In Need Of Re-Posting

I know I put up this poem last year, in the heat of the election and seasonal change and economic apocalypse, but let's put it up again this year, for another time of transition:

"How to Like It," by Stephen Dobyns

These are the first days of fall. The wind
at evening smells of roads still to be traveled,
while the sound of leaves blowing across the lawns
is like an unsettled feeling in the blood,
the desire to get in a car and just keep driving.
A man and a dog descend their front steps.
The dog says, Let’s go downtown and get crazy drunk.
Let’s tip over all the trash cans we can find.
This is how dogs deal with the prospect of change.
But in his sense of the season, the man is struck
by the oppressiveness of his past, how his memories
which were shifting and fluid have grown more solid
until it seems he can see remembered faces
caught up among the dark places in the trees.
The dog says, Let’s pick up some girls and just
rip off their clothes. Let’s dig holes everywhere.
Above his house, the man notices wisps of cloud
crossing the face of the moon. Like in a movie,
he says to himself, a movie about a person
leaving on a journey. He looks down the street
to the hills outside of town and finds the cut
where the road heads north. He thinks of driving
on that road and the dusty smell of the car
heater, which hasn’t been used since last winter.
The dog says, Let’s go down to the diner and sniff
people’s legs. Let’s stuff ourselves on burgers.
In the man’s mind, the road is empty and dark.
Pine trees press down to the edge of the shoulder,
where the eyes of animals, fixed in his headlights,
shine like small cautions against the night.
Sometimes a passing truck makes his whole car shake.
The dog says, Let’s go to sleep. Let’s lie down
by the fire and put our tails over our noses.
But the man wants to drive all night, crossing
one state line after another, and never stop
until the sun creeps into his rearview mirror.
Then he’ll pull over and rest awhile before
starting again, and at dusk he’ll crest a hill
and there, filling a valley, will be the lights
of a city entirely new to him.
But the dog says, Let’s just go back inside.
Let’s not do anything tonight. So they
walk back up the sidewalk to the front steps.
How is it possible to want so many things
and still want nothing? The man wants to sleep
and wants to hit his head again and again
against a wall. Why is it all so difficult?
But the dog says, Let’s go make a sandwich.
Let’s make the tallest sandwich anyone’s ever seen.
And that’s what they do and that’s where the man’s
wife finds him, staring into the refrigerator
as if into the place where the answers are kept-
the ones telling why you get up in the morning
and how it is possible to sleep at night,
answers to what comes next and how to like it.

Friday Unrelated Information

1. Have you heard this? First Conde Nast shuttered Domino magazine (which I miss so much, as next year I start advance furniture buying for The House To Come), and now Gourmet will fold after November--the same Gourmet that's been around since the 40s and been home to writers such as MFK Fisher (not to mention the online cocktail gallery). Damn.

2. It's John Lennon's birthday. He would have been 69.

3. I just learned that ravens can live up to 40 years in the wild; the average raven lifespan is between 15 to 25 years, depending on your source. (Collective noun for ravens: An unkindness.)

"A Love Of One's Fate"

Yesterday, the poem featured on The Writer's Almanac was called "Amor Fati," a phrase I didn't know. Wikipedia gave me some good stuff:
[The phrase] is used to describe an attitude in which one sees everything that happens in one's life, including suffering and loss, as good. That is, one feels that everything that happens is destiny's way of reaching its ultimate purpose, and so should be considered good.

Nietzsche used the concept and phrase a lot; Wikipedia also gave me a good quote from him:
My formula for greatness in a human being is amor fati: that one wants nothing to be different, not forward, not backward, not in all eternity. To not merely bear what is necessary, still less conceal it...but to love it.

I like this concept of amor fati. There has been a lot to deal with in my life lately and I think this is a good approach to it.

In other words...SERENITY NOW!

Serves Me Right To Complain About Private Jets

Remember my last business trip? Yeah, I'll wear all the booties you want if you don't make me fly to Orlando and back and arrive both places after midnight. Oh, the humanity.
But I'm home now. And business trips=salary. So I really shouldn't complain about this one, either.

Tuesday Project Roundup: Plane Knitting

The beige cardigan is coming along, but I decided it was too big to take with me on the plane. So I started some mittens with some leftover yarn I had and am working on those on the flights. However, they are mittens inspired by the movie Twilight.

Yes, I saw the movie. The can't-look-away-train-wreck part of me even had to go and read the book after that. I am thoroughly embarassed to be boarding the Twilight Mittens Train. But these will be plum! And will look good with my coat! And I left the first page of the pattern that shouts "Bella's Mittens" at home, so maybe no one will know.


(Top photo from the movie; bottom photo from the pattern.)

Or maybe when I'm finished, my mittens will sparkle and declare their undead love for me. We'll see.

Two Pieces Of Information With a Blues Brothers Tie-In

The first: Saturday night Mr. Isbell and I saw Inglourious Basterds at Brewvies, and a lot of the time I couldn't help but think, "Illinois Nazis. I hate Illinois Nazis."



The second: While I never had to be a juror last week, that trip to Florida I was worried about is happening tonight and tomorrow. So I'm hitting the road and Toby is currently sitting next to my overnight bag, looking worried.

Friday Unrelated Information

1. Happy birthday, Wallace Stevens (1879). I'll try to remember this quote when I'm feeling overwhelmed: "Everything is complicated; if that were not so, life and poetry and everything else would be a bore."

2. Go visit myvintagevogue.com before Conde Nast makes them take down the site for copyright infringement. Some of the dresses are so timeless:

3. I agree with this: "What we need is a word to describe 'nostalgia for things we haven’t even experienced.' Things like transistor radios, soda counters, and rabbit-eared televisions. Wes Anderson is a connoisseur of this sensation. No doubt the French have ten different words for it." (From here, a blog about the production of Where the Wild Things Are.)

Happy Tocktober!

How did it get to be Tocktober already? Before you know it, it will be Nosevember.

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.

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.