Pages

Tuesday, November 29, 2011

It's Never Too Late To Be Grateful

While everyone else has been talking about gift knitting and breaking out the Christmas music, I've been thinking about what I'm grateful for- why? Because I've never been on time for anything in my life.

These skinny ankles are just begging for some fancy knit socks
  • I'm grateful for my dear friends. They appreciate my obsessions  hobbies without question, humor me when I go overboard, and show genuine interest when I don't.
  • I'm grateful for easy transportation in the cities. For a fraction of what it would cost me in gas and parking, I can hop a bus or train to my most important destinations (and plenty more) any time I need to.
  • I'm grateful that Shane and KJ had tasty vegetarian options in spades.
  • I'm grateful for new friends I'm making all the time.
  • I'm grateful for Drew's preparedness, with just enough phone battery to snap a couple shots. (Jason left my SD card at work).
  • I'm grateful for my mind and  body, literacy, imagination and the internet.
  • I'm grateful for knitting, and all manner of woolly animals.
  •  I'm grateful for my best friend, lover, partner, and co-parent. I'm grateful for our kids. My family is incredible. I'm also grateful that my kids love to travel. I'm grateful that every time they see something they want they say "Can you knit me one?" even if it's physically impossible, and every time I cast on they say, "For me?!"
  • I'm grateful for our apartment, and that when we sleep on couches now, it's to visit.
  • I'm grateful for the things I've experienced and that which I will yet experience, for the perspective it will give me and the inspiration it already has.

    What are you grateful for every day- not just on Thanksgiving? 

Wednesday, November 23, 2011

Toe Headed

I've always wondered where on Earth the English language came up with the term "Toe Head." I mean, seriously? Toe head? I can't begin to tell you the imagery that invokes. And what the heck does it have to do with blond hair? My toes sure don't look like a Fanning girl.
I couldn't help but think of this when I started making Cal a yellow hat that he'd requested. The interesting part is that he's as blond as the sunshine. He always draws himself with yellow crayons. Strangers have commented on more than one occasion, quote, "Kid, you are yellow!"
Being thus compelled, I started searching the internet, only to find out I was wrong all along. All these years I was thinking "Toe head," when in fact it's "Tow head." According to most sources, tow is the Germanic word for flax or hemp that is ready for spinning! Flax and other similar fibers, when ready for spinning, are blond.
You learn something new every day.

Sunday, November 13, 2011

Black Pansy

When I was a kid (middle school- high school) my mother had a couple of whiskey barrel planters at the front of our little house. I wasn't much for doing any of the actual gardening (I felt more like that was her thing). For the most part it was just an extension of my mother's house decor. I appreciated the flowers well enough, but it was wasn't my project, and I kind of saw it like "The same old thing," every spring: purple petunias and varied pansies.
 It wasn't even so much that the flowers she picked were the same each year, but that everyone picked the pansies and petunias every year. They were all over the neighborhood, in all the store front planters, at the city park, by the freeway exit, and into the next town! Same old purple petunias and yellow, burgundy, and purple pansies.
 The spring of my senior year of high school, my mother brought home a flat of seedlings labeled "Pansies-varied." The buds hadn't opened at all, so I expected the standard yellow and purple. Imagine my surprise when I came home a couple days later to find the whiskey barrels gushing with the most beautiful, pearly, black  blossoms! Every single pansy was black, with just a hint of iridescent blue-violet toward the yellow center. I'd never seen anything like it (and frankly neither had anyone else on my block)! It was still classic in its familiarity, but suddenly elegant, even a bit playful or mischievous looking! A flower had taken my way of thinking and turned it upside down for a whole different perspective. And I was in love with it.

That's what Black Pansy represents to me: taking familiar, classic elements to create something that is fresh, unexpected, even a bit mischievous. It emphasizes the unique among the ordinary. It's about the allure, the magic of taking a fresh perspective.

P.S. I can't wait to have a container garden of my own this spring.

Wednesday, November 9, 2011

Fashionista

Lala insisted on choosing her own outfit today. Got to love a girl with a mind of her own. She's wearing her new stealth booties.

Tuesday, November 8, 2011

It's Dark in Connecticut, but the Future's Lookin' Bright

In a nutshell (maybe a coconut):
     Isn't that for responsible knitters?
  • I had the best birthday I could remember. I felt so loved. My little ones were soliciting loves like it was going out of style. My mother came to visit and assured me that in the two weeks she'd spent at my sister's, the two of them couldn't keep up with the dishes (if you only knew what an incomparable gift that was). And my dear love brought me three different kinds of vegan cake (slices, but combined to the size of a whole cake) and Boomerang by Michael Lewis (since I just got so much lovable fiber at Rhinebeck). This was clearly one of my favorite birthdays.
  • I don't know what happened to me after Rhinebeck, but I came home, got into my stash, and started swatching. And I liked it! I never do that! Who is this person and what are they doing with my yarn!
  • Halloween pictures, and the Finn the Human hat I knit for Jason in two nights, are coming- just as soon as my mother emails them to me.
  •  Thanks to a crazy Nor'Easter snowstorm the weekend before Halloween, my place became someone else's  temporary residence: my sister and her 3 kids came to stay after the 3rd of 6 days without power, practically frozen. She ranted a bit about the disorganization of the CT authority, but mentioned a friend who proclaimed that the state had used it's emergency help from other states when Eirene came through with out paying it back, and that the utility company had fired a huge chunk of it's staff. It makes sense, but I wish I could get the facts. It's the kind of thing I think people should know about- it's totally the thing I want to go back to school for.
  • With all of the fun that comes from a house full of cousins, we just couldn't keep the noise down, no matter how hard I tried. After a thinly veiled email from our landlord (on the floor below us) about how we promised to get rugs, we explained that it'd only been two paychecks time, whilst my extended family was in need. All was forgiven, but I decided to make the kids some booties to help muffle the sound. I used the formula for Ysolda Teague's Grown-up Booties, and I've got to say, they're kind of awesome. The kiddoes are looking forward to their new "Stealth Ninja Feet" and I'm just hoping that it doesn't backfire with them falling on their faces all over the place.
  • Stealth ninjas like rosebuds, right? 
  • I finally got Berklee published. Talk about crazy-accomplished-excited-anxious-nutzo. It's totally surreal. I'm so green.