This week’s project is just a pillow cover. I had some fabric on hand that I had bought for the quilt binding (before I decided on solid blue) and enough left over from the back border to finish it off.
And there’s piping. I guess I’d better plan on making a winter bathrobe soon, since I’m starting to put piping on everything.
Karen
Posts by Karen Kaminski:
To The Mountains
Since there are only six weeks left of summer and I hadn’t been to the mountains yet, Saturday I went to Mirror Lake with the family.
I hadn’t been up there for nearly twenty years, but it was pretty much how I remembered it–with about a thousand percent more people. (Whatever happened to people camping in tents? Now people bring trailers, barbecues, lawn games, lap dogs, and god knows what else.) But it was still nice to see the sights:
This is Bald Mountain. We did not climb it because we did not want to get stuck in an afternoon thunderstorm at the top.
Here’s a little lake. We had walked away from the people at this point.
A gorgeous gorge (ha!). People were right behind us but I ignored them.
Friday Unrelated Information
1. Do you think it’s prudent or crazy to avoid buying a house in the Avenues because I’m afraid it would slide right down the hill in an earthquake? I was thinking it was prudent, but I walked to yoga last night and thought, “I really like my neighborhood.” (Do other people even think like this? Plan their life around disasters that may never happen?)
2. It’s the first of August this weekend, which means it’s Lughnasa, which means we have six more weeks of summer. I’d better take more walks and enjoy it.
3. Fair season will also be here before you know it. I didn’t enter anything last year and when I walked around the fair I felt like I was left out. So now I’m trying to decide what sewing projects are impressive enough to enter, and if I want to try to finish that cable sweater, too.
Not A Verb
I’ve found a site that I want to print out and leave at everyone’s desks at work: notaverb.com. It makes the case conclusively that “login” is not a verb (if you don’t want to read the page, use it as two words). This makes me unreasonable happy–as does the conclusion on the “login” page:
If you take only one thing away from this page, take that one fact: “login” is not a verb. Educate others. Correct manuals, software, and web pages as you find them. Tell everyone you know that “login” is not a verb. You will make a pedant (me) happy. You will earn the respect of grammar nazis. Most importantly, you will know the truth.
Toby Says:
Tuesday Project Roundup: The Summer Of The Skirt Continues
Hey look, a pencil skirt in a bright print–bet you haven’t seen anything like that before!
It’s the same Burda pattern that I used on all the others, and it goes together in under two hours now. The fabric is a print from designer Heather Ross’ collection inspired by fairy tales. I went with generic roses, but the Owl and the Pussycat fabric was tempting.
I have one more dress planned for summer, but lately all I can think about is fall and fall sewing–which makes me feel kind of disloyal to the season. I was secretly happy about the rain and the coolness last night. (Sorry, summer.)
Mad Men Music Monday
How great was the first episode of Mad Men season 4 last night? I loved seeing Peggy like that and the ending was fantastic, with Don and his whiskey and this song:
Friday Unrelated Information
1. Today is Raymond Chandler’s birthday. Here’s one of my favorite quotes, talking about Phillip Marlowe setting up a chess problem for himself:
[It was] …a battle without armor, a war without blood, and as elaborate a waste of human intelligence as you could find anywhere outside an advertising agency.
2. With the windows open at night, I’ve been hearing some rustling in the front sometimes. It’s not human-sized rustling, but I’ve wondered what creature is doing it (mice? snails? there are a lot of snails here). This morning at 4:00 it woke me (and Toby) up again and I looked out to see a mama raccoon and FOUR big babies. They seemed to be eating snails. Carry on, raccoons.
Thursday Poem
I like today’s poem; it sounds like the blues. (A minor seventh is the interval between the opening two notes of “There’s a Place for Us,” by the way.)
Minor Seventh
by Jeffrey Bean
Foghorns, grackles, wheat fields sighing in wind. The night
hawk’s ricochet. You better come on in my kitchen. Mixolydian
trumpet runs boiling up the Mississippi, turning into urban
blues and smokestacks over Gary, Indiana. Hymns. Grief.
The hiss of sprinklers in timber yards, brawl of log trucks
crawling up Mt. Hood. Chainsaws, see-saws, sneakers,
squeaking in high school gyms. Have you driven a ford lately?
Field hollers. Sorrow. Fat fathers riding their mowers’ thick
Chords. Throngs of Santa Clauses all across Wisconsin ringing
bells in snow in front of Wal-Marts. Musac at Costco, Osco,
Piggly Wiggly, Winn-Dixie. Arawaks’ shouting, the Santa
Maria creaking onto shore. Cell phones, car alarms, laptops,
the air raid siren’s range. Achy Breaky Heart in the flamingo
light of roller rinks. The wheeze of progress. The forests of
Mississippi echoing with Me and the devil was walking side by side.
Grind of church organs, cotton gins, sledge hammers
knocking into granite. No one listening to Monk play
Crepuscule with Nellie at The Open Door. Toyotas starting,
crows screaming, a rabbit snatched by an owl. Gimme a pigsfoot
and a bottle of beer. Reverend Dimmesdale speaking in tongues
of flame. Michael Buffer crooning Let’s get ready to rumble!
Chants at NBA games. Weeping. St Louis woman, where’s your
diamond ring?
Happy Birthday, Papa!
No, it’s not my father’s birthday–it’s Papa Hemingway’s!
There are a lot of old interviews with him floating around the internet–one from The Paris Review has this gem:
HEMINGWAY [asked about the amount of revising he does]: It depends. I rewrote the ending to Farewell to Arms, the last page of it, thirty-nine times before I was satisfied.
INTERVIEWER : Was there some technical problem there? What was it that had stumped you?
HEMINGWAY: Getting the words right.
Amen, brother.