James Taylor singing the National Anthem at Fenway. Ah, the World Series in Boston.
My Childhood Nightmare
October 22, 2007 by
This thing would send me screaming from the room. Damn you, Children’s Television Workshop!
How to Ease Back into Real Life After Stitches
October 16, 2007 by
Take Monday off and spend Monday evening at Woolwinders with Fiona Ellis, of course. She was as delightful this year as she was last year (and it was great fun to have her in a smaller group, outside the general melee of Stitches). This class was about Celtic knotwork patterns, a subject that has intrigued me since Marie made me a Starmore sweater (yes, I am a very lucky girl with delightful friends who are far too good to me). Truth be told, though, I think I would take a class from Fiona if she was teaching how to crochet a potholder. She’s just that fun, and I’m sure I would learn something intriguing about the history of potholders, because her mind is a heat-seeking missile when it comes to interesting stuff.
So, of course, no photos (because I’m an idiot again and didn’t even bring the point-and-shoot that makes me crazy, let alone the SLR). We did a swatch of a Celtic knotwork pattern and were encouraged to adapt it once we had the pattern set. Being me, I didn’t stray too far from the original design, but brought the two final cables together, seeking a sort of candle-flame effect (but we all agreed I’d really knit the Taj Mahal).
A couple of small funnies before I have to dash: Fiona’s approach to figuring out where one has gone wrong in a pattern is an episode of “CSI: Cable Strand Investigation.” Her insouciance and British accent, combined with the subject matter, made me suggest making up tee shirts that read, “Fiona told me to get knotted.” Hmm… where’s the login for that Cafe Press account…
I can show you a photo of that – evidence that yes, in fact, I did learn something:
And now I REALLY need to get back to reality.
30-minute running playlist
October 15, 2007 by
I need to get beyond week 5/6 of the couch to 5k plan, but I’m so proud of myself for running 20 minutes nonstop, I am in a bit of a rut. Having reached the five minute walk warmup, 20 minute run, five minute walk cooldown stage, which honestly doesn’t need much in the way of podcast monitoring (though having someone automatically tell you when to walk/run when there are multiple intervals is a godsend), I did up my own playlist for a 20-minute run with 5 minute walks at either end. I’ve run to it now for about three weeks, and it’s so daffy I thought I would share.
“I Wish” – Victoria Beckham, Soundtrack – Bend It Like Beckham: Surprise – an ex-Spice Girl in vertiginous stilettos gets us walking. I really love the soundtrack to Bend It – it’s all ear candy. This track’s synthesized ra-tat-tat gets me walking.
“Independence Day” – Melanie C, Soundtrack – Bend It Like Beckham: “There’s a reason why Sporty Spice is the only one who doesn’t have a fella.” Maybe, but this is a sweet, soaring tune that gets me past that first, “Groan – time to stop walking,” mode.
“Inner Smile” – Texas, Soundtrack – Bend It Like Beckham: Um, yeah. I promise, this is the last song off of that disc.
“There’s a Girl” – The Ditty Bops, The Ditty Bops: It’s got a good beat, and you can run to it. Not to mention sly lyrics that still make me chuckle and a great surf-guitar solo.
“Amigone” – The Goo Goo Dolls, Dizzy Up the Girl: This is where the run gets hard – a long, shallow grade upward (that killer kind: the one you don’t notice at all if you’re walking, but try and jog it and feel the pain). The drumming on this track is all punk, relentless as a metronome, and it drags me up that hill.
“Sin Wagon” – Dixie Chicks, Fly: Natalie Maines’ yodeling wail, the sharp fiddling of Martie Seidel, and the rat-tat of the rhythm section gives me a second wind as I get the reward of going back down the hill I just came up. (My route takes me down trails behind our house, and I do a lot of backtracking to avoid roads, since I usually have the dog with me. If I were to trace the route on a map, it would look like spiky branches or a deer’s antlers).
Yes, we just went from folk-pop to punk to country. Told you it was daffy.
