The Adventures of Sally, by P. G. Wodehouse. First published in 1922. Read for you by Kara Shallenberg.
09 Ginger Becomes a Right-Hand Man – 00:16:46
I’ll post another chapter next Monday.
(Impatient? Get the entire audio book for free here: http://librivox.org/the-adventures-of-sally-by-p-g-wodehouse/)
Flower Garden, $2.99 at the App Store
Developer website: http://www.snappytouch.com/flowergarden
I’ve had my iPhone for about 6 weeks now, and I’m finally getting around to reviewing some software. There are a number of great apps that I use every day so it was a bit hard to choose which to review first, but Flower Garden is so pretty and fun that it wins the coveted first-iPhone-app-review-on-kayray’s-blog award!!
Flower Garden is a garden simulation app. It’s not the kind of thing you’ll play for an hour at a time, but you’ll find yourself checking your garden several times a day, especially when you unlock some of the more difficult-to-grow seeds. The graphics are very pretty and the outdoor sound effects, birdsong and a gentle breeze, are soothing. I feel happy every time I look at my Flower Garden.
My main Flower Garden page:
When you play for the first time you have twelve empty flowerpots and a small selection of seed packets. Tap a seed packet, tap the “plant” icon, and you’ll have a pot of seeds ready to care for. Water them as often as necessary to keep the slider in the green zone and your seeds will grow into lovely flowers. If you accidentally over-water and the slider goes into the yellow zone, the app plays a sad sound and your flowers droop a bit. Let them get too dry and the slider drops down into the red zone, the flowers droop even more, and the dirt looks dry. There will also be an alert icon on your main garden page to let you know you’d better water them. But don’t worry — your flowers won’t die! Just take better care of them and they’ll regain their health.
My seed packets, with some still remaining to unlock:
A packet of Sunflower seeds:
A pot of Tulips:
When you’ve got full-grown flowers you can cut them, assemble a pretty bouquet, and email it to someone special. Cut flowers go straight to the bouquet page. From there, you can remove any flowers that don’t suit the bouquet, rearrange them by shaking your phone, rotate horizontally with a finger-swipe, and even rotate them vertically with a two-finger swipe. You can zoom in and out and move the bouquet up and down. Choose from a small number of different-colored backgrounds; the developer says a color-picker is coming soon, which I’m happy about, since I need a mild yellow background my tulip bouquets. Tap the tag, which is draggable, and enter the recipient’s email address (or choose from your Contacts list) and a brief message. The email interface is perfect — you stay within the app instead of getting kicked out into your email program, and you’ll enter your own return address so your recipient knows it’s not spam. An emailed bouquet looks like this:
Over time you will unlock more and more seed packets. Eventually you will see a little padlock at the bottom of the seed packet page, which lets you enter an unlock code for super-special flowers. Try entering “snappytouch” or “theappera” or “theportablegamer” or “touchofgaming” or “iphonegamesnetwork” or “fingergaming” or “appcraver”, and let me know if you figure out any others. :) May 2011: Note: you no longer need to enter unlock codes. All of these flowers are in the Bonus Seed Pack.
Many thanks to Noel of SnappyTouch for this charming iPhone pastime, and thanks to Chris Hughes for recommending it to me!
Flower Garden on Facebook (check here for more unlock codes)
(By the way — any review you see here will most likely be positive. I’d rather write nice things about fun and useful iPhone apps than gripe about the bad ones.)
22 comments » | Blog, Reviews, Tech
The Adventures of Sally, by P. G. Wodehouse. First published in 1922. Read for you by Kara Shallenberg.
08 Reappearance of Mr. Carmyle – and Ginger – 00:24:16
I’ll post another chapter next Monday.
(Impatient? Get the entire audio book for free here: http://librivox.org/the-adventures-of-sally-by-p-g-wodehouse/)
I’ve finished recording the audiobook of Part 2 of This Country of Ours and it’s ready for you and your kids to download and listen to.
http://librivox.org/this-country-of-ours-part-2-by-h-e-marshall/
This Country of Ours
by H. E. Marshall
Stories from the history of the United States beginning with a full account of exploration and settlement and ending with the presidency of Woodrow Wilson. The 99 chapters are grouped under 7 headings: Stories of Explorers and Pioneers, Stories of Virginia, Stories of New England, Stories of the Middle and Southern Colonies, Stories of the French in America, Stories of the Struggle for Liberty, and Stories of the United States under the Constitution. Ages 10-14
You can purchase a high-quality reprint of the text to read along with at mainlesson.com, and you can also read along online there for free!
