Happy Belated Birthday, Ed Abbey

Saturday would have been Edward Abbey's 84th birthday. (I think he's still waiting for someone to take out the Glen Canyon Dam.*) Here are two of my favorite quotes of his:

"Completely passive, acted upon but never acting, the desert lies there like the bare skeleton of Being, spare, sparse, austere, utterly worthless, inviting not love but contemplation."

and

"A drink a day keeps the shrink away."

Amen, brother.

*dear FBI, if you are monitoring the interwebs, I'm not a terrorist. That was just the plot point of The Monkey Wrench Gang.

Friday Unrelated Information

1. The latest report from people in the know tells me that I may be closing on the house as early as February 4th. That's next Friday. The Friday one week from today. Oh my god.

2. Look at this fabric that has flying squirrels and Sphinxes on it. What a shame I need to buy appliances instead of fabric.


3. Let's all think of this quote from Ayn Rand, because Ayn wouldn't panic at the thought of moving:
Do not let your fire go out, spark by irreplaceable spark in the hopeless swaps of the not-quite, the not-yet, and the not-at-all. Do not let the hero in your soul perish in lonely frustration for the life you deserved and have never been able to reach. The world you desire can be won. It exists, it is real, it is possible, it is yours.

Sundays Are My Laundry Days, But I Like The Point Being Made

Etta James had a birthday on Tuesday and I've been listening to her album At Last a lot lately--especially this track, "A Sunday Kind of Love."



It makes even laundry days a little more soulful.

In Which I Go To Sundance And Get A New Imaginary Boyfriend

Despite being a native Utahan, I've never been to Sundance (I've never been downhill skiing, either). But a friend had an extra ticket this year, so last night I got to see The Ledge. It was a thriller/love story/exploration of faith and it was really good--but I liked the Q&A with the writer/director Matthew Chapman most of all.

You can get a taste of him in the video linked to above, but he was just so smart and insightful and logical, talking about how the world needs "mercy more than condemnation." Sigh--rational humanists do it for me every time.

Also, if you want to stick out at Sundance, just wear a color. Especially and orange coat.

Tuesday Project Roundup: Not What I Pictured, But Finished At Last

Here is the dress I'd been working on since December, using fabric I'd had since August. I used a pattern I'd made twice before, so I thought I knew what to expect, but I'm not 100% pleased with this, for undefined reasons.

Maybe because the fabric is some of the last fancy fabric I'll be working with for a long time (hello, mortgage) and I expected more from it? Maybe because the print isn't large enough to handle the big blank canvas of the dress? Or is it because the print is too busy for the plain silhouette?

On the hanger. It needs pockets, or a belt, or something...


On me. Still missing something. (Yes, we like to gather round the space heater here at Chez Kitty.)

I just don't know. I think I might take up the hem a few more inches and get some bright contrasting tights. Bright tights help everything.

It's Monday

I woke up feeling cynical, so here is a picture of Toby.


He was "helping" me sew last weekend and just climbed on top of the machine while I was pressing a seam. He usually sits on the machine when it's covered, which gives him a little more room--note the paw held up to tell me, "Mama, this is too small. Fix it."

(Don't worry, he couldn't have made the machine go, so he wasn't about to hurt himself.)

Friday Unrelated Information

1. Sorry, I put up a broken link to my Twitter stream yesterday (I just assumed it would re-direct to the non-signed-in page but I guess Twitter doesn't do that). If you want to read 140-character inanities, here's the right link.

2. Speaking of Twitter, Laura Ingalls Wilder is on it, too.

3. And in space news, Voyager 1, launched in 1977 with the golden record of Earth sounds picked by Carl Sagan, has reached the very edge of our solar system and is almost in interstellar space--the first time anything from Earth will do so. (Thanks to my friend Jason for pointing this out.)

Eyes On The Prize

If you follow my Twitter stream you will know that there was more lender drama yesterday, which made me nearly inarticulate with fury (all-caps shouting of "FOR THE LOVE OF GOD" was about all I could manage). But I went to see the house last night and if I can ever get in, I will like living there.

Did I mention I have a basement? That comes already insulated?

And that I think I picked the best beige carpeting option from the six other beiges offered?

And that I have a place for a washer and a dryer? I think I will weep with joy when I do a load of laundry in my own house for the first time.


Until then, I just hope I don't weep.

All House, All The Time!

I didn't want to turn the blog into "househousehousehouse," but you know what? I'm buying a house! It's exciting! So I'm going to blog about it.

As of Monday, I had countertops:

And carpet pads:

And someone's jacket and hat:

As of today, I know I have carpet, and I think I'll have appliances. I alternate between excitement and dread--of the move, of last-minute impediments or expenses, of bouncing around in the big fancy new house like a rat in a can. It's mostly excitement, though.

