Home Wong Nga and Black Cty: June 2010

Wednesday, June 30, 2010

I Have Been Playing...

I have been playing lately with my kiddos.

I have taken pictures of their findings:

I've played with Rachel's hair more

Playing in the sand (this picture is Rachel's art work, I don't know what it is though)

No sewing this week, part of me is antsy that I am not sewing. Although, I know my sewing machine will be there next week, but these moments with the kids won't.

I am gonna keep playing until next week; I have a great idea for the month of July, so come back to see what I am up to soon. Have a great holiday weekend!

red and blue and better with two

recently, a reader sent me a request for some inspiration pictures including twin beds with a red and turquoise color scheme. i scoured my inspiration files and the internet and came up with a few photos for her.

i didn’t find too many with both red and turquoise, but i did find quite a few with variations of the colors. {unfortunately many of my inspiration files aren’t labeled so if you know the source of any of the “unknowns” please let me know so that i can give the proper credit.}

{source unknown}

{domino}

{source unknown}

{pb teen}

{country living}

{martha stewart}

{jeff andrews}

{source unknown}

{domino}

{source unknown}

{brooke giannetti}

{barrie benson}

{little green notebook}

and lastly, one of my favorite rooms of all time.

{domino}

LiveJournal Tags: twin beds,red and turquoise,domino,barrie benson,little green notebook,brooke giannetti,jeff andrews,martha stewart,country living,pb teen

Slicer3: Make physical site models fast

Making physical site models was the bane of my architecture school existence. The photocopying, the tracing, the hundreds of dollars spent on wasted reams of chipboard -- I can smell the spray mount just thinking about it. Ugh.

I recently came upon Slicer3, a Ruby plugin for SketchUp by TIG that's so useful and so easy to grasp that I couldn't wait to write about it. What it does is simple: Given a piece of geometry, Slicer3 slices it up. You tell it what spacing to use, how thick the slices should be and which direction to cut, and it does the rest. For turning a piece of digital terrain into a physical model, it's a godsend.

Take a look at what I was able to do with Slicer3:

Start with a terrain surface, then make it a solid (I use the Line tool) and group it.

Choosing X for "Slice Orientation" produces slices that are perpendicular to the X axis.

Specify your units in the Spacing and Thickness fields.

Entering the same value for Spacing and Thickness (and choosing Z for Slice Orientation) yields a traditional contour model.

Some things you should know about this awesome script:

Slicer3 is free; you can download it from the Ruby Library Depot
To install it, just drop it in your Plugins folder.
This SketchUcation thread provides some nice discussion and examples.
This Pushpull Bar post is also very informative.
For this script to work, the thing you want to slice has to be solid (watertight) and either a group or a component.
Slicer3 doesn't automatically scale your model for you; you'll have to do that part yourself.

And if that isn't enough, Slicer3 will also (if you wish) lay out each slice on the ground, separating them by an amount that you specify. It can even number the slices for you. Can you say "laser cutter"?

Tell Slicer3 to lay out copies of each slice on the ground -- and number them automatically.

One last thing: I thought it might be neat to try using Slicer3 on some 3D terrain from Google Earth. Here's my attempt:

Start by framing a view in Google Earth. This is a section of Boulder Canyon, a few miles West of the SketchUp office.

Import a terrain snapshot into SketchUp and color it (because it's prettier in color).

Make a giant 3D "crop box" that encloses the terrain you want to keep.

Use Intersect with Model to merge the box and terrain surface into a single, solid object. Then group it.

Scale the terrain object. I scaled by a factor of 0.005 to achieve 1:200 scale.

Use Slicer3 (this is the fun part).

The resulting stack of slices. Cut, stack, glue and enjoy.

On behalf of the entire SketchUp community, thanks for this script, TIG. A thousand architecture students will get another hour of sleep because of you.

Posted by Aidan Chopra, SketchUp Evangelist

Summer SketchUp training schedule

I'm happy to announce that our July/August 2010 SketchUp Authorized Training Center schedule is now available. Training sessions are available in more places than ever.

The map below contains information on specific locations, dates, and courses provided.

View July/August 2010 Training Schedule in a larger map

Posted by Shara Rice, SketchUp Training Team

If there is one thing I am really passionate about when it comes to decorating, it just might be bedding. Believe it or not, one of the very first things I ever sewed was a duvet. Brian and I were first married and he helped hold the sides so I could sew straight lines... kind of funny to think back to that. I have clearly passed on that love of bedding to all my kids. When we all go to the beach together, they joke about emptying out their suitcases and stealing away all the bedding from the room. Its one of those little things that makes their stay all the more amazing.

I feel like we should have that feeling all the time, however. After working hard all day, what could feel better than a nice shower and crawling into an amazing bed. I think we all deserve that. After all, think of the amount of time in life you spend in your bed.

You know when your favorite sheets are on your bed its like that breadth of fresh air in the room. They are pretty and they feel so wonderful. And if you're anything like me, you have that one sheet still in rotation, the one that crinkles when you crawl into bed and all you can think is "ugh... I have to sleep on this tonight..." I think its time to throw that sheet into the sewing pile and treat yourself right.

