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Society 3.0 Lectures

My favorite topics as a public speaker are Trends & Strategy, Innovation, Value Networks, Blue Ocean, Disruptive Business modelling, Web 3.0, Social Media, Enterprise 3.0, Collaboration 3.0, Geo Branding, the Corporate Story Model, Government 3.0, The Serendipity and last but not least Society 3.0.

About keynote speaker Ronald van den Hoff

Ronald van den Hoff is co-founder of the Dutch CDEF Holding BV, a Holding company with a remarkable range of ventures operating on the disruptive intersection of the Hospitality-Tech. CDEF incorporates ‘much discussed’, disruptive exponential formulas, like the co-working and meeting centers, and the Society 3.0 Foundation., with over 150 locations worldwide, has become an interactive breeding ground for inspiration, innovation, entrepreneurship acceleration, cross-linking and cross-pollination. S2M is also the online development lab, not only creating our in-house software and apps, but also Artificial Intelligence software like ‘The Serendipity Machine’.

A publishing company, The Society 3.0 Foundation, completes this range of innovative ventures. In April 2011 this Society 3.0 Foundation published Ronald’s book Society 3.0, creating a context for all CDEF’s activities. This Society 3.0 foundation is a movement, a guiding light and a change agent in our ever-dynamic world. Its activities, books, publications, events and websites are the visualization and exploration of the vision and mission of the CDEF Holding. In addition to his work within CDEF Holding BV, Ronald works on innovation with (international) hotel chains and other service companies in the field of E-commerce, E-communication, Business Modeling, Value Networks, Exponential Organizations, Decentralized Autonomous Organizations, Social capital and alternative monetary systems.

Mas Society30 en Espagnol.

Read all articles written by Ronald van den Hoff here:

“I just wanted to personally thank you for joining us in Dubai.  Ronald, you are truly, truly inspiring and you have a great sense of fun.  Thank you so very much and we hope to be able to do some amazing things together in the future.  The GMs did not stop buzzing about your presentation.”  Angie Hall (Partner,

“The audience of the NIMA Marketing Day 2017 rated your presentation with a 8.43 (scale 1-10).  With this rating you belonged to the best speakers of the day…” Rachella Boere ( Project Manager)

“Thank you again for participating in the speaking programme at the ICMA “Classifieds in a Sharing Economy” conference in Berlin. Having collected the results from the delegate feedback forms I am delighted to inform you that your presentation rating received an overall of 4.53out of a maximum 5.0 rating which was one of our highest evaluation results. In addition, 100% of delegates felt the topic was relevant and that they learnt something new which is a fantastic outcome.”  Hannah Worrall (Events & Communications Manager)

See all Ronald’s presentations (300+) on Slideshare

Speaker Fee

You transfer €3500,- excl. VAT to the Society 3.0 Foundation, a foundation which helps people and organizations to overcome the obstacles they encounter on their path to Society 3.0. For that amount of money Ronald or one of the Society30 Ambassadors will give a lecture of 30 min – 1hr.

Society 3.0 in real life

Visit the award winning disruptive business model concept flagship location in Utrecht (the Netherlands): One of our most disruptive and succesfull ventures is the hospitality cowork-, meeting and office concept A visit and tour of our S2M Flagship location in Utrecht is possible. The location manager will give you a brief explanation of the concept. Contact location for details.The visit to S2M Utrecht can be enhanced by a presentation of one of the Society 3.0 speakers.

Request a speaker!
Email to ronald [at]


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Drunk Selfies… Nothing more Irish

Drunk Selfies - Nothing More Irish

So many of my Irish friends texted me on St Patrick’s Day, sending me a ton of really bizarre selfies, and groupies.. It was insane.. and as I was unpacking this pose set from, Fashiowl I was reminded of those photos.

Man, Irish people can drink.. but, you need to keep them away from electronic devices… and social media…
As much as I am tempted… I am not going to post their photos… and trust me when I say… it would be so worth doing.. but, I shall be good, and keep those to myself.. and the 100 other people they sent them too…….

Anyway.. here is your info.. and btw.. remember to smile, at least once a day this week… I promise one of many things will happen… like.. possibly, brighten someone else’s day…. or, Piss off the person pissing you off and in turn, make your day much better…. or, it will make people think you have plum lost your marble and then, will leave you the Eff alone.. heheh… either way.. so many more things could happen.. if you just smile.

All product, event and designer info in styling area.

Descriptions are always as follows

Item/URL | Product Name | Event | Month

I do my best to always credit everything in my photos.

No matter the length of my posts, I always include the above explanation in my styling area.

I hope that you have enjoyed this post!

I blogged random things that I liked over the past month…. or so.. lol

Have a great day, and happy shopping!!

Shape | So Hawt SL – Shapes |  Dianna | WIP

Head | Catwa |  Lona | Catwa Clip

Body | Belleza | Isis

Eyes | [the Skinnery] | Lovers eye-Raven

Tattoo | TattooMania | T-15 / Opacity | anyBody | March 2017

Skin | [theSkinnery] | Cintia – Honey | ULTRA | march 2017

Hair |:::Phoenix::: | Annie  | Kinky | March 28th 2017

Nailpolish | DP – Koffin Nails | FatPack –  Lady Of The Moon | Ostara’s Altar  | March 2017

Ears | ^^Swallow^^ | Shiny Elf

Dress | Vinyl | Chai Slip Dress | uber | March 2017

Shoes | _CandyDoll_ | Lysae – Dark Colors | Kustom9 | March 2017

Scarf | .:* LOULOU&CO *:. -| :: MOLLY :: Black | Luck of the Irish Gacha Event | March 2017

Pose/Props | Fashiowl | Cheers  | Luck of the Irish Gacha Event | March 2017

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Camera Phone Mini Lenses

I just found the most amazing thing ever, mini lenses for my camera phone. Sold at for combo price of $40. There are different lenses in the combo package (sold separately too), fisheye, wide and macro angle.

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The picture quality of these lenses seem to be very good and it’s the easiest thing to attach and detach them. With your lenses you will receive a magnetic sticker that goes around you camera’s lens and you can just attach and detach the lens with that magnet. How cool is that!

I’m addicted to take pictures with my phone, so this is a gift from god for me. Maybe I’ll treat myself and my BlackBerry Storm 2 and get these lenses!

2 thoughts on “Camera Phone Mini Lenses

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Thursday, November 28, 2013

DIY Master Bedroom on a Budget

Batchelors Way started with a fairly simple bedroom and made it into something pretty amazing. She has tutorials for all the projects listed and tons of pictures to drool over. You've got to checkout this bedroom makeover.

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Tuesday, November 22, 2016

The Showdown - Blood In The Gears

Band:  The Showdown
Genre:  Southern Metal

The Showdown was probably my favorite band for a little while back in 2010.  They had just released the album Blood In The Gears and it was at the time the best thing I had heard.  Turns out when they recorded the album they borrowed a couple of people from Demon Hunter.  Go figure, Demon Hunter was one of my favorites before I even knew it.

But yo, the vocalist for The Showdown is possibly one of my favorites for the Southern Metal style.  He's pretty smooth with his transitions between singing and screaming and his screaming is just good.  It's really perfectly suited for the style of music they play.  Sure, they have a bit of a Pantera fetish, but that works out reasonably well for the band.  It's a solid, crazy, southern style that you don't always find executed in a polished way.

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Gamecocks Chores Only Get Heavier

South Carolina knows the problem and what must be done to fix it.

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When Spellcheck won’t help you…and Autocorrect fails.

Spellcheck is many people’s favourite tool when writing; it’s great for picking out niggly spelling and grammatical errors. However, what it’s less good at is spotting words used out of context. If it’s in the dictionary, it’s deemed ‘acceptable’.

So you get odd things happening at times, such as articles where the writer has obviously become confused by two homonyms, and the results come out something like these (the below come from a Digital Tutors blog post about the game engines Unity and Unreal):

one engine might rain supreme

And this particularly poorly structured sentence – who are its ‘dominants’, exactly? The people who’ve been oppressing a game engine?

When it comes to mobile games that is where Unity really shows its dominants, with many popular mobile games created with it, it’s really become a mobile developers go-to game engine.

Finally, the penultimate paragraph has this recommendation:

‘We’re so krazy, we eschew dictionaries!’

First of all, apologies for not blogging last week. I’ve been simultaneously editing two books, and paid work took over a bit, culminating in me realising at midnight on Friday that it was probably a little late to be thinking about what to post twelve hours ago.

This week’s post/rant is called ‘Spell it however you like – it’s still wrong’.

Why, oh why do some companies give themselves a name that sounds perfectly reasonable, but is spelt in a ‘unique’ way? I know it’s easier to potentially trademark a name further down the line if no one else uses that spelling, and that people can still understand what’s meant, but we’re not back at primary school learning phonics.

I’m thinking here of pack leaders like Krispy Kreme Doughnuts and Bratz dolls (I particularly dislike ‘Slurpee’, but that’s not so much a misspelling as a horrible word), although there are plenty of places out there who present a challenge to accepted orthographic standards.

Take ‘Krazy’, for example. I just googled the word and found one of the top hits to be a company named Krazy Kool Kastles, who hire out bouncy castles in Northern Ireland. I bet they don’t abbreviate their name very often. (Returning to Krispy Kreme for a moment, at least their Hull branch had the sense to drop its ‘KKK Wednesdays‘.)