The Adventures of Sally, by P. G. Wodehouse. First published in 1922. Read for you by Kara Shallenberg.
07 Some Meditations on Success – 00:06:26
I’ll post another chapter next Monday.
(Impatient? Get the entire audio book for free here: http://librivox.org/the-adventures-of-sally-by-p-g-wodehouse/)
The Adventures of Sally, by P. G. Wodehouse. First published in 1922. Read for you by Kara Shallenberg.
06 First Aid for Fillmore – 00:47:40
I’ll post another chapter next Monday.
(Impatient? Get the entire audio book for free here: http://librivox.org/the-adventures-of-sally-by-p-g-wodehouse/)
Mom came over on Friday and finished building my little garden! Henry helped, too. I felt really horrible that day so I mostly just watched but I did plant the zucchini seeds.
The planter box is about 7.5′ x 2.5′ x 6″. We had to buy quite a bit of dirt. Mom dug a pit about a foot deep, maybe a foot and a half. Then she picked out all the sod so we had a lot of decent dirt left over to go back into the hole. I’m lucky — the dirt under my yard was unusually nice for San Diego dirt. It’s real dirt, not just sand or clay, and even had some worms in it! It must have been trucked in when the house was built.
Anyway, I am thinking we bought about 6 bags of “amend”, 1 bag of steer manure, 4 bags of topsoil, maybe a couple more. Mom dumped the bags out in layers, alternating with plain old yard dirt dug from the pit, got it all wet, mixed it very well by turning it with the shovel, then tamped it down to get all the air pockets out. The resulting bed is beautifully moist and springy, and smells divine.
Total cost, including lumber, dirt, seedlings, and tomato cages was right around $100.
Here’s Mom evening out the dirt:
Mom planting a tomato:
Henry planting a bell pepper:
Me planting zucchini seeds:
The garden! Two tomato plants, four clumps of Swiss chard, a bell pepper, a clump of cilantro, and two plantings of zucchini seeds at the end:
It’s been a long time since I showed off my recent knitting projects, so here we go. Brace for photos.
We gave Henry’s original Capitan hat to Sally, since it was a little big for him after he shaved off all his hair. So I made him another. (Just happened to have another skein of WotA Bulky!)
Here are Dan’s new favorite socks, made of Briggs and Little’s “Tuffy” (80% wool, 20% nylon), which Halcyon sells as “Canadian Sock Yarn”.
Here’s the little Helena sweater I made for Jaylah.
Another pair of Tuffy socks for Dan.
And a pair for me. I am absolutely in love with Tuffy!
And the beginning of an Andean Chullo hat for mom, from the Knitpicks’ kit.
Not feeling great lately, tired all the time, depressed, anxious, irritable, can’t sleep, etc. I think my thyroid levels are off. Or maybe it’s something else. Today, however, I woke up feeling a bit better and had the energy to record two chapters for librivox, so maybe it’s just one of those things! Anyway I’m supposed to get my blood tested in another week or two so then we’ll see.
On Sunday Mom came over and dug me a little garden bed! She’s so amazing. I wouldn’t be able to dig up one shovelful of dirt but she dug a whole 2.5×8′ plot about a foot and a half deep in 40 minutes :) Dan hammered the frame together for me yesterday, and on Wednesday Mom and I plan to buy some more dirt to fill it, and some seedlings!
Also, I am really enjoying my new iPhone. I plan to do a software review post soon.
The Adventures of Sally, by P. G. Wodehouse. First published in 1922. Read for you by Kara Shallenberg.
05 Sally Hears News – 00:17:24
I’ll post another chapter next Monday.
(Impatient? Get the entire audio book for free here: http://librivox.org/the-adventures-of-sally-by-p-g-wodehouse/)
The Adventures of Sally, by P. G. Wodehouse. First published in 1922. Read for you by Kara Shallenberg.