(Pictures are from my parents, who have been up there more than I have. But I've been securing financing, and renewing my drivers license, and, you know, working so I can stay employed to make the mortgage payments.)

Tuesday Project Roundup: Incomplete and Uninspired

Guess what? I'm still not done with the corduroy dress I've been working on since December. I only had to blind-hem it last night but the thought of finishing and then taking a picture at ten o'clock didn't appeal to me.

But after the dress is wrapped up, I don't know what to make next--I don't think that's happened to me in a year or two. I'm sure it's because it looks like I'll be moving in TWO WEEKS (holy sh*t) and all my creative energies are getting channeled into decor, and picking curtain fabrics, and deciding between Kenmore and Whirlpool for a washer and dryer. (Any opinions?)

So I'm sorry, I know the project roundups have been a little lackluster. Just wait until my entire living space becomes a project.

Lines For Winter

If you have the day off, enjoy the thaw while it lasts--because I think more snow is on the way this week. Here's a poem about surviving winter:

Lines for Winter
by Mark Strand

Tell yourself
as it gets cold and gray falls from the air
that you will go on
walking, hearing
the same tune no matter where
you find yourself—
inside the dome of dark
or under the cracking white
of the moon's gaze in the valley of snow.
Tonight as it gets cold
tell yourself
what you know which is nothing
but the tune your bones play
as you keep going. And you will be able
for once to lie down under the small fire
of winter stars.
And if it happens that you cannot
go on or turn back
and you find yourself
where you will be at the end,
tell yourself
in that final flowing of cold through your limbs
that you love what you are.

Friday Unrelated Information

1. Look, I have kitchen cupboards!
They've made so much progress! I don't have a lender yet! Aaaaaaaaaaah!

2. I realized that my driver's license expired on my birthday (the 3rd). Today's the 14th. Aaaaaaaaaaaaah!

3. And finally, a new site that I love entitled "Things Real People Don't Say About Advertising." Here's a sample of what people don't say:

Morning Poem

I liked the beginning of the poem on the Writer's Almanac today ("An Early Start in Midwinter," by Robyn Sarah):

The freeze is on. At six a scattering
of sickly lights shine pale in kitchen windows.
Thermostats are adjusted. Furnaces
blast on with a whoosh. And day
rumbles up out of cellars to the tune
of bacon spitting in a greasy pan.

But maybe I only liked it because it mentions bacon, which I wish didn't come from pigs.

Speaking of mornings, it's getting so light now! Check out this video that's been making the rounds--it's a time lapse of a whole year, and watching the snow melt and the leaves come out makes me feel almost hopeful.

Someday, Palm Springs

If you've followed my lists for the last two years, you know that I can't even make it to Moab, four hours away--so going to my dream vacation spot, Palm Springs (which is much warmer than Moab in the winter), is really not going to happen.

Last fall I saw that fabric designer Heather Ross was hosting a weekend sewing workshop in Palm Springs January 21-23. "Hotel and meals and sewing machine all provided for $700?" I thought. "One of my favorite sewing bloggers teaching classes? I should do that!"

But then I saw that hotel rooms were based on double occupancy, and I got shy, and thought I should save money for the house, and I talked myself out of it. Little did I know that Palm Springs would sound REALLY NICE in our second week of sub-freezing highs. Oh, well. If it happens next year, maybe I can remember this post.

Tuesday Project Roundup: The December Scarf

For December, I knit a scarf. (Reviewing the 2010 projects, I realized that I made a tube scarf a year ago December, too. Is it a theme?) While I was making this one, I was thinking how nice the green would look over a certain orange coat that I wanted. And it does.
Yarn: Malabrigo merino, my first time using it. Nice!
Pattern: I kind of made it up. I was inspired by this one but ended up using a different stitch pattern to make it look lumpier.

(And yes, my new camera came with a tripod and not one but two self-timer features. I just haven't figured it out yet. Because I'm figuring out a MORTGAGE this week and anything else might make my head explode.)

My House, Let Me Show You It

I went over to my new house this weekend and let myself in to check it out. In all the confusion of which model to get, I had only visited "mine" once and was having a hard time visualizing the layout--and after dealing with an awful mortgage broker last week, I wasn't 100% convinced I needed to buy it at all, if it was going to be that difficult.

Well, I like my house. (And I'd better, because the construction deposit check has cleared.) There were birds in the trees outside and space for a garden and it was so! fancy! inside! Plus, it wasn't drafty. Incredible!

Here is the kitchen half of the main floor. I think the kitchen goes in this week, which means I can finally get that sink out of my car.

