Report from Nerd Date Night

 
Last night the girl had a sleepover at her cousin's house, so my man and I took advantage of the opportunity for an extended afternoon-evening date.

I wanted some help getting comfortable with my new camera, so he took me to our local university, where, on a rare sunny spring afternoon in Seattle, we were by far not the only shutterbugs.

I'd experimented with aperture before.



But this time I also played around with shutter speed.

Fun with bokeh!



Splendor in the grass.

I learned a ton, I think.

And was pretty much in botany-nerd heaven.

I think my man took some pictures, too.

For dinner: Panevino on Capitol Hill, which is much better than you'd expect it to be just from glancing at the rather standard-issue menu. The ravioli are house-made, contain a high enough proportion of spinach that you can actually taste it, and feature the same ricotta that's sold at DeLaurenti's. I rest my case.

Symmetry, Again

Last year.

This year:

Goodbye, Grandfather.



Hello, Easter.

Spring decorating

Brought out the daffodil-like afghan I thrifted a while back.



Set up the eggs.



And some bunnies. The print is from ZouZou's Basement on Etsy.



This one is ceramic, not chocolate. Clever though, right?



Cut some real forsythia and made some pretend forsythia.



 The latter (inspired by this) is pretty self-explanatory but here's how I did it:



Tie some embroidery floss (this is DMC 444 and it's a remarkably good match for actual forsythia blossoms) around your twig and clip off the tail.
 

Wrap it....



Add a dab of glue, cut the thread, and use your fingers to smooth down the end.
 

Voila! Now it's Spring inside the house as well as outside.

And there was still time for the important stuff. Like Busytown. (Look at those adorable curled-up fingers and feet.)
 

And napping.



And getting inspired by a new book. No joke, it's blowing my mind.

And finally, this is not really apropos of spring, but I thought some of you might be interested in this interview I recently did with artist Kathryn Clark about her Foreclosure Quilts series. Wonderful project and a truly fascinating conversation.