A Monday Morning Sort Of Poem

Love Poem with Toast

by Miller Williams

Some of what we do, we do
to make things happen,
the alarm to wake us up, the coffee to perc,
the car to start.

The rest of what we do, we do
trying to keep something from doing something
the skin from aging, the hoe from rusting,
the truth from getting out.

With yes and no like the poles of a battery
powering our passage through the days,
we move, as we call it, forward,
wanting to be wanted,
wanting not to lose the rain forest,
wanting the water to boil,
wanting not to have cancer,
wanting to be home by dark,
wanting not to run out of gas,

as each of us wants the other
watching at the end,
as both want not to leave the other alone,
as wanting to love beyond this meat and bone,
we gaze across breakfast and pretend.

Friday Unrelated Information

1. Sewers and knitters, hurry and scour your stash--the Iraqi Bundles of Love project is taking donations through September 7th. The project wants to get sewing supplies into the hands of Iraqi women. It's all organized by one soldier:

Willing contributors can send to me a flat-rate box of sewing / quilting [or knitting] supplies, all bundled up. I’ll open the box, pull out the fully-contained bundle, and hand it off (with others) to our counterparts in the Iraqi Security Forces (Army and others) or the local police, for them to distribute. Some of the bundles will also be delivered by US Soldiers.

I'm just not sure something can get to an APO address in a week...maybe Priority Mail is a better idea? I only heard about this yesterday, but I hope to put something together.

2. Bonnie Tyler brings back fond memories of my old roommate. Here's a flowchart for "Total Eclipse of the Heart," in case you need it (click for big):

3. And the quilt looks fantastic! On to the finishing--pictures soon.

Major Quilt Progress

I got a call last night that the quilt is done! So after work today we are going on a field trip to pick it up. Hopefully this will be my initiation into the quilting world--I've noticed that established crafty ladies (usually older ladies) are really unwelcoming to newer crafty ladies (usually younger, like me) until you've sort of "proven" that you're not a dilettante. It took me months at the knitting store for the knitting ladies to accept me, and I noticed that the quilting ladies I've encountered during this process have a little of the same attitude.


Overall, though, the quilt ladies been more welcoming than the knitting ladies. Maybe it helps that I came in with a completed quilt top, so they don't think I'm completely clueless.

Anyway, I'm excited to see it turned into a real quilt!

What The Weather Is Like Right Now

Third sentence from Out of Africa:

In the day-time you felt that you had got high up, near to the sun, but the early mornings and evenings were limpid and restful, and the nights were cold.

So it's a good thing I got a call last night that my quilt will be ready this weekend. I need to get it finished and on the bed before the nights get truly cold.

Tuesday Project Roundup: Another One For The Pile

Remember when I took days off from my old job to sew? I was a lot less busy there, but I didn't like it half so much. And I had no fancy title.

I am taking the Friday before Labor Day off, though, ostensibly to hike Bald Mountain for the 29 Things and continue the tradition of doing something beyond our fitness level on Labor Day. However, it's one thing to get stranded on the Jordan River Parkway, like last year, and another thing entirely to get caught in a lightning storm (or even snow) on top of a peak in the Uintas.

Which is all just a long intro to the fact that I bought more fabric to add to the fall project pile, just in case we don't hike and I have four days to sew:

This is a Japanese import and it's gauze, which I've never worked with before. I saw that Kara made a darling skirt from a print from the same line and was inspired. I thought the fabric would lend itself well to a tunic and the print would look really good with navy. Because even if I don't get as many days off in this job, I can buy blazers now.


Oh, J. Crew. My on-again, off-again relationship with you just continues to cause me trouble.

Let's Talk About The State Fair

The deadline to enter anything I've sewn or knitted in the state fair is fast approaching, so I'd better decide if I'm going to enter or not. I've sewn a lot over the past year, certainly, but no project is jumping out at me as particularly fair-worthy. Last year's entries were a silk dress and a jacket--kind of big, impressive pieces--but this year my quilt certainly won't be ready in time,* and I'm still wearing the robe and pajamas, so I don't know.

As for knitting, I think the owl sweater is a candidate, but in my years of fair-going I've noticed that the judges tend to favor huge intarsia projects straight out of 1986:
And I still feel much more shy about my knitting getting judged than my sewing, although I think I do a pretty good job finishing.

