true vacation

We went to Maine again. That's how long it's been! We went to Maine and had a lovely week doing just about nothing. I took naps. Christopher did some writing. I read a little. Christopher wrote some more. We made pasta from scratch. I started a blanket. It wasn't enough time. I feel terrible saying that, since this was the fifth week I've taken off this summer, but it was the first of those weeks that I really felt able to relax. Italy was good until my eye fell apart. And my trip to Haystack was overshadowed by bad weather and my cold. Next summer we are thinking that a month might in Maine be nice. Maybe we can sublet our apartment, and not worry about the lack of income, and we can settle in and just be.

quilting

I feel like apologizing every time I blog, because it is so long between posts. I am sorry. I am a little checked out these days, and I'm finding it hard to come up with witty and interesting posts. But I do want to share my quilting with you before it is so far in the past that it is obsolete.

So. I have always wanted to quilt. In high school, I made a few quilt squares by hand with some of my mother's scrap fabric. I like how quilts often have histories and contain objects of the past. And I love the patterns you can make with fabric, and how practical they are. So when my mother invited me to join her at Session 3 of Haystack this summer, I was immediately attracted to the Quilting as Art class. It's an interesting choice, really, since what I love about quilts is their tradition, and the point of this class is to break tradition.

We started the class by doing a bunch of creative exercises with color and line. Part of this involved us each picking an image or object that we found interesting and playing with it. My image was a dress. I placed in on my square in different ways and played with applying dress images onto different fabrics. I was also interested in exploring quilting lines and how one can draw with texture just using stitches.Throughout the two weeks, my dress evolved, until at one point I decided to make many squares using just details of the dress image, and to piece them together into a small quilt. (Unfortunately I don't seem to have a lot of photos of this process, which surprises me, frankly)

I drew out 9 details of the dress, which I thought could translate into 9 squares. I made cardboard templates and cut them out, and then I cut out fabric and made 9 squares. Except that I didn't like how all of them went together, and then I thought that 9 looked sort of measly, so I made 3 more squares. And I rearranged them and made more, and I dyed some red and yellow fabric that I thought might look good with my green and blue theme. Basically, I guess you could say that I approached it like a piece of art. But that's probably typical for this sort of thing, right?I also learned how to sew angles, which was pretty fun.

Once I had decided on my squares and sewed them together, I had to figure out a border.These are just a few of my options. I decided to go with green, with a thin brown border around that. But it's still not done.

When I realized that I wouldn't have enough time, I took a few of my cast off squares and made a mini quilt. You might also call it a rectangular pot holder, or a mini-placemat. it's really not much of anything, except an exercise. I took these two squares and made them into a quilt, so I would learn how to sew a binding on, and how to quilt it, and all of that, while I still had quilting colleagues to ask advice of. Of course, I didn't photograph this piece, and I left it in Maine...

Here is how my quilt looks now, along with some of the fabric I dyed for it. Yeah, I didn't finish it. And I left it at my parents' place in Maine, since I figure I'll finish it when I go back up there in August. But it's a start. I still have to figure out where to put my quilting lines, and then finish that border.

I feel like I have a dialog with my little quilt, and the fabric that reminds me of water and the sky at the same time. It will tell me where to put those lines.

I don't know how many more quilts I'll make. Frankly, they aren't so portable, and I find them much less tactile than knitting. But we'll see. I do have a lot of fabric that needs to be used...

Home from Haystack

It has been awhile! And so much has happened.

First things first, my eye, and only because it is good news. I do not need surgery because my eye is healing itself. I may have some long term scarring, but honestly I barely notice anything now and I will be happy if this is how I see for the rest of my life. Phew.

I actually didn't realize until yesterday (when I got this news) how much my eye issues have been weighing on me down since it all started in early June. Yesterday I emerged from the hospital a happier person, smiling and squinting at the sunlight, so thrilled that it would be alright. I find this interesting, because I don't feel like I've been dwelling on it very much, but I guess it's just been there, dragging me down.

