for father's day, i assembed -- with ben's help -- a photo album. it's based on schematics from a book about japanese bookbinding i got for christmas.
i covered bookboard with japanese mulberry paper for the back cover, and with my first blackwork sampler on the front. i glued and cut, and ben folded, accordion-style pages out of heavy cotton paper. i included a few photos and a package of photo corners -- very modern -- they just come off on a strip and you can peel them one at a time.
it was hard to get a great photo so i went with the moody one. the shiny thing beneath the book is a bubble-wrap envelope that i put the little book in -- which smells like frozen shower gels from LUSH, since that what was in it up until i pulled it out of the freezer. (the freezer is now a new place i can look for recyclable gift wrapping. please pretend to be surprised and charmed when all your xmas presents from me are arranged under the tree, wrapped in a "frozen vegetables from trader joe's" theme.)
in sims news...
after an extended "illness", queen jane seymour went down for good.
i tried to make her get "sick". everybody else's sims do it. i sent her out in the yard. i underfed her. i worked her hard. not a sniffle. i wanted to be historically accurate -- even if in a very general way. but alas, it wasn't taking, and edward was just growing and growing, and i had to get rid of jane, so she developed an unusual "malady" that makes one want to swim in a pool that has no ladder for getting out of it.
also, somewhere along the way, james V died. a little later than he ought to have, considering how old mary queen of scots was at the time. and frankly, we missed it. he must have been running with scissors. he may have been particularly low on reserves since he and marie de guise had been going at each other with these evil magical aspiration vaccuums.
anne of cleves left henry at the altar; i got bored and moved everyone into much larger homes, then again into much smaller homes. i gave the pre-queens a taste for television that i now really regret giving them; and edward seems to be a rather hale and hearty little boy, already far older than he ever should have gotten before expiring. part of what is keeping me from playing now is trying to resolve within myself what appears to be the inevitability of edward not dying at all, or just being removed from the game by social workers. (anything that would normally cause a child to expire is simply intervened upon in the eleventh hour by social workers.)
sometimes, when i get to a difficult point in the game, i let
ben
take over until it is solved.
ben
is the eradicator. he makes problems go away.