Just the first three pages of Google bring up Krazy Playdays (soft play centre), Krazy Horse (motorcycle shop), Krazy Kat (theatre group), Krazy Kev’s (magician and balloon modeller), Krazy About Pizza (take a wild guess), Latin Krazy (dance teaching) and Krazy K9s (dog training). They’re so crazy that they shun the curly c!

It’s also interesting to me that when I just googled the name of a company that used to be known as ‘Wonderous Ink’ (and which used to have a list of FAQs on its website, one of which was a long explanation of how ‘wonderous’ was an older and well-established spelling of ‘wondrous’) that it has now changed its name to Wondrous Ink. I guess they got sick of all the Facebook and Twitter comments they were receiving about the company name, but they’ll never manage to erase the Google Images search results that clearly show the older (and incorrect) spelling (shown below). Which is a shame, because their books look lovely. The Internet elephant has a very long memory.

wonderous ink

I could probably go on for hours and trawl the Internet for more examples, but let me leave you with my favourite example, and the one which triggered the thought for this week: QwinnT’Sentiel Beauty. The name caught my eye when the company car was parked next door, and no matter how many times I reread it, I find it virtually impossible to commit the ‘correct’ name to memory. I know ‘quintessential’ is quite a tricky word to spell, but surely easier than ‘qwinnt’sentiel’? They may provide a fantastic service – I’m not doubting that for a moment – but I find the fact that I can’t spell their name really off-putting. And this company is a reseller of Younique cosmetic products, a name which really makes me cringe (although I guess that’s more a matter of personal taste, as spellegance no doubt is to some people)!

‘Til next week,

A peek inside my ‘editor’s toolkit’: shaping the textual garden

The whole editing process is a bit like tending an overgrown garden: you start off faced with the unruly greenery (the text) which you first need to weed (remove obvious and repeated errors), then work out a design for (structuring and styling), and finally water and maintain (ensure textual flow, prune to remove unnecessary words and sentences, check that everything is still where it should be and not encroaching on another section).

In any kind of writing, the same kind of errors tend to crop up again and again. Word’s ‘find and replace’ function is useful for finding a lot of these (I know creating macros can also be a big help, and this is something I still need to get to grips with and may well write about in future). By taking a few simple steps at the beginning of the copy-editing process I can save myself time and ensure consistency throughout the manuscript. Here are the steps I take when editing a text.

The pre-editing stage

I like to think of stages 1–6 as ‘pre-editing’ – removing surface errors before getting down to the ‘bones’ of the text, where I’m looking at each character in turn and the overall structure.

1. Style guides

Firstly, when I’m given a text I make sure I’m using the correct style guide for the publisher in question. I give this a quick read-through to refresh my memory, as they’re all a little different from each other. In the absence of a style guide, I check with the publisher or author what they prefer to use (my default would be Oxford, as it’s so widely used as a standard for writing and editing).

There might, for example, be a requirement in the style guide I’m using to write all numbers up to ten as words rather than numbers. (Oxford suggests all to one hundred. There are exceptions to this rule, but that’s one for another day.) So I might add this to my list of ‘things to check’ for this particular manuscript.

Some publishers have a preference for particular spellings of terms, so it’s worth doing a specific search for these as well. One company I work with which prefers to use ‘Quran’ (rather than ‘Qu’ran’ or ‘Koran’) for the Muslim holy book and ‘The Second World War’ (rather than ‘World War 2/II’, which is how you often see it written). I tend to put these on the end of my checklist (see below) to make sure they don’t slip through the net.

2. Using a template (not always applicable)

I then copy-paste the manuscript into the template provided by the publishing services company. (If I’m editing for one particular company I’ve been supplied with a template containing all the different styles I normally need. The template strips out extraneous formatting and makes the document easier to work with.)

3. Document styling

Once the document is in the correct template, I can format things like headings, chapters, body text, quotes, epigraphs and image references correctly. This makes it far easier to find my way around the text later on. It’s very difficult to edit several hundred pages of text with no formatting to provide a ‘map’ of the manuscript.

4. Using the paragraph mark button (¶) to spot additional errors

The next stage for me is to remove all tabs, extra spaces after full points, spaces at starts of lines (search for ‘^p’ to find these) and line breaks. I keep the paragraph mark button selected at this stage to see where these are. (Manual page/line breaks aren’t necessary if you modify your styles to include a page break before or after the style in question.) Likewise, you can set a requirement for ‘Normal’ text (the majority of the text) to inset the first line of a paragraph so it’s easier to see where one paragraph ends and the next starts after you’ve switched off the paragraph marks.

5. Spelling/grammar checks

Now I can run the manuscript through a spelling and grammar checker. It’s surprising just how many errors this can pick up. I have access to a spellcheck tool used by one of the companies I do regular work for (I appreciate that not everyone has this luxury) and I find this tool invaluable. As well as having all the functions of the Word spellchecker, it can check against the following different spelling standards:

  • British with Oxford -ize only;
  • British with -ise only;
  • American;
  • British -ize and -ise comparison;
  • American and British -ise difference; and
  • American and British -ize difference.

This won’t find everything, necessarily, but finding even one error is better than it getting missed in the editing process! Because it comes up with a list of all the mistakes in alphabetical order, it also makes it easy to spot where difficult-to-spell names have caused the writer to come unstuck.

6. ‘Common error’ checklist

I’ve created a table in Word of all the things I need to check before beginning on the main task at hand. This is a working document which I add to as and when additional issues crop up. It includes the points above, and also a list of common errors to check for. The ones currently in the toolkit are:

  • Ensure apostrophes are the right way round in date abbreviations (’30s).
  • Remove all bold text (File > Replace > ‘Find What’ > Ctrl + B > ‘Replace With’ > More > Format button > Font. Select ‘Regular’ under ‘Font style’).
  • Use ‘Find and Replace’ to weed out double spaces after punctuation, and to remove any spaces immediately before punctuation marks.
  • Check correct types of dashes are used (for example, en dashes (–), which are longer than a hyphen, are used in number spans). (Different style guides will have different types of dashes used to interrupt words, sentences, etc., so I make sure I know the guidance before I start.)
  • Ensure ellipses (…) are only ever 3 dots, and that they’re formatted correctly. (CTRL + ALT + . will do this.)
  • If document contains any references, ensure there is a space immediately after the full point following the ‘p’ or ‘pp’ (p. 6, not p.6).
  • Make sure all speech marks are the right way round, paying particular attention to quotes that have quotes within them. (Word often gets confused and tries to immediately follow opening quotation marks with a closing apostrophe, regardless of what’s written on the page.)

The ‘proper’ editing stage

Once all these fiddly technical bits are done, I can get down to reading through the text itself with ‘Track Changes’ highlighted so I can show the author/translator what I’ve done and add any queries using the ‘Comments’ function so they can reply and clear up any confusion or state their preferences.

Normally I’d send a sample of ten or twenty pages to the author with all errors highlighted to ensure they’re happy with the way I’m working and suggest that I only track changes where it’s a matter of preference or more clarity is needed in the text, rather than one of us having to approve changes that are amending outright errors. Once I have their approval, I can work my way through the manuscript and get the first edited draft to them for approval and for any questions to be addressed.

And that’s it, really. Once all the issues are addressed, the manuscript is ready to go off for typesetting and, after that, to be proofread.

You don’t have to be a copy-editor to take the steps above to create documents that are easier to navigate and more internally consistent. Establishing your own (or the organisation’s) preferences at the start for common words used, font type, etc. can give you a common ‘thread’ that runs through all your business documents, styling will help you and others navigate through your writing, it’s surprising how much the paragraph mark button can show up that you hadn’t noticed, and a ‘common error’ checklist could pick up quite a few things that are hard to spot when writing a document – particularly when you’re up against a tight deadline.

And with that, I’ll say goodbye for this week, and happy gardening!

Don’t leave your editing until the last minute!

In my past life in a communications department, one of the tasks I was regularly given was to do the final checks on magazines and leaflets before they went to press. This activity tended to follow a pattern:

  1. Document written by manager from one department or other (sometimes with input from team, sometimes not, often very last-minute).
  2. Document sent directly to design studio to put into magazine format and ‘prettify’.
  3. Document sent by print team to communications team to proofread before print run of several thousand. (Usually with an impending deadline.)
  4. Enormous email sent back to design studio containing all the corrections to be made before document was suitable to be sent to the public. (This was in the days when you couldn’t annotate Adobe Acrobat Reader PDFs electronically without buying the pro version.)
  5. Disgruntled email received by communications team from design studio, who’d spent a lot of time making the document look nice, asking why there were so many corrections needed. (A classic case of ‘shooting the messenger’?)
  6. Disgruntled email received by communications team from manager who’d originally written the document in question, asking why the design studio were stressing about the changes that needed to be made. (Messenger. Dead.)

My point is this:

Any document going out to the public – whether it be a beautifully printed and bound book, a four-page leaflet or a web page – is a sales pitch for the author, organisation or individual. However beautiful the finished product looks, glaring typos will make many readers question the quality of the service or work provided, as touched upon in my blog entry in November last year, Are spelling mistakes costing you money?

