I Need One Of These

Mine would pop out of my desk drawer and offer me hors d’oeuvres and a cocktail every afternoon.

Tuesday Project Roundup: Beige Rectangle Edition

I can't say it was the most thrilling week of projects, but I did finally get a new bath mat made for the miniscule bathroom in the apartment:

To give you an idea of scale, the bathmat is made of two hand towels sewn together. Hand towels. I had to make my own, obviously, because standard-size bathmats were way too big for the floor space.
And here's a scarf I made out of a long piece of linen, finishing the edges with my sister-in-law's serger. Once again this is a blatant copy of--I mean it's "inspired by"--something I saw online here.

(Also, see that stripey dress? I didn't make that. It came from a store, ready to wear. I'd almost forgotten that feeling.)

If Monday Were A Toy Mousie, I Would Do This To It:

Then I'd just walk away from it:

That's what I'd do.

Friday Unrekated Information

1. So glad it's Friday. Go away already, longest week ever.

2. If you're wondering what the baby alpaca at Blue Moon Ranch got named, he's Sergio. (Apparently Linda tries out different names on them and sees what they react to. She's the alpaca whisperer.) Sergio and his mom Lola.

3. Why do we like pandas so much? NPR tells us, "Because they make you smile."


4. Something else that makes me smile? The first season of 30 Rock. Like all TV shows, I'm late to the party on this one, but it's awesome.

It's Not Just Me, Then

I've always thought the new LDS Conference Center looked disturbingly 3rd Reich and that the Church Office Building looked like a dreary tenement, so imagine my vindication when I found this Tribune article linked on my coworker Jason's blog: SLC skyline 'pretty disappointing'. In it, the Chicago Tribune's Blair Kamin (Pulitzer-prize winning critic of architecture--who knew that could be a job description?) is given a tour of the city and weighs in on the landmarks. His summary of the Conference Center? "It's like fourth-rate modernism." And his thoughts about the Church Office Building? "That looks like the wrong side of the Cold War."

Who Needs Clive Cussler?

I read an awesome Wired magazine article Monday called, "High Tech Cowboys of the Deep Seas: The Race to Save the Cougar Ace." It's about a nautical salvage firm trying to save a sinking Japanese freighter--if they can save it, they get a cut of the cargo value from the ship's insurer. If they fail, they don't get anything.

Who knew things like that existed outside of Bruce Willis movies? The guy in charge, Rich Habib (and if that's not a fake name, I don't know what is) "holds an unlimited master's license, which means he's one of the select few who are qualified to pilot ships of any size, anywhere in the world." How cool is that?

It's a long article but it reads like adventure fiction, complete with tragedy and a foul-mouthed Panamanian sidekick. Go check it out.

Tuesday Project Roundup: I Know What I'm Wearing To County Fairs And Derbies This Season

I'm wearing gingham, like generations of farm women behind me!
My gingham has a mandarin collar and a 70's feel (I modified the duck dress pattern), which hopefully keeps it from feeling too literally farm-like.

I'm extra pleased by how I got the checks to match on the front: They match horizontally across the collar and across the front inset, and (mostly) vertically from the inset into the body. That's a lot of 3/8 inch checks to keep track of while cutting out.
Toby, however, was underwhelmed by it last night:

(He's on the ironing board here. Yes, I give my cat plastic bags to play with and let him sit on the ironing board while I'm ironing. It's a good thing he's not a human baby.)

Awwww....

The first of 19 expected crias arrived at Blue Moon Ranch yesterday.
He doesn't have a name yet, so check the barn cam tomorrow to see what it is. (I would call him Robin, but that's just me.)

Friday Unrelated Information

1. Has anyone had any experience with "kitty window boxes"? Toby is an inside-only cat while I'm living next to Pirate House and busy streets, but he's already expressed a very strong interest in open (screened) windows. This could work, but I 'm afraid that he'd either figure out how to knock this out of the window and escape, or that it would drive him bonkers to be even closer to the birds but still unable to get them.2. I'm about three steps away from turning into a crazy cat lady, aren't I?