04 Ginger in a Dangerous Mood – 00:09:50
I’ll post another chapter next Monday.
(Impatient? Get the entire audio book for free here: http://librivox.org/the-adventures-of-sally-by-p-g-wodehouse/)
Henry has been working really hard to improve at kung fu. He attends about 6 hours a week of classes — group, sparring, grappling, weapons, and a private lesson. For the past couple of months he’s been preparing for his green sash test, and Thursday was the big day!
Dan, Chloe, Sally, Bob, and I were all there to watch him. Henry demonstrated his mastery of the appropriate techniques and even did some sparring with another student. His teacher, Miss Edwards, led him through the test and Sifu Stanley watched to evaluate his skill. It was extremely intense, and we could see how very hard he was trying and how tiring it was. He “strove with great effort”, as he says, and passed his test!
I accidentally had my camera set to “multi-burst” instead of “burst” for the first part of the test so I didn’t get many good photos, but here’s a nice kick:
And here he is sparring with a blue sash student:
Here, all the students and teachers in the school are congratulating him after he was given his new sash:
For a few more photos, go to this photo set: Green Sash Test, 2009
Congratulations, Henry! You’re amazing and we’re all so proud of you!
Dan surprised me with an iPhone last weekend! It’s so neat! The very first app I installed was Pandora, and then I found a few good games and utilities (reviews later), and then I bought Tweetie, a very nice Twitter client. I set up some bookmarks so I can access my gmail, my google chat, and my 30boxes calendar really fast. Today, just before I left to pick up Henry, I noticed a WordPress app, so here I am, blogging from the park! (Also we finally got to escape from Sprint, and there was much rejoicing.)
The Adventures of Sally, by P. G. Wodehouse. First published in 1922. Read for you by Kara Shallenberg.
03 The Dignified Mr. Carmyle – 00:27:22
I’ll post another chapter next Monday.
(Impatient? Get the entire audio book for free here: http://librivox.org/the-adventures-of-sally-by-p-g-wodehouse/)
I have a borrowed inkle loom, and just finished my first little weaving project:
I’ve wanted to try inkle weaving for years and years, but never thought it would be worth buying a loom — after all, how many straps and bands and belts and tapes does one need, and that’s all you can produce on a inkle loom. So I was so delighted when our Dehesa EF, Carol, said her mom (a weaver) would lend me her inkle loom! I figured out how to make heddles and warp it, and went to town. And now I have a nice green tape that should make a great drawstring for a summer skirt. Now I’m itching to warp it again and make something else. Anyone need a strap? ;-)
Also, Henry asked me to shave off all his hair so he’d be more streamlined at Kung Fu. No more hair flopping in his eyes, and he doesn’t get quite so hot when he’s in his sparring helmet. He looks a lot different, but still as handsome as ever.
I made cinnamon rolls on Friday:
Lordy, they were good, and gone by Saturday afternoon. (Twelve rolls is only 4 apiece!) Here’s the recipe: Ninety-Minute Cinnamon Rolls. I always use butter instead of margarine.
On Friday night the Teen Club from Dehesa, Henry’s new charter school (which we LOVE), met at the mall to go ice skating. Henry had the Best. Time. Ever. and I worked on my Thick Warm Socks:
They’re made of Briggs and Little’s “Tuffy”, an aran-weight 80% wool/20% nylon blend. I love this yarn. It’s a bit rough, still has lanolin and bits of hay in it, and smells of sheep. It seems like it will wear very well.
Sunday night, Bob and Chloe came over and we talked and knitted and watched TV and had a wonderful time. You should see Chloe’s socks — I think they’re even prettier than mine: http://www.ravelry.com/projects/xsolv/warm-winter-socks. Same yarn, different colors.
The Adventures of Sally, by P. G. Wodehouse. First published in 1922. Read for you by Kara Shallenberg.
I’ll post another chapter next Monday.
(Impatient? Get the entire audio book for free here: http://librivox.org/the-adventures-of-sally-by-p-g-wodehouse/)
This eyelet pattern reminds me of the Sweet Alyssum flowers that grew in our yarn when I was a kid. If I remember correctly, there were white ones and purpleish ones, so if I make these socks again I’ll choose purple instead of orange.
