Another perk of the iPhone? Toby doesn’t mind it the way he minded the camera, which means he’ll actually keep making whatever cute face he’s making as I take his picture. Like this:
(This is the face he makes when he wants me to do something, like give him catnip. In this case, he wanted me to put the vase of flowers back that he’d been eating. “See Mom? I’m sitting right where they were. You should go get them and let me eat them again.”)
Are you following Chris Hadfield on Twitter yet? He’s a Canadian astronaut who has been aboard the International Space Station since December. (In March, he’ll take over as commander.) Since he’s been up there, he’s been tweeting pictures of Earth as they orbit it, several a day. Earth, as it turns out, is pretty striking:
Also striking is the fact that we have a space station orbiting the Earth; that the Canadian commander-to-be was carried there in a Russian Soyuz spacecraft; and that we can get pictures from the station sent to our computers and smartphones in real time. Remember the Cold War? Remember the time before the internet? Remember when I didn’t have a smartphone? This is the future!
Lately I’ve been knitting in the round, which is exactly what it sounds like: You go round and round a tube and then you get a longer tube and then it’s done and you have armwarmers to wear to yoga.
Or say there’s a sweater you started in 2010 (last seen here in 2011). If you just keep going round and round you’ll end up with more sleeves on it, and someday a finished sweater to wear as a hiking layer.
Amazing how that works.
I
Among twenty snowy mountains,
The only moving thing
Was the eye of the blackbird.
XIII
It was evening all afternoon.
It was snowing
And it was going to snow.
The blackbird sat
In the cedar-limbs.
MINE:
I went hiking
and thought of Wallace Stevens.
My hat got snowy.
1. I love every single word in this article, which begins, ” A truck carrying 27 tons of brunost, a Norwegian brown cheese, caught fire in a tunnel in Narvik on Thursday and burned with gooey rage until Monday.”
2. The food blog Dinner: A Love Story (are you reading it? you should be) posted “nine rules of blogging,” which happen to be really good rules for writing, too–see Rule 4:
If I can’t explain it in a title and a subtitle, I’m in trouble. If I can, there’s my idea. It’s really nothing more than the topic sentence we learn about in third grade writing. Once I know what I want to say, I spend the rest of the piece saying it.
And see Rule 9:
There is literally no reason not to write. Nothing bad can come of it. Even if no one reads what you are writing, you have a chronicle of something. You are creating something…How is that ever bad?
Like jewelry, I’ve never worn a lot of makeup. I’m not opposed to it (although this blog can get me spinning out), but I never really learned how to do it.
But now that I’m dealing with getting older (and working under the worst florescent lights imaginable), I’m trying to learn about things like undereye concealer. And wearing blush that doesn’t make you look like a doll. And eyelash curlers, which still really freak me out.
So I was beyond happy to find the video tutorials of makeup artist Lisa Eldridge. She’s British, so the accent adds a lot more gravitas to a fairly superficial topic, but she’s also really down-to-earth and non-judgmental. And she starts out most videos without any makeup, so you can see what differences the products are making.
I mean, just look at her talking about “a minimal rosy flush”:
One of her latest videso is about “the best makeup look to wear when meeting with an ex,” and it’s twenty minutes of a nice lady making you feel (and look) better. She ends it with the advice “be strong, look gorgeous..and keep your head up high.” I can get behind that, eyelash curlers or not.
How about “Wild Geese” by Mary Oliver again? There are geese in the field behind the office park and they were flying last night and I saw the leader look back over his goose shoulder to check on the rest of the V. So: goose poem.
Wild Geese
You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees
for a hundred miles through the desert, repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body
love what it loves.
Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.
Meanwhile the world goes on.
Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain
are moving across the landscapes,
over the prairies and the deep trees,
the mountains and the rivers.
Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,
are heading home again.
Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,
the world offers itself to your imagination,
calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting-
over and over announcing your place
in the family of things.
Just like Muddy Waters, I got my [sewing] mojo workin’ again. I even think I could work fast enough to complete not just one, but two projects in the season I intend to wear them. Crazy talk, I know.
The first thing I want to make is a cape, because that is a rational and versatile item to add to one’s wardrobe. This Vogue pattern has been well-reviewed on the sewing blogs and has a dramatic collar to boot:
I’m picturing it in this plaid, which I think would take it from “Giambattista Valli knockoff” to “Technicolor mod” (obviously far superior): 
The other plaid project I am feeling ambitious enough to tackle is a little 60’s-ish jacket…
…in this plaid:
The pattern comes with an optional intensive step-by-step guide with instructions for underlining, etc. so I think I could finally attempt some real tailoring.
I ordered swatches (because nice plaids, they are not cheap) and will pick up the cape pattern on sale this week. I really think I can start and finish at least one of these. Stay tuned.
It’s Inauguration Day and Civil Rights Day and a good day to reflect on our progress–over four years or fifty. Four years ago I was laid off right after the inauguration. Now I’m a homeowner. The general working environment for women isn’t like Mad Men any more (binders notwithstanding). More and more people are realizing that allowing people to marry whom they love won’t cause the end of civilization as we know it. You see? PROGRESS.
In spite of horrific news reports or stubborn, stupid debates (or denial), I do think we’re moving forward as a nation. Come on, humans. Yes we can.
1. If you’ve been reading for a while you know my thoughts about profanity (it’s science!), so of course I find this hilarious (it’s censored just enough you can watch it at work without getting in trouble for anything more than watching videos at work).
2. Keeping the raven theme from Monday going, I saw this on my friend Jason‘s feed. Always share a pun!