3. To counteract yesterday's "sad little llama picture," as my mother called it, here's another happy Mary Oliver poem I found:

Morning Poem

Every morning
the world
is created.
Under the orange

sticks of the sun
the heaped
ashes of the night
turn into leaves again

and fasten themselves to the high branches ---
and the ponds appear
like black cloth
on which are painted islands

of summer lilies.
If it is your nature
to be happy
you will swim away along the soft trails

for hours, your imagination
alighting everywhere.
And if your spirit
carries within it

the thorn
that is heavier than lead ---
if it's all you can do
to keep on trudging ---

there is still
somewhere deep within you
a beast shouting that the earth
is exactly what it wanted ---

each pond with its blazing lilies
is a prayer heard and answered
lavishly,
every morning,

whether or not
you have ever dared to be happy,
whether or not
you have ever dared to pray.

She Looks Like I Feel

Sometimes, it's just all too much, whether you're an alpaca or a copywriter.

Planning For Spring While It Snows

I could dig up another unhappy quote about the weather, but let's just assume I'm unhappy with it and move on to something more hopeful: Seeds.

Last year I had a patio garden and it did pretty well, so this year I'm getting more ambitious and will actually plant things in the ground. (In the blighted area where the landlord cut down all the trees last spring, actually.)

I have tomatoes and basil going as starts, and I bought seeds for the rest of the produce yesterday. So now I'm really impatient for nice weather.

(And because I have to take a picture of Toby every time I get out the camera, here he is. His new favorite toy? A plastic bag. I have some reservations giving my "baby" a plastic bag as a toy, but he's supervised. And very smart, as you can see.)

Mom: Better Than Any Project

You love sickly cats best; you complain bitterly about managing students but then always make them birthday cakes; you're redecorating and using Monet's house as an inspiration; pruning is your therapy. Thank you for everything and happy birthday!

Love,
The Daughter


2006, on the bridge at Giverny

"Privilege O f Being"

Mr. Isbell has been out of town, and yesterday night I dreamed that instead of adopting Toby, I took him back to the shelter, realized my mistake, and went to get him again only to find out that he had been "donated" to the "University Cat Research Center". (It was a dream, but it was very ominous.)

Of course I was so relieved to wake up and see Toby sitting on my chest, but I had to think of my friend Sean: When I told him I wanted to get a cat, he said, "That will just open up whole new ways for you to be miserable!"

I understand his point. While the dream was just a dream, there are so many ways to be afraid for something you love. People can "die young, fail at love, fail of their ambitions," cats can get lost or sick--but you have to just accept that risk, because the happiness you get tempers the fear. (Sean disagrees, of course, but he also doesn't care for pets.)

(Title and quotes from one of my favorite Robert Hass poems.)

Friday Unrelated Information

1. Gah! Has anyone else had the 24-hour stomach flu that’s going around? Mr. Isbell had it Sunday and I told him it had to be food poisoning, since it came and went so fast. Well, my disbelief was punished—I came down with it yesterday at lunch. I’m just glad it does move fast. I might even try to eat a cracker later.

2. I will wash my windows tomorrow, when I am recovered. No excuses. It’s getting hard for Toby to see the birds out of them.

3. From an archived interview (now online) with Ernest Hemingway on how he approached symbolism in his books: "I tried to make a real old man, a real boy, a real sea and a real fish and real sharks. But if I made them good and true enough they would mean many things. The hardest thing is to make something really true and sometimes truer than true."

A Lovely Poem For Thursday

It's by Mary Oliver, who wrote a handbook we used in my long-lost poetry classes but whose work I didn't really know.

Wild Geese

You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees
for a hundred miles through the desert, repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body
love what it loves.
Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.
Meanwhile the world goes on.
Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain
are moving across the landscapes,
over the prairies and the deep trees,
the mountains and the rivers.
Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,
are heading home again.
Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,
the world offers itself to your imagination,
calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting--
over and over announcing your place
in the family of things.

He Wasn't Really Dancing

I mentioned Dancing Cats Feline Health Center on Friday, and at the risk of telling yet another cat story, I have to mention it again today. Toby had to go there last Wednesday for an eye infection; they were really nice; he didn't mind being there (until they tried to take his temperature); and he got eye drops to clear things up.

But the drops weren't clearing things up, so I left a message Saturday morning when they were closed, thinking I wouldn't hear back from them over the weekend. But only an hour later the vet called and had me come in to get oral antibiotics, and called again yesterday to see if they were working. (Fortunately, they were, because it wasn't fun for anyone involved to make sure Toby got eye drops and liquid medicine.)

But my point is: great vet, who remembers people by their cat's name, who comes in on weekends to check messages, and who names her clinic Dancing Cats.