“Mr. Blue Sky” – Electric Light Orchestra, Greatest Hits: Don’t tell me you don’t have a secret crush on this song, I won’t believe you. Yes, ELO is cheesy. Yes, lyrics like “running down the avenue/see how the sun shines brightly” is a cheesy way to finish out a run (especially since at around 7 a.m. when this song usually comes on is about the time when the sun is actually up this time of year), but it does make me smile, and more than that, its brightness, the fact that it’s the last running song, and the COWBELL get my feet moving even faster. Right around the time when “Mr. Night comes creeping over” is when the cooldown begins, and off we go to the Bops again…
“Bye Bye Love” – The Ditty Bops, Moon Over the Freeway: …and Amanda and Abby’s sweet harmonies on this tune walk us home for the first cup of coffee. 30 minutes, almost exactly. And today, it was 2.58 miles, and I beat my personal best time for the mile. Go, me.
Stitches Weekend Roundup
October 14, 2007 by
Thursday evening: Milo gets his first fire in the fireplace. Fall is really here! (FINALLY.)
Friday: Wake up at six. Run around like an idiot. Drink coffee. Pack. Load car. On the road by just after eight. In Baltimore by ten (the first ten or so miles only took a half hour… I hate route 270).
Sit for a few minutes congratulating myself that I got to Baltimore Penn Station in time to not make Daisy wait (I hate making people wait – especially when I am picking them up from something. There’s something really anxiety-producing for me about arriving somewhere and having nobody there to meet you – even if you’re sure, really sure they’re on their way. By the same token, I hate thinking that I’m inflicting that kind of agitation on someone else.
Daisy arrived in good order, found me (“I’ll be the one waving like an idiot next to a grey Jetta”), and off we went. Being the good photographer I am, this is the only photograph of The Entire Weekend.
(What can I say? I knew I was going to be hauling fiber – I didn’t feel like hauling a camera also.)
We head over to the Convention Center (Daisy, by the way, either has a touching faith in my knowledge of Baltimore streets, or she’s a very good actress). Taking a deep breath, we plunge in to the hum of Stitches East. Despite the fact that it was Friday and the scrum really hadn’t started to form yet, Daisy had that look in her eye pretty early – you know the one: “Oh. My. God. Colortexturefiberpeoplestuffgoingon…” I noted Kaffe Fassett sitting at a signing (looking a bit dazed himself, poor man), and pointed out Brandon Mably as he whizzed past us. Daisy said, “Oh my god – I’m not even taking in the people.” I told her it was pretty much the same for me the year before. Learning to filter at Stitches takes some practice.
Daisy however, was as game and cheerful a companion as a person could want at Stitches. We were well-matched in many respects: we liked to look at the same things (but gravitate towards different colors – I to my usual green, Daisy to her favorite purple. When you’re selecting a hunting partner for Stitches, it helps to have someone whose color preferences lie at opposite ends of the color wheel). We both hit the blood-sugar wall at the same time (this is key – one would hate to drag an unwilling party away from the fun; but by the same token, one would hate to have a companion growing ever grumpier and grumpier in hypoglycemia’s iron grip). She was resourceful and organized – when the people at the non-selling Malabrigo booth gave us mini-skein samples of laceweight to take away (the first hit is free…), she located an envelope and noted all the Malabrigo-selling booths so we could reconnoiter effectively.
We both hit the wall reasonably early on that first day, and headed off to the hotel to spread our new loot over bedspreads and let our brains spin down a bit. Again, we were nicely matched. We were both tired from a long day, and Daisy had booked a suite hotel with a little kitchenette. I brought what I thought was soup (turned out to be curry – yum anyway) from our freezer and bread I had made the night before. A bottle of wine, some Malabrigo swatching and an episode of Doctor Who on my laptop made for a relaxing, geeky evening in. Daisy finished a Mr. Greenjeans sweater for wearing the next day.