Maybe I won't enter anything; maybe my state fair phase is ending, like the derby phase (haven't been to one in two years). Although if I don't go, where will I ever eat funnel cake again? Lots to consider..


*I dropped the quilt off to be machine-quilted two weeks ago, hooray! I think there's another week to go before I get it back and have to do the binding. (Not hooray.)

Friday Unrelated Information

1. Tomorrow my dad turns 62! He's the only 62-year-old I know who is going to perform impressive feats of strength on his birthday (a 100-mile bike ride.) Happy birthday and be safe on your ride--we want you to stay around for many more birthdays.

2. Ray Bradbury turns 89 tomorrow, too. Did you send a card?

3. And, in other news about old guys (ha! sorry, Dad--you thought I had resisted), here's a news report from last month: New Jersey Homeowner Calls Cops on Bob Dylan. They thought he was a homeless man in their yard and the 24-year-old officer didn't recognize him. Hijinks ensue.

Happy Belated Brithday, Mlle. Chanel

The Writer's Almanac told me that yesterday was Gabrielle "Coco" Chanel's birthday (1883). She's always fascinated me, because she essentially started out in business as a kept woman and ended up with an empire:

Her parents were poor, she was an illegitimate child, and when her mother died, she was sent to an orphanage. When she turned 18, she went to work for a tailor, and she also sang in cafés and concert halls. She was a mistress to one wealthy man and then another, and with the money they gave her, she set up her own millinery shop, which she opened in 1910. Soon her clothes became popular among the elite of Paris. She took men's styles and made them feminine—loose clothes made from jersey, short skirts, suits—and women were relieved to have comfortable clothes suddenly be stylish, and to get rid of the corsets that had been popular for many years....She said, "Fashion fades, only style remains the same."

She also single-handedly made the suntan popular, after an outing on someone's yacht, launching 130 years of a tan equalling health and leisure instead of time spent being an outdoor laborer.

Tour of Utah

Did you know that there's a pro road bike race going on right now? In Utah? The Tour of Utah prologue was last night--almost in our backyard--so we walked to the turnaround in City Creek Canyon and watched with all the hard-core cyclists (and their egos). However, the racers themselves didn't need to show any ego; they just went fast. Really fast. One guy nearly ate it coming out of the turn back down the canyon but he recovered and there was much cheering and ringing of cowbells.

If you like cycling at all (even if you ride a cruiser very slowly), you should really try to go see a stage, if only to see what you see on TV in person. There's an individual time trial Friday at my new favorite place, Miller Motorsports Park, and the final event is downtown on Sunday. And they're climbing a couple of mountains in between.

Tuesday Project Roundup: One Down, Three To Go

I've been working away at my sweater this week and have made some good progress. (It helped that I knit in the car while riding to the motorsports park last week. I guess I'm pretty comfortable with my coworkers now.) I'm almost done with the first hank of yarn, which puts me just past the shoulders:


Three more hanks of yarn and it will look like this girl's lovely sweater (more of her photos of sylish knitwear here):
I wish I could find a floral print like that dress to wear my sweater with, too.

Oh, Weekend

Now that I am resigned that summer has passed me by, let me tell you how delightful it was to wake up Saturday to chilly rain and think, "I don't even have to string two sentences together coherently if I don't want to!" So I stayed home all day and sewed and made brownies and homemade pizza, and we got the apartment cleaned and watched some Mad Men. And some Mighty Boosh, just to balance out all that highbrow drama.

Friday Unrelated Information

1. It's been a long week at the office--a week in which I've met race car drivers, ridden on a golf cart, corrected my boss quoting The Blues Brothers, and worked what feels like a hundred hours. My job is awesome, but sometimes tiring.

2. Check out these trompe l'oeil murals from the UK that you can put on your garage door. Now the neighbors can see scenes like this instead of just a door:

Personally, I like the giant bird:

Meanwhile, Back At The Ranch

What's going on at the alpaca ranch, you ask? Lots of baby alpacas! Karma the alpaca had a little daughter, Jasmine:

If I had bought Karma two years ago I'd have doubled my investment now. (Such a shame I lacked a spare $15,000 at the time.)

Be sure to plan on visiting during Fall Open Farm days, too--the last weekend in September.

Just When You Start Planning Ahead For Fall Projects

...The Writer's Almanac puts up a Mary Oliver poem about the uncertainty of tomorrow. But it's a nice poem.