So. What I've been up to, though I think I'll give this to you in installments.

Week One.
At the end of June I went to Maine with my mother. She taught a drawing class at Haystack Mountain School of Crafts, and I was her guest, and a student in a Quilting as Art class. I had never done any quilting, though I could do some basic sewing, so the whole thing was really new to me. After some initial design exercises, we learned about Shibori dyeing. (Maybe it's just me, but I thought that Shibori was just for knitting!)In any case, Shibori is a little like tie-dyeing (you might say that tie-dyeing is a form of Shibori) but bigger and better. We tried different techniques, including wrapping, stitching, folding, clamping, rolling our fabric to create resists. And if it came out badly (as mine sometimes did), you just refolded it in some other way and overdyed it. Nothing lost.We had a whole dyeing room at Haystack, with lots of big pots and tall tables for dyeing on, and there was a whole set of primary colored dyes for us to mix and experiment with.The unfortunate part of our first week was the weather, which basically looked like this the whole time. Fog. And more fog. (These pictures were not all taken on the same day.) That's the ocean out there, with lots of islands and a mountain. We didn't see it until the second week.And it was really very cold and rainy too. I can usually handle this sort of weather, but we didn't have any heat in the studio or the cabins, and I didn't bring the right clothing for cold weather, and I was miserable.

And I got sick. But that's week two, in which I also tried to make a quilt!

lack of distractions

Sometimes it seems like life just takes over and there's no time for the fun stuff. I mean, on a normal day (meaning most days before June) I had things to fill in the gaps, things that I did to entertain myself and take the edge off the problems in my life. Like knit. Or spin. Or go to see a play. But since we got back from Italy it's been all about unfun things, like going to the eye doctor again. Or getting a second opinion. Or moving all of our furniture so the contractors can work on our windows. It's so full of this stuff that I don't even miss knitting. That's how bad it is.

Our windows. I have mentioned on various occasions that they leak. Well, the leaks were supposedly fixed on more than one occasion over the past 6 months. June has been rainy and it seemed to have been fixed, so we gave the go ahead for our building to bring someone in to replace the rotten sills in our living room and bedroom.Christopher and I moved the furniture away from the problem windows, so it wouldn't get dust and grime on it. Most of the side tables and laundry baskets, the TV, our mattress all were moved into other rooms.

We were told it would take 2 days to rip out and replace the window frames.Thursday was a rainy day, and soon after the first frame had been torn off, water started pouring in from above. The contractor finished his destruction, cleaned up and left. There is no point in him putting new sills on until the leak is located. That was almost a week ago.Today, at last, the management company informed us that they finally got a hold of the people who had originally "fixed" the leak. Hopefully they'll come soon to "fix" the current leaks. I have little faith, since they have been here numerous times and still haven't fixed anything.

And in the meantime, since we are dealing with 3 windows that are oozing dust and mildew, we are living out of boxes and sleeping on our mattress on our floor. So depressing. I'm going away tomorrow, and then Christopher will be left to deal with this situation. I hope he doesn't have to suffer too much longer.

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In eye news, I got a second opinion. The general consensus is that I should wait and observe it for about a month, and then possibly have surgery. I can't get a straight answer from the doctor's office about what the surgery entails, and I am hoping that they decide it's not necessary. But I won't know that until I get back in mid-July.

In more positive news, I am heading to Maine for two weeks for a quilting workshop. I'm super psyched to get away, though I feel bad about leaving Christopher with the mess of our apartment.

enough moping

I think it's important to remember that we had a good time in Italy, before we realized that we would have to leave early.

Proof:This is my friend Carlotta. I met her back when she was a senior in high school, and I was a college student studying in Florence. I lived with Carlotta's aunt and uncle (her zii- I love how in Italian you can just group aunts and uncles together into one word.) She and I took 19th century ballroom dancing classes together back then, which was really fun.

