3+1 Things Wrap-up: Thing 3

And the third goal this year was:

3. Memorize 6 poems.
Technically, I only have 4.5 memorized, as I'm still working on getting the middle of "Starlings in Winter" down and never found one I liked to replace the Neruda for September/October. But I'm still proud of the success--I've always had a hard time memorizing anything well, but this was easier than I thought it would be.

I have yet to recite them to anyone else (but just ask! you know I'm dying to be asked); instead, I say them to myself when I hike, or when I can't sleep. There's such a shift from reading them off a page--even aloud--to having the words come from your own brain. I may have to memorize more favorites.

3+1 Things Wrap-up: Thing 2

This year's second goal was:

2. Learn more sewing techniques.
I'm not sure I can say I accomplished this one, at least concerning fancy techniques like bound buttonholes or pad stitching--but I realized it's because I'm not a "process" sewer. I'm all about the finished product, and don't like to be working on things that are so painstaking they take months to complete (for example, hand tailoring).

But there's a lot of ground between basic sewing and hand tailoring, and I did use some fancier techniques on a few projects: flat felled seams in baby pants, a faced hem in the first tunic dress, a little pattern drafing to alter that same tunic dress pattern a few times-- and let's not forget lined drapes, either. So I don't think I plateaued by any means. (But I still haven't figured out how to use the serger.)

In other sewing news, I bought some Liberty of London fabric after a long time without fancy fabric and called it a Christmas/birthday gift to myself. Just two cuts to get me from winter into early spring:
"Yoshie," a print from winter 2010 (with tiny owls and horses and bunnies and hawks!)

and "Mitsi," a standard print. Both will be dresses worn with colored tights.

3+1 Things Wrap-up: Thing 1

Yes, it's time for the week-long wrap-up of this year's goals. The first thing?

1. Walk, bike, or do yoga once a week.
Final verdict on this one: I like exercise! It makes me feel good! Anyone who hasn't spent her life reading and/or in an office chair already knows this, but I've finally realized it. So what have I been doing? A weekly hike (even in the cold! although I've only made it out twice this month so far) and yoga once or even twice a week.

Yoga, of course, lets my inner hippie go wild; but I'm really seeing a lot of mental benefits, too. It also comforts the worrier in me, knowing that being old and alone holds a lot fewer terrors if you have muscle mass and crazy flexibility.

As for hiking, buying a house by Millcreek wasn't planned but I'm so glad I did. There are plenty of shorter trails that fit into a weekend schedule, but because the canyon's pretty steep, you get a lot of exercise for your time. The terrain is varied, the views are great, and you get to see lots of happy dogs and generally nice owners. (Another bonus for solo hikers who worry: You can believe a dog will sniff you out pretty quickly should you fall off a trail or something.)

I haven't ridden my bike much but I can always add MORE exercise in next year.

Friday Unrelated Information

1. I have a half day to work today and then I'm off until January 4th, HOORAY. I'll still be posting, though--I have reviews of the 3+1 Things to write and, of course, the 32 (approximate) Things to unveil.

2. Until then, Robert Earl Keene and I wish you a Merry Christmas from the Family:


It's funny 'cause it's true.

We Made It

Thank everything that's holy and/or scientific--today is the winter solstice. We made it. We beat the dark. Only three months to the equinox.

This year I learned a phrase connected with the Roman sun god Sol Invictus, whose birthday was celebrated around the winter solsitce: Dies Natalis Solis Invicti, or "birthday of the unconquered sun." So happy sun birthday to you--the old star hasn't fizzled out!

Seasonal Poem

Here's something by Billy Collins, whose work I haven't posted before. I like this one a lot.

The Christmas Sparrow
The first thing I heard this morning
was a rapid, flapping sound, soft, insistent—

wings against glass as it turned out
downstairs where I saw a small bird
rioting in the frame of a high window,
trying to hurl itself through
the enigma of glass into the spacious light.

Then a noise in the throat of the cat
who was hunkered on the rug
told me how the bird had gotten inside,
carried in on the cold night
through the flap of the basement door,
and later released from the soft grip of teeth.

On a chair, I trapped its pulsations
in a shirt and got it to the door,
so weightless it seemed
to have vanished into the nest of cloth

But outside, when I uncupped my hands
it burst into its element,
dipping over the dormant garden
in a spasm of wingbeats
then disappeared over a row of tall hemlocks.

For the rest of the day,
I could feel its wild thrumming
against my palms as I wondered about
the hours it must have spent
pent in the shadows of that room,
hidden in the spiky branches
of our decorated tree, breathing there
among the metallic angels, ceramic apples, stars of yarn,
its eyes wide open, like mine as I lie in bed tonight
picturing this rare, lucky sparrow
tucked in a holly bush now,
a light snow tumbling through the windless dark.

Tuesday Project Roundup: Finishing Things

Here is a silk/mohair cowl thing I started back in the spring. Since it's just a knitted tube (no pattern), I've had the knitting done since summer, but I hadn't woven in the ends yet to make it ready to wear. I took ten minutes to do that last week and blammo, instant project:

I wish the same thing could happen with my orange sweater!

It's Monday

Play with it like it's a toy mousie you got that's the best toy mousie EVER, and that you keep playing with 48 hours later:

And then go back to bed:

Friday Unrelated Information

1b. I'm happy to report that the "Yoga for the Winter Blues" video was really helpful. I got farther into a backbend than I ever have before (which is still not very far) and realized that if I can do that, I can easily survive onerous meetings or a weather inversion.

