Tuesday Project Roundup: 1950's Housewife Edition

The loudly striped orange fabric from last Tuesday's roundup turned into this dress. It didn't get any quieter, either. I used a reproduction pattern from 1952 and nearly five yards of fabric. The skirt is a full bias circle, meaning if I twirled in it, it would flare out into a perfect circle. (Not that I've tried it or anything.) It reminds me of Lucy on vacation with Ricky in Florida, or of what a housewife would wear for her Wednesday errands.

And here's a little cardigan I finished a couple of weeks ago. It's like something the housewife would change into when the errands were done and dinner was ready and "the Mister" was due to arrive home any minute. And while that scenario made my skin crawl a little, I like the cardigan.

Monday Unrelated Information

1. This was me this morning. Spots and everything.

2. Ray Bradbury writes a story a week. Why don’t I do that? I stay up late enough to write a story a night.

3. Tomorrow: A project roundup, including some knitting I never photographed and some dresses. (Yet it took me ten minutes to find something to wear this morning. Why?! I’ve been making things to wear for three months now.)

Happy Summer Solstice, Here's A Poem

So today is the longest day of the year, a day that I've always wanted to celebrate--because it means no snow for a few months--but that I always end up feeling sad about--because it's all downhill from the longest day of the year.

But I've been going to the Gallivan Center at lunch for a couple of weeks now, and while that doesn't make me more reconciled to the inevitable shortening of days again, the Mark Strand poem carved above the stream-fountain thing there does.

Visions of the end may secretly seduce
our thoughts like water sinking
into water, air drifting into air;
clouds may form, when least expected,
darkening the glass of self,
canceling resemblances to what we are.
Even here, while summer sunlight
falling through the golden
folds of afternoon
brightens up the air, we mark
our progress by how much
we leave behind. And yet,
this vanishing is burnished
by a slow, melodious light,
as if our passage here
were beautiful because
no turning back is possible.
It is our knowledge of the end
that speaks for us, that has us weave,
as slowly as we can, an elegy
to all our walks. It is our way
of bending to the world's will
and giving thanks.

"..as if our passage here were beautiful because no turning back is possible." Yes, that makes me feel better about the Solstice. (I bet it makes the construction crew cleaning out the stream-fountain thing and the homeless guy watching them feel better, too.)

And as a bonus: my tomatoes. They're pretty summery.

In Trouble

Last night at the airport, I saw people in the “park and wait” pick-up lot parked and waiting in their cars—with the windows up and the air conditioning on. I’m afraid humanity is going to stupid itself to death.Yep.

Tuesday Project Roundup: Big Top Edition

The cotton lawn got sewn up into a Smock-Like Blouse (SLB) and finished Sunday, and I'm really pleased with it. Not only is the fabric nice and light, the print somehow reminds me of a circus. Send in the clowns! In their SLBs! Wait, they're already here!

This project went together well--I got the zipper right on the first try, didn't have to unpick anything, and even the gathers look nice.Gathers! Thrilling!

Here's another SLB. It's been finished for over a week, but I never got around to a picture until Friday, when I wore it going out. (Not shown: matching red shoes. I tell you, the movie theaters on 3300 South had never seen such shoes.)

Here's a pocket detail--remember, that's hand embroidery. I might need a hobby away from my hobby.
Finally, this is the next project (because if I don't have a project I go straight to the crack cocaine) which is going to be a full-skirted 50's sun dress. I considered gingham, then decided I would look as if I were wearing a tablecloth. So I went with "circus tent" instead: Trust me, it's even more orange and striped in person. It's either going to work very, very, well, or not at all.

Standing Alone

I had never heard all the lyrics to "Blue Moon," because people stop singing it after "..you saw me standing alone." Two different people did that Sunday, and then I heard the entire song on KRCL last night. (Sunday nights from 10:30 until 1:00 they play Big Band music.) And it's such a charming song! It's my new theme song!

Blue moon
You saw me standing alone
Without a dream in my heart
Without a love of my own

Blue moon
You know just what I was there for
You heard me saying a prayer for
Someone I really could care for

And then there suddenly appeared before me
The only one my arms will hold
I heard somebody whisper "please adore me"
And when I looked to the moon it turned to gold

Blue moon
Now I'm no longer alone
Without a dream in my heart
Without a love of my own

Awwww....