As you can see, Carlotta is pregnant. Her baby boy is due sometime in June. The exact date seems to be debated, at least by her. I think officially it's due around the middle of June, but Carlotta is sure that she will go into labor when the moon is full. I asked her to explain this logic but just could not grasp the moon-due date theory.

A month or two before we went to Italy, I consulted Carlotta about what she would like for her baby, if I were to knit something, and she said she'd like a little cotton cardigan for the summer, something the baby could wear every day. She gave me a lot of color choices: caffé macchiato, sage or sky blue. Or of course she also liked red and orange. It was a little hard for me to narrow it down until I found a big ball of orange cotton in my stash, and felt like it would work perfectly.Of course I didn't have enough orange for the whole sweater, so I had to buy a contrasting color for the cuffs, buttonband and collar. I really stressed over what would match, and only found a paler orange when I went to Stitch Therapy.
I think it works well, in any case. And Carlotta was estatic when I gave it to her. I should have gotten a photo of her holding it over her belly, which she did more than once. It's so nice to make something for someone who really appreciates and treasures it. I can't wait to see a photo of the baby in his new sweater, or his golf. (yes, that's really what they call cardigans in Italy.) I guess in this case it's a golfino, since it's a little cardigan. (What a great language!)Pattern: Offset Wraplan by Sara Morris (Ravelry link)
Yarn: Classic Elite Yarns Provence and Berroco Pure Pima
Needles: #6 US
Buttons: from a great button store I found with my mom in Philadelphia

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I should give an eye update, since many of you wrote such kind notes. The long and the short of it is that the doctor wants to wait and see. There is some sort of bleeding in the back of my eye, almost like a bruise, and it can clear itself up apparently, though it might take a few months. Of course, it may also get worse. It's all about watching it.

Working on the computer is problematic, as is reading, though I am going to try going back to work tomorrow. I just need a sense of normalcy and routine. The doctor thought that my brain will probably adjust to having this smudge on my vision and compensate for it somehow. We shall see.

an early return

As you might have gathered, I speak a little Italian. It's become rusty over the past 13 years, so being in Italy meant stumbling around a bit, trying to find the right words and verb tenses. I managed to add a few things to my vocabulary, however:

pronto soccorso: emergency room
oculista: ophthalmologist
gocce: eye drops
dilatare: to dilate
miopia: near sightedness
distacco post vitreo: vitreous detatchment
degenerazione maculare senile: age-related macular degeneration

Nothing is ever simple for the Brown-Walls, and within a few days of arriving in Italy, we found ourselves rushing to the ocular emergency room in Florence, accompanied by an Italian friend, Moreno.
The main issue was, and still is, that I have a spot of distorted vision near the center of my left eye. It is stuck there, making it difficult for me to read and do anything that requires me to focus close up, such as reading. Writing and proofreading this blog post is rather frustrating. (Interestingly, knitting seems to be no problem.)

The doctor there, a very matter of fact woman working in a dark and sparse room reminiscent of a third world country, made me throw away my contact lens (which was in fact disposable, but was supposed to last me another month), dilated my eyes and told me that I had a vitreous detachment. Which I know that I have. I'm used to little things floating around in my vision. This spot seemed different, but since she told me that it was no big deal (even though I was now wandering around with just one contact lens) we continued with our vacation.

Luckily, I brought my glassses. On Sunday, we went to the Accademia, where the David is housed. My doubts about the original diagnosis, along with the fact that looking at the David required a lot of effort, made me think that we should get another opinion. Sunday night we went to our friends' beach house on the Tuscan coast, and on Monday morning Carlotta's husband Francesco took me to their local emergency room.

This time the doctor asked me more questions, and had me look at a graph. After dilating my eye and examining it, he told me that I had macular degeneration and that I needed more tests and probable immediate surgery. He advised that we cut our trip short and deal with this back in New York.

