Monday, February 23, 2009

naaaaaaaaaap

My wee one has been fast asleep for a record-breaking length of time.

Two hours and forty minutes? Seriously!? This is a wonderful thing, except I don't know how to manage my time. Had I known there would be two hours and forty one minutes of uninterrupted time in my life today, I might have made a list. I may have planned. I would have folded the clothes immediately, knowing that Wee One would sleep through the opening and closing of drawers. I might have swept the floor. I would have straightened the living room.

then again, I might have done just what I did and watched Big Love, begun a new knitting project, reheated some leftover stirfry, and caught up on some of my favorite blogs.

And she is still sleeping!

The weirdest part is that she usually wakes up right when I notice that she's been asleep for a long time. I think, "hey, she's been asleep for a while..." and almost instantly her little voice answers me from the other room.

And yet?

silence.

Wednesday, February 18, 2009

Thrift Score!

Hello, Edie is 13 months old yesterday. When did that happen?

This morning I had a good feeling about the thrift store, and I always try and act on it when that happens, especially after reading this cautionary tale over at owl in the dark. Asidedly, could her life appear any more charming? I'm completely fascinated with this lady's blog - her boyfriend used to play in the Cocteau Twins, she has two pure white cats and her knitted creations are like something an elf might have snuck in to make while she slept.

I'm on a limited budget now, so I've set up more rules about thrift store shopping. Thank goodness, or I'd find way too many things. All I ever look for anymore are wool sweaters. I found a pair of high heeled boots that I almost bought, until 70cents turned into 7dollars. Edie got to babysit the last half an inch of my green tea frappacino, as a reward/bribe for staying in her stroller, complacently fingering the fringe on a couple of shawls while I read the tags. Some of the older sweaters boast "100% virgin acrylic." Oh, virgin acrylic, huh? I don't know what that means, except it sounds more like wool that way. I found a little capelet made of 100% wool, with big easy seams to undo, and in a cream color which is good for dying. Then I discovered the Men's sweater section. Hello, cashmere! Hello, lambswool in argyle! Unfortunately I didn't have enough cash to rescue all the sweaters that deserve a new life as a felted blanket, but I have a good feeling they'll still be there when I return. It is getting warmer out, and I am becoming well-aquainted with a lot of the sweaters living at that store. In other words, the sweaters tend not to move very fast around here, so as far as scoring good wool for cheap goes, Inglewood is not the worst place to be.

I ended up with a hunter green cashmere sweater in a fingering or sock weight yarn and a light brown cashmere/angora/nylon blend in sock weight as well. I want to experiment with dying brown to see how it turns out. I also just found out last night that I can use Wilton's icing colors (for cake decorating) to dye wool, which will give me more options for color mixing. When I told Kenneth, he left the room and brought back a package of icing color that he'd bought a while back. Sweet.

So....I just realized what the most positive aspect of living here has been, for me. I've been so focused on what we are missing here, that we used to have in Portland - plenty of friends, parks, nice places to walk, a public transportation that is not brain surgery to utilize, and perhaps most of all, coffee shops - that I completely overlooked what has been happening in the vacuum. I am learning more and more to work with what I have, for entertainment aka yarn. Hunting for sweaters and colors to make new yarn with is one of my favorite things to do here, and the love of yarn is starting to consume me. If I were working, I'd probably spend too much of my paycheck at the yarn shop, amassing cool balls of color to store in my stash bin and perhaps knit up someday. Since I can't really afford to horde yarn like that, my thoughts turn more and more often to creating my own yarn. I think about color combinations all the time, and I've been watching videos about spinning yarn online.

And here I thought I might focus on writing, if everything that kept me preoccupied in Portland was removed.

I'm not sure if these thoughts are clearly laid out...it was a mini-piphany that I had while walking around the same old dirty streets, looking for new colors in the cracks......

and This weeks list of Ten...

Ten songs that describe you or your life.

huh.

