November 2011

Tuesday Project Roundup: Getting Things Done During Long Weekends

By in knitting, sewing, Tuesday Project Roundup 2 Comments

This weekend made me realize that maybe I haven’t lost my crafty mojo; maybe I just need four-day stretches of time to make things. (Hm, how can I work that?)

I finished a tunic dress that has been cut out for a couple of weeks:
It’s the same pattern as this one from June (adapted from the Built By Wendy Dresses book), with longer sleeves to make it more cold-weather appropriate.

And the owl sweater for Skyler is just waiting to dry so I can sew on all 32 little button eyes:
Hoot hoot!

Space Therapy

By in space

Let’s distract ourselves from the first workday after a long weekend by thinking about space. Did you hear the Mars Curiosity rover launched successfully on Saturday? We shot something into space, will guide it along the 350 million mile trip, and will be able to use it to study another planet remotely–incredible! A thousand years ago humanity didn’t even know about basic sanitation, and now we’re going to study Mars.

Here’s the New York Times coverage; the Bad Astronomy blog has a collection of launch videos and a NASA-produced overview of how exactly they plan to land the thing (parachutes and rockets, oh my!). Read up on it and get lots of perspective on your life here on this planet.

Giving Thanks While Seated

By in decorating, the precious, Toby 3 Comments

I’m not hosting Thanksgiving this year, but I could:
I finally have chairs to go with that table–and for the first time in my adult life, I can entertain more than a total of two for dinner!

So I’m thankful for furniture, and that I have family and friends that I want to fill the chairs, and for what’s been a really good year, overall.

Meanwhile, Toby remains thankful for his space heater:

Enjoy the long weekend! I’ll be back Monday.

A Visit From Skyler

By in Skyler, Toby 1 Comment

Look who came over to his auntie’s house on Saturday! There was lots of kitty chasing–because someone can crawl now:

There was also a moment when I had to tell Toby that the little creature wanting to touch him was not for pouncing on. (Toby had a look in his eye; I wanted to head that off.)

There was also some delicious paper to be had:


Kitties and paper and Skyler, oh my!

Friday Unrelated Information

By in Edward Abbey, Friday Unrelated Information, quotes

1. Happy birthday to Sir William Gilbert, half of Gilbert and Sullivan and the librettist responsible for “I Am the Very Model of a Modern Major General.“

2. Science may be inching ever closer to giving us lab-grown meat. It reminds me of all sorts of science fiction.

3. Here’s something to ponder from Ed Abbey, whom I always thought of as curmudgeonly. But maybe he wasn’t as hard as I thought:
Has joy any survival value in the operations of evolution? I suspect that it does; I suspect that the morose and fearful are doomed to quick extinction. Where there is no joy there can be no courage; and without courage all other virtues are useless.

All I Want Is Another Vacation

By in deserts, hippies 2 Comments

The last two weeks being back from Moab have just run me over. Work isn’t particularly tough right now, but I’m feeling pretty worn out by it.

Let’s think back to a happier time a couple weekends ago, when my inner hippie was set free in the morning in Arches:

Doesn’t she look happy?

3+1 Things Project: The Last Poem

By in 3+1 Things, Mary Oliver, poems

I’m a little late posting the November/December poem in my 3+1 Things project, probably because memorizing anything for September/October didn’t happen. (The Neruda didn’t fit, I couldn’t get behind the Frost, and there were just too many other things to think about.)

But this poem–I will memorize this poem because it’s fantastic. Mary Oliver does it again. (Watch something like this video before you read it and you’ll really be able to see it in your head.)

Starlings in Winter

Chunky and noisy,
but with stars in their black feathers,
they spring from the telephone wire
and instantly

they are acrobats
in the freezing wind.
And now, in the theater of air,
they swing over buildings,

dipping and rising;
they float like one stippled star
that opens,
becomes for a moment fragmented,

then closes again;
and you watch
and you try
but you simply can’t imagine

how they do it
with no articulated instruction, no pause,
only the silent confirmation
that they are this notable thing,

this wheel of many parts, that can rise and spin
over and over again,
full of gorgeous life.
Ah, world, what lessons you prepare for us,

even in the leafless winter,
even in the ashy city.
I am thinking now
of grief, and of getting past it;

I feel my boots
trying to leave the ground,
I feel my heart
pumping hard, I want

to think again of dangerous and noble things.
I want to be light and frolicsome.
I want to be improbable beautiful and afraid of nothing,
as though I had wings.

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