Here is my challenge piece for the “Making Music” themed challenge for the Utah State Fair. When I dropped it off, I saw many of the other entries and mine looks like crap compared to the others. I nearly took it back but the person doing the intake convinced me not too. She pointed out that I’m probably the only person who did a quilt completely by hand. My description card named the piece Crescendo and says “No Machines were used (or harmed) during the creation of this quilt.” All the workers thought that was totally funny. I finished two more items Saturday morning too.

This is a mystery Needlepoint pattern done in Ash and I finished the pillow so I could enter it into the fair. I also finished Be a Witch into a pillow for the fair as well.

There’s a part of me that feels ribbons in the fair this year would be a hollow victory. I know the stitching was finished a while back but since I made the pillows in just a few hours, part of me feels like I didn’t put in much effort. So why should I beat people who honestly feel that they did their best?

Thanks to my kids and phonezoo my Blackberry now plays the Dr. Who theme when it rings. This will help since my dad and I both picked the same ringtone and it was getting confusing trying to figure out whose phone was ringing…

By the way, this is my 400th post… Not much of a momentous or meaningful post but fitting since this blog is just about me and my daily life and the trivia that happens to me.

Yep, I caught the men’s gymnastics team finals. And on the rings someone did a Maltese Cross which is my favorite all-time move in men’s gymnastics. Justin Spring’s performance on the high bar was divine. I’m just glad that men’s gymnastics actually got prime time coverage this time around. I’m usually running around to neighbors who have cable and trying to get them to film the middle of the night showing.

So were Jonathan Horton’s parents county music fans?

The Japanese parallel bars is drool worthy as well. I’m looking forward to seeing the men’s pommel horse in just a few minutes…

Yep, if this is all I see, my Olympics has been made!

So as part of the trip to Finland for the funeral, I took my kids to the Finnish historical museum. They had a great time and we spent most of the day looking at artifacts (took pictures of an outfit that will be historically accurate for SCA). Then we got to the end of the day and my oldest son was taking pictures of a mural in the dome of the entry way. He couldn’t find a sign to describe the scene so he and one of my brothers asked at the front desk. Apparently the asked the cultural equivalent question of asking a Greek, “So like who’s this Zeus, dude?”

Yep, despite my Finnish ancestry, I’ve never studied the Kalevala. I’ve got a copy, I’ve started reading. Apparently I’ve never gotten to the good stuff like the Sampo or the field of snakes.

The one thing that did hit me though is how many legends and myths deal with a man and his brothers doing all sorts of impossible tasks to get the girl. You have Jacob and Rachel, Orpheus, and for some reason I’m drawing a blank although I know there are more.

pusillanimous – I feel that I have been pusillanimous about my life lately but that phase is ending.