Wednesday Project Roundup: Cue The Richard Strauss

Done...

done...

done....

done, DONE!


Done, done, done, done, done, done, done, done.....

Why yes, the quilt is finished after nine months. It kept us warm last night. Toby approves of it. But what project will stay at the back of mind mind now? Something like this? (I'm serious; I think I like quilting.) Although maybe I'll take a few months and enjoy this one being done.

(If you're like me, now you have to go listen to the real Richard Strauss piece. Here's a video link for you.)

Let Me Distract You With Pictures Of Oktoberfest While We Wait For Quilt Pictures

The quilt didn't get a photo shoot last night but it's ready for its close up (!!!)*. So for today, check out The Big Picture's photos of Oktoberfest in Munich.

These Lowenbrau horses' harness puts the Budweiser Clydesdales' to shame:

German knights! With beer!

And did somebody say beer? That is a lot of beer.
I know we wanted to try to go to Snowbird's Oktoberfest this weekend, but the weather may not cooperate with us. I'd rather not trudge through the snow to get my beer.

*Stay tuned for a Very Special Wednesday Project Roundup tomorrow: The Quilt Reveal.

Toby's Great Escape

As you might guess from the title of this, Sunday was a pretty bad day. But everything ended happily so really, it was a great day.

Saturday night I went to bed with Toby sleeping on the in-progress quilt, so when I woke up once in the night and he wasn't on the bed I thought, "Oh, he's on the quilt." I woke up again at 4:30 and he still wasn't on the bed and I thought, "Where the hell is he? I'd better so check." So I get up and he's not on the quilt and he's not anywhere and I'm already getting a sinking feeling and yes: He pushed out a corner of the screen in the front window and was gone.

Well, about four hours of panic ensued--panic and lots of walking and hollering. We made a two-block radius around the apartment, I went down into Memory Grove, I made fliers and started posting them, I put up an ad on Craigslist and ksl.com, and did I mention the panic part?

I called my mom again after the flier posting and she said, "Put out some food and be sure to check really carefully in all the corners of the yard." So I started investigating the potting shed in the back parking lot here and wedged between the back of the shed and a tree trunk was a very, very scared Toby. (Isn't the wisdom of moms fantastic? How do they learn these things?) He was too scared to even meow at me, which is why we missed him in the frantic search (and it was dark), but I scooped him up and carried him back inside.

Then, of course, all he wanted to do was pace the windows (now shut) and go out again. Um, kitty? You didn't seem to be enjoying yourself. There's no food out there. Let's stay inside, OK?

Anyway. That was Sunday, but all is well now. I'd like a weekend to recover from the weekend, please.

Friday Unrelated Information

1. We had a server and internet crash at work yesterday, so I took an early lunch and went to the Gateway--where I saw the CIRCUS PARADE. I was all, "Elephants!!" but then immediately after, "Oh god, that's sad." There were also clowns riding mini bikes.

2. Don't forget to go visit the alpaca ranch this weekend for Open Barn Day (they have yarn to buy).

3. The Smithsonian has a whole bunch of old seed catalogs you can peruse online. My favorites are below.

A Poem For Thursday

In The Night Orchard

by R. T. Smith

I know, because Paul has told me
a hundred times, that the deer
gliding tonight through tangleweed
and trashwood, then bounding across
Mount Atlas Road, are after his pears.

And who could blame them?
On the threshold of autumn, the Asian
imports, more amazing than any Seckle
or indigenous apple, start to ripen.
Then a passing crow will peck one open.

That's when the whitetails who bed
and gather beyond Matson's pasture
will catch the scent and begin to stir.
It's a dry time, and they go slowly mad
for sweetness. No fence can stop them.

The farmers like Paul will admit
it starts in hunger, but how suddenly
need goes to frenzy and sheer plunder.
When the blush-gold windfalls are gone
and the low boughs are stripped

of anything resembling bounty, bucks
will rise on their hind legs and clamber
up the trunks. Last week Cecil Emore
found one strangled in a fork,
his twisted antlers tangled as if

some hunter had hung him there
to cure. We all remember what it's like,
this driven season, this delirium
for something not yet given a name,
but the world turns us practical, tames

us to yearn for milder pleasures.
For Augustine, it was actual pears
that brought him out of the shadows
and over a wall, for Eve, the secret
inside what we now say was an apple.

Others have given up safety for less,
and I wonder, catching an eight-point
buck outlined on the ridge amid spruce,
if it's this moonstruck nature that renders
the ruminants beautiful, or if we stalk

them out of envy, not for the grace
of their gliding, but for the unadorned
instinct that draws them after dark
into trespass and the need to ruin
the sweetest thing they've ever known.