Which is what we've done. It's highly unusual for someone my age to develop macular degeneration, though I do seem to have the symptoms. I'll see a specialist in a few hours, and hopefully have some better (and more positive) answers.

We are so sad to have missed the last leg of our trip, which would have included several days in Venice and short trips to small towns in northern Italy to see architecture and art. I can only hope that we can return sometime soon, to pick up where we left off...

Escape

View of Florence, originally uploaded by GOC53.

So... we got off a plane this morning, and found ourselves here.

Not that it's a surprise. We've been planning this trip since March.

So far it's been a whirlwind of connecting flights, stuffing ourselves with delicious food and dining with old friends. I spent my college junior year here (13 years ago, Madonna!) living with a Florentine family, who we're staying with.

Sort of. It's complicated. Basically my host family's duplex was in a building with 5 other apartments, all of which were occupied by extended family. This week we're sleeping in one of these apartments, which is vacant, allowing us the freedom to come and go but also will let us visit with everyone. (I am good friends with my host family's niece Carlotta, and by extension her parents and sisters and, well, you see how it goes. This is Italy, after all.)

It's good to be back, and I was planning to blog about our trip. Unfortunately, I forgot to bring my camera card reader, or a cable, so I can't download any pictures yet. We'll see. I'm not sure it's worth writing about this or than if there's no visual... (for now I am borrowing from Flickr.)

hand me downs

When we were in Philadelphia for Mother's Day, my mother pulled out a bag for me to go through. More clothes from her recently deceased friend (this is the third group of clothes I've been offered from her). For the most part this is a fun discovery, especially as this friend had great style, traveled a lot, never threw anything away, and wore the same size as me in the 1970s and early 80s.

Check out this vintage Marimekko dress.My mom has already cut and started to hem it to knee length; I have to finish the rest of it myself. I can't believe how well it fits me, and I just have to find the right occasion to wear it. An art opening would be appropriate, don't you think? Not that I go to many of those... or it would be perfect if I were to give some sort of presentation. (If only most of my work didn't involve me working alone in my studio or in a dark theater where no one sees me!)

Here is the other dress.Yes, you might notice that it resembles (er...perhaps it is) a traditional Bavarian outfit, though it's missing the apron piece. It also fits me well, and minus the blouse (which in true costume fashion only goes to my midriff and would be good for nothing besides this dress) the bodice of the dress is too loose to wear sleeveless. My mom and I considered altering it so it's more fitted, but it's got a ton of lining and shaping that makes it difficult. Which is too bad. It will have to be a fall or winter dress, paired with a sweater underneath or something.

What I love about hand-me-downs, and as the youngest grandchild on both sides of my family, I've been getting them forever, is that you never know what you are going to get. It's like Christmas, without the stress of having to like or keep something. And in this case, it's a challenge for me to wear something different. Which is a good thing, I think.

mitts for mom

A few months ago, when my mom was visiting, she put on the Fetching Mitts that I'd made her for Christmas back in 2007. They were ragged, pilly, stretched out. She didn't seem to care - she mostly wears them while she's painting in her studio - but I was embarrassed by how they'd worn. Honestly I thought that Mission Falls 1824 was better than that. It should have held up better in nearly two years of wear. Seriously.

So when I was deciding what to make mom for Mother's Day, a new set of mitts were the obvious choice. I have sworn to use stash yarn this year (unless absolutely necessary), and was happy to find two skeins of Elsbeth Lavold Classic AL in my collection. It was perfect for the Rib-and-Cable Mitts (Ravelry Link) pattern from Interweave Knits from Spring 2006. I used some left over Brown Sheep Handpaint Originals from my stash for the borders, and when that ran out I subbed in some brick-colored Donegal tweed, also left over from an old project. (amazingly the colors blend together well, and you can't really tell unless you look closely).Mom seemed really surprised and pleased by the mitts. I really hope they wear better than the Fetchings did. Hopefully the Classic AL is a better yarn...