Tuesday Project Roundup: Brand New Bag

I got the feeling on Friday (get it, James Brown fans?) to ignore my dirty windows and screens and to work on a new bag instead. I've made purses for myself before, but have always been a little dissatisfied with how they turned out--too small, the zipper looked lumpy, the interfacing didn't bond right, etc.

But I got so sick of carrying an old bag that I bought in the days of credit (that I probably just paid off) that I decided to try again. And it turned out well: It's big enough to hold a bottle of wine, my minimum size requirement (putting wine in a purse happens more than you'd think); there's a magnetic snap instead of a zipper; and the interfacing is just fine.

Toby likes it, too. Although he prefers his grocery bag.

Dammit, Spring, Will You Get Spring-like Soon?

This is the rest of the passage from A Moveable Feast I put up a couple weeks ago:

"Sometimes the heavy cold rains would beat it [spring] back so that it would seem that it would never come and that you were losing a season out of your life...You expected to be sad in the fall. Part of you died each year when the leaves fell from the tree and their branches were bare against the wind and the cold, wintry light. But you knew there would always be the spring, as you knew the river would flow again after it was frozen. When the cold rains kept on and killed the spring, it was as though a young person had died for no reason."

Hear that, spring? You're making us sad. Shape up.

Friday Unrelated Information

1. I learned an awesome word this week: jeremiad, or "a long literary work in which the author bitterly laments the state of society and its morals in a serious tone of sustained invective."

2. The article in which I learned this awesome word is worth reading, even if it's depressing: "The Dumbing of America."

3. If you maybe have the day off and are trying to decide between sewing a new bag and washing your filthy windows, you could read this article, too, while you finish your coffee and decide: "Stowaways," about "the strange things restorers find in historic aircraft."

4. If you have a cat and need a vet, I highly recommend Dancing Cats Feline Health Center. Not only because their name is Dancing Cats (which is fantastic), but because they're kind, efficient, and affordable and recognized Toby as the superior cat he is.

What Makes A Good Blog

I read The Simple Dollar blog generally every day--it's what sparked my financial turnaround over a year ago and I'm still fond of it for that reason, although now it's more of a habit. Mr. Simple Dollar recently quit his job to become a full-time blogger, and shared some advice on what gets a blog traffic (and income):

"The thing is that almost all blogs out there on the internet--the kind where people talk about their pet cat and such, or ones that are very unfocused about the topics they write about, or are written in very poor grammar--don't get a lot of traffic."

Heh. It's a good thing I don't want to get any income from this. At least my grammar and spelling are up to par.

And doesn't everyone want to read thrilling stories about Toby L. Cat?

I Need Some New Music

I was tired of the CDs I had in my car last night so I turned on the oldies station to see if anything good was on, and it was The Byrds version of "Mr. Tambourine Man." I knew that their version of the song was always more popular than Dylan's, but I had never heard it, being a Dylan fan who thinks he sings just fine, thank you. And being a Dylan fan, I thought The Byrds took out all the best lyrics and made it lugubrious with 10-string guitars. I can see now why everyone thinks it's a druggy song.

But if you listen to the song as Bob does it, preferably the solo version from 1966 or so, you really focus on the lyrics which, in my opinion, are as evocative as something by Kerouac and make great use of word sounds and consonance. For example:


Then take me disappearing through the smoke rings of my mind,
Down the foggy ruins of time, far past the frozen leaves,
The haunted, frightened trees, out to the windy beach,
Far from the twisted reach of crazy sorrow.
Yes, to dance beneath the diamond sky with one hand waving free,
Silhouetted by the sea, circled by the circus sands,
With all memory and fate driven deep beneath the waves,
Let me forget about today until tomorrow.


Maybe my thwarted English minor is asserting itself; maybe I should buy a CD recorded in this century. But I think that verse is awesome.

Tuesday Project Roundup: Cat Hair Everywhere Edition

I started this project weeks before Toby L. Cat showed up, but I got the decorative strip pinned on and then lost all steam to finish. Last week I finally sewed the strip down and added ties to keep the sides shut.
What is it, you ask? A sewing machine cozy, of course. It keeps things like dust and cat hair out of the machine and it keeps interesting small chewable things hidden from Toby.
I'm glad I got this out of the way because I feel a project-filled weekend coming up: The navy gingham will be here soon, and yesterday I got fabric for a new summer handbag project.

Which is, of course, Toby-approved: