Year: 2010

Friday Unrelated Information

Karen2 Comments

1. I’ve signed up for “new listings” emails from a real estate office (more to just keep my goal in mind than to actually buy anything yet) and the agent remarks on the houses continue to be great. Did you know that Salt Lake has a trendy acronym-ed neighborhood? One house was located in “SOTRO (South of Trolley).” Groan.

2. Would you like to look at some mid-century gas stations designed by famous architects? (Who wouldn’t?) Check them out here. I kind of want to move in to the Albert Frey one in Palm Springs.

3. Here is a recipe for Carl Sagan’s apple pie. I’m sure it will be crumbly, but good. (Click for big.)

Rally!

Karen4 Comments

The Paris-Dakar Rally (apparently just called the Dakar Rally even though it’s being held in South America “for security reasons”) is going on right now. The Big Picture blog has some great images, although there seemed to be even more death and mayhem than I would expect.

But look at this!

Sadly, there were no pictures of Ford Focus rally cars.

Have A Seat

Karen4 Comments

I am really going to push myself this year to be more social–not only to get out more, but to have more people come to the apartment. Last year there were hardly any visitors, and if I’m not going to turn into a crazy cat lady hermit, I need to change that.

So I bought a chair (Thing #6) and rearranged the living room. Now guests can make their way to the seating area easily and we won’t have to sit side-by-side and try to talk.

I “cheated” on this, too, in that I picked it out online when I was making my 30 Things list, but I was going to wait to order it–until Target had a sale plus free shipping after Christmas. I do love that Target furniture.
Toby does, too.

Tuesday Project Roundup: Stacking The Deck

Karen2 Comments

I started thinking about the 30 Things in December, and I have to admit that a couple of things were not only thought of but carried out in 2009. I was going to wait on Thing #7 (sew new pillows for the living room), but then I decided to have a New Year’s party and I had some time off and the brown pillows were just too much of an embarrassment. So here are the new ones:

I am so much happier with these, which don’t collect cat hair and have orange flowers and birds on them to boot. And I have a nice feeling of early accomplishment with my list, even if I did cheat a little.

And speaking of cheating, what’s this in the foreground of the rearranged living room? Thing #6, perhaps? Tune in tomorrow to find out!

Friday Unrelated Information

Karen

1. The Writer’s Almanac tells us
Today, writer Isabel Allende is starting a new book, just as she has been doing every single January 8th for the past 29 years. On January 8, 1981, when Chilean-born Allende was living in Venezuela and working as a school administrator and freelance journalist, she got a phone call that her beloved grandfather, at 99 years old, was dying. She started writing him a letter, and that letter turned into her very first novel, The House of the Spirits. She said, “It was such a lucky book from the very beginning, that I kept that lucky date to start.”

2. And here’s Toby on an IKEA nightstand nicely finished by my dad as per this hack:

How Little We Know

Karen

You can’t binge on Humphrey Bogart movies without running into Lauren Bacall. Here she is singing “How Little We Know” from To Have and Have Not.

That dress kind of makes me want to try a pattern from the 40’s. Usually I avoid that era because older patterns=sparser directions, and I’ve never cared for that strong shoulder. But all these old movies are making me reconsider.

Capable

Karen1 Comment

I’ve been watching a lot of Humphrey Bogart movies lately (Sabrina, To Have and Have Not, The Big Sleep, Key Largo, The Maltese Falcon), and when my mom called last week and I was watching another one, she said, “I don’t think he’s that handsome, really.”

And I said, “No, but he seems so capable.”

Tuesday Project Roundup: "A long and lovely project."

Karen

“It is a cold and snowy January. The holidays are behind us, and Twelfth Night will be any day now: what better time to embark on a long and lovely project? I have masses of thick unbleached natural cream wool, which with luck should work up into a really solid-looking Aran.“
That is a quote from the Knitter’s Almanac, a sort of pattern “guidebook” by famous knitter Elizabeth Zimmerman, and the source of my next project. This project terrifies me a little: I have guidelines on creating a sweater pattern just for me but no actual pattern, there are complicated stitches, and it involves knitting a tube and then cutting it to make it a cardigan.

Because there’s a lot of “knitter’s choice” in the pattern, it’s hard to find a picture of what it looks like. It’s the sweater at 2 o’clock on the cover of the book above, and here’s the original pullover knit by EZ. Here are a couple other cardigan options with different cable patterns than specified in the book.

I’m not usually one for crafty challenges, but I’ve been thinking about this sweater all year (it was on the 29 Things) and I really want to wear it once it’s done. We’ll see if that’s enough motivation, because it certainly will be a long project–hopefully a lovely one.

And We’re Off!

Karen7 Comments

I had a lovely three days of celebrating the New Year and my new decade, so let’s jump into the first week of what should be a great year with my list of 30 Things:

  1. Put the money that I was using to pay off debt into savings for a down payment on some sort of house, townhouse, or condo
  2. Learn about real estate and home buying through the Utah State Extension classes
  3. Stop buying non-essentials (ready-made clothes, really expensive fabric, shoes, magazines, etc.) for three months (months TBD)
  4. Buy that Eames desk chair. I’ll use the money I’ll be saving from not buying any non-essentials.
  5. Buy that damn garbage can already
  6. Buy a living room chair–armless, small-ish, but comfy. This will help with seating to accomplish #22.
  7. Sew new pillow covers for the living room
  8. Buy a vacuum
  9. Refresh my yoga skills and then…
  10. Start doing yoga once or twice a week
  11. Get recycling at the apartment. I haven’t had it for three years and I’m tired of feeling guilty every time I throw away some junk mail.
  12. Similarly, bring in some actual flatware for the breakroom at work to cut down on waste
  13. November-March, walk or ride to work at least twice a month. April-September, up it to at least four times a month.
  14. Eat at one new restaurant a month–any meal, but it has to be somewhere I haven’t been before.
  15. Eat at Red Iguana
  16. Go to Bonneville Speed Week
  17. Go to a roller derby game
  18. Stop biting my fingernails (I mean it this year)
  19. Wear more colors of lipstick than “pink” and “darker pink”
  20. Find a perfume I want to wear regularly
  21. Stock and maintain a home bar and keep it stocked. No drinking it up and not replacing it.
  22. Have more people over to the apartment–not huge parties, but a few people for dinner, or drinks before a restaurant, etc.
  23. Learn more about wine
  24. Learn and retain the difference between whisk(e)y, bourbon, and scotch
  25. Learn and retain the difference between brandy and cognac
  26. Get my eyes checked again, update my prescription, and start wearing glasses in front of the computer.
  27. Find a dermatologist to look at a couple of moles, if only so I can stop worrying about skin cancer
  28. Learn how to can fruits, veggies, or jam
  29. Get a better camera
  30. Go to Moab and/or Zion