I wrote up this pattern in a way that makes sense to me, but if you find it confusing please let me know and I’ll try to clarify :)
This sock fits my skinny size 7.5 foot with room to spare. The eyelet pattern and the Risata are both nice and stretchy.
One ball Knitpicks’ Risata in Clementine (use Fairy Tale or Marionberry for more botanically accurate socks)
One ball Knitpicks’ Risata in Buttermilk
Needles size 0 (I knit very loosely — you may need to use needles several sizes larger to get gauge)
Gauge in Stockinette: 6.5 st/inch
Eyelet chart:
Cast on 48 stitches. I used both colors and this lovely, two-needle, stretchy cast on: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xXDMsy949yw. That’s my favorite cast-on for cuff-down socks and mitten cuffs.
Work 11 rounds k2 p1 ribbing in Buttermilk.
Switch to Clementine, and begin eyelet chart.
After 8 rounds of Clementine, switch back to Buttermilk and work next section of eyelet chart. Move round marker forward one stitch so that the eyelet pattern fits within the round. As you knit around, you may need to shift stitches from one needle to another to avoid having to work eyelet motifs between needles. Do whatever makes it easy. Buttermilk eyelet motifs will be centered between the Clementine ones. I carried the yarn loosely up the back of the sock between color rounds so I didn’t have a million ends to weave in.
Continue switching colors every 8 rounds and shifting round marker one stitch forward or back until you have four Clementine stripes.
Work heel flap in Clementine on 25 stitches. Be sure that your heel flap is centered relative to the lace pattern! I like a long heel flap so I worked 30 rows, I think. I used the basic Heel Stitch. Turn the heel according to your favorite method. I prefer a German heel.
Switch to Buttermilk and pick up gusset stitches. Here’s a good way to avoid holes at the corners of your gusset: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EOI_oXPm1iA.
Arrange stitches so you have your 24 instep stitches on one needle, and continue eyelet pattern across that needle as established. Keep the sole of the foot and gussets in stockinette and decrease away your gusset stitches every other round, with k2tog just before you knit the instep stitches and ssk right after, until you are back at 48 stitches.
Knit in pattern until you have 5 Buttermilk stripes on foot. Switch to Clementine for toe. (If you have a shorter foot, knit until you have 4 Clementine stripes on foot and make toe with Buttermilk)
Pretty Little Toe (my hybrid of Round Toe and Flat Toe):
k 1 round Clementine
Decrease round: k6, k2tog around (42 st)
k 5 rounds plain
Dec round: k5, k2tog around (36 st)
k 4 rounds plain
Dec round: k4, k2 tog around (30 st)
k 3 rounds plain
Dec round: k3, k2tog around (24 st)
k 2 rounds plain
Dec round: k2, k2tog around (18 st)
k 1 round plain
Arrange stitches on two needles so you have 9 instep stitches on top needle and 9 sole stitches on bottom needle. KNit a few stitches as necessary to get yarn to side of toe. Graft stitches together (tutorial here).
Block to open up eyelets, and wear!
****************
Detail of the Pretty Little Toe:
Genuine Sweet Alyssum flowers. Look, each tiny flower really does have four petals!
The Adventures of Sally, by P. G. Wodehouse. First published in 1922. Read for you by Kara Shallenberg.
01 Sally Gives a Party – 00:39:06
This is not actually a children’s book, but it won’t do the little ones any harm and I think the tweens and teens will like it!
This romantic comedy stars a young American girl named Sally, who inherits a considerable fortune and finds her life turned upside down. The typically Wodehouseian cast includes Sally’s ambitious brother, an assortment of theater people, a pair of English cousins, and, of course, an Uncle.
I’ll post another chapter next Monday.
(Impatient? Get the entire audio book for free here: http://librivox.org/the-adventures-of-sally-by-p-g-wodehouse/)
I’ve just finished recording another free audiobook for LibriVox: The Adventures of Sally, by P. G. Wodehouse
I’m going to add it to my podcast feed. It’s not strictly a children’s book, but it won’t do the kids any harm and I think the tweens and teenagers will like it!