1. Sovay, by Andrew Bird, though I don't know why.
2. Emily, by Joanna Newsom
3. Little Room, by the White Stripes
4. Me and the Bean, by Spoon
5. Here it Comes, by Modest Mouse
6. Good Friday, by CocoRosie
that's all I got.

Friday, February 13, 2009

blog neglect

Hi there.

I just signed up to receive weekly blog prompts, Ten on Tuesday, because I have been feeling utterly uninspired to make words out of life lately. The words would be something like

ice cream

homesick
television
bike ride
new shorts
knitting knitting blah blah blah
edie this and that
dirty
gerty
jinx
etcetera

The good news is that we've been having at-least-once-weekly playdates with Clementine and her mom Kimb, which means (a) we get out of the house and (b) we practice our social skills. Oh, and (c) sometimes I get paid to play toys and go to the park while Kimb keeps the books at her new job.

This week's list of ten, by the way, only a couple of days late, is Ten Things You're Really Good At.

Hmm. Okay,

1. Being Edie's mom. Every day has it's bad mama moments, such as leaving the child out back with the dog while I ran inside for such necessities as coffee, knitting, notecards, my cell phone; returning to find the child squeezing under the gate on her way to freedom aka the driveway and beyond that, The Busy Street; then running back through the house to catch her out front because I have no key for that gate and am not the correct size for squeezing under (as are Edie and the cats), narrating the whole time while on the phone with my mother for comedy's sake. Or it might be as simple as trying to prevent the child from falling into a water fountain by accidentally knocking the child into the water fountain. (try and figure that one out, it's like a moebius strip or one of those other things that I cannot for the life of me describe or name - a glass vase whose handle becomes a hole in its center? if anybody has a guess help me out! name that mystery object) Just as complex as all that is the fact (theory?) that I'm best at being Edie's mom, even though there are lots of times when I am a crappy mom. I believe I got picked for the team because I'm really good at doing whatever it is that the child needs her maternal unit to do, in order to carry out her earthly directive on this go-round.

2. Typing. Maybe not so good at grammar or make-sensical sentence structure, but sure do I love to hear the sound of keys clicking as I spell out combinations of letters that may or may not have anything to say for themselves.

3. Going with the flow, sometimes. Or at least compared to the kinds of people I've been surrounding myself with lately. Just kidding, everybody I am referring to! Jokes! What I mean is, even though sometimes I get a little controlfreaky because I think my way is the best way, for the most part I think I've learned to let life take the wheel. That's the best way to get somewhere new, to be surprised.....wait a second, see? The "best way"? Exactly what I just told you.

4. Watching Battlestar Galactica which brings me to numbers

5-10. Kenneth just home and the baby is asleep (miracle!) and it's time to watch the latest episode of BSG.

Happy Vallantimes Day!

Wednesday, February 4, 2009

ee hoppings

Gotta make this quick because I'm not alone at the helm.

Today we went to the Getty Museum and ran down the grassy hill with Clementine. we played in the kid's section and danced in front of lots of movable mirrors. We sang into long foam tubes meant for sticking into holes in walls, an interactive version of the giant pipe sculpture in the front of the place. We nursed our babies in a cgo6iijrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrjj


see waht I mean


?
ell into the fountain. G ot l
agll 0weht

N
b0 Atee\\


9.nd then Edie fell into

the reflecting pool for a mom etn.

got all drippy and soaked.

and it's funny because the woman who took Kimb's ten dollar parkiung fee had a tattoo on her arm which was this poem by ee cummings:

1(a

le
af
fa
ll

s)
one
l

iness
Hmmmm coincidence?

ee cummings?
EE?
Edith Emily?

alert the dalai lama.

Sunday, February 1, 2009

moving pitchas!

Erika Shira, an old friend from highschool who found me on facebook, made this from Edith Emily's Santa pictures:



which is so cool because I don't know how to do that, but I wanted to!

Thanks Erika. Your computer prowess has no limits.