Jury Duty Looms

So work is slow this week, but next week a site needs to be written and there's the potential for a trip to Florida for a new client, plus all of the other things the only writer at an agency handles. And that's all going to be a problem because I've been called for jury duty.

I'm hoping that the court will find enough jurors before my number comes up. And failing that, I'm hoping the deadline on that site is flexible. In theory, a break from the routine with lots of downtime for knitting sounds OK, but I'd be happier if I had some freelance lined up. I guess that's today's project.

Tuesday Project Roundup: Project Schedule

I don't have anything finished this week, but it's not for lack of trying. I'm adhering to a very productive crafty schedule:

On the nights when Mr. Isbell has school, I sew the quilt binding and watch my Masterpiece Theater miniseries. (He doesn't share my love for British period dramas.) I'm halfway through the binding!

On the nights when we're both home, I usually knit. I'm almost to the point where I start the fancy stitch pattern on the beige vest.

And on the weekends, when we're not going to car races or open barn days, I've been working on a fall dress with that black gingham.
So statistically, I should really have something to show soon.

Happy Fall

190 years and three days ago, John Keats wrote his "Ode to Autumn," and, while the astronomical equinox isn't until tomorrow, it's a nice way to start the week. Here's the first stanza; you can read the rest of it here.

Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness

Close bosom-friend of the maturing sun

Conspiring with him how to load and bless

With fruit the vines that round the thatch-eaves run;

To bend with apples the moss'd cottage-trees,

And fill all fruit with ripeness to the core;

To swell the gourd, and plump the hazel shells

With a sweet kernel; to set budding more,

And still more, later flowers for the bees,

Until they think warm days will never cease,

For Summer has o'er-brimm'd their clammy cells.

Friday Unrelated Information

1. Big events this weekend: My brother's birthday AND a race at Miller Motorsports Park. I got him tickets, too, so we can all watch the Rolex Grand Am series and think about him being 33. I think owning three lawn tractors by 33 was a goal of his, and he has accomplished it. Happy birthday!

2. Remember when I learned about Alan Turing last year? The UK has finally apologized for prosecuting him for homosexuality, forcing estrogen implants on him, and essentially driving him to suicide. Nice apology; shame he's dead and can't accept it.

3. Here is a gallery of some vintage Porsche posters to peruse. I like this one:

State Fair Tonight

I never did enter anything in the fair this year; nothing seemed worth the leaving work early and registering it with all the crafty fair ladies and leaving early again to pick it up afterward.

But I still want to go, and my brother gave us free tickets (courtesy of John Deere), so tonight is fair night. I haven't checked the schedule for any events we want to see, but maybe we'll catch some draft horse pulls. And eat some funnel cake.

Wednesday Project Roundup: One Step Forward, One Project Back

So I start hand-sewing the binding on the quilt tonight (while watching the Masterpiece Theater Little Dorrit, inspired by Kara). I know I've been talking about the steps involved in this for nine months now, but this is seriously the last one. The LAST ONE!

But with all progress comes some un-progress: I stopped working on the turquoise sweater for now. The more I worked on it the more I realized I wouldn't wear that style of pattern, and the more I saw the yarn the more I thought it was a spring color. (Pantone tells me that it is, too.)

Instead, I'm working on this, in beige. Beige is always in season.

(From the Interweave Knits magazine, in lieu of anything elaborately cabled, because I still can't decide.)

Tuesday Project Roundup Will Return Tomorrow

It's being bumped so I can wish Mr. Isbell a happy birthday today instead. Happy birthday, hon!

(This birthday, say it with lolcats.)

The 20th Century Has Been Good To Me

I can vote, I can work full-time, and I didn't have four kids by the time I was 25. The Writer's Almaac tells me that today is the birthday of Margaret Sanger, in 1879, who is responsible for that third one. Emphases are mine in the quote below:

Margaret Sanger was born into a working-class Irish family. Her mother died when she was 50, after 18 pregnancies. Margaret went to New York City, became a nurse, got married, and gave birth to three kids. As a nurse, she worked in the maternity ward on the Lower East Side, and many of her patients were poor, some of them living on the streets. They seemed old to her by the time they were 35, and many of them ended up in the hospital from self-induced abortions, which often killed them. Margaret nursed one mother back to health after she gave herself an abortion, and heard the woman beg the doctor for some protection against another pregnancy; the doctor told the woman to make her husband sleep outside. That woman died six months later, after a botched abortion, and Margaret Sanger gave up nursing, convinced that she needed to work for a more systematic change.

We can all be glad Margaret did work for change, went to prison in 1916 for opening a birth-control clinic, and in 1921 started what would become Planned Parenthood. Thank you, Margaret.

