet or something. Whatever it is, it turned out to be a little less "everyday" and a little more "special occasion." You know, for those more grandiose moments in the playroom and on the playground.

Here it is on one of her dolls. (And vat a doll, eh?)



But there is the below photographic evidence that the young lass has taken a turn or two in it herself.

And here is an end-of-post quick quiz for you:

1. What is Hazy's favorite color?
(Sorry, I know, it's a tough question. Try to relax and think of not-so-obvious colors. Then rethink the obvious ones.)

and

2. How freaking adorable is my niece??!

A) What an inevitable question. I refuse to answer.

B) She's a crazy Q T!

C) Pink?

(Hint: Maybe at least a fraction as cute as this kid, who wore his favorite outfit for his school pic. And who also received the aforementioned eyeball for his recent birthday.)

A cool birthday prez

You're welcome, Henry! I hope you enjoy it. And keep it on a padded surface away from pets when you're not playing with it.

I heart Tina Fey

This past week's episode of 30 Rock is the last one for now, due to the you-know-freakin-what. And after seeing this past week's episode, I've decided: Every night I am going to kneel and pray and every morning I am going to wake up and kneel and pray again that this frustrating strike will get resolved so the Honorable Lady Fey can get back to work with her writers and continue creating her unbelievably funny, great, phenomenal, groundbreaking TV. Oh my god. Lord, please!

A busy moment in the sky

Here's a sketch for a birthday card I made for a certain someone who loves cats. I think the less said about this, the better, though, maybe. I mean, I could also say this person is interested in squirrels and trampolines...but that wouldn't be true.

I am going to hypnotize you now...

...while simultaneously showing you how the bobbin in a sewing machine works.


P. emailed this amazing graphic to me today from this place. (I think they got it from the "How Stuff Works" website, which is apparently chock a block with tantalizing animations like this one.)

There is something so neat about this, I guess because I've been sewing for years and not really known what was going on under that mysterious bobbin plate.

A stony gaze

I was looking through the album of pics Brook puts together annually of the Meinhardt-Moe shenanigans throughout the year, and noticed this one.



! ! !

I freaking love everything about this shot. Especially because it's so my sister to be visiting a sculpture park with her kids and end up with a picture like this. I can practically hear her giggling her head off before, during, and after the assemblage of this geniusness.

Bravo, sis. I hope you have lots more inspiring snap attacks like this one in 2008.

Olive has some ideas too, dammit

Ever since I posted about Beatrix the other day, Olive has been all up in my face, like, "What? I'm the original cat, and I'm not the first one you post about? Well, fine. But just you wait. Little do you realize, while you're out gallivanting around town with P., I'm here at your desk, already halfway through my memoirs."



In response I try to be all like, "Great! I hope it's going well! Let me know if you need someone to read some pages!" But she just gives me the cold shoulder.

And then she sulks for awhile.

Harumph.

Killer Cake

Here's my New Year's wish to you: that you'll have a piece of this kind of cake at some point this year, if not in your lifetime. It's "le bomb," as the French probably wouldn't say. Here's the recipe. And no, I don't know what they put in their icing to make it so bright and artfully mid-frozen drippy — cocaine or some other illegal baking substance, I bet.