Saturday: Celebrity Extravaganza. Daisy, among her many talents, is a WordPress expert (and has been invaluable help in getting this blog over its initial technological bumps when I transitioned from iBlog), who helped Wendy (yep – that Wendy) when she transitioned her blog from Movable Type. Wendy had graciously invited both of us for breakfast, and after completely forgetting that the Baltimore marathon was being run yesterday (and having to ditch the car further from the waterfront than we had intended), we trekked over to her hotel and I was privy firsthand to the Wendy and L-B show. What a delightful pair. You know how some good friends are really exclusive and you feel like an eavesdropper or interloper when you’re around? Well, Wendy and L-B are absolutely not like that. They’re inclusive and funny and fun. I figured we would have breakfast and then all go our separate ways, but I was lucky to be wrong. We spent our entire day with them. Wendy and I had each other’s respective number in about five minutes, Wendy affirming that yes indeed – that 50%-off Debbie Bliss cashmere at WEBS was in fact green and the lights in the convention center were weird (we were right, Wendy – it’s sage-celery, even though it looked grey in the convention center light), and when Wendy plucked a ball of dark-green quiviut off a shelf and mused about another color to go with it, I handed her a ball of lighter green and suggested knitting them together to get an interesting depth of color (in terms of $/volume, I think that’s my enabling zenith – I believe I can retire now).
Funniest moment? When Wendy from the Yarn Barn saw L-B’s badge and asked if she was “the” L-B as Wendyknits Wendy stood just to the left and behind her. I silently waved and pointed at Wendyknits Wendy until Yarn-Barn Wendy caught my eye, saw Wendyknits Wendy and her mouth flew open. We all agreed afterwards that L-B was officially the celebrity in the group, and Wendy was a vastly successful publicist.
Most staggering moment? Meeting Eunny Jang and hearing her say to me, “I recognize you from Ravelry!” (Note: if you’re going to an event like Stitches and you wear your “Print o’ the Wave” stole, not only will complete strangers say nice things about your work, but you may get the chance to say, “I’m sorry – this is tacky, but I may never have the chance to do this again,” and hand it to Eunny herself. She was gracious, as one would expect. I only feel slightly foolish in retrospect.)
It was over all too soon and I only got us slightly lost getting back to the car and up to the train station. Daisy made her train (which then promptly broke down outside of Philadelphia, getting her back to her family horrifically late, but we had so much fun I don’t think she has any regrets).
Sunday: Stash cataloging, blogging, laundry, and wondering when I’m ever going to knit all the gorgeous stuff I have.
Sorry to subject you to the tour of the inside of my head
October 9, 2007 by
I’m just hoping yesterday’s mental peregrinations made sense to somebody.
Because I’m not completely heartless, I shall give you a long-awaited glimpse of that superstar of the animal kingdom, Monsieur Milo leChat. His covetous approach towards my Sea Silk stole was not a one-off, it appears. The current project, John’s “Cobblestone” sweater from the latest IK is also a prime favorite with him (is it the color? Does he just like blue? It is a nice shade for a redhead).
John often terms him a “funny little creature,” and this is very true. He has a very un-cat-like willingness to be moved about – so much so, that when he curled up in the sweater-in-progress and I needed to be elsewhere, he didn’t object when I bundled up project and cat and deposited the whole shebang in the knitting bag.
Sweet, no? How about this one – cuter, since it contains 100% more Simon than the other:
(yes, he’s still wee, our Milo).Â
Lest you think Milo is completely slack, he does have his moments of wild activity. For instance, he seems to have inherited John’s passion for soccer. Here he is rooting for the German women’s team:
Oi, Milo – you make a better door than a window, fella!
Courage, Miss Honeychurch, courage and faith… The steel knives… are in the other carriage.
