Better Living Through Literature
Words + Projects + Stuff I Like
I finished the pajamas that match my robe on Friday and have been sleeping in them ever since, which is why they look slept in:
These (and the robe, too) were fun projects–my machine makes putting on piping really slick and I’m happy with how everything turned out.
Piping detail and darker photo that is closer to the real color:
I feel very put together in the mornings now, which is always a good thing. I’m already planning a winter version.
It’s the birthday of Antoine de Saint-Exupery, the dashing French pilot who wrote Night Flight and Wind, Sand, and Stars–and wrote and illustrated The Little Prince. He was shot down on a reconaissance flight over the Mediterranean in WWII.
Here’s the most famous quote from The Little Prince:
Translated as, “It is only with the heart that one sees rightly. What is essential is invisible to the eye.”
1. Transformers 2 started out pretty good for a mindless action movie, but by the second hour it became clear that when Michael Bay had to choose between paying the writers to finish the script and adding more explosions, he chose the explosions.
2. Poor Michael Jackson. In the first gossip going around at work yesterday, one of my bosses asked, “What happened? Did one of his monkeys kill him?”
3. Here’s a J.D. Salinger quote to ponder, from “De Daumier-Smith’s Blue Period” in Nine Stories:
The fact is always obvious much too late, but the most singular difference between happiness and joy is that happiness is a solid and joy is a liquid.
We’re going to see Transformers 2: Revenge of the Fallen tonight, and while I don’t have high expectations of it, just yesterday I found a priceless review by Roger Ebert that makes me think it’s going to be pretty bad:
“If you want to save yourself the ticket price, go into the kitchen, cue up a male choir singing the music of hell, and get a kid to start banging pots and pans together. Then close your eyes and use your imagination.”
“The music of hell”? Roger Ebert, you are a treasure. I will think of your review tonight in the theater and probably laugh in inappropriate moments.
And speaking of movies: This site is genius. Genius! Why has no one thought of this before?
“Enjoy the sunshine today.”
Here are pictures of that chunky knit cowl top I knit when it was so cold and rainy last week. I did get one good wear out of it and now it can wait until the fall.
And I’ve made progress with Thing #7 of the 29 Things: Knit Christmas stockings, starting with Toby’s. Here’s Toby’s stocking.
He is not aware that it’s a Christmas stocking, as those concepts are hard to explain to a cat, but he does know that it’s wooly and he’s allowed to lay on it.
He also is allowed to help with photo shoots–actually, we can’t stop him.
I’ve been reading about an elderflower liquer in my magazines for a while now, and it’s finally available in the liquor stores here! (Well, in the new wine store, at least.) I’d been subsituting the non-alcoholic IKEA elderflower concentrate (“Fladersaft”) in the recipes I’d read calling for the liquer, but this
has nothing on this:
Buy it for the bottle alone, and feel like your apartment is really full of French antiques and witty people enjoying a full bar whenever you open the cupboard. The site is nice, too–the St. Germain Cocktail with sparkling wine and soda water is going to be the new fancy drink around here.
1. The summer solstice is this weekend. Perhaps it will actually be WARM this summer. I’m not holding my breath, though.
2. I have another work project to share: Provo Craft’s microsite for a Cricut promotion. More exclamation points that I’ve ever used in my life contained herein. (I’ve also written the blog posts to date.)
3. Speaking of blogs, Mr. Isbell has one now: animaaeturnus.blogspot.com. It is geekier than I am really comfortable with–and I just heard him talk about the langugaes used in Star Wars (Galactic Basic and Huttese!)–but it shows off his mad model-painting skills. His blog name is “Lord Captain Valentine;” I call him “Cap’n.”
(From Married to the Sea. Click if you need it bigger.)
I finished the sweater discussed yesterday and am wearing it today. I’ll have to wait to block it before I put it away for the summer, but I got a sweater in a week and a chance to wear it–not too bad.