In the publishing world, you’d never get an author submitting their work directly to the typesetter to be laid out ready for print. There will, at the very least, be a diligent copy-editor checking the whole text for

  • correct formatting;
  • spelling and grammar;
  • factual accuracy;
  • internal consistency; and
  • adherence to the house style or style guide.

After the manuscript has been copy-edited it will be typeset (i.e. made to look like an actual book rather than a Word document) and then passed in its typeset form, usually as a PDF document, to a proofreader for a second read-through. The annotated (either on paper or electronically) PDF will then be returned for the typesetter to make the amendments before the book can be approved for print.

So why do people cut corners so often? The case discussed at the beginning of this post was a cash-strapped public body, so perhaps they’d be reluctant to hire a copy-editor or proofreader separately, but all it needed was for the writer of each document in question to send the original, in Word, to the communications team before it went to the design team. That way the errors in the original would have been removed at a sensible point in the process, everyone would have been happier, and a lot of time would have been saved.

Next time you’re writing a document for print or a web page to go on your site, think of this post… (And think of me!)

P.S. As a footnote to the story above, shortly after I left the department, the communications toolkit we’d developed was due to be rolled out to all staff. One of the guidelines was to send all printed publications to somebody in communications to be correctly formatted, edited and proofread before the design stage, and mentioned that perhaps using the style guide set by the organisation (‘conveniently’ located about six mouse clicks away on the Intranet site) would be useful. Hopefully this would also be applied to the website (although I had more doubts about this as it was based on a content management system and the people allowed to write for it varied vastly in their abilities). I wonder if anything has changed in the last four years?

Busy, busy, busy!

After a few days off over Christmas, I’m back on the work wagon with a vengeance: there’s a short novel to copy-edit by the end of the month, a medium-sized one due in early February, and a book on feminism to put the finishing touches to before 27 January. I’ve been told to expect some transcripts of interviews to edit during February, too, and I have a couple of ideas for generating extra work that I plan to chase up once things quieten down a little.

A certain husband is also turning 40 towards the end of the month, so there are things to be organised on that front as well. I didn’t say it wasn’t going to be challenging achieving the resolutions I set a couple of weeks ago! (If anyone has discovered the secret of making time magically expand, please let me know. I’m serious.)

Getting fitter and healthier – so far, so good…

So far (I know it’s early days, but if I write it here it will hopefully make me feel guilty if I’m tempted to slack) I’m managing to keep my resolution about getting fitter and healthier in 2015. I’ve been swimming a few times and attended two TRX suspension training classes so far (plus a taster just before Christmas). Although I feel stiff and creaky at the moment, I love the variety within the classes, and it also gives me more incentive to avoid eating loads of chocolate as I know it’ll negate the workout I’ve paid for (in cash and in hard graft).

I’ve also got a grand plan to involve the children in my exercise plan – basically, they can join me after school in learning all about burpees and planks. Of course, they’ll think it’s fun and easy while I collapse crying in a heap on the floor, but once I’m fitter I’ll be the one laughing…I think.

On a blog topic-related note, I’ll leave you with a link to Allie Brosh’s brilliant rant on her site Hyperbole and a Half about the common usage of the non-word ‘alot’. I may have shared this before – apologies to those who’ve seen it before – but it’s such a classic I feel it’s worth mentioning again.

My Christmas present to you: proofreading tips (and my year in summary)

With the flurry of activity in the Spellegance family household this morning, it’ll be a short one from me this week!

I thought I’d start with my Christmas gifts to you – firstly, a link to a blog from 9 December, 11 Proofreading Tips to Help You Write with Confidence, which contains handy tips for non-proofreaders to write with confidence, in instances where they don’t have a proofreader on hand.*

Secondly, for all you other bloggers out there, I found this post (admittedly from August 2011, but still relevant) entitled 11 Blog Proofreading Tips You Can’t Afford to Ignore.

As the end of the year is rapidly approaching, I thought I’d finish with a quick summary of this year’s happenings, and hopefully illustrate in the process why I love my job…

Since January, I’ve proofread or edited 15 different books – not bad considering I’ve only been working very part-time and have only increased my hours recently. These have ranged from an acclaimed novel written in Brazil and published in the UK for the first time this year to a philosophical look at the nature of belief.

I’ve had a varied and interesting year in factual titles, reading about science fiction films, the philosophy of belief, a massacre in Angola, the state of arts funding in Britain, the Royal Navy during World War I, Aneurin Bevan (the founder of the NHS) and the current situation in and history of Ukraine. I’m finishing off the year in style, with a look at the world of beauty, burlesque and feminism, which seems appropriate given the pressure women’s magazines place on us to be glamorous over the party season!

In fiction I’ve travelled on a road trip round Africa, met a Brazilian girl living by the roadside and her older lover, followed a young Libyan boy on his journey of self-discovery, investigated Finnish murders, had a taste of life in South Africa, experienced life in Ukraine during World War II through the eyes of a German major, and got to know a Maori detective a little better after my previous meeting with him two years ago.

And I’ve become a writer as well as a reader/editor since starting this blog…

This is all in addition to the less exciting elements of my work: business planning, attending training, researching websites and logos, record-keeping and trying to keep on top of Twitter and social media in general.

(And of course there’s the non-work stuff of family and hobbies, but that would be another blog in itself. No wonder I feel tired!)

Things to do, places to be…so I’ll end by raising a goblet of mulled wine to you all! Have a very Happy Christmas, and I’ll see you all in 2015!

Merry Christmas!

* Please note that this is not a substitute for hiring a professional!

The pleasure of beautiful writing – an appreciation of some lesser-known titles

Just a quick one from me this week after the whirlwind of school Christmas events, editing work and endless list-making…

It’s all too easy to focus on things that are ‘wrong’ or pick out amusing typos (I still snigger like a child when I see ‘pubic’ in place of ‘public’, and could barely contain my mirth when my husband recounted the tale of an e-book where OCR software had converted the printed ‘burn’ to ‘bum’), but I think it’s also important to celebrate what’s being done well.

Following on from Buzzfeed’s ’51 Of the Most Beautiful Sentences in Literature’ and their ‘6 Perfect Sentences’ last December, I thought I’d share a selection of my favourite excerpts taken from books I’ve edited or proofread this year. (Please note that I can’t provide the source for some of these, as some won’t be published until 2015.) In no particular order, here they are:

From Nowhere People, Paulo Scott:

In the story she told him there was a colourless girl who very much liked being kissed. One day ‘the colourless girl was by the side of the road when a squad of bikers passed her and one of them threw an apple at her back. She almost fell over, she was hurt. They stopped a few metres on, took off their helmets, laughedat her. The day, which had been lovely and sunny, clouded over. Hurt, the apple looked sad, sadder even than the girl,’ that’s how he wrote it down. And she will watch the leaves on the trees and she won’t know when his leg has gone to sleep and the time has come for them to go.

From a book due to be published in April 2015:

He travelled along a dirt lane, straight and white like a parting in the hair, between fields of new grass where larks sang and quails called out with their three notes, clear like water drops.

Due to be published in January 2015:

The thunderstorm was right overhead now. It was like the sky was pummelling the city in its ribs.

Due for publication in March 2015, this description of the prelude to the protagonist settling down to watch a rugby match on TV:

All was in readiness. The highly decorated (and priced) bottle of Pinot Noir had been breathing for a couple of hours. The fire, craftily tended and force-fed, had worked itself into a yellow-orange fury generating so much heat that the room had been opened up and outer layers discarded. The lamb shanks had been slow-cooked into submission. The panel of pundits had squeezed every last drop out of the bleeding obvious and hedged their bets. The players were about to take the field.

Another book due out in January 2015:

There were fiery and unknowable impulses just below the smooth skin. A frail bravado, an unsettling unpredictability. Above all, he possessed a hungry kind of beauty.

Under the Tripoli Sky, Kamal Ben Hameda:

And, as often happens when the night decides to divulge its secrets, the darkness was vast, like a confession of love. The stars looked on calmly as they busily wove the sky’s face. They were there in their groups, jostling for position as if wanting to console me with an initial burst of chaotic movement, for once forgetting their place in the heavenly hierarchy so that I could touch them with my hand.

And my personal favourite, from the book mentioned above due out in April 2015:

The crickets outside were like steel nibs scratching the dark.

I love the fact that however tedious an editing task may be (I’m sure all editors must hate proofreading footnotes and bibliography sections as much as I do!), I also sometimes stumble across sentences of unexpected beauty and poetry like the ones above.

And with that, I’ll have to love you and leave you, as I have another Christmas concert to attend! Until next week…


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Friday, March 30, 2012

Another Pattern!

I excited to have another new quilt pattern available here at Spring Water Designs!  This one is called Prairie Pinwheels.  It's a great large bed-sized quilt (96" x 96"), and is easy to piece for a beginning quilter.  I designed it using the Garden Maze Fabric collection from Andover Fabrics (their current International Quilt Study Center fabric line).  I love the shabby retro feel of the fabrics in this quilt, but I think it's also be cute in fresh modern fabrics too :)

Enjoy the day!
~ Dawn

scottylover said...

That is so pretty! Love it!

Sandy A

AlaskanColleen said...

I love pinwheels! This is so pretty. Great job.