Things To Do This Weekend

1. Go to the Deseret Peak Demolition Derby in Tooele tomorrow. (Fireworks! Cash! Prizes!) Starts at 5:00, tickets are $5.00. They have beer there, too, but if you’re drinking it you can’t sit in the family section. I highly recommend this one.

2. Hell, if you can go to the first demolition derby of the season, why would you want do anything else?

3. Watch out for Godzilla:

Not Long Now!

Really, aren't we all waiting for coconuts? I know I am.

I Have Nothing

I have no witty observations, no literary quotes, no poems, no pictures of finished sewing or knitting projects. But….

Meeting People

I met my upstairs neighbors last night. I’d been calling them Mr. and Mrs. Stompy, due to their penchant for stomping around. But their names are actually Kara and Clark. Kara and Clark Stompy. (Actually, they seem very nice--they admired my patio garden. And they don’t mind the cuckoo clock, which is loud enough to scare quail outside.)

Okay, Maybe It Is Just Like "Little House On The Prairie"

While I take offense at people thinking my hobbies are pioneer-like, I was cutting out the latest blouse Friday night and had a flash. And the flash had to do with Laura Ingalls Wilder.

I was working with very, very nice cotton lawn. Cotton lawn is lightweight, tightly woven, and very crisp. It's so lightweight it felt like I wasn't cutting through anything while I was cutting out pattern pieces. I was being careful to line up the pattern pieces, and enjoying the fabric, and admiring the print (pink and purple at the same time!) when I thought, "Wait a minute...something's familiar here--oh my God, I'm in a passage from a Little House on the Prairie book."

For Laura's summer dress they bought ten yards of delicate pink lawn...The lawn was so crisp and fresh, the colors so dainty, that Laura was afraid to cut it lest she made a mistake, but Ma had made so many dresses she did not hesitate. She took Laura's measurements; then, with her dressmaker chart, she made the pattern for the waist, and fearlessly cut the lawn.

So maybe I should just EMBRACE my inner Laura after all. At least the finished blouse will look more like a little girl's smock from 1968 than a shirtwaist from 1890. (I think that's a good thing.)

And did you catch the part in the quote about Ma MAKING the pattern? Not only were there no sewing machines in 1890, you had to know pattern drafting, too.

Friday Unrelated Information

1. Check out this Time photo essay (via Boing Boing): Families from around the world posed with the food they eat in one week. Sobering: The family in the refugee camp in the first photo.

2. Okay, that’s enough sober thought about world hunger. On to crafts! It may be a two-project weekend. I’m close to finishing the embroidered-pocket top and have a second blouse ready to go. We’ll see.

3. And more news off BoingBoing: I found this interview with Ray Bradbury from the Los Angeles Times this week, in which he says Fahrenheit 451 was never about censorship, but about TV taking over people's lives. And of all people, he would know what his book is about.

I Have No Goals. But I Have Books.

My newest find on the internet is personal finance sites. The advice they give is alternately inspirational (if I can save $20 a month now, I won't have to eat cat food when I retire!) and terrifying (oh my God, I have no emergency fund!). But the real blow was not this quote: "If you think it's hard to make ends meet now, try doing it when you're old and sick." No, sobering as that was, the real blow was being told in an article to make a life map.

The idea behind a life map is to start with long-term goals, then find shorter- and still shorter-term steps to reach them, so you have a meaning and purpose to your savings plan. The article suggests starting with your name and then attaching your biggest goals to it, working outwards in a sort of spiderweb, with the shortest-term goals on the outside leading into the main goals on the inside.

"Cool," I thought. "A life map. I'll do that." But then I discovered I have nothing to put on my map.

Seriously. Three things floated through my head. Three. They were, in order:
1. Own an alpaca ranch in a place that's kind of like Hawaii and kind of like Castle Valley.
2. Go to the Cook Islands.
3. Win the National Book Award before I'm sixty. (I only write if there's a deadline. Therefore, sixty.)