1b. I've turned into one of those sports people. I think I get why they run marathons now.

2. Happy birthday to Jane Austen and Arthur C. Clarke today.

3. Here's another MST3K Christmas song, because it's absurd and because Christmas is next weekend:


"Hey, you keep Christmas in your way and let me keep it in mine."

The Darkness

I think the lack of sunlight is getting to me early this year. I'm seriously considering light therapy, but my inner hippie also wants to try some yoga and re-read this essay I found a couple years ago. From Jeanette Winterson, it talks about embracing the winter darkness--and she does make some good points:

It is a mistake to fight the cold and the dark. We're not freezing or starving in a cave, so we can enjoy what autumn and winter bring, instead of trying to live in a perpetual climate-controlled fluorescent world with the same day-in, day-out processed, packaged, flown-in food.

And she ends on a strong hippie note about the darkness:

Food, fire, walks, dreams, cold, sleep, love, slowness, time, quiet, books, seasons – all these things, which are not really things, but moments of life – take on a different quality at night-time, where the moon reflects the light of the sun, and we have time to reflect what life is to us, knowing that it passes, and that every bit of it, in its change and its difference, is the here and now of what we have.

Homebodies

I was reading the Christmas chapter of The Wind in the Willows this week, where Moley finds his old home and the caroling field mice show up, and thought, "Forget Dagny or Franny; I identify most with Moley." Consider this:

He saw clearly how plain and simple...[his home] was; but clearly, too, how much it all meant to him, and the special value of some such anchorage in one's existence...It was good to think he had this place to come back to, this place which was all his own, these things which were so glad to see him again and could always be counted upon for the same simple welcome.

Tuesday Project Roundup: This Counts

Putting up the tree counts as a project, right? I did make a ten-minute tree skirt out of felt.

Then, of course, someone was upset that the tree got fabric and he couldn't fit underneath it to sit on said fabric, so I brought down the remnants for him:

Mood lighting!

Hooray For Winter Birthdays

Happy birthday to my sister-in-law today! Not only does she win the bread for the family, she finds time to make homemade baby food--and she's put up with her crazy in-laws for nearly a decade. I hope she has a fantastic birthday!

Friday Unrelated Information

1. I'm putting up a Christmas tree this weekend. As we decided, this doesn't make me a hypocrite, it makes me a homeowner. But I'll still sing this song from MST3K:


2. Opportunity, the rover that's already on Mars (not Curiousity, which is on route to land next August) has confirmed the existence of "a mineral, apparently gypsum, deposited by water" on Mars. This is big news--so of course there's more LOLSpace to go with it:

Space Jokes

For your Thursday, I give you two funny space things, as found on It's Full of Stars:

1. First, the Unimpressed Astronaut meme. It's fantastic. Go see all of them.



2. Second, as you (should) know, the Kepler observatory has found its first planet in the habitable zone of a star like the Sun. But did you know that the planet has a Twitter account? The first tweet is brilliant.

Big Day

Some big historical events happening today, courtesy of The Writer's Almanac:

1. The 70th anniversary of the attack on Pearl Harbor.
2. Willa Cather's birthday.
3. The anniversary of the first fully clear photograph of the Earth from space, taken by the Apollo 17 crew in 1972, and known as "The Blue Marble."

Tuesday Project Roundup: The Cute Doesn't Stop

What's cuter than an owl sweater? Skyler wearing the sweater!
And what's cuter than that? Skyler in an owl sweater showing off how he can make goofy faces!

Squeeeeee!

Fruitcake!

Yesterday I made fruitcake, the kind where you raid the Whole Foods bulk aisle for fancy dried things and then soak the cake in booze and age it for a month. The Anne of Green Gables-reading part of me likes doing something so "old fashioned" (if not downright medieval); the drinker in me likes the booze part; and the adult reader in me thinks of Laurie Colwin:

Lately I have begun to think less of holiday and have turned my attention to the idea of winter, of trying to fill the house with good things... I want to make a gesture toward that longed-for simpler time by producing something that is made only once a years.

(from the essay "How to Face the Holidays," in More Home Cooking.)

Also: BOOZE!

Friday Unrelated Information

1. I found a Salinger quote (I think from "Hapworth 16, 1924") in the blog archives that is encouraging:
"I find it magnificent how beautiful loose ends find each other in the world if one only waits with decent patience, resilience, and quite blind strength."

2. This video from the Shelter Pet Project has been making the rounds, but it's hilarious:


3. And in other old-but-new-to me news, I've discovered the Hobbit Name Generator. It's hours of fun (and there's an Elvish Name Generator, too!).

Advent Calendars In Spaaaaace!

Now that it's December, it's time once again for my favorite part of "the holidays": The Hubble Space Telescope Advent Calendar. It's at the Atlantic this year (I guess its creator went there from the Big Picture blog?) but it will give you an image from the Hubble telescope every day from now until Christmas. And we all know how I feel about space pictures.

Here is today's image, the unpoetcially-named UGC 1810:
And here's something to ponder while you look at it, from the Upanishads:
The little space within the heart is as great as the vast universe. The heavens and the earth are there, and the sun and the moon and the stars. Fire and lightning and winds are there, and all that now is and all that is not.