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It is the most often asked question of authors. It comes in two versions. It is also an inquiry without a quick or easy way to address it. Interviewers will always ask them and as an interviewee, you have to come up with a precise answer. Sometimes, the reasons change from interview to interview.

140327123339-large“Where do you get your ideas?” and “What inspires you?”

They are fantastic questions, even if they are loaded. And since inquiring minds want to know, I am going to address the subject of inspiration as it relates to me, my work, and my life. You guessed it, this is going to be a series. It is one that I think you’ll enjoy though. The idea behind this blog is to give you a window into my world. Truth is, I think you’ll find this much more interesting than my going on about my day job, or search for one, and word counts.

So when the tradewinds blow in, you’ll get some insight into my process and what inspires me to write, and what inspires the things that I write.

I’m most often asked about what I write. Since most of my work has some paranormal or supernatural element, people have often asked me why I write those elements into my stories. Where is my inspiration for it?

d8501f955efcc822e3e3638cc7740a31First of all, it is larger than life and requires the fun part of my imagination. It is a bit of a break from the mundane life I lead on a regular basis. Everyone needs a bit of excitement in their life. Even if it does mean living vicariously through your characters in a book.

Secondly there is a little known fact about me that I’m willing to share with all of you. I have been a paranormal researcher for over 15 years of my life. I’ve participated in various aspects of the field as a researcher, analyst, interviewer, and even as a director and founder of a group. I’ve had to step away at times and take time for myself to sort out some of what I experience. Sometimes parts of cases will end up in a story. I can honestly say that I’ve experienced many things in my research that have made an impact on me. And no, I am not going to try to convince anyone to believe in the paranormal. I firmly believe that skeptics will always be hesitant to believe until they’ve had an experience of their own that they can’t explain.

Of course, the experiences that I had in the field make it easy to spice up the fiction. I think that people like something a little larger than life when they read fiction. Sometimes the experiences are a little larger than life and unbelievable on investigations. More often than not, it is just a lot of work and feeling really silly in the process. It isn’t all fodder for the fiction though. I really do enjoy the process and helping people who are experiencing things that are unsettling in their homes or businesses. And it is also interesting to learn so much of the history of different areas. Sometimes, you’re amazed at what comes up in the midst of the investigations. When you investigate the paranormal, it is all about the details. The smallest things have a way of triggering ideas for stories.

I’ve often thought about reviving the investigations. Now that I’m in a better position, I may just do that. Checking out the local area and the history could be a good thing for me. There are plenty of places to look at. Jefferson, Texas isn’t that far away (only an hour) and it is known as the most haunted town in Texas. It may do me some good to pick a place and do a study on it. I have also thought about writing a book about the experiences and giving talks on it. I may just do that at some point. I’m certainly working on a project behind the scenes in what little spare time I have.

All of that being said, I hope that all of you will stick it out with me. I just transitioned into a new full-time job. This is such a good thing for me personally. It means no more erratic schedules, I can plan for things, make an effort to get into a routine and, I hope, be more productive once I adjust to the commute and the information overload. I’m scheming other posts to bring here and will be posting on a more consistent basis soon.


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Tagged with Decor

Laundry and Bath Rooms Before and After

I’m back!  Sorry I kind of dropped off the map there for a month or so.  Things have gotten busier over the last month now that we are officially “settled” in our new home.  We’ve really enjoyed the opportunity to have people over more and I love being able to grow in the gift of … Continue reading

Master Bedroom: Before and After

It’s amazing how much color affects your mood!  I went with the same wall color that we put in our son’s room, a light blue, and I absolutely love it!  It’s so calming and refreshing.  And I love how it brightens up the chocolate browns we had in both our furniture and bedding. Here are … Continue reading

Kitchen: Before and After

My husband would say “if I had know how much work this was going to be, I wouldn’t have started it!”  We are both very much novices at DIY home projects and had no idea that painting kitchen cabinets would take 40+ hours of work!  But, in my opinion it was still worth it!  What … Continue reading

Kids Room: Before and After

Here’s another peek into our home and some of the changes we have made in order to make it feel our own. There are three bedrooms: one we are using as a guest room (which I wrote about in a previous post), one is the master bedroom, and one is our two-year-old son’s room.  Here … Continue reading

Guest Room: Before and After

Today is our son’s 2nd birthday!  I can’t believe how quickly time has flown!  We are celebrating with a big family party on Saturday and my parents are driving in from Missouri to stay with us for the weekend.  That was motivation for us to prioritize getting our guest room finished next. Here is what … Continue reading

Our New Love Seat

You may remember from my previous post about our Living Room, that we were on the look-out for a piece of furniture that would give us more sitting room, but not crowd the room.  Because we already had two pieces of chocolate brown leather furniture, I wanted to find something a little lighter and in … Continue reading

Living Room Before and After

I haven’t posted in awhile because we’ve been busy with projects around the house!  Last week we had our living room/dining room painted so we were finally able to put up curtains, hang pictures on the wall, and buy an area rug.  It feels so much cozier now!  It is still in process, but I … Continue reading


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Hot Dog Ingredients Described

longest hot dogWhat’s in Your Wiener? Hot Dog Ingredients Explained:

Mechanically separated turkey: …paste-like and batter-like poultry product [is] produced by forcing bones, with attached edible tissue, through a sive or similar device under high pressure

Sodium erythorbate: …has replaced the use of sulfites in many foods and serves as a preservative and to help keep meat-based products pink. Some people report side effects, including dizziness, gastrointestinal issues, headaches and, if consumed in large quantities, kidney stones.

They reference the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA), which identifies U.S. Federal standard for hot dog ingredients.

The Canadian equivalent of the USDA is the Canadian Food Inspection Agency. I couldn’t easily find information specific to hot dogs but the Canadian Food Inspection Agency does have information about Meat and Poultry Products labeling

A better hot dog: Maple Leaf’s Natural Selection Hot Dogs (which I couldn’t find a direct link too – maybe it wasn’t selling well enough and was discontinued). All the Natural Selection products appear to contain ingredients one recognizes and can make sense of. They’re a lot more expensive though.

I found one common criticism about Maple Leaf Natural Selection labeling: they appear to be misleading their labeling on their ham:

This CBC article about ham ingredients says the same:

Some companies use ingredients like celery extract as an undeclared source of sodium nitrate. Maple Leaf’s Natural Selections ham, billed as containing “no preservatives” or “artificial ingredients,” does contain “cultured celery extract.”

(Maple Leaf’s Natural Selections ham also contains “smoke” and “smoke flavour,” also called liquid smoke. The Canadian Food Inspection Agency ruled in 1992 that food containing liquid smoke can still claim to have “no preservatives added.”)


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Bali Black Raspberry

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Picked this out of the cabinet at work. It smelled good, but the taste isn’t all that great. I read the package and it says the ingredients are all natural. Black tea, hibiscus, and raspberries. However, it tastes a bit strange. I get an aftertaste of raspberry, but that’s about it. I do kind of like the smell, but I would not have this again.

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197 tasting notes

It smells like blackraspberries, but it doesn’t taste like them. Maybe too much hibiscus, but it’s too soapy, perfumey, whatever for me

205 °F / 96 °C 2 min, 15 sec

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Some pictures…

This could be interesting i am going to show some stitchy pics

here it goes..

first up is Maggie.. just a recap she is done 1×1 on 28 ct Jobelan.. the fav fabric for me . I worked on Hair this week so no real jaw dropping progress…

next is My Cirques des Cercle..1×1 on 32 ct lugana opalescent Violet Shimmer (SMF) with Vikki Clayton Silks in Inky Depths and Black..

yes i DID do some.. i did some baby black circles…

cirques des cercles

and Finally another floss test on my Patchwork sampler… the pretty varegated silk above the Purple Genie i tested from Colour Streams is a Glissen Gloss Colour Wash Silk in i think the African Sunset.. i am too lazy to get up and walk to the next room sorry..

LOVELY to work with , 1 ply is a bit thinner than the VC and Colourstreams floss but i loved using it…..

i think i will order a few more also the two littlepaler  purple circle things on the right are in Wisteria VC silk

Patchwork Sampler

So i wentt to Stitching Bits and Bobs to find the right colour name for the Colour wash silk, and now i want to order more..

is that a recognised disease .. silk floss buying??

i want to add  Baby’s Breath , Confetti  and flamingo i think next , as well as Dinky Dyes Tutti Fruiti , Madi’s Rose , Argyle , Cabernet ( i need a really dark one for a few patches) as well as a few more Waterlillies.. Baby’s Breath , Grape , Orchid , Fraises Du Boise and African Violets

there now i have them written somewhere i have a hope of remembering to order at least 4 of them soon… I keep losing track..

i need to do the same for the Gloriana’s i still want..

i will stop rabbiting now and go to bed

11 responses to “Some pictures…

  1. Everything looks gorgeous. I amloving the floss choices for your patchwork sampler.
    Where are you getting the colourstreams silks? I had a quick look for them last week I think and didn’t come up with anything. You make then sound so great I want to get some 😀

    Disease? that makes it sound like something that needs a cure.

  2. Fudgey, I LOVE the new blog-the layout & color scheme with the gerbera daisies & butterflies are so pretty. Gerbera’s are my fave. I ordered DD’s Madi’s Rose & am anxiously waiting to get it-I can’t wait to see it IRL. I also can’t believe how much cheaper the prices are @ SB&B.