Notes! I made the hand about an inch longer than specified, since I like to keep my knuckles warm. Hopefully mom does too!

running (for a cure)

I think I mentioned a few months back that I'd started running. It all began in mid-February, when 3 people asked in one week if I was a runner, and then my friend Joanna (who was then visiting from Seattle) asked me if I wanted to run with her before I went to work. She and I ran for about a mile in the park, and it was completely glorious to be outside for an extended period in the winter. Joanna also talked about her recent conversion to running, and I was struck with the inspiration to start training on my own.

I think I should mention that I've tried running before, but without success. In middle school we had to run a timed mile every year, and it was something I dreaded for months ahead of time. In high school I actually quit playing lacrosse because I hated running so much, and in college I used to jog with a friend of mine, but we never went more than a mile. Even more recently I have run sporadically in the park, but again never went farther than about a mile.

This time, I downloaded some Couch-to-5k podcasts. The program involves running 3 times a week over the course of 9 weeks, and eases you into running in a very manageable way. About half way through my program, I realized that I'd reach the goal (5k) around the time my cousins run their annual Race for the Cure 5k in Philadelphia, which is held yearly on Mother's Day. They invited me to join them, and my runs began to take on a purpose.

Needless to say, last week was week 9 of my training and the race was on Sunday morning. Last Monday I ran my first 3 miles at the gym (the rain kept me indoors) and on Thursday afternoon I ran what I thought was about 3 miles in the park. And on Sunday morning, after a nervous night's sleep, I found myself here:

That's me waving to my cousins across the crowd.

My cousins are Real Runners, meaning that they do things like train for marathons, and one of them has a treadmill in her garage. In the period leading up to the race, they kept telling me that I'd find the race to be a piece of cake, that it was only 5 kilometers. Well, they were right. The worst part was probably the first third of the race, when I couldn't stop coughing (I think I had a bug in my throat or something) and then I got a stitch in my right side. My cousin's husband (also a marathon runner, who was running with us) advised me to reach my right hand over my shoulder and to lean back a little. The stitch went away almost immediately, and the rest was downhill (well, not literally, but it felt much easier). We finished the race in about 32 minutes.

Christopher, who didn't sleep the night before due to my nervous tossing and turning, dragged himself down and took some photos of me at the finish line. He's a good sport.I shouldn't forget to mention the fact that we were running in order to raise money for Breast Cancer. I raised $140 from donations. There were roughly 35,000 people participating in the run/walk, and I found being in that crowd rather sobering. Many people (including my cousins and I) were running in memory of a loved one, and some had signs celebrating their mom or sister or whatnot. Perhaps I was feeling overwhelmed by the race and early hour anyway, but while Christopher and I were wandering around trying to find my cousins I must have cried 3 or 4 times reading people's signs. Once I found my cousins, they advised me to stop reading people's signs, since they were so upsetting. Good idea.Anyway, I did it! and it wasn't such a big deal. Strangely, now that I've reached my goal, I don't feel like running anymore. I know that this is a mistake, that I should keep going, even if it's just to maintain my distance, but it's hard to get out there and run!

spring is here!

We spent about an hour yesterday at the Sakura Matsuri (Cherry Blossom) Festival at the Brooklyn Botanical Garden. We live more or less across the street from the Garden, and have a membership, which meant we were able to avoid the huge lines.

This was the line at just one of the many entrances.

It was supposed to rain all day, but it was actually very sunny and comfortable.I don't know a lot about the festival, or about Japanese culture really, but it was fun to just walk around and see whatever was going on. People (of all races, though also of a certain generation) were in costumes. And not just kimonos. It was a little like Halloween or something.I had a lot of fun playing with my camera and taking pictures of people and of the plants. Everything seemed to be in bloom. And other people were taking pictures too. By the time we reach April (or May!) we're all ready to spend some time outside and in the sun. Of course today it is raining. Maybe I have to actually finish the furniture moving project I started a month ago...

