Words + Projects + Stuff I Like
…for some physical activity. My traveling companion and I hiked up to the tram at Snowbird, like I had done last year with my father. I remember last year being easier, but this was still excellent.
Someone marveled at the age of the canteen:
Someone else was too tired to look into the camera at the top:
And someone at Snowbird really should have put this sign at the BOTTOM of the trail:
And alphorns make anything better:
1. Storm sewer spleunking. It happens. It sounds cool. The accompanying photographs are gorgeous.
2. I’ll be enjoying a long weekend not camping, because the rest of the state beat me to the campgrounds.
3. The Nigel Slater cookbook had to go back to the library yesterday. I’m suffering from Nigel withdrawal.
4. I’ve been meaning to start my next knitting project, but haven’t had a chance to just sit and work out the math (knitting involves lots of math! I was never warned!)
5. My next project will not, however, be a tree sweater.
No, not the movie–although it would be seasonally appropriate to watch it right now, just like Picnic–but the actual event. I’m entering the happy dress and the vortex of craft top and I’m tempted to tell the ladies who take your entry that both my projects are named.
Your cute alpacas for the day.
This is the bottom half of the vintage dress with no instructions that obviously did not work out as a dress. It makes a pretty dashing skirt, though; the plaid and the big pockets make me think it would be something the boss lady would change into if she got her dress dirty rounding up the cows. 
In other sewing news, my new favorite tool is the rotary cutter
which means I can roll-cut on a mat at counter height rather than kneel on the floor with scissors. If you put a pinking blade on said cutter you don’t have to worry about finishing any raw edges, either.
Although if you drop the pinking blade on your foot you get a zig-zag shaped cut. I speak from experience.
This is the bottom half of the vintage dress with no instructions that obviously did not work out as a dress. It makes a pretty dashing skirt, though; the plaid and the big pockets make me think it would be something the boss lady would change into if she got her dress dirty rounding up the cows.
In other sewing news, my new favorite tool is the rotary cutter
which means I can roll-cut on a mat at counter height rather than kneel on the floor with scissors. If you put a pinking blade on said cutter you don’t have to worry about finishing any raw edges, either.Although if you drop the pinking blade on your foot you get a zig-zag shaped cut. I speak from experience.
Last night I was trying to find the attribution for a Wallace Stevens quote (“God is in me or else is not at all,” quoted in The Little Zen Companion) (oh yes, I succumbed to the mid-90’s trend for miniature inspirational books)(and just don’t ask why I was reading The Little Zen Companion again)–anyway, I looked up the attribution for that quote and found this quotes from his letters, as well.
They talk so beautifully about work and having a family and a home (and I do, too, sometimes) — but it’s all worry and head-aches and respectable poverty and forced gushing…. Telling people how nice it is, when, in reality, you would give all of your last thirty years for one of your first thirty. Old people are tremendous frauds.
So much for encouragement and inspiration! Where’s my mini book…
1. Have you ever thought, “It just takes too long to cut out all those newspaper letters for my ransom note?” Then you’ll be delighted to hear about the ransom note generator, with choice of white or yellow paper background.
2. Similarly, are you stuck coming up with a title for your literary work? Go to the title generator!(Warning: seizure-inducing website. But still fun! Seizures are fun!)
3. What your food cravings really mean. I don’t know if this is really based on science, but it temporarily made me want to eat better.
Yesterday a request for someone to recite a poem came up, and I was the kid saying “Pick me! Pick me!”—until I realized the only thing I have memorized in its entirety is “The Owl and the Pussycat.” (I do have big pieces of a lot of real poems, but it just spoils a dramatic recitation to fill in the gaps with “How do I love thee? Let me count the ways…something, something…”) So much for being so literary.
But why devote your life to memorizing poems when you can do THIS: www.extremepumpkins.com. You kind of know what you’re getting with a URL like that, but I was still surprised. Especially by the one that uses kerosene-soaked toilet paper.
My dad turns 60 today, after another year of building furniture, making model ships, raising barns (no, really), remodeling bathrooms, reading books, putting in fences, helping with moves, wearing Hawaiian shirts, and overall continuing to be tough and handy, all while singing songs from the Golden Age of Broadway. And Dad, I hope you know I’m planning on writing one of these for the next twenty years, so keep it up.