  3. Ooh, forgot to add that I really like the color choices on the Patchwork sampler. Very striking.

  4. Maggie is always better day after day. She is so lovely.
    I think i have the same disease as you have concerning the floss buying. I don’t know if there is a medecine ….

  5. Love the charts you’re doing and it goes without saying your stitching is awesome. really want to get the patchwork sampler chart. do you know if/or who might carry it in the US? love it so much and the colors you’re using are gorgeous.

  6. Gorgeous colours on the patchwork sampler 🙂 I bet that one’s just as addictive as cercles!

  7. I see that spring is in the air…it seems to agree with you as you have done so much. Just lovely stitching, I can not say just how much I adore all that you are working on at the moment.
    Pobably should keep me nouth closed but… hold off on buying Waterlilies Babys breath…it is part of you know what. There, I have said too much already, now you know one of the colours.

  8. Lovely colours you are choosing for your patchwork sampler. I have VC Wisteria.. gorgeous isn’t it. I have recently caught the silk floss frenzy too. Isn’t it sooo much fun!
    Your Cirques is stitching up great. Since seeing your progress and Vicky’s stitching with Havana, I am tempted to stich Cirques in havana. Yum.
    Btw, your pics in this new blog loaded up faster than I ever got them to on your old one (I’m on dial-up so it was an obvious difference)

  9. Your Cirques is stunning. What a work of art! Someday, I hope to have time to try the silks and some of the designs like Cirques. Meanwhile, I just live vicariously through you!

  10. As always you wip updates just keep gettting better and better. Maggie is looking especially adorable. Love the silkie colours you’ve listed too … i shouldn’t have looked, (lol).

  11. Flamingo is AWESOME!!!!! You are such an enabler, dearie.

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The Suffering and Death of a Shepherd

WeeklyMessageGood Friday Readings for Apr. 22, 2011 (Holy Week)
Guest Homilist:
By Fr. Thomas Rosica, CSB

For our Good Friday Reflection this year, and in preparation for the beatification of the Servant of God Pope John Paul II on Sunday May 1, I have chosen to share with you the this reflection on what Pope John Paul II taught us at the end of his life.

I cannot celebrate Good Friday without remembering Pope John Paul II, especially his final Good Friday on earth in 2005. This reflection is part of a major address I gave at the Knights of Columbus Museum in New Haven, Connecticut, for the opening of the special exhibit, “Blessed,” that commemorates the life of this great man.

Human suffering

One of the beautiful and not frequently cited writings of John Paul II was his 1984 apostolic letter “Salvifici Doloris,” (On the Christian Meaning of Human Suffering). The late Pope, following the Apostle Paul and the entire Catholic Tradition, maintained throughout his life that it is precisely in suffering that Christ displayed his solidarity with humanity, and in which we can grow in solidarity with Christ, who is our life.

In “Salvifici Doloris,” suffering is the consequence of sin, and Christ embraces that consequence, rather than repudiating it. By embracing suffering, he shares fully in it, he takes the consequence of sin into and onto himself. He does this out of love for us, not simply because he wants to redeem us, but because he wants to be with us, to share what we share, to experience what we experience. And it is this shared love, this shared suffering in love, which completes and perfects the relationship broken in sin, and so redeems us.

Pope John Paul II taught us that the meaning of suffering is fundamentally changed by the Incarnation. Apart from the Incarnation, suffering is the consequence of sin. It offers opportunities for insight into oneself, for personal growth, and for demonstrating practical love for others, but these are incidental. Because of the Incarnation, however, we become sharers in the Body of Christ. Our suffering becomes his suffering, and becomes an expression of redeeming love.

Because he was the leader of a billion Roman Catholics; because he was the first pontiff of the satellite and Internet age, reaching out to billions more, and because he was John Paul II, who has ruled the church for more than 26 years — in that public experience of suffering was found enormous power. And that he certainly knew. In 1981, after recovering from the gunshot wound that almost took his life in St. Peter’s Square, John Paul declared that suffering, as such, is one of the most powerful messages in Christianity.

During the final years of his pontificate, John Paul II brought suffering back into the realm of the expected in human life. Everyone could see that his spirituality gave him an inner strength — a spirituality with which one can also overcome fear, even the fear of death. What an incredible lesson for the world! His struggle with the physical effects of aging was also a valuable lesson to a society that finds it hard to accept growing older, and a culture that sees no redemption in suffering.

In 1994, as age and infirmity began to incapacitate John Paul publicly, he told his followers he had heard God and was about to change the way he led the church. “I must lead her with suffering,” he said. “The Pope must suffer so that every family and the world should see that there is, I would say, a higher gospel: the gospel of suffering, with which one must prepare the future.”

A Consoling letter to his peers

In 1999, in preparation for the Great Jubilee, Pope John Paul II published his “Letter to the Elderly.” Following his Letters to the young in 1985, to families in 1994, to children in 1994, to women in 1995 and to artists in 1999 year — and not counting those letters that he wrote each year to priests on Holy Thursday, since the beginning of his pontificate, he wrote deeply moving and encouraging words to his peers in the “Letter to the Elderly.”

He had no fear in placing before the eyes of the world the limits and frailties that the years placed upon him. He did nothing to disguise them. In speaking to young people, he has no difficulty in saying of himself: “I am an old priest.” John Paul II continued to fulfill his mission as the Successor of Peter, looking far ahead with the enthusiasm of the only youth that does not deteriorate, that of the spirit, which this Pope maintains intact. The letter had a very personal, almost confidential, tone and was not an analysis of old age. Rather, it was a very intimate dialogue between people of the same generation.

“The passage of time,” wrote the Pope in that memorable letter, “helps us to see our experiences in a clearer light and softens their painful side.” Moreover, he says, the daily difficulties can be eased with God’s help. In addition, “we are consoled by the thought that, by virtue of our spiritual souls, we will survive beyond death.”

“Guardians of shared memory” was the title of the one part of the Pope’s Letter. Pointing out that “in the past, great respect was shown to the elderly,” the Pope remarks that this is still true in many cultures today, “while among others, this is much less the case, due to a mentality which gives priority to immediate human usefulness and productivity.” He wrote: “It has come to the point where euthanasia is increasingly put forward as a solution for difficult situations. Unfortunately, in recent years the idea of euthanasia has lost for many people the sense of horror which it naturally awakens in those who have a sense of respect for life.”

The Pope added: “Here it should be kept in mind that the moral law allows the rejection of ‘aggressive medical treatment’ and makes obligatory only those forms of treatment which fall within the normal requirements of medical care, which in the case of terminal illness seeks primarily to alleviate pain. But euthanasia, understood as directly causing death, is another thing entirely. Regardless of intentions and circumstances, euthanasia is always an intrinsically evil act, a violation of God’s law and an offense against the dignity of the human person.”

Pope John Paul II continued in that letter: “Man has been made for life, whereas death … was not a part of God’s original plan, but came about as a consequence of sin. […] However rationally comprehensible death may be from a biological standpoint, it is not possible to experience it as something ‘natural.'”

We ask ourselves, he says here, “What is on the other side of the shadowy wall of death?” The answer comes from faith “which illuminates the mystery of death and brings serenity to old age, now no longer lived passively as the expectation of a calamity, but rather as a promise-filled approach to the goal of full maturity.”

Pope John Paul’s “Letter to the Elderly” closed with a section entitled “An encouragement to live life to the full.” He writes: “I feel a spontaneous desire to share fully with you my own feelings at this point of my life, after more than 20 years of ministry on the throne of Peter. […] Despite the limitations brought on by age I continue to enjoy life. For this I thank the Lord. It is wonderful to be able to give oneself to the very end for the sake of the Kingdom of God!”

“At the same time,” he concludes, “I find great peace in thinking about the time when the Lord will call me: from life to life! […] ‘Bid me to come to you’: this is the deepest yearning of the human heart, even in those who are not conscious of it.”

What a magnificent signature piece of Pope John Paul II! He not only wrote the letter, but enacted it in his own life. We were eyewitnesses.

Public suffering

Pope John Paul II taught us that life is sacred, no matter how painful his own life became for him. Rather than hide his infirmities, as most public figures do, Pope John Paul II let the whole world see what he went through. The suffering and dying of this Pope did not take place in private, but before television cameras and the whole world.

In the final act of his life, the athlete was immobilized, the distinctive, booming voice silenced, and the hand that produced voluminous encyclicals no longer able to write. John Paul II’s final homily was an icon of his Galilean Master’s final words to Simon Peter: “Very truly, I tell you, when you were younger, you used to fasten your own belt and to go wherever you wished. But when you grow old, you will stretch out your hands, and someone else will fasten a belt around you and take you where you do not wish to go.” After this, he [Jesus] said to him, “Follow me” (John 21:18-19).

Many Catholics and non-Christians saw the Pope’s suffering as something like the agony of Jesus himself, and neither John Paul nor those around him discourage such comparisons. When asked a few years before his death if he might consider resigning, John Paul reportedly asked, in reply, “Did Christ come down from the cross?” His close aides say that debate about his ability to administer the church, as if he were the CEO of a secular corporation, essentially missed the point. This pope is not doing a job, he is carrying out a divine mission, and his pain is at its core.