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I promise to update soon with some new knitting projects. The problem is that I'm in a button rut. Anyone know where to get some large, affordable (but pretty) orange buttons? I went to M&J and didn't find what I was looking for. And I can't get over how expensive they are-- how can can I justify spending more than the yarn cost on buttons?

musical memories

So, a little background.

Back in 1995, when I was a college student, I spent a summer interning at Glimmerglass Opera. I was on the stage crew, along with 6 other interns. Glimmerglass is a professional summer company that runs in rep, meaning that every day they do a different opera. The summer I was there we did 4 operas, all appealing to very different tastes: Don Giovanni (Mozart), Paul Bunyan (obscure 20th century Britten), Yeomen of the Guard (Gilbert & Sullivan) and Tamerlano (Baroque/Handel).

This experience was huge: it confirmed that I wanted to spent my life doing theater. Everything there was exciting, new and big.

And I also formed a very important friendship with Joanna (aka Jojo, though at the beginning of the summer she was still Joanna). She and I were the only women in a group of rowdy and somewhat lewd college boys. (To be fair, there were some women on the crew, but they were not interns and therefore had more responsibility than us.) Neither of us were particularly rowdy. Joanna had recently moved to the US, having transferred from a French university the year before. She had listened to all of the operas before she got there that summer, and during the operas she would let out a little sigh or coo every once in a while, when the music was particularly good.

She was also rather outgoing, and became friendly with some of Tamerlano cast. I remember us having breakfast with one of them at a coffee shop in downtown Cooperstown, and another time the soprano invited the crew (through Joanna, of course) to the house where she was staying for brunch.

Since we both were staying at the same residence, had similar work hours, and had only one car between us, we frequently went to work together or came home for lunch together or went grocery shopping together. Basically, we were inseparable.

The operas. In the case of this blog post, there is only one opera worth discussing: Tamerlano. I don't think I was at all familiar with Baroque opera before that summer, but I was blown away by it. So soft and lilting, so unexpectedly beautiful. As a crew member on Tamerlano, I spent the duration of the opera behind a very tall gold folding screen with 2 other crew members. At certain musical cues (once each act, I think), we moved the screen. Otherwise, we played cards or napped. On stage. I am serious.

There were two musical parts that we would wake up for and listen to intently. One was David Daniels' aria. The other was the show finale. I've found a YouTube clip of some other singers singing the finale and strangely they are wearing the same costumes as our production. (Looking at the credits, it has the same director, Jonathan Miller)It's not very long, and it is beautiful. Listen!

That fall, I went to study in Italy. My college had a very intensive, immersive junior year abroad program in Florence, where I studied art history and Italian language. It was very hard, especially going from Glimmerglass (where had I finally found people who loved the same things as I did) to a country where I barely spoke the language and didn't know anyone. How I got through that year is another post (and I did get through it, and loved it), but I have to stick to my story. Joanna (who had by then been nicknamed Jojo) sent me a ton of letters. Along with being a great friend, she knew about culture shock and she knew Europe; she understood what I was going through. And she sent me things, tapes of music she'd gotten out of the library: Purcell (Dido and Aeneas) and Bach (St Matthew Passion), to be exact. And I listened to them on my walkman, laying in on my bed writing letters or walking the Sede for class. The music was so surprisingly different from Handel (unfortunately I have little music education and have no way to discuss this. I can just tell you that is very modern to me.)

Years passed, and I stopped listening to my cassette tapes. I met Christopher, and was surprised when one day he put on the St Matthew Passion. Apparently when he was in a chorus in DC they sang it, and he loved it. He plays it regularly, and I always think of all of these things when he does.

A few weeks ago he sent me an email while I was at work. A staged version of the St Matthew Passion is being done at the Brooklyn Academy of Music, and he wanted to get tickets. He had been listening to the director, Jonathan Miller, on the radio and it sounded really exciting. Jonathan Miller! The same guy who directed Tamerlano! St Matthew Passion! Needless to say, we got tickets to see it, and went last night.

