That Friday Feeling...02/03/12

Wow it's March already. Did any of you ladies propose to your other halves on Wednesday? I suggested it at school but the girls all went 'yeurrrrrghhhh!' and the boys all quite obviously moved across the classroom just in case any girls got the wrong idea. It was quite amusing really!

One of my goals this year is to read more books. Except I've been stuck on Cloud Atlas since January now. Seriously I NEVER read this slowly! I don't think it's a particularly bad book. I don't mind reading it and there are parts I've quite enjoyed, but I'm just not gripped enough to bother about it much.

Anyway, because I'm reading Cloud Atlas, I thought I'd dedicate today's post to clouds. I've been thinking about a cloud post for a while and today, being so foggy in the morning and evening, and overcast throughout the day, seems a good day to talk about clouds. So here are my picks for this week:

Love this paper garland by GenTerro

Sweet cloud mobile by leptitpapillon

Cute little cloud necklace by ICharming

Gorgeous baby quilt by AlphabetMonkey

What little facts can I conjure up for you?

• Cloud Atlas is not just the name of a novel by David Mitchell... an actual 'International Cloud Atlas' was published in 1896 which featured the classification of the 10 basic types of cloud.
• Pilots do everything they can to avoid cumulonimbus clouds (thunderstorm clouds) as they can be incredibly dangerous. The only person known to have fallen through a cumulonimbus and survived was William Rankin, in 1959. His plane caught fire just above a cumulonimbus and he had to eject. His survival was quite miraculous as he spent about half an hour inside the cloud being pelted with hail and thrown about. He had frostbite, blood pouring from his eyes, nose, mouth and ears (because of decompression) and several welts caused by hail. Lucky to have survived although it sounds like the after-treatment would have been pretty horrible.
• Hindus and Buddhists believe that cumulus clouds (the white fluffy ones) are the spiritual cousins of elephants.
• Any planet with an atmosphere can have clouds. Saturn definitely does.
• Cumulonimbus are not only the largest clouds (they can be incredibly tall - and we're talking about kilometres high not metres here), they can also hold up to million tons of water.
• Have you seen the Disney-Pixar short film 'Partly Cloudy'? It's kind of cute...

In case you haven't seen it yet, I'm holding a twitter giveaway for those who follow me on Twitter (create_trouble) All you need to do it leave a comment under the giveaway post to tell me your twitter name and how many entries you have.