That final Good Friday evening

One of my most vivid memories from the last week of our late Holy Father Pope John Paul II’s life was during the Way of the Cross on Good Friday evening in 2005, in which he participated by watching the service at the Coliseum in his chapel on television. The television camera in his chapel was behind him so that he would not be distracted from taking part in this ceremony in which he always took part personally. Then-Archbishop John Foley was doing the television commentary in English from Rome, reading the very provocative meditations prepared by a certain Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger.

At one point toward the end of the Way of the Cross, someone put a rather large crucifix on the knee of the Holy Father, and he was gazing lovingly at the figure of Jesus. At the words, “Jesus Dies on the Cross,” Pope John Paul drew the crucifix to himself and embraced it. I will never forget that scene. What an incredibly powerful homily without words! Like Jesus, Pope John Paul II embraced the cross; in fact, he embraced the crucifix of Jesus Christ on Good Friday night.

The death of a patriarch

Several hours before his death, Pope John Paul’s last audible words were: “Let me go to the house of the Father.” In the intimate setting of prayer, as Mass was celebrated at the foot of his bed and the throngs of faithful sang below in St. Peter’s Square, he died at 9:37 p.m. on April 2. Through his public passion, suffering and death, this holy priest, Successor of the Apostles, and Servant of God, showed us the suffering face of Jesus in a remarkable way.

Pope of holiness

Karol Wojtyla himself was an extraordinary witness who, through his devotion, heroic efforts, long suffering and death, communicated the powerful message of the Gospel to the men and women of our day. A great part of the success of his message is due to the fact that he has been surrounded by a tremendous cloud of witnesses who stood by him and strengthened him throughout his life. For John Paul II, the call to holiness excludes no one; it is not the privilege of a spiritual elite.

“Lumen Gentium,” the dogmatic constitution on the Church of the Second Vatican Council, notes that the holiness of Christians flows from that of the Church and manifests it. It says that holiness “is expressed in many ways by the individuals who, each in his own state of life, tend to the perfection of love, thus sanctifying others” (“Lumen Gentium,” No. 39). In this variety “one and the same holiness is cultivated by all, who are moved by the Spirit of God…and follow the poor Christ, the humble and cross bearing Christ in order to be worthy of being sharers in his glory” (“Lumen Gentium,” No. 41).

When the throngs of people began chanting “Santo Subito” at the end of the Pope’s funeral mass on April 8, 2005, what were they really chanting? They were crying out that in Karol Wojtyla, they saw someone who lived with God and lived with us. He was a sinner who experienced God’s mercy and forgiveness. He was the prophetic teacher who preached the word in season and out of season. He looked at us, loved us, touched us, healed us and gave us hope. He taught us not to be afraid. He showed us how to live, how to love, how to forgive and how to die. He taught us how to embrace the cross in the most excruciating moments of life, knowing that the cross was not God’s final answer.

That a person is declared blessed is not a statement about perfection. It does not mean that the person was without imperfection, blindness, deafness or sin. Nor is it a 360-degree evaluation of the Pontificate or of the Vatican. Beatification and canonization mean that a person lived his or her life with God, relying totally on God’s infinite mercy, going forward with God’s strength and power, believing in the impossible, loving one’s enemies and persecutors, forgiving in the midst of evil and violence, hoping beyond all hope, and leaving the world a better place.

That person lets those around him know that there is a force or spirit animating his or her life that is not of this world, but the next. Such a person lets us catch a glimpse of the greatness and holiness to which we are all called, and shows us the face of God as we journey on our pilgrim way on earth.

In the life of Karol Wojtyla, the boy from Wadowice who would grow up to be a priest and Bishop of Krakow, the Bishop of Rome, and a hero for the ages, holiness was contagious. We have all been touched and changed by it. Pope John Paul II was not only “Holy Father,” but “a father who was and is holy.”

At his funeral Mass on April 8, 2005, Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger told the world that the Holy Father was watching us and blessing us “drom the window of the Father’s House.”

As we prepare for the beatification of this great shepherd and holy priest and bishop on Sunday May 1, 2011, may we learn from “Papa Wojtyla” how to cross thresholds, open doors, build bridges, embrace the Cross of suffering and proclaim the Gospel of Life to the people of our time.

May we learn how to live, to suffer and die unto the Lord. Let us pray to have a small portion of the fidelity of Peter’s witness and the boldness of Paul’s proclamation that were so mightily present in Karol Wojtyla — Blessed John Paul II. May he intercede for us and for all those who suffer in body and spirit, and give us the desire to help carry one another’s crosses, to grow in holiness and to become saints.

* * *

Basilian Father Thomas Rosica, chief executive officer of the Salt and Light Catholic Media Foundation and Television Network in Canada, is a consultor to the Pontifical Council for Social Communications.

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First Communion – 5th Grade Milestone

Since March, our fifth graders and their families have been gathering together for an in-home study about Communion. This is a special opportunity for students and parents to learn about the sacrament and its central role in a Christian’s life. On April 29 the families came together for First Communion Family Day, highlighted by a trip to Pottery 101 where they decorated the chalice they will use for their First Communion.

First Communion Sunday was celebrated on May 7th at the 11am Worship Service. The students and their families received communion from the chalices that the students made. Thank you for prayers and joy in celebrating this milestone!

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Day 20: Koji

This is Koji. I met him in his clothing shop in Daimyo, a neighbourhood of Fukuoka dotted with little boutiques and bars.

He says he was born in 1965 but I can’t really tell if he’s joking or for real. I spot one or two white strands hidden in his jet-black ponytail, so, who knows.

He likes rock climbing and has never been to New Zealand but he’d like to go. They have good rock climbing there, right? he asks. I think so, I reply (I hope I’m right?). Good surfing? I think so, I reply. Good snowboarding? When conditions are right, it can be very good, I say.

Koji’s shop is pretty cool, the kind of shop that can afford to space out the clothes hanging on its racks, the kind of place that makes you feel a bit special just looking around. Koji goes to London, Paris, New York for buying trips. (So lucky.) Paris is his favourite. At night, it’s a magical place, he says. I don’t disagree.

I ask Koji what his favourite food in Fukuoka is. He thinks for a moment:

In Fukuoka, everything is delicious. Fish, vegetable, rice, everything. Can you eat noodles?Then Ichiran. You write your order, and then, (he gestures handing a slip of paper over the counter). Everything you can choose: noodles hard or soft, soup strong or light, white or green sliced negi, how much garlic.

He tells me the name of a good cafe (do you prefer a cool place with not-so-good coffee, or a not-so-cool place with really good coffee, he asks; I pick the latter) and the name of his favourite restaurant and asks me to add him on facebook. If you weren’t flying off to Korea I’d say you should come out for dinner with some friends tonight, he says. Maybe next time.

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17 March 2017

Proposed Subic-Clark Railway project listed in forthcoming PHL-Japan trade, infrastructure talks

The Philippines and Japan are set to begin a new round of discussions on trade and infrastructure late this month, according to the National Economic and Development Authority (Neda).

The high-level meeting, which will take place in Tokyo, is part of the commitments of Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe when he visited the country in January.

The Subic-Clark Railway Project is part of the #BuildBuildBuild program of the Duterte Administration

Neda Secretary Ernesto M. Pernia said the discussions will include finalizing the projects to be funded by the Japanese government.

One infrastructure project that could be discussed in the meeting is the hotly contested Subic-Clark Railway project, which is being eyed for funding by both the Chinese and Japanese governments.

The P35.044 billion worth project involves the construction of a 65-kilometer cargo and passenger standard gauge railway.

Envisioned to be a “speed train”, the project will traverse the Subic-Clark-Tarlac Expressway and the Subic Freeport Expressway.

“The project will connect Subic to the major economic hubs in Central Luzon. The project can decongest Metro Manila by transferring portions of business activity to Clark and Subic,” the Neda documents stated.

On the trade side, it is known that the Philippines has a bilateral trade agreement with Japan, the Japan–Philippines Economic Partnership Agreement (Jpepa).

The Jpepa agreement was signed in Helsinki in 2006 and was ratified by the Philippine Senate in 2008.

In 2015 the Department of Agriculture (DA) said the Philippines is seeking to bring down tariffs for sugar once a review of the Jpepa begins.

Based on figures from Japan Customs, tariffs for cane sugar range from 18.9 percent to 26 percent.

Agriculture Undersecretary Segredo R. Serrano said the Philippine government is also asking Japan to lower tariff for other agricultural products, such as processed food, fish products and tropical fruits, including bananas, mangoes and pineapples.

In 2007 the DA estimated that the Philippines would earn some $419 million in potential revenues from farm exports under the Jpepa. The department said the amount represents the tariff cuts due that will be implemented under the free-trade scheme. (Cai Ordinario, BusinessMirror)


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slithery rainbows

in grey puddles and at their end

black gold lies

This poem was written in response to Carpe Diem Time Glass #16, Rainbow, another great prompt hosted by Chèvrefeuille at Carpe Diem Haiku Kai. All of the poems in the link-up can be read here. And, to finish, here’s a song about ungolden gold by the Stone Roses –

9 thoughts on “Slithery

  1. Oh, very cool — good for both “rainbow” and “juxtaposition”. But really — those oily mud puddle lies can be beautiful if you don’t think about the source.

