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Monday, May 05, 2008

No rest for the wicked with a toy-boy

I've just spent the weekend in the Southern Highlands of NSW, checking out Bernice Balconey's new hidey-hole, which is small but gorgeous. The weekend away from my studio was a bit of a birthday present to Best Beloved, who turns 37 today (I love being married to someone younger than me). He loves the chance to talk politics with Bernice, and also to pop into a certain Berrima jam shop and swap cooking tips. I love the chance to talk art with her, and not averse to popping into Peppergreens and The Art of Bookbinding. So a good time was had by all. Funnily enough, we always stay in that area around this time of year.

Today's Book Design class was on box-making, and we got halfway through making a clamshell box, something I'm quite able to do on my own but am nervous to make with a group, because my maths is so bad and it shows as I'm calculating bases and sides and gaps etc. Luckily I'm quite able to expose the flaws in my personality and very open to being laughed at, so I don't try and bluff my way through these things; instead I confess all at the beginning of the class and we all have a good laugh and help each other get things right. It makes classes a lot of fun. I can prove my abilities in other ways later on, when I can show how to fold the little tuck in the corners of the bookcloth, or how to glue out a large swathe of cloth without getting glue on the neat side. In the meantime I get to hear a lot of student gossip, which is also enormous fun.

When I got home after doing all the shopping and pre-preparing a self-saucing chocolate pudding to follow the pizzas that I would pick up after my yoga class (the requested birthday meal), I found an email from artist book mistress Adele Outteridge, who shares a love of cats with me, especially cats who torture cardboard boxes. She sent me the link to a very funny cat video called An Engineer's Guide to Cats. Do yourself a favour.

As you were.

9 comments:

GS said...

The video was so funny I almost wet myself...but then again when I met the not boyfriends he was a scientist living alone with 3 cats (one with an uncanny resemblance to Zoey) who liked to get them to play various Star Wars characters. Hmm perhaps thats too much information?

Ampersand Duck said...

No, that's fabulous information!

I nearly wet myself at the cat yowdelling [sic] because it's something I've been trying to do with my two. Obviously I need a video camera.

fifi said...

Babby responded to cat yodelling with merely a piteous grunt.

btw have you got the book
"The World of the Book" by Des Cowley and Clare Williamson?

(is this a silly question? ooh I hope not. I can lend you mine if ever I get to can-berra. ever.

Ampersand Duck said...

No, not silly. I fully intend to own it, just haven't got around to buying it! I keep being distracted by metres of sewing tape and swathes of starched cotton shirting.

Mindy said...

That was the best 7 minutes of time wasting at work eva! Fantastic.

Enny said...

I love the video - I saw it a while ago and showed it to The Hun who is an engineer but not a cat person... the best bit is we sent it to two of his friends who are engineers AND cat people so we can laugh about it together. Plus now I can threaten to punish The Hun with love!

GS said...

I've been trying to get the 3 kitties to yodel but I'm too chicken to squeeze them enough. They are geriatrics, I wonder if cats get osteoporosis?

lucy tartan said...

I finally had time to watch the video, it's delightful. I think that man is quite brave to expose himself to Youtube commenters in that way. My cats all squeak (and dance) extensively.

Maybe we need a meme?

Lost in reverie... said...

What a gorgeous video. And as much as I'm tempted to make my cat yodel I don't want to squeeze her, mainly because I know she'll claw my eyes out (she was abandoned as a kitten on Black Mountain 14 years ago, we saved her, but she's still half feral).