October 8, 2007 by
Interesting – I’ve never quite put it that way, but I have had friends with a swift and dismissive way with faith and religion that has sometimes bothered me deeply. I’m not one of the faithful myself, but I have a lot of respect for the things that motivate people (respect as in, “I have a lot of respect for that dog’s ability to take my arm off”). There’s a sort of juvenile whistling in the dark that is characterized by, “F**k that s**t – it’s stupid. Opiate of the masses, dude,” and this automatically dismissive attitude is not only dangerous because religion in the service of hate and fear can create chaos and pain – but also because religion in the service of love and caring can create hope and joy. It may not be the same hope and joy that a TV show provides us when we see Martha and the Doctor view Tim Latimer’s wartime honors with poppies on their lapels, but it’s a sibling or cousin.
What use is hope and joy? Well, I for one believe better things and better worlds can be created out of it. Certainly, from my perspective our entertainment is made better by it (the creators of works like “Saw” can keep their unrelieved brutality – I don’t have need for it in my psyche). But doesn’t inspiration have real, practical value also? I see photographs of the Great Wall of China, and I have to grimly acknowledge the accomplishment, but it does not make me want to go out and build. However, when I see labors of love – fine lace, a beautifully crafted home, the soaring and capricious gravity of a Calder mobile – my hands itch to make, my brain starts to weave words that might be worth reading.* I see something, I think about what it might mean: if there is joy there, it gets my own creative process moving.
How this differentiates (or if it differentiates) from the mad experience of having one of my HS English teachers get up at a chalkboard and ask a class of wary teenagers to identify all of the potential themes we could from William Carlos Williams’ “The Red Wheelbarrow,” letting us gradually spin ourselves into a sort of giddy oblivion culminating in the realization that when you say everything depends on something (even or especially when it is as prosaic an object as a red wheelbarrow or simple wooden cross) that yes, in fact “everything” means exactly what it says, I don’t know. There is a code, and it’s no code at all, and those who say, “This means only what it says on the page,” and those who say, “This is symbolic of X and never Y,” are both as incorrect as they can be.
Religion, like art, either speaks to our selves – our personal experiences – or it doesn’t. If it doesn’t speak to you it may or may not entertain. If it does… it can inspire.
*Though anyone might get it wrong from simply looking at exteriors:
Rev. Eager: Remember the facts about this church of Santa Croce; how it was built by faith in the full fervour of medievalism.
Mr. Emerson: Built by faith indeed! That simply means the workers weren’t paid properly.
Weekends – they’re too short
October 7, 2007 by
This was one of those weekends where two days really felt like one. We completed the AIDS walk yesterday (a big thank you to supporters!), came home, lay down for naps (yes, we’re big babies) and woke up three hours later.
Is a three-mile walk that big of a deal? No, not really, but it has been hot, humid and so un-fall-like as to create more than mere physical discomfort. It was overcast, humid and in the mid-80’s yesterday. The dashboard thermometer registered 93 today as we ran errands.
It’s October, for crying out loud. Gimme my fall.
Success.
October 4, 2007 by
Ever have one of those friends you know would be really good at something? And not only would they be really good at it, they’d probably enjoy doing that something also?
I’ve been pretty sure for some time that my mom was a born blogger. She’s smart, she’s funny, she writes really well. When I was a kid, she had a column in our hometown newspaper, the Hollis Times, and more than one person (me included) has asked her to sit down at the keyboard again. Blogging seemed to be the perfect way to channel and encourage that creativity. But her job has been demanding for many years, and I knew that if I said, “Mom, let me set up a blog for you,” she’d either glaze over from demand-overload or she would go off like Daffy Duck, bouncing and whooping all over the landscape in sheer techno-panic. She’s been shopping for digital cameras for years, and hasn’t been able to bring herself to buy one because there are just too many variables for her to consider in making the decision.
Well, she retired earlier this week. Her former colleagues gave her a digital camera, and in her own words, she’s “obsessed.” She loves it. She learned that if someone takes the technology purchase decision out of her hands, she likes the result.
Aha.
Sneaky kid that I am, I set up a WordPress blog for her. I named it “Letters from the Woods,” because that was the name of her long-ago column. She’s written her first post. She’s off and running and I couldn’t be more delighted.