    • Thanks, Chèvrefeuille – BTW my autocorrect wants to change your name to ‘Chef refer ills,’ which could even pass as a comment on my cooking 🙂

    • Thanks, Georgia. I don’t seem to have seen any good rainbow puddles for ages – maybe cars are less leaky now, which I can’t complain about, of course!

      • Clean mud puddles .. that is an upside if cars aren’t leaking oil on the streets! you’ll have to come to Italy … we still have rainbow puddles, but usually they’re at the mechanics shop, now that I think about it.

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Tag Archives: v1212

Vogue 1212 – The almost coat

When I was auditioning patterns for my faux fur coat and looking for something with a large collar, I made a mockup of this Sandra Betzina pattern, Vogue 1212. It’s got two awesome collar designs, two sleeve options, a hidden zipper, welt pockets, and a cool little flap option at the back waist. I like the simpler option in green on the pattern envelope. Here is the mockup on Helena. It’s being worn over a work jacket that has shoulder pads.

What’s with the curving seam under the bust line? It looks like it’s designed for a baby bump! Why would they do this intentionaly? It also seemed like it wasn’t very shapely.

At the time, i said no way is this going to be my faux fur, nor did I want to cut some of my precious wool for it. I figured that if I made this pattern, it would have to have the underbust/waist curve banished, and replaced with some shapely lines. Looking at it now a few months later, the curved seam must still be changed, but it doesn’t look so bad overall. I still LOVE the collar!

So what do you think? Is it worth making? I still don’t want to use my wool on it, but perhaps some microfiber of some sort would work; like a windbreaker or raincoat.


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Steig’s “Hockey Stick” and CRUTEM3 Southern Hemisphere.

Steve McIntyre has a post up looking at Siple Dome ice core data and Gavin Schmidt’s claim that the data shows”exceptionally high values in the late 20th Century “.

Steve includes an R script and a link to the data so I graphed it myself with a few minor tweaks. The peak year in the period from 1840 to 1994 was 1881.

In the last few days I’ve been graphing some of the data so I thought I would look at CRUTEM3 Southern Hemisphere to see if 1881 was exceptionally warm. And there is some confirmation of ~1881 being really, really warm. These are the ones that jumped out at me (graphs are below).

The 2nd warmest August in the Southern Hemisphere was 1884.

The 3rd warmest December was 1881.  (First was 1850, 2nd was 1977)

The 3rd warmest September was 1878.

The 5th warmest July was 1877.

The 2nd warmest June was 1873.

I appreciate Gavin prompting Steve to look at the data so I would look at the CRUTEM3 SH data and realize …. what “global” warming?

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Coaster Mania and Six Flags Scavenger Hunt

Carowinds Coastermania 2012

While this year winds down (18 more days), I am going to write about some of the activities I have done this year. Last Friday, we took a group of 60 5th graders to Carowinds in the Carolinas. We competed in Carowinds Coaster Mania. The students spent the past 4 months building roller coasters with the help of some volunteers from Gulf Stream. They taught the students about the physics and science behind a roller coaster. (Here is the video played on WSAV from last years STEM trip).

After taking the time to build our coaster (our theme was Angry Birds) we took the kids up to Carowinds on a charter bus (they sold Kripsy Kreme doughnuts to help earn the money). We spent the whole day at Carowinds, and presented our coasters to their engineers. The rest of the day we spent riding roller coasters! Its so much fun working with the students when they are outside of the classroom. Even when riding roller coasters (or at least waiting in line) there were so many teaching opportunities (such as explaining the electricity and how it runs to the bumper cars).

Six Flags Scavenger Hunt

While looking for some opportunities for next years STEM program, I came across Six Flags Gogo Coaster Competition. It simply requires a coaster design (it can be built, like ours) and a photo or drawing of the design with the Gogo character in it. I think, since we already have a coaster built, we may be entering it into Six Flags competition as well.

The other interesting thing I found when looking on Six Flags education site, is the Elementary Education Days, and the activities Six Flag has developed for K-5 students. There are the obvious activities such as science & physics, as well as creative and problem solving activities (including a cool one on crowd control). However the activity that impressed me the most was the Six Flags over Georgia Scavenger Hunt. There was a lot of Georgia History, including Civil War History, built into the scavenger hunt and the actual design of the Six Flags tehem park. I never knew how much of the park was designed and based off of things in Georgia history.
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Incorporating Google Adwords into your FastSpring Store

No matter what your budget or how little time you have, you can reach new customers and grow your business using Google's online advertising program, Google AdWords.  FastSpring makes the integration process with Google AdWords quick and simple because we only need you to enter two values from your Google Adwords account.

Google AdWords Setup

If you intend to use Google AdWords, keep in mind that you can link only one AdWords Account to a Google Analytics account. You should use a single Google Analytics account to track all of the websites associated with one AdWords account, and create as many profiles as you need for each site. This setup simplifies account administration, letting you do things like apply a filter to multiple web properties at once or have a single view of all the subdomains you are tracking.

If you have not already done so, sign up for a Google AdWords account. To do so, you will need a Google email account which will then have access to both your Google Analytics account and your Google AdWords account. Next, you will need to link your Analytics and AdWords accounts. During the linking process, make sure you choose the Google Analytics profile you created for cross-domain tracking.

FastSpring Setup

Go to SpringBoard's Store Home » External Tracking. Click Add Tracking Method.

FastSpring offers three tracking types: Google Analytics, Google Adwords, and custom tracking. Select Google AdWords Tracking and click Next.

You will need to enter your Google AdWords conversion id and label. To get this information, you will need to set up conversion tracking in Google Analytics and follow their directions to get the code snippet. In the code snippet process, make sure you select https as the Page security level for your conversion because your FastSpring store is secured using SSL.

When the process asks "Who makes changes to the code on your website?" selecting "I make changes to the code" will give you JavaScript code. Within this code, you can find your google_conversion_id and your google_conversion_label. Copy these values and paste them into FastSpring, and click Next.

Once you've added the Conversion Tracking code to your SpringBoard account, it can take up to 24 hours before conversions appear in your AdWords account.

We're Here to Help

If you need assistance with Google AdWords, please visit the AdWords Help Center. If you need further assistance integrating Google AdWords with FastSpring, please open a support ticket.

Have more questions? Submit a request

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Which network connection is required for migration?

In both iOS &Android platforms, Migration will require Wifi connection to start get the process running.

For those who are using iOS, Migration would be capable of resuming over 3G if Wifi connection should happen to drop during the process.

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Canopy too big - Log Cabins

Sometimes the canopy of a log cabin may not be what you require and you find it too large. This is easily resolved and can simply be cut back as required on installation.

We do not recommend taking a canopy any closer than 200mm from the front of the building as this will help to protect the doors.

We can of course make a bespoke, one off building for you but the expense can be too great for the sake of trimming as required on installation.

More Information

Answers to most questions can also be found by typing into the search bar in the widget or our info center or please contact us to help you further with any questions you have.


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How To Create a Swap

This is where the magic happens. Choose which currency you need and how much, we'll take care of swapping your money with fellow travellers. Everyone gets the fairest rate. More sangria. More pizza. More happy. Easy!

To swap, first make sure you've loaded your account with some money. Here's how to do that.

Then you're good to swap to travel money.

  1. Log in to access your Dashboard.
  2. Select "Swap".
  3. Choose the currency you want to swap from. Remember you can only swap money from a wallet where you have a balance so don't forget to load your account. Check out our Fees and Limits for the minimum amount you can swap.
  4. Choose which currency you'd like to get.
  5. Enter the amount you'd like to swap.
  6. Choose how quickly you need the money.
  7. We make no money on the exchange rate. The only fee we take is a small percentage of your swap, based on how fast you need your money. Basically the longer you give us to swap your money with other travellers, the better! The options are:

    • Swap instantly– Our fee is 2%* of the amount swapped.
    • 3 day swap – Our fee is 1.3% of the amount swapped.
    • 7 day swap – Our fee is 1% of the amount swapped.
  8. Click "Create Swap" and you're done! We'll start swapping your money straightaway and will email you as soon as it's finished, and your money is ready to spend.

How much will I get?
We'll show you approximately how much you'll get after all of our fees when you create a swap. This is approximate because it's based on that moment's exchange rate. Because the exchange rate changes over time, your final amount will depend on the rate at the time the swap finishes.

Can my swap finish early?
Yes! If you choose a 7-days swap we may find people to swap with you quickly. In that case your swap will finish earlier. But don't worry, you'll still only be charged at the original swap fee rate you chose. For example, if you select a 7 days swap but we are able to finish your swap sooner, we will still only charge you 1%. So it's a good thing.

 * For all users who registered prior to 08/05/2017 immediate swap fee is 1.4%

Submit a Request

If you can't find the answer you are looking for please submit a request to our customer support team.


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How can I automatically close a popup recorder?

If you want to launch the video recorder in a fullscreen popup and automatically close the popup once the video has been recorded, you can go about it as follows:

var popup = ZiggeoApi.Embed.popup();
ZiggeoApi.Events.on("submitted", function(data) {
Have more questions? Submit a request


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You are currently browsing the tag archive for the ‘foraging’ tag.

Willow before.....

Willow before.....

I am sitting here in the study feeling a little bit guilty, something I have been feeling all week, before I had done the actual act. The act is now 90% complete and there is no going back now, unless I want my willow tree to look like it has have a complete haircut but I got bored or forgot the last branch!