Walking to Oak-Head Pond, and Thinking of the Ponds I Will Visit in the Next Days and Weeks

by Mary Oliver

What is so utterly invisible
as tomorrow?
Not love,
not the wind,

not the inside of stone.
Not anything.
And yet, how often I'm fooled-
I'm wading along

in the sunlight-
and I'm sure I can see the fields and the ponds shining
days ahead-
I can see the light spilling

like a shower of meteors
into next week's trees,
and I plan to be there soon-
and, so far, I am

just that lucky,
my legs splashing
over the edge of darkness,
my heart on fire.

I don't know where
such certainty comes from-
the brave flesh
or the theater of the mind-

but if I had to guess
I would say that only
what the soul is supposed to be
could send us forth

with such cheer
as even the leaf must wear
as it unfurls
its fragrant body, and shines

against the hard possibility of stoppage-
which, day after day,
before such brisk, corpuscular belief,
shudders, and gives way.

Tuesday Project Roundup: Looking Forward

The stores are all promoting back-to-school, the cold front that came through last weekend made me get out an extra blanket, and we're closer to the equinox now than we are to the Summer Solstice.

You know what this means for me: New fabric and a knitting project!

The yarn is from the Montana ranch and will be a jacket-type sweater; the fabrics will all be dresses. And to go with all these black dresses?

Hello, boots. My boyfriend does not understand why I need you, but he'll learn to love you. I just have to wait until September, because I can't buy fall footwear in a summer month. I just can't. You understand, boots.

Busy Day Today

Friday Unrelated Information

1. Going back to happier topic, Hemingway's thoughts mirror mine on an after-work cocktail:
I have drunk since I was 15 and few things have given me more pleasure. When you work all day with your head and know you must again work the next day, what else can change your ideas and make them run on a different plane like whiskey?

2. Ray Bradbury is turning 89 on the 22nd (also my dad's birthday), and he is having a birthday party at a bookstore in Glendale, CA. This cool bookstore has promised to give Ray any cards you might want to send him, so click here for the address and go get a birthday card in the mail.

3. I've found a site about hilariously bad Craigslist postings: You Suck At Craigslist. This post has been making me laugh whenever I think about it. You have to click through and see the picture, too, but the last line is a masterpiece:
test drives at ur own risk i cant go with you too many bees.
Now I want to add "too many bees" to the ends of all my sentences.

So Much For Avoiding Sad News This Week

I was going to wait about posting about the state of food TV in America and probably just not post about the movie about dolphin hunting. But then I saw that today is the 64th anniversary of the nuclear bombing of Hiroshima. So let's just get it all out today and go back to fluffy quotes tomorrow.

If you want to see pictures of the event and think about worldwide nuclear disarmament, check out the Big Picture blog.

Something Lighthearted For Wednesday

(I had posts lined up about the sad state of American cooking and about a sad movie about Japanese dolphin-killers, but we don't need all that sad in the middle of the week.)

So instead, let's talk about The Random P.G. Wodehouse Quote Generator. He's been on my list to get around to reading, and now I really need to bump him up to the top of the list, based on these examples:

His first emotion was one of surprise that so much human tonnage could have been assembled at one spot. A cannibal king, beholding them, would have whooped with joy and reached for his knife and fork with the feeling that for once, the catering department had not failed him.

and my particular favorite,
It was obvious that only the fact of his having no soul prevented the iron from entering into it.

Tuesday Project Roundup: A Muumuu No More

Besides being a good title for a short story, today's post is all about re-purposing and recycling. I got some nice blue and green and purple shirting fabric a year ago and tried to make a long-sleeved muumuu for fall, which just turned out to be a bad idea all around. And also too big.

All that good Italian shirting got put into the Fail Bin for a year, but I was sorting things to give to the thrift store last weekend and I just couldn't bring myself to toss it. So I pulled out the trusty top/dress pattern I've made a few times

and I thought, "If I cut off the yoke and the sleeves, I'll have enough fabric in the body of this enormous muumuu to make a top that I'll actually wear." And that's what I did.


You can see I cut the yoke all in one straight piece instead of the diamond inset, and the sleeves had to be cut crosswise, but I did have enough fabric (it was a big muumuu). And now I have a cute top.

Yet another example of how muumuus, even when rejected, are a delightful garment.

It's Monday

Sit it in like it's a big tote and be really cute.

Then tip over.