Sorry. It's been a while since I wrote here. I haven't busy per se but I haven't made time to update the blog. Well, I'm doing it now. lol.
Let's see ... Have I told you about Colton? He is my boyfriend. I like him. We have been hanging out a lot and it always fun. A while ago we started watching 'How I Met Your Mother' from the beginning. We are currently over halfway through the second season. I remember watching some of the episodes but they are all great. We also started playing LEGO Batman on his computer which is a lot of fun. The first day was hilarious because we found that you could punt the rats that are in the town. It's awesome. I think we just got through with the good guys side of the story. We found out you can play through as the bad guys and we are going to be next. And then we'll probably go back and get all the mini-kits and stuff. We have just played in story mode. I have been the second player as Robin. One night we somehow got switched and we confused because I was Batman and Colton was Robin. But we sorted it out. lol.
Speaking of LEGO games I have been continuing my quest to get a 100% in LEGO Star Wars. I bought all the characters yesterday. For some reason I haven't bought the last fifteen or so but I had the money so I did. I also bought all the gold bricks. It helps that I have times 12 coin bonus. lol. I am able to get a lot of coins really fast. I think I got all the Jedi bonuses for all six episodes and now I'm working on finding all the mini-kits.
The French Open ended today/yesterday. The men's final was started yesterday but got rain-delayed to today. It was actually kind of funny for me. So the final started at 7am (UT-time) so I got up and got ready for church at around 6:30am so that I wouldn't have to miss anything. And then I watched tennis for the next three and a half hours. They did have a 30 minute rain delay which I think help Novak Djokovic get his head in the match and out of life and his possibility of making history. He played like we know he can after the delay. At the time of the delay Rafa Nadal had won the first two sets. And after the delay, like I said, Novak really stepped up and was able to win the third set. At about 10:30am they were just closing the third set and I was sad because I had to go to church. I wanted to watch the whole match. I left. I went to church. After church I made Colton check the score to see who won. I wasn't really expecting the match the have play suspended due to rain. I was SO happy. Colton's family probably thought I was crazy. I was laughing because I was able to watch the rest of the match. And the funny thing is they suspended play only a few minutes after I left. So I was really only missing a few points. Anyways, this morning I got up around 5am so that I could watch the rest of the match. Rafa was killing the ball this morning. I'm sure he didn't want it to go to a fifth set. Final score: Rafael Nadal def. Novak Djokovic. 6-4, 6-3, 2-6, 7-5. He won his seventh French Open title becoming the winningest French Open holder in history. lol. On twitter Rafa had the hash-tag of #HIS7ORY. I thought that was pretty cool to have the number seven as the T. I was somewhat sad that Novak didn't get his first French Open title and hold all four majors at one time. But his still number one on the rankings. lol. Actually according to the ranking Rafa didn't change at all. But Novak went up more. Which doesn't seem right to me. I'm pretty sure that no one changes in position but the numbers should be different. Oh well. lol. Some interesting things that happened during the match ahd to do with the crowd and Novak. First the crowd was really subdued the first two sets but then they came alive and were supporting both players in the third set. I agree with one of the commentators when he said that the French Open spectators like drama and they haven't really seen that in the past few years because Rafa wins so easily on clay. And the other drama happened with Novak before the rain delay. He got very mad (with himself, I think) and he hit the side of the bench with his racket and broke a hole in the bench. I was disappointed in his conduct and I really think he should have gotten a fine for his outburst. But I'm not sure that he did. If I was his coach that's one of the things I would have told Novak during the 30 minute rain delay. "Calm down and get you're out of your nerves. Play tennis. Play one point at a time. You need to control your emotions or else this match might as well be over now." I feel like that is why Novak has become the number one player in the world. He is play great tennis but he also knows that his emotions can get the better of him and it affects how he plays. Rafa on the other hand never really shows emotion. I feel like that has helped him. He doesn't get angry and he doesn't let it affect his game much that we can see. I do feel like when his parent's were going through their divorce back in 2009 he was playing a little off but I also feel like that would affect anyone who has a tight family. I am glad that Rafa's parent's are friendly enough with each other to come and support Rafa at his matches. Yeah, emotions and tennis don't go hand in hand. If you want to win you have to focus on your opponent on the other side of the net not in your head.