Now, you may argue that these are indeed goals. If I can save and invest, yes, I could get a ranch. And even go to the Cook Islands. (More about writing coming up.) But what about things like changing the world, spiritual growth, home ownership, even having a family? The life map example used "being a good parent" as one of the primary goals. I suppose it's a mercy that didn't cross my mind, because I suspect having a relationship last for more than three months should come before wanting to be a good parent, and I haven't even managed that yet.

As for being a writer, it's the one thing in my life I've always felt I could do. But then I go and read All The Pretty Horses (which won the National Book Award) again after realizing I have lame goals for my life map and think, "Just abandon all of them now, including the Book Award one. Because you will never, ever, be as good as this guy." Case in point:

"They rode out along the fencline and across the open pastureland. The leather creaked in the morning cold. They pushed the horses into a lope. The lights fell away behind them. They rode out on the high prairie where they slowed the horses to a walk and the stars swarmed around them out of the blackness. They heard somewhere in that tenantless night a bell that tolled and ceased where no bell was and they rode out on the round dais of the earth which alone was dark and no light to it and which carried their figures and bore them up into the swarming stars so that they rode not under but among them and they rode at once jaunty and circumpsect, like theives newly loosed in that dark electric, like young thieves in a glowing orchard, loosely jacketed against the cold and ten thousand worlds for the choosing."

Reading that passage, I can't imagine coming up with anything remotely as good, ever. But, reading that passage, I don't care about goals, or my own talent, or anything else. I just want to keep reading.

So if I end up homeless from not having parenting goals that would motivate me to make a savings plan, I'll hang out at the library.

Honeysuckle

I brought some home from my parents’ last night. Then I put it in a blue vase on my red nightstand. And then I took a picture of it. And put it on the internet. Of course.

Best Packaging Ever

A friend gave me a bag of Lion Coffee ("The King Of Coffees") on Sunday, which she had brought from Hawaii. I had no idea Hawaii had a fairly famous coffee brand, let alone a fairly famous coffee brand with awesome packaging!

Not only is there a lion wearing a sailor hat, the lion has EYEBROWS. And there are coffee beans in grass skirts DANCING THE HULA above him. Even better, the text, which you probably can't make out, says both "The cup that cheers" and "A Century of Wisdom In Every Roast!".

My own bag is of Kona Organic, which I had with pineapple rice pudding this morning, while admiring the delight that is the Lion Coffee packaging.

(Incidentally, I've been on a vaguely tropical food kick--the rice pudding, coconut cheesecake, pineapple salsa, sangria, etc. I think part of me is hoping that eating the food of sunny climates will help me get tan.)

Have You Any Wool?

Saturday was shearing day at Blue Moon Ranch!

It started with getting alpacas into the barn.

“Oh, shit, what’s going on?”

Then they were wrangled into the shearing station, where they couldn’t kick or squirm and get accidentally cut.

Alpacas spit when they’re mad or scared. Shearing makes them mad AND scared, so there was a lot of spitting. So much spitting, in fact, some of them got a sock as a temporary spit shield.

My job wasn’t so spitty: I got to label and bag the fleece after it was off the animal.

In spite of the spit and the scared alpaca noises, after it was done, they seemed fine. Just much smaller.

Friday Unrelated Information

1. I finished what I was calling the Lincoln Green Robin Hood Tunic-y Thing this week. Its new name is the Green Tunic-y Thing That Disturbingly Reminds Me of The Jolly Green Giant. (There may or may not be pictures next week.)

2. Tomorrow is shearing day at Blue Moon Ranch! I'll be wrangling alpacas! And I'll get to see Ziggy Marley, the first cria (baby) of the season. (Click to see Ziggy Marley, but be prepared to shout, "Gaaaah!" due to his extreme cuteness.)

And Then There Will Be A Vortex Of Craft And I Might Be Sucked Into Another Dimesion

I think the first crafty skill I learned was embroidery. (I'm assuming making bridles and blankets for my model horses doesn't count, of course.) But for years I didn't really have a craft hobby, because I was a musician and I felt guilty about having any hobby other than practicing. About four years ago I had a return to craftiness: I decided, out of nowhere, to embroider a pillowcase set for my roommate. He ended up with two sets and I thought, "Hm, craft hobbies...they have possibilities." Then I learned how to knit, and then I started sewing again, and now I'm on a veritable runaway train of craft.