It was beautiful. I guess the piece is usually performed as a choral work, very staid. Miller made it a little more dramatic, separating the two choruses and orchestras so that they each faced each other in a loose sort of circle, leaving the center open as a performing space and for the conductor. Musicians would enter the stage for solos as well, and everyone was in street clothes.

I found a YouTube clip of an older version of the production, and it just doesn't do it justice because I think the spacing is so important. I suppose you can hear the music though. It's interesting to me how connected I feel to this music. Listening to it last night brought back so many memories of different times in my life. Times that are pretty far in the past...

a second panorama

I think we (ie my father) have solved the problem of how to post the panorama on a blog. Here is a view of the street I grew up on, and where my parents still live.

I recommend viewing this very large. Just click on the X at the bottom of the image.

I have been tempted to change the layout of this blog for a while; I have found the column rather narrow and the colors overwhelming. Please let me know how you like this simpler layout.

blankets for Afghans

I've mentioned before that I sometimes knit things for Afghans for Afghans. Their latest drive, which started early this year, is for baby items. I usually send a mass email with the appeal to my knitting group, and then collect a few hats and mittens. This time when I sent the information, Tony (the group organizer) smartly thought we should make and sew together blanket squares.

Tony keeps giving me credit for organizing this, but in reality he wrote up a bunch of blanket square patterns and has taught group members how to make them, plus he collected the squares and has kept them at his apartment. It only seemed fair that I host a piecing party, the first of which was on Saturday.
It turned out that Tony had to go to a party with his girlfriend that day, so he brought the squares over before everyone arrived.
The squares were of varying sizes, so we lay out one blanket of small squares and anther of large ones and had a tall stack of mixed sized squares left over.
Our piecing group was small (just 3 of us!), but we had fun chatting and sewing everything together. When Lizz and Lisa left, there was one blanket that still needed a final center seam; the second blanket was only partially sewn.

On Sunday morning I finished the seam and sewed in all of the ends, completing our first blanket. Voila!I really love the combination of squares, and the number of different styles it incorporates. I am also really taken with the crocheted ones. I wish I knew how to crochet!

The second blanket is now in strips (I couldn't resist it). It's really tempting to finish it too, but I'm being encouraged to wait so it's more of a group effort. Now to have another piecing party...

mitts for spring

This spring seems to have taken a long time to come. Actually, I think that I always expect spring to come earlier than it does. By the time April rolls around, I think there should be daffodils and warm sunny weather, but there never is. This year seemed especially rainy and cold, especially on days when I planned to be outside running. (I'm still running! But that's another post.)

A few weeks ago, when Lisa came over I showed her the yarns I'd spun. She really loved some merino I spun sometime last year, some hand painted stuff that I got at Downtown Yarns when I first started spinning. (I can't remember the brand, unfortunately. Though maybe you can recognize and identify the tag.) This is how it looked unspun.And this is it spun, last May.Lisa thought I should make some mitts. I don't usually take other people's advice to heart, but I cast on for a pair of mitts within a week. And I improvised the pattern as I went.
They fit perfectly, and I've been getting quite a lot of use out of them for the past month or so.

Unfortunately, I can't seem to photograph them very well.

They are squishy and soft and so cozy, and wearing them makes me smile. I made these. I spun the yarn and made up the pattern and knit them. And they fit me. They warm me.

self cure

We've been slowly working on our apartment. I bought myself a new computer desk on Craigslist, and on Tuesday I put it together and cleared a space for it in the den. The reasoning behind this was to get the taxes done, and though it took a while, yes, I made some progress on that too. The rest of the room is still in progress, so it's not worth showing just yet. Hopefully this weekend we'll finish moving everything around and I can begin to settle into my new work space. I have hopes of artistic inspiration once the clutter has been removed.

