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.
August 2009
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.