On my craft train, I once again want to embroider something. But now, I'm not content with "His" and "His" pillowcases, oh no. Now I am COMBINING crafts. I thought, "Wouldn't a red apron top with piping on it be really cute...with embroidered pockets?"

I decided it would be and started a pocket last night.

But I'm a little concerned what all this craft-combining is going to do to the universe. The energy I spend on any ONE craft is enormous; what will the energy of TWO combined crafts in one finished item do?

It Was Like A Band Reunion, But With Drink Umbrellas

The Eurythmics, from their "reunion" album, Peace, in 1999:
Karen and her old roommate Todd, from the aloha party, 2007:
And check out the dress--oh yes, another project.

News Flash

So I was going to post about the weekend, and the party, and how after living alone for nearly three months I've turned into the talkiest girl in the world if I have a drink in a social situation, but that will have to wait until tomorrow. Because BoingBoing, source of all my internet news, just told me there is a new Ray Bradbury book out. And it's a SEQUEL to Dandelion Wine.

Because I worry about these things, I've been half afraid that Bradbury would be dying soon (he's 87!)but no, he goes and writes a sequel to my favorite book of his, originally published in 1957. And according to the BoingBoing review, it's as good as the first one.

Hot damn, get me to the library!

Friday Unrelated Information

1. Check out this children's book cover Photoshop contest.

2. Whales are mammals and therefore need to drink water. But they live in the ocean. So what do whales drink?

3. If you're ever feeling dubious about hosting a party and also maybe a little existentially lonely at the same time, don't read the last three chapters of Cannery Row.

Happy Birthday, Bob!

Bob Dylan is 66 today. In honor of his birthday, you can celebrate International Talk Like Bob Dylan Day, you can listen to my two favorite Dylan songs, or you can read some celebratory haiku I wrote for him. Because every iconic musician needs some celebratory haiku.

What makes you so cool?
The Ray-Ban Wayfarers?
The cigarette voice?

Your profundity
always impresses me, and
I'm not even stoned.

I saw you on tour
and wished I were a groupie.
Alas, you're too old.

Get Ready

Tomorrow, May 25th, is Bob Dylan's birthday. And apparently, it is International Talk Like Bob Dylan Day, as well! (Thanks, BoingBoing.) International Talk Like Bob Dylan Day is not to be confused with International Talk Like a Pirate Day (September 19), although both are fun.

It may be too late to enter a video of me talking like Bob, so I'll have to think of something else to celebrate ITLBDD. IT may involve serenading the houseplants and the cuckoo, but I will celebrate. The man is my hero.

Proof From Steinbeck

Remember how I've said that if I channeled the energy I spend on my wardrobe into, say, cancer research that we'd have a cure for cancer by now? Check out this quote from Sweet Thursday:

If only people would give the thought, the care, the judgment to international affairs, to politics, even to their jobs, that they lavish on what to wear to a costume party, the world would run on greased grooves.

I knew it!

Cuckoo! Cuckoo!

When I moved, I asked for the cuckoo clock my father bought during his Army tour in Germany in 1966. The clock needed some repair: the movement was dirty and the bellows had gone out, so the cuckoo could only say "coo". But I picked it up Saturday and now it's on the wall, working beautifully. (I tried for an action shot, but the cuckoo is too fast. He's blue, and his beak opens and closes, and then the door snaps shut.)

I love this clock inordinately. Every time it struck the hour Sunday I had to go see it and I just stood there and grinned, watching the cuckoo. Crazy? Maybe! But there's a similar passage in Out of Africa:

"The central symbol of [the house] was an old German cuckoo-clock that hung in the dining room...at every full hour, a cuckoo flung open its little door and threw itself forward to announce the hour in a clear insolent voice. Its apparition was every time a fresh delight to the young people of the farm. From the position of the sun they judged accurately when the moment for the midday call was due, and by a quarter to twelve I could see them approaching the house.