The French Open has made me excited to create my tennis court blankets. Have I told you that idea? Several (several) months ago I got this idea to create a blanket of the tennis court for each tennis major. So a teal blue on for the Australian Open, a orange one for the French Open, a grass green one for Wimbledon, and a navy blue one for the US Open. So this last week a scaled down the dimensions of a tennis court to 1/9 scale. The length is good but since tennis courts are longer then they are wide it doesn't translate to a good sized blanket with just the court. So I have to add a panel to the side so the width is good. I think I might put the name of each major up the side of the blanket to add width to them. With that in mind I was attempting to design some bubble lettering that would translate well to fabric. But I gave up because my letters just looked crazy and didn't work at all. I did find on Etsy some awesome lettering that gets paper-pieced. And the pattern is under $10. So I'm thinking I'll just use that for the words. I was kind of hoping they have a numbers pattern too because then I'd have matching letters and numbers. I like the letters because they are somewhat wonky but they all work with each other. The seller does suggest you put a strip of fabric in-between the letters when making words so that the letters don't run into each other. And I do agree that it looks better. So I plan on doing that with the names. I have to figure out what fabric I am going to use for the panels and the backing still. I think I want something plain for the panels so that the letters standout somewhat. Ooh! I just an idea! What if I do the panel thing on the front but the names are across the back of the blanket. It would give some interest to the back then it's sort of a two-sided blanket that way. I'll sketch out each and show you what mean later.
You can see the first set of drawings have the court offset with the words on the front and the backing is very plain. And with the second set of drawings the words are on the backing with just the court on the front. The words would be able to be a bit bigger if they were on the back. I think I want all the words to be about the same size on all the blankets. But I haven't decided. Since "Australian Open" is so much longer than "US Open" I think I have to sketch out all four words in the blanket length to see what works best. The more I think about that solid color for the letter backing the more I like the idea to do the contrast color like the majors have in real life. I know that the French Open contrasts the clay orange with a teal green. Let me think AO and USO might now contrast much. I can't think of what Wimbledon does. Okay so maybe that idea doesn't work with "real life" much. Maybe I'll just do the same white as the lines for the lettering background. And while were on the subject of undetermined things with this blanket I haven't found the right backing fabric yet. I want something fun and tennis-like. I think something with tennis balls and/or rackets would be fun. But tennis fabric is hard to find and the ones I can find I don't like. So I might have to design my own fabric and print it with
Spoonflower. I really like one of the French Open
towel designs this year.
So I think I might use that idea of the different color so and the large rackets. But I did want to through in some tennis balls in the mix. I also don't want them all lined up like the towel. I want the design to be more turned and random looking. I like those fabrics more when it come to large scale usage. I also think it would look better when/if I need to cut part of it off. lol. I still can't decide what colors to make the rackets though. I want a match to the four colors I am using for the courts. But I also want some other colors as well. I'll have to do a few designs and figure out how many colors to do. I think seven or eight would be good. Which means I need to find three or four colors to go with the court colors. And I'll save yellow for the tennis ball color. So I could do the four court colors Teal (AO), Orange (FO), Green (W), Navy (USO) and also Red, Black, Pink. What other colors would work? Remember the tennis balls on the fabric are going to yellow so that can't be a racket. Maybe I'll do a quick mock up in just black to figure out more what the backing fabric will look like.
So enough about tennis quilts. lol. What else have I been doing? Oh I went on a vacation with my family a couple of weeks ago. We painted our rental house in Colorado. It was fun. lol. We painted the house fast so the last few days of our vacation were more fun. On Sunday while we were there my niece, Laura, was blessed. That was fun. They decided to do it that Sunday because both sets of baby Laura's grandparents were there and we thought it's a good a time as any. lol. Monday night we spent the night camping at Vedauwoo. It was fun but it was also windy at night. It was really hard to cook hot dogs or s'mores because the fire kept getting blown around by the wind. I couldn't find any good coal sport to roast my marshmallow but I still tried. It wasn't as nice and evenly cooked but it was still yummy. Eric and I went and hiked around the rocks Monday afternoon. At one point Dad showed up on top of the rock we were just on. It was odd. lol. When Dad showed up Eric and I were actually heading back to the motor home. We were working out way down the hill. We went and saw the beaver dam ponds after we got down. They are really neat. Eric has some photos of that. Maybe I'll snag one and show you. I didn't take any photos because I found that my camera was almost dead on battery. (I really should invest in a second battery for both my cameras someday.)
Next week I'm going back to Colorado for a wedding. My best friend from high school is getting married to her high school sweetheart. I remember when she met Tyler. She talked about him a lot. He was in college at that point and older then her. I think she liked that fact. lol. Anyways I guess she really likes Tyler because they have been together since then so it's been four or five years now. And they are getting married. I'm so happy for them. Anyways, that trip is going to be fun. Eric is coming with me. And we might be bringing a few of Eric's friends with us too. Eric wants to meet some of the Parkour people down there in CO so that's mostly why he is going. We'll be gone for a total of six days. (Two of those days are for driving there and back.)
I haven't really been reading much the past couple of weeks. I did read to really quick books because I was bored. Today I started reading
Eragon. I want to read the conclusion to the series but first I'm reading the previous three books again. Reading
Eragon again made me think about how horrible the movie was. lol. I hope someday that gets remade because it could be so awesome.