And here's looking down from the second floor (Toby is going to love these stairs.)

There's even a real entryway, with an actual coat closet!

So in dealing with brokers this week, I just have to remember that it will be worth it. And that there's no going back now.

Friday Unrelated Information

1. I know that it's usually a bad idea to take scientific reports out of their complete context, but Out of Context Science pulls the funniest or strangest lines for your enjoyment.

2. I said I'd spare you the first-world problems of buying a house, but last night's quandary will give you an idea of what it's like in my head right now: I was wondering whether I wanted to upgrade to matching wooden hangers for my new closet. The pro? It would be a fancy matching closet. The con? Wooden hangers take up more space, so would all my clothes still fit? Oh, the dilemma!!

3. And after posting about color this week, I found this quote from Rushkin:
"The purest and most thoughtful minds are those which love color most."

Thinking

There's a lot on my mind lately: House, job, decor, money for decor, and last night I realized that I had better start planning the move, too. So to keep this from becoming a blog of first-world problems, here is a picture of Toby taken with the new camera I got for my birthday (!):
He is thinking, too--thinking of the stairs in the new place that he'll be able to run up and down.

Color!

Here's what Dorothy Draper* has to say about using color in decorating back in 1939:

Select the loveliest colors you can find--throw them together--and your own taste, resourcefulness and independence will carry you through. Above all, never be afraid of color. As I've said before, the day of drab, timid colors is past.

With that said, I am going with white walls in the new place for now. But look at the fabrics I'm considering:


*In this same book (Decorating Is Fun!), Dorothy Draper talks about painting ceilings in a complementary or contrasting shade, a practice that no one I know has ever heard of. As she says, "Just don't treat [the ceiling] like a stepchild."

Tuesday Project Roundup: House Projects

Even though I got a lot of sewing time in yesterday, I don't have anything finished for today. (I forget how long it takes to make actual sleeves with a cuff.) But I have started buying things for the new house. The first thing, of course, was fabric:
This will be a shower curtain for the second bathroom.

I also bought a kitchen sink. It's now in my car, waiting for the kitchen to go in. And wow, could I have bought a lot of fabric in exchange for one sink. I'm going to have to get used to buying home items, I guess.

Happy Birthday To Me

Yes, it is my birthday today! (And Tolkien's, too. I always have to point out that we share one.) 31 is not really a meaningful or special number, but it is still fun to celebrate--and to make a list of things to do this year.

Unlike 29 or 30, I'm scaling back a little for 31. The long lists of goals were getting to be overwhelming, so this year I'm doing 3+1 Things instead of 31 Things. And I'm really going to do them all this year.

Here are the 3 things:

1. Walk, bike, or do yoga once a week.
When I first got an office job, I made it a point to go out for a hike on Sundays. Now that I should have my own washer and dryer and won't have to do laundry at the parents on Sundays, I might start that again. (My new house will be closer to Millcreek Canyon and I want to get an annual pass there.) I also want to try biking to the grocery stores and downtown Sugarhouse. And I need to find a new yoga studio.

2. Learn more sewing techniques.
I tend to want to hurry and finish projects so I can wear them, but this year I want to take a little more time and learn some higher-end techniques, like stabilizing necklines, and underlining, and using a silk organza press cloth, and making bound buttonholes. I also want to learn how to use my serger, since I'll finally have a place to keep it out.

3. Memorize 6 poems.
I've always been bad at memorizing--music, words, anything. I can get pretty close but then I get stuck, or discover that I don't have it down as well as I thought. Sometime over the summer I realized that I had the Mark Strand poem in the Gallivan Center memorized (after visiting it for four years), and it was a revelation when I said it back from memory. I think all poems need to be memorized now, so I'm going to try to get some of my favorites down:

i. "The Poems of Our Climate," Wallace Stevens
ii. Final section (VI) from Ash Wednesday, T.S. Eliot
iii. "Meditation at Lagunitas," Robert Hass
iv. Section XVI from Dark Harbor, Mark Strand
v.. Sonnet 100 from 100 Love Sonnets, Pablo Neruda
vi. "Starlings in Winter," Mary Oliver


And here's the +1 thing. Because it's a +1, I'm calling it optional, just in case I don't get everything accomplished this year:

+1. Go on a date.
Given how quickly the time has passed between 27 (when I last went on a date) and 31, I think it may be wise to ask my friends to set me up a couple times this year. I'm not sure I want to actually get into a relationship--Toby and I have been just fine, thank you very much--but I also don't want to suddenly be 40 and realize that I haven't been on a date in 13 years. I intend to keep my hand in, so to speak.

I have the day off, so I can start on some of the 3 Things already--I'm going to sew and think about Wallace Stevens.