It also sometimes happened that a very small herdboy...would come back in the early morning all by himself, stand for a long time in front of the clock, now shut up and silent, and address it in Kikuyu in a slow sing-song declaration of love, then gravely walk out again."

So at least I'm not talking to the clock.

I've Come Undone

Or, "Obvious Visual Pun of the Week."


I noticed that I had gotten off on my increases about 9 inches ago, thought about being okay with it, remembered "The Cowboy Way," and decided to rip it(rip it good!).

This visual pun brought to you by OCD. And Devo.

Movies I've Watched This Week, With One-Sentence Synopses

1. Almost Famous: The Wonder Years goes on tour with Led Zeppelin

2. The Science of Sleep: Like Amelie, if Amelie had been a mildly autistic boy and her relationship didn't work out.

3. The Endless Summer: Dudes surfing, in a time when girls didn't and it was okay to make jokes about apartheid.

4. Grey Gardens: Ladies in mink coats feeding raccons in the attic.

There's always something excitig playing at Chez Yarn!

Food Recess

I found this, um, reading a blog I like (Tomato Nation, advice and stuff like this) (and stories about her cats and the Roomba vacuum). This is about food at work, a very apropos subject at my job:

Here, lunch is recess. Food gets fetishized at work, possibly because communal breaking of bread is one of human society's strongest signifiers of acceptance and unity, but probably because everyone is kind of bored...

We spend a lot of time thinking about food here—where to get lunch, what to get, what time to get it, whether to order it in or go out for it, do we want Mexican, does anyone else want Mexican, no thanks I got a sandwich already, what kind of sandwich, ham and cheddar on rye toast with champagne mustard, ooh where'd ya get that, deli on the corner, hmm maybe I'll get that instead except I'm not hungry yet, what are you getting, nothing I just had a scone, on and on it goes all day.Either someone is eating, someone is fantasizing out loud about eating, or someone is admiring something someone else is eating. Or we're filling the time we don't spend eating by going out for coffee, rationing ourselves a snack, buying gum, refilling our water bottles, biting our nails, and otherwise just trying to get to the part of the day where we go home and start dinner.

Somewhere, An Old Lady Is Missing The Bottom Of Her Housecoat

Because doesn't this look like I took a housecoat and made it into a shirt? I knew I picked a nostalgic print; I didn't realize the finished item would look like it could have been worn by someone named Mavis Greenwald, in Waukegan, some hot summer around 1968. She probably liked the pockets, so she could keep her handerchief and maybe even her cigarettes handy.

Clarification

Just to make it clear about the craft blog I was mocking yesterday: This blogger already had a studio. It's not as if she was overcome with emotion about finally having a place to work. She just rearranged it. And wrote that post about rearranging her studio.

See? I'm not not mean-spirited--just a hater.

Blogs I Read

(Not that I, um, read a lot of blogs during the workday or anything. Not me.)

1. One that rounds up "modern and fresh" Hawaiian products called hapa|hale
2. One that has cute animals.
3. One that focuses only on cat pictures, with captions in gamer-speak.
4. One that makes fun of celebrities' outfits.
5. One that I really relate to: Crazy Aunt Purl.

And, while my blog-reading choices probably don't give me the cultural advantage to argue this, I think this next blog typifies everything that's wrong with the so-called "craft blog." It's fine to post pictures of your craft projects, or of your kids, or house, or all three (it's one big craft project!), but PLEASE stop taking yourself so seriously. Post some cat pictures or something. (This one is one of them who likes to use "thrift" as a verb, if you couldn't tell. Yet I can't look away! Craft blog train wreck!)

Friday Unrelated Information

1. My brother and dad are fantastic. My car isn't leaking antifreeze and scaring me anymore.

2. My knitting isn't going well: I tried three times to get the increases to look right on the Enormous Green Robin Hood Tunic Thing. So no pictures of crafts yet.

3. The yearly "I want to be tan but I'm crazy so I take skin cancer warnings too seriously, thus sometimes spoiling my enjoyment while getting a tan" marathon begins this weekend. (Damn you, Coco Chanel, for making the tan fashionable!)

I Dream Of Kittens

No, really: in one of those right-before-you-wake-up dreams this morning, I dreamed I found a stray kitten and decided to adopt it. (Go ahead and interpret that.)