Friday Unrelated Information

1. If you'd like something to read, I found a Malcolm Gladwell article about advertising, the rise of feminism, two women copywriters, and the birth of the focus group. It's good stuff, although if you ARE a woman copywriter who likes the Mad Men era you'll really like it. True Colors: Hair Dye and the Hidden History of Postwar America.

2. This weekend is the Great Basin Fiber Arts Fair, held at Wheeler Farm. The alpaca ranch will be there--check out their new blog to see how you could win an alpaca mat.

3. Here's a picture of Hemingway kicking a can, from here.

Things You Learn In Your Morning Internet Reading

My trusty sources, The Writers Almanac and Coudal Partners, tell me that today is poet Mary Oliver's birthday (there's a nice poem from her about being seventy at the top of the page) and pointed me to a post about "micro-poems" that would translate well to Twitter. That post containted this Mexican proverb:

Cada quien puede hacer de sus calzones un palote
“Anyone is entitled to make a kite out of his pants.”

So let's just all ponder that today.

Wednesday Project Roundup: Some Fall Projects

I feel as if I completely squandered my four day weekend, but at least I got some sewing done. Here's that double gauze blouse:

I made this pattern last year as a dress, but the double gauze was a new experience. It was kind of like working with Kleenex, in that the layers would stick to each other and there's no drape to the finished shirt whatsoever. I think it will look OK with jeans, though. I'll channel my inner hippy.

And here's that paisley Liberty of London print from the fall projects pile:
This I finished before the weekend but it got bumped for quilt photos last week. I've made this pattern before, too, so it came together quickly. I like working with these busy small prints--it keeps things interesting while you're finishing seams. (I realize that this one also looks kind of hippy-ish. I guess I should just embrace that.)

Tuesday Project Roundup Has Been Rescheduled For Wednesday

Monday was a holiday so now I'm going to be off a day all week. Since today feels like Monday, let's push the roundup to Wednesday since that will only feel like Tuesday. (Also, I'll be able to take some pictures of the projects tonight.)

OK. Back to work, I guess.

Friday Unrelated Information

1. I need to decide on an elaborate cabled sweater to make soon if I'm going to accomplish Thing 22 on the 29 Things. The latest Interweave Knits magazine had a cardigan that I know I would wear a lot, but is it cabley enough?

2. Check out this crosswalk sign hack:

3. And speaking of high fives, I took today off from work so I get a four-day weekend. That's pretty great, too.

Food-Related Things I Learned Last Night

I was searching the Gourmet.com archives for a plum cake recipe that used ingredients I had, got distracted by their Cocktails of the Decade, 1940-2000 gallery (awesome), and noticed a cocktail called the Phoebe Snow. I knew the Phoebe Snow was a train, and that Utah Phillips wrote a song about it (her?), but I didn't know the backstory: Both the cocktail and the train were named for
a character created for a railroad advertising campaign that ran from the 1880s into the middle of the 20th century. The original Phoebe Snow was a young woman whose white dress remained pristine while riding the train because it ran on anthracite rather than normal, sooty coal.

Both Wikipedia and Utah Phillips back that up. Cool.

(Here's Phoebe, courtesy of Wikipedia.)

Then I moved on the The Joy of Cooking, still looking for a plum cake recipe, and I finally decided to look up "cockaigne." Many recipes in there are called "Chocolate Cake Cockainge" or "Christmas Fruitcake Cockaigne" and while I've been reading the cookbook since I was about ten, I've never bothered to find out what it means. (In my head, I had decided it meant "with nuts;" I don't know why.)

As it turns out, in medieval times "cockaigne" was a mythical land of plenty to peasants, kind of like the Big Rock Candy Mountain was to hobos. The Joy of Cooking authors had a country house named that, so all the "Recipe Cockaignes" were really just their house specialites--no nuts involved. Apparently this was in the forward to the cookbook the entire time. Thanks, Wikipedia!

(I did finally make "Plum Cake Cockaigne," but I always forget how much sugar plums need. It's a little tart.)

Busy Wednesday

It is Wednesday, right? Somehow I ended up with a re-scheduled doctor's appointment in the middle of a day filled with meetings and projects that are demanding more creativity than I think I can muster at this point.

So let's watch this video of a cat washing a fennec fox:



There. Now I feel better.

Tuesday Project Roundup: Quilted

I wonder if all these "in progress" quilt posts will spoil the final reveal, but I'm just so pleased with any step forward that I can't not show it. The latest step forward is, of course, the quilting. Like the Velveteen Rabbit, it's a Real Quilt now. Behold the even machine stitching:


And look how it looks like a real quilt all folded up:
The only step left is to finish the raw edges with some binding. I hope to at least start that over the long weekend.