When someone comes to the store looking for new bedding my heart almost skips a beat. I jump at the opportunity to show them all the amazing different textiles and simply love helping people come up with the perfect bed for them. It makes me so very happy. To start with Bella Notte or Matteo (Have I gone on enough about Matteo yet? There is a reason all the top designers use only this... it is a.ma.zing. Trust me. Come see for yourself.), then add a couple fun pillows and you're done. I get giddy even just thinking about it. Come on, couldn't you just crawl right into this bed...

A little peek into my own bedroom...

And, yet I am already a little jealous of that bed at the store...

Call us or come visit the Willows for more information on all the amazing bedding we carry!

The "Other" Blooms in June

The last day of June 2010 brings an end to twenty-one straight days of temperatures in excess of 90°F. I don't have accurate information on the number of days over 100° or the days where the heat index was in the triple digits. During those twenty-one days, the rainfall went north, south, east and west of my garden. Finally, in the middle of the night, I heard the rain. Relief.

Now, I can reflect on all the beautiful flowers in the garden, captured in photos but unable to fully enjoy in the unbearable heat.

The "other" blooms in my garden often take a backseat to grand-stand performances of agastache, bee balm, coneflowers, coreopsis, nepeta and salvia. While the blooms of these "other" plants are more limited, they fill significant niches in my garden.

The "Emerald Isle" (photo below) beside my stone walk is still a work in progress. The ground covering hardy ice plant (delopserma cooperii) is a good match for the mounding betony (stachys hummelo).

Over the last four years, the two perennials have been filling in the space between the stone walk and the dry stream, beneath the high canopy of a crepe myrtle 'Tuscarora'. In spite of the tree, this spot receives a pounding by the sun on the southwest side of the house. Zones 5-9 can grow the ice plant in xeric conditions; Zones 4-8 can grow the betony; full sun. Both are deer and rabbit resistant, although there is the occasional sampling of a betony bloom.

Balloon flower (platycodon grandiflorus; photo below) is an edger along a section of cottage garden path, adding color when the azaleas fade. I've long lost the label for the exact variety of the perennial balloon flower! This is an "out of sight, out of mind" perennial that has been under-appreciated until recently. I am determined to collect seeds this year to sow with shasta daisies, so I've not deadheaded for rebloom. Zones 3-8; part sun; doesn't like to be transplanted after established.

The balloon flower (second photo below) mingles well with rose campion (far right pink), perennial heliotrope 'Azure Skies' (ground cover at bridge), garden phlox (pink bloom in middle).

I have a love-hate relationship with the unknown variety of chaste tree (vitex agnus-castus; photo below was shot in the evening light, making the blooms appear more blue).

I love the flowers, color, form factor and the fact that bees and butterflies are drawn to it. Therefore, I will not be without this tree. The chaste tree grows in my butterfly garden with St. John's Wort 'Sun Pat' (hypericum), bee balm 'Jacob Cline' (monarda didyma) lantana 'Miss Huff', bronze fennel, milkweed (asclepias tuberosa and incarnata), agastache, salvia, verbena and coreopsis.

What I hate are the hundreds of seedlings that sprout below since I can no longer reach the top to deadhead or cut back the tree. I also planted a 'Shoal's Creek' variety in my meadow above the butterfly garden. This variety has an even more lovely bloom and I've not had a seedling problem. However, that one isn't planted in rich garden soil!

I have trained the unknown chaste tree so that there is a trimmed-up trunk, but it can also be treated like butterfly bush with a late winter shaping. Zones 6-9; full sun; drought-tolerant and can be used for xeriscapes; deer resistant.

Last, but not least, are my daylilies. Once upon a time, I had quite a daylily (hemerocallis) collection at a previous home. Here, with limited space inside the cottage garden fence, I grow two re-blooming varieties, the lovely yellow 'Happy Returns' and the pale yellow-white 'Joan Senior'.

I had grouped these daylilies together for a yellow garden bed. However, hot summer droughts were parching the foliage. I am in the process of moving the daylilies to another location with more moisture and less sun.

The yellow blooms look great with perennial heliotrope 'Azure Skies' and the cobalt blue blooms of Brazilian sage.

Daylily foliage is eaten by rabbits in early spring and the blooms are eaten by deer in the summer. So, I won't invest the money or the effort in growing any exotic varieties. Zones 4-10; sun to partial shade.

Although these plants haven't been given much attention, I would be hard-pressed to garden without their presence.

Words and photos by Freda Cameron, Defining Your Home, Garden and Travel. Deer and rabbit resistance varies based upon the animal population and availability of food. All company or product or patented names mentioned are registered trademarks, copyrights, or patents owned by those respective companies or persons.

Hammock & Lilacs

Following a cool and rainy spring, hanging the hammock this summer was especially wonderful. Finally, warm temperatures and blue skies have arrived and it feels so good.