Dream kitten looked a little like this. But it was older.

Oh Lord, Won't You Buy Me A Mercedes Benz?

My friends all drive Porsches, I must make amends.
Worked hard all my lifetime, no help from my friends,
So Lord, won’t you buy me a Mercedes Benz ?

Or maybe just a newer Focus? One that isn't spewing anti-freeze? How about it, Lord?

(That song has been in my head ever since I ordered a pair of Janis Joplin-style platform sandals last week. I was going to post a picture of them today, but puddles of anti-freeze were on my mind more this morning. Too bad I can't drive my shoes.)

Narratives

I was thinking about yesterday's post, and how crazy it makes me to assign a story to my clothes, when I remembered a post from the Dress a Day blog:

...stories are why I sew. Personal sewing gives a garment an inescapable story, with an inherent narrative that pulls you along to the next bit: where I found the fabric and the pattern, and how long they waited to be made; how difficult or easy it was to put together...how it turned out, and so on.

And we all know how I like narrative. If you think about it, our lives are stories ("I was born, I grew up, I made some clothes..."). We dream in narrative, it's so ingrained. So no wonder the J. Peterman catalog resonated when I was 14, and no wonder I like making my clothes.

Better Living Through Craft Literature?

Acutally, I'm fairly certain there is no literature about crafts. But--and we can thank the J. Peterman catalog for this--I've been thinking of literatry scenes to go along with my latest projects:

I finished a blue linen pullover Sunday and remembered that one of Catherine's outfits in The Garden of Eden (about a young couple being fabulous in the south of France in the 1920's) was "a blue linen shirt with an open collar and a heavy white linen skirt." (Of course, the book ends in madness and adultery, but there are good outfits. And we all know good outfits help us deal with madness, adultery, bad traffic, and everything in between.)

Another project is a little blouse in a dandelion print,
which will allow for all sorts of quotes from Dandelion Wine when it's finished, one of my top ten books ever and something I have to re-read every summer. (And Dad, I have my own copy now! Aren't you proud?)

I'm also knitting something, which in my mind I'm calling the Robin Hood tunic. We'll see if it works out, or if I look like I'm being swallowed by too much chunky-weight Lincoln Green yarn.

But between the Jedi Jacket, the Dandelion Wine Blouse, and the Garden of Eden Pullover, I'm giving Peterman some competition.

I Am My Own Sweatshop

But I had to stay up and finish my alpaca sweater last night because today is the only day that will be cool enough to wear it!

First, the alpaca. The grey fellow is Merlin:
As you can guess, the yarn I used was spun from him. I earned it by volunteering at the Blue Moon Ranch "open barn day" back in September. Here's what Merlin knits up into:
Merlin makes a very warm cardigan, let me tell you. I'm glad I made the sleeves short.

Here's a gratuitous close-up--the trim is silk/alpaca, from anonymous Peruvian alpacas (and silkworms, I guess)
Ignore the little hiccup by the bottom buttonhole. I have a knitting book with a real-life chapter titled, "Buttonholes Are Bitches" and it's right. (I may go back and fix it, but it was too late to care much last night.)

Another Thursday night Chez Sweatshop!

Like Jedi Robe It Is

Okay, I guess you don't immediately think "Jedi," but the sleeves reminds me of it a little.




Anyway, here's the latest project:


And how does it tie in with the tablecloth from yesterday's post?
That's how!

I decided the brown was too thin to be an unlined jacket and needed to be faced with another fabric. I had the right amount leftover from the tablecloth, and it all worked out. (The Force was with us!) The lining tied with the topstitching as my favorite part.

A Quiz

What do Obi-Wan Kenobi

and the tablelcoth for my filing cabinet I made last weekend

have in common?

The answer, young Skywalker, will be found in tomorrow's post about the most recent sewing project. May the Force be with you.

There Is No Cake At Versailles

I'm lucky enough to have my family very close--only a 20-minute drive from the city to the suburbs. My lovely mother recently made a comment that going from my apartment to their house was like going to the country for me. "No," she corrected herself, "it's like going from Versailles the the Petit Trianon."