Yes, you have probably guessed, this weekend was cut the willow day but my guilt is due to the fact that honey bees (and other foragers for that matter) love Willow for early season nectar – which I never knew before – I didn’t even realise that trees were a really important part of the honey bee diet! So what happened….. Read the rest of this entry »

So I have done the 10 week course (I will blog about my experience at the course shortly) and so I almost feel like a theoretical beekeeper! I now have to start thinking about the practicalities of a/ getting near a hive and b/ getting near an actual bee! Hmm….I am not quite sure how I will react when faced with something that has all the ability to sting me. We will see.

One fact on my course amazed me and I felt I had to investigate straight away. In doing this I felt it introduce me to the practical side immediately and make it all feel a little bit more real. Read the rest of this entry »


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Eating in Seattle – Sitka and Spruce Taco Monday

There’s a good reason why you start a Mexican meal with a shot of tequila and a bite of bracingly sour, salty lime. The two open your palate, preparing you for the subtle, delicate, complicated flavours that follow. Which brings me to a myth about Mexican food. This myth is that Mexican food means flabby flour tortillas and great big larded heaps of beans and rice and loads of cheese and two sauces: red and green. This could not be further from the truth. Mexican food – real Mexican food – is about slow cooking, refined flavours, and balance. Above all, balance.  In fairness, I think that thanks to chefs like Rick Bayless and the prevalence and huge popularity of taco trucks lately, most people know this, or are learning it.

This is the story of Taco Monday, as it was told to me by my one of my favourite Seattle dining buddies. Matt Dillon (no, not that Matt Dillon), is a hot shit chef in Seattle (that’s a technical term) and Sitka and Spruce is his restaurant. Since I moved to London, Sitka and Spruce also moved, to a beautiful space in the Melrose Market on lower Capitol Hill where from all reports it still turns out thoughtful, precise slow food.

But Taco Monday is not Dillon’s night. In fact, Sitka and Spruce used to be closed Mondays, but one of Dillon’s chefs – from Mexico City, I think – persuaded him to let him run a Mexican pop-up, called The Suadero, “food of the ‘malafacha’” (literally, poorly dressed). More about the suadero later.

“Taco Monday” is a bit misleading, because what they’re serving up isn’t anything like what you’d get from a taco truck. This isn’t street food, and if you’re expecting street food prices, you might get sticker shock. But it’s beautiful, exciting food, masterfully prepared.

We were all famished, so after a bracing round of tequila shots we ordered queso fundido (spiced melted cheese with poblano chiles served with toasted tortillas and pico de gallo, $8) and every taco on the menu. (My apologies: most of my photos are terrible, so you’ll just have to trust me that these plates were gorgeous.) With our first taco, I realized that the meal was going to be stellar. Cochinita pibil is Yucatecan-style suckling pig, traditionally buried in a pit and slow-cooked. I ate it whenever I could in the Yucatan – and some places did it better than others. This was extraordinarily good – rich and tender, lingeringly sweet, with a tingly hot kick from the habanero. Campechano ($8) – salt-cured beef with chorizo, chicharron and smoked jalapeno – was an immensely complex, exciting dish. Piles of lean cured beef topped with a crumbling of cotija cheese got a fatty boost and smoky heat from the chorizo and smoked jalapeno, with the crispy chicharrons (pork crackling) adding crunch and texture. Both vegetarian tacos – potatoes with poblanos ($7) and nopales ($7, grilled cactus with avocado salso and cotija cheese) showed the same careful attention to flavour, balance, and spicing as the meat tacos, the bright flavours and heat at equipoise (yes, equipoise) with the dense taste of umami.

I was skeptical of the halibut ($10) and the carne asada ($10).  How good could a fish taco and grilled steak be? Remarkably, surprisingly, astonishingly good, is the answer. The slightly charred grilled meat was rare, tender, and nicely seasoned, and the fish taco was bizarrely magnificent, a beautiful combination of succulent fresh delicately-fried halibut with a bright acidic pico de gallo and crunchy cabbage. Yes, classic, but not bog-standard.

But the dish that simultaneously made me want to cry and stab my friends’ greedy hands with a fork so I could eat it ALL was the dish for which the restaurant is named, the suadero ($9.50) – thin-cut tender brisket, milk-soaked and slowly braised until it literally melts on your tongue, topped with just a touch of chopped cilantro and a delicate salsa verde. It was the kind of dish that you tell your friends about later, the kind of dish that makes you come back to a restaurant.

So if you’re in Seattle on a Monday night, all I can say is RUN do not walk to Sitka and Spruce, and bring your auxiliary stomach and your favourite dining buddies, because Taco Monday, simply, is exceptional.

The Upshot

Sitka and Spruce Taco Mondays

1531 Melrose Avenue #6, Seattle 98122

Phone: 206.334-0662

Price per person: about $40-$50 per person, including drinks and tip

The verdict: Must try

Sitka & Spruce on Urbanspoon

17 thoughts on “Eating in Seattle – Sitka and Spruce Taco Monday

  1. Authentic Mexican cuisine is so much better than Don Pablos and Taco H*ll, I mean Bell. I’m so glad that chefs and cooks across the country (I’m in New Jersey) are not afraid to give us true, balanced flavors, not mystery meat smothered in chiles and cheese!

    We have a local place that serves tripe tacos – and they are stellar!

    Great post 🙂

  2. Fantastic descriptions! Thanks for including the vegetarian and fish dishes now I know I would find great food there too. Little did I know to start with a shot. Now I have a plan for eating Mexican food. Beautifully written post!

    • Thank you so much for this lovely comment Nina! The shot, I think, is essential. (But it’s entirely possible I’ve got a wee bit of self-interest underlying that statement.) Try for pure agave tequila. I agree about the vegetarian/seafood dishes — it always makes me happy when a restaurant prepares vegetarian food with the same attention and dedication they show their meat dishes. Taco Monday’s menu changes weekly or monthly, but there are some items that are always on the menu.

  3. I’ve heard good things about Sitka and Spruce, but I’ve never been. I’ve never heard of their Taco Mondays. I’ll have to add this to my list for my visit to Seattle this summer. Here in Southern California, we have so many “hole-in-the-wall” restaurants with chefs that are cooking authentic dishes from their homeland. That’s what I love about the LA food scene.

    • I desperately need to come eat my way through LA. I haven’t been there for years. There is some excellent Mexican food in Seattle, too, but I’m sure that LA blows it out of the water.

  4. Great post! I completely agree: Mexican food gets such a pounding from ignorant people! There is so much diversity in Mexico, and the complexity of the cuisine can rival France, Japan, China. It’s just that no one went around and codified it!

    What really gets my goat? I can’t tell you how many of my European friends either wrinkle up their noses or refuse to go to a Mexican restaurant, declaring flatly that there is no good Mexican food.

    • There are so many other reasons to visit Seattle, food-related and not food-related! I am glad I was able to convey what a magical meal this was.

  5. Pingback: Mexican Milk-Braised Brisket | Susan eats London

  6. finally went last night- wow! my friend (who’s from the DF, so he knows his tacos) were both well into our third plate of the the suadero (as well as some cochinita), when we finally came up for air … yummy stuff! We seriously contemplated challenging his lifetime record (19 tacos), but decided this was neither the time nor the place for such antics. 🙂 Great post, Susan – so glad I found your blog- it’s beautiful –

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Sweaty Feet

Do your feet feel soggy and sloppy all the time? Does sweat ruin your shoes? Are you afraid to wear sandals or flip-flops for fear that you'll slip right out of them? Do you leave damp footprints when you walk barefoot? Are your feet always cold because they are always wet?

These are just some of the experiences of people with extremely sweaty feet, or plantar hyperhidrosis. Hyperhidrosis, also called excessive sweating, is a medical condition that affects different body areas including the feet. Fortunately, there are treatments available.

Treatments for sweaty feet include: antiperspirants, iontophoresis (a great option, learn more about it), and Botox injections.

Botox injections are a popular treatment choice for underarm excessive sweating (axillary hyperhidrosis) and may be used to manage excessive sweating on the hands and feet as well. You should know, however, that plantar injections of Botox (injections on the foot) can be painful (although there are pain relieving techniques that experienced physicians use) and the results do not last as long as they do in the underarms. Typically, Botox injections in the feet tend to "wear off" in 3 to 4 months, meaning you'll need to return for re-treatment at that point. Be sure to learn about all your options.

One more important note: ETS Surgery is NOT recommended for sweaty feet. NOT even as a last resort. The side effects can be dire, and reversing the procedure is not possible.

In addition to the treatments mentioned above, there are a number of products and tips available to help make living with sweaty feet easier:

  • Shoe inserts help absorb moisture so your feet don't slip and shoes stay drier longer. Try Summer Soles shoe inserts and use the coupon code just for SweatHelp visitors!
  • Powders can absorb moisture. (Avoid powders in the genital region or if there is risk of inhalation - especially for children/babies)
  • Shoe driers can help your shoes to dry thoroughly and quickly so they are ready to wear again, smell better, and last longer. We've tried PEET Dryer and loved it!

To learn more about hyperhidrosis treatments and management techniques for sweaty feet, talk to a physician who is experienced in treating hyperhidrosis.

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