Twilight Tuesday

I happily plunked down $10 for the highly-anticipated copy of US Weekly's special feature called The Sexy Stars of Twilight, which came out this week. Mr Hazel can scarcely believe I spent $10 on something like this, but we'll just ignore him. The magazine includes seven big pullout posters, as well as articles and quotes. I skipped over the feature on Kristen Stewart but devoured the rest, and my favorite was R-Pattz's quote along the lines of how he now sometimes feels like he's in a boy band. How cute!

Since New Moon has wrapped up filming and is currently in post-production, there has been a dearth of movie news, but today an exciting one came out: they released the filming schedule for Eclipse. Filming is to start on August 17 until October 31, again in Vancouver, and using the same set and studio as New Moon.

Cuff bracelet

I made a cuff bracelet for the first time. I've been thinking about the design and construction for a while but didn't have the courage to actually pick up my torch and start creating one lest it ended up in the discard pile, like a lot of my metalwork attempts. But on Sunday I spent the whole afternoon at my workbench, and this is one of the fruits of my labor. My sister has been bugging me to name a piece after Star Trek's Uhura, but I've been waiting until I made something sufficiently funky and sassy and space age-y. I think this one finally looks like an Uhura, doesn't it?

On the ferry

Yesterday we took a ferry to check out a new harbor being developed into an area for new restaurants, stores, and a resort hotel. Upon docking, we unexpectedly ran into old friends, whom I haven't seen in years. That made me happy. Mr Hazel and I enjoyed some lunch and walked around for a bit before boarding the ferry back. It was a gorgeous day to be out on the river among all the pretty sailboats. The last picture is of a bird's nest built on top of a buoy, a sight you don't come across too often.

Sunflowers

Hello, summer.

Twilight Tuesday

A new cover for New Moon. They relegated Edward to a ghostly, hallucinatory image on top of a moon! What were they thinking? You can't even tell it's R-Pattz, much less notice him at first glance. As a member of Team Edward, I say boo on this one. Stupid Jacob with his stupid muscles. And stupid Bella with that come hither pose. Though I do wonder what that 'exclusive poster' is of.

Nature trail

Last weekend we went to the nearby Nature Center for a walk along the trails, where I pretended to be a National Geographic photographer. There were a million dragonflies by the pond, and we saw a family of what we believe were Canadian geese, as well as pretty flowers and turtles. I'm still amazed that I was able to capture the dragonfly in the last picture, because they were flitting about so quickly.

Twilight Tuesday

My friend Tameka went to the candy convention in Chicago this spring, and among her loot that totaled 35 pounds, she brought me back a box of the Twilight Sweethearts Conversation Hearts candy. Ha - it says "Forbidden Fruits." The boxes come in three different designs, and mine, of course, has Edward on it.

Sewing machine

In between Twi-Geek '09 I managed to make a new piece for the shop, the Nancy necklace. I'm introducing one of the pendants that I found a couple of weekends ago, which was really fun to work on. This one is a vintage sewing machine! How charming is that image?

Twi-geek party

This is the t-shirt I made for last night's Twilight party. Originally I had thoughts of puffy paint and/or a Bedazzler, but both sounded too complicated, so I went with iron-on letters instead. Did I mention that we're not tweens, but rather grown women in our twenties and thirties? You couldn't tell, could you?

On e-readers

My e-book reader is one of my all-time favorite gadgets. It's especially handy when I travel because, depending on how long the trip and the plane ride, I usually bring four or five paperbacks with me. When we went to the Philippines for two weeks one year I brought something like fifteen paperbacks, half of them intended for the almost-24 hour plane ride. I didn't have room for much else in my carry-on. But with my e-reader, I could put as many books on there as I want and I only have to worry about bringing one device with me.

Before I settled on my e-reader a few years ago I was torn between the Ebookwise and the Sony, finally settling on the Ebookwise because it was a lot cheaper ($124 vs. Sony's $300 price tag). At the time, Sony didn't have an interactive touchscreen while the Ebookwise did, but Ebookwise was clunky and the screen didn't have e-Ink technology. Nevertheless, I've generally been very happy with how it has performed and held up over the years.

Then came the Kindle, and then recently, the much bigger Kindle DX, and I've been seriously considering replacing the Ebookwise with the Kindle at some point in the future. I especially love the wireless download feature of the Kindle, meaning you don't have to plug in the device in order to download the book file like I have to do with my current e-reader. But then...but then! I recently read on Time magazine that Apple is looking into designing and creating what I consider to be the holy grail of all e-readers - a device similar to the iPod. An iPod e-reader?! Sold! So I think I'm going to hang on to my trusty Ebookwise for now, and wait for Apple to come through on this. I hope they don't take too long!

Lucky finds

Errands, work, movies, chores, books, travel, family, friends, and Twilight have temporarily pushed aside jewelrymaking and attempts to stock the shop, but yesterday I scored a bunch of these amazingly adorable metal and epoxy charms with various vintage-y looking images on them. I snatched up a bunch. They're very whimsical charms such as a pair of French shears, Gibson girls in hats, an old-fashioned sewing machine, and a black-and-white bulldog. So fun, and I can't wait to work on them this week. I debated taking photos because I had a mind to debut them as finished pieces, and also, it's been a very busy weekend!

Twilight Tuesday

Finally, the first official New Moon trailer! This was debuted during the MTV Movie Awards, and it's great. We see the birthday party scene, we see the breakup scene, we see Jacob transforming into a wolf. And the CGI looks pretty good. Did you guys catch the MTVs? RPattz was looking particularly hot, and his British accent made him a hundred times more charming, if that's even possible. I wish Edward spoke with a British accent.



Also, my cousin Leslie and I talked about going on the Twilight cruise, with a pit stop in Forks, WA!

Weekend trip

This weekend Mr Hazel and I made a quick jaunt to Cleveland to see family and watch the Indians vs Yankees game at the Jake (never, ever will I call it Progressive Field). We had loads of fun, and except for the midges and the dozens of seagulls that kept landing on the baseball field, the weather was gorgeous.

We played tourist and wandered over to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, which I still think is one of the coolest architectural structures.


This is the back view of the Rock Hall sitting on the banks of Lake Erie.


View of the North Coast (Lake Erie), which reminds me a lot of Chicago's Navy Pier.


This scene of the Cuyahoga River and the many bridges says Cleveland to me - industrial, steel, gritty.