And on some level, she's right!

The Orangerie at Versailles:

The fields around the Petit Trianon:
(Yes, I took those pictures myself. From the Paris trip just about a year ago with my mother.)

However, I don't think they did much knitting or clothes sewing or bread baking at Versailles, and I've been doing a lot of that. Enough of it that I think sometimes, "My god, what could I do if I applied this energy to something worthwhile, like finding a cure for cancer?"

But then I make an experimental bread recipe (found in the May "Vogue" magazine, thank you very much) and I think I couldn't possibly spend my time better. This is some seriously tasty bread.

And it cooks in a Le Creuset French casserole (at temperatures that some kilns reach, I think). It all fits.

All Is Well Again

I just have time for a quick update on the tree carnage. I was happy to see some birds come back Friday evening; by Saturday, the two quail and the robin were poking around in the churned-up dirt and looking delighted by all the ivy berries that had fallen down. So all is well--but sunnier--in the front yard again.

Tomorrow: Why my apartment is like Versailles, and maybe a craft update.

No Excuse

I've mentioned before that I really enjoy the wildlife around my apartment. I've watched a pair of quail bobble around under the trees outside my bedroom window. There's an enormous robin who thinks he owns the front yard, who tries to eat the ivy berries off the vines that cover the tree trunks. I watched the sparrows going in and out of the ivy Wednesday night, nesting. I've heard a mourning dove in the last week and saw a starling fight in the trees this morning on my way out the door to work.

I got home last night and was putting the key in the lock when I looked to the left towards the trees, where I like to think of the sparrows sleeping in the ivy and maybe the fat robin, too.

There was nothing to the left.

The trees by the house are gone, there is a huge expanse of bare ground where there used to be grape hyacinths and leaf mold and happy quail, and I don't care what gets planted instead--there is no reason to cut down perfectly healthy, ivy-covered, bird-harboring trees.

Bastards.

Amazing!

First Wilson Pickett, and now this--the delight just doesn't stop!



Those are Australian fairy penguins wearing sweaters ("jumpers," if you're in a former British colony). The penguins are rescued from oil spills and the sweaters help absorb the oil and keep them warm as they recover. And the best part: there are instructions that tell you how to knit your own penguin sweater. Think of the penguins!

UPDATE: Put your needles down; the project is ended. 15,000 penguin sweaters were collected. Also, more information on why you'd dress a penguin in a sweater in the first place:

The jumpers, when fitted, keep the penguins from ‘preening’ (picking at their feathers) to remove the oil, which is highly toxic to them. Later they are used to protect them after cleaning, a process that temporarily affects the natural oil keeping the birds warm and waterproof.

Baby Crane!

It's all I have today ("one too many mornings and a thousand miles behind") but it's so cute! I've never seen a young crane before.

Three New Things That Delight Me

1. Wilson Pickett. I know, I should know these things--but I had no idea! The Midnight Hour! 634-5789! Mustang Sally! Fabulous! Yes, I live under a rock. A very white rock.

2. Speaking of white rock (ha!), the second delightful thing is Bruce Springsteen. I'm not going to announce that I'm delighted by ALL his music, but his album "Nebraska" is excellent. Apparently, he recorded it solo at his kitchen table, plus he plays a fine harmonica. I'm a sucker for a harmonica and a strummy guitar.

3. And the third thing that delights me: The color brown. Further explanation: Because one simply cannot wear brown shoes with a black suit, or vice-versa, years ago I decided that, when given a choice between brown and black, I would simplify my life and opt for black. Fast forward 10 years or so to my current wardrobe, in which 80% of my shoes are colored. I realized I could choose brown, so I did, and Sunday I started sewing a brown jacket.

It's a revolution a day over here, I tell you.

"In Soviet Russia, Dress Wears You!"

So I got some shots of the dress I made out of that enormous Japanese crane print. I like how it turned out, and it went over well at a party, but it is not a subtle dress.

Here it is semi-modeled. I thought the jeans and red shoes were good at drawing attention away from all those cranes, if only to make people ask, "Why is she wearing jeans with a dress, and shoes that don't match?"

Fun with fashion!