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.
Y
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!
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.