The economy has been really getting me down recently. The play I recently designed closed, and I have just one more project coming up. I don't blame myself for this lack of work. In fact, everyone I know is slowing down and reevaluating what they'll do next. Last Saturday I had a meeting for my new project, and afterwards I hung out a little with the sound designer, who I have worked with twice before and am thrilled to be working with again. We were in Williamsburg and he followed me up to The Yarn Tree, where I bought some bamboo roving.

Broadway seems to be doing very well, and I'm not sure why. It's the little shows that are suffering, the ones dependent on funders for donations in order to survive. Non profits. This sound designer said that 6 companies that he worked with last year have now folded or lost their spaces, and are no longer producing. He also said that he did something like 25 projects last year, a mixture of assisting and designing, and now he only has a handful coming up. 2 projects that I thought I'd be doing were either postponed or downsized, pushing me out. We both found this terrifying.

The upswing of this, what seems to be in the air these days in the arts community, is that this might be a time for us to try something new. This sound designer was talking about how he'd always wanted to compose music, and now he has the time. I've wanted to try illustration (yes, and quilting and other fibery things).

Or perhaps we'll see unusual collaborations. Once we take the money aspect out of a theater project (ie someone hires you to do their project, and then they sell tickets) perhaps things can be a little more democratic and more interesting. "WPA" seems to be on everybody's tongue. I am not sure that the US government is about to give money for theater development this time around (though it would be wonderful if it did). But perhaps slow times call for self-motivation.

the furniture dance (part 1)

You may remember a few weeks back, when I'd decided to to the Apartment Therapy Cure. Curers (curees?) can opt between the Deep Therapy or One Room cure, and instructions are found both in the official Apartment Therapy Cure book and on the site, where there's currently an 8 week Cure-Along taking place.

I borrowed the book from Terra this week, and skimmed through it fairly quickly. There are some really interesting ideas, and a lot about just slowing down and decluttering. I could use some serious decluttering; the advice about cooking at home is a little less necessary, seeing as I do that regularly anyway. But the book is really about how to love and use your home, and not just inhabit it.

We have plans to refinish the floors in our bedroom and office sometime in the next few months, so it seemed silly to cure those rooms. I quickly decided to focus on our "den," which has become less of a den and more of an office/fiber space for me. My thought is to make it mine, since I use the room more than Christopher does, and it seems to be taken over with my knitting anyway.

Quick history:

May 2007We once had a sofa in here, and it made more sense as a den. I would set up here and watch TV and knit, or maybe we'd watch an episode of Six Feet Under together. (this was before our Netflix subscription.)This is the view looking the other direction. Clearly this was right after the room was set up; there still aren't any books on the shelves.

In the following two years, we have moved the sofa to the living room, where it creates a very nice L with our other sofa, and the cat has claimed this room for herself. It's also become a bit of a dumping ground when we're cleaning up, since it's conveniently located right next to our living room. We've also gotten a nicer TV, which means that we're more likely to watch things (ie Netflix movies) together. Unfortunately, all there is to sit on is the office chair and that white armchair, which is now covered in cat hair.
If you are still reading this, you might see what I'm talking about. Time to throw stuff away.

This room is also mostly about my knitting and my computer, so it would make sense to move my desk and drafting table in from the office, where it's mostly in the dark. Plus Christopher flees every time I try to work in there. I see no point in sharing the work space with him if he's unable to work with me in the room.

Other than putting the old stuff on the curb, I have declared that the TV has to be moved out. Our den is no longer good for watching TV, but the living room is.
So TV and TV cabinet will go into living room, in a space currently occupied by a cabinet housing our linens. This cabinet will be moved into our bedroom. Once this happens there will be little access to the secretary, so it will also be moved. At the moment we want to put it where this mirror is (across the room) though I'm sorry to see the mirror leave the living room, and that corner might start to feel heavy.
On the other hand, it might be a nice little desk/bill paying space, and could work nicely.

There is more planned, but this is the first part of our renewal. I also need to think about how my new work space will function and how to organize it without overfilling it with stuff (which I have a lot of).