Curious
watching the Law & Order SVU episode being filmed right outside my window…..want to see Mariska? I’ve got pics.
OK, I’m getting kind of bored. They say that making a movie (or TV show) involves mostly standing around and waiting, and they’re not kidding. It takes a crew of dozens to do every single thing. Each person does one thing – this guy stands and slowly rolls up that piece of tape, another guy slowly rolls up another piece of tape, while half a dozen stand around and watch those two guys slowly roll up their pieces of tape. All for one very brief scene. I’m just uploading the photos into a flickr set, which I’ll update when anything interesting happens. I want to see the hair and make-up girls make the murder victim look victimized. If that happens, I’ll snap the pic.
To work. Enough farting around for me this morning.
I thought the murder scene was a cab, but I was wrong. The team spent all morning preparing the cab for a driving-around scene, with Mariska in the cab.
Hair and makeup are still outside my window, and now the team is setting up tables and tents. More to come….
I thought the murder scene was a cab, but I was wrong. The team spent all morning preparing the cab for a driving-around scene, with Mariska in the cab.
-
- and there she is!
-
- Mariska’s inside – lighting the scene
Hair and makeup are still outside my window, and now the team is setting up tables and tents. More to come….
The SVU victim will be in a cab, I think – literally just a few feet from me:
The SVU victim will be in a cab, I think – literally just a few feet from me:
lighting the murder scene
i’ve never HAD time to kill! i don’t know what to do with it.
greek yogurt with greek honey - luscious
It’s so strange, going from having too little (time) to having an abundance. From having too much (stress) to having almost none. I don’t quite know what to do with myself.
I know what I want to do with myself! I want to arrange a life of balance, that’s the big picture. I want to do yoga regularly, to strengthen my very bad back; I want to walk regularly, to be outdoors and to benefit my heart; I want to lose a bit of weight and eat well; I want to write; I want to line up enough work so I don’t feel frantic about it; I want to make things; I want to stay connected to people; I want to keep my house clean and neat. Balance.
If I’m not careful, though, I piddle away time without doing anything at all. I sit with my laptop, just checking this site one more time and oh yeah let me look at that one and oh wait I need to respond to this and after I look at that I’m shutting it down and getting busy and then it’s time for dinner. That’s what happened yesterday.
I tend toward Prussian organization, which then collapses and I’m back to wasting. In other words, I get way too anal about it, like this: On Mondays from 8:30 to 8:45 do this. From 8:45 to 9:45 do that. Tuesdays and Thursday from 7:15 to 8:45 do that. Every Wednesday afternoon from 3:00 to 4:15 do that. Rigid, strict, entirely structured. And all it takes, when you’re set up like that, is one fail and then the whole thing can wash down the drain. (Of course it needn’t, but if you’re a person with these tendencies, that’s what happens.)
So I think instead, well, how about if I just say “3 mornings a week I’ll spend an hour doing yoga” etc. But what I do in reality is this: well, right now I’ll just finish my coffee and poking around the internet, then I’ll get up and straighten up the living room – I’ll do yoga tomorrow.
Maybe, instead, I need to deconstruct the beginning – do what alcoholics have to do when they’re trying to learn how to stay clean. Break up the routine that supports the addiction. Right now, I get up and make a little pot of coffee — 2 mugs’ worth — and then I slowly drink my coffee and feel justified in poking around the internet. Just while I drink my coffee, you know? That’s all. Then I’ll get busy. But I take a long time with it! I may take 2 hours drinking those 2 mugs of coffee. A little sip, poke poke poke. Sip poke poke poke. Sip poke poke poke. It’s really really hard to break up that very slow start to my day. Every night I think, as I drift off to sleep, “in the morning, don’t open the computer, just take your coffee to the table and write by hand for 20 minutes. Just do that.” But then I don’t, because I’m tired. Or whatever.
My life has been entirely structured, forever. Babies’ nursing schedules, naptimes, picking up kids from school/snack/homework/dinner/baths/tucking in. My own college and grad school schedules. Work work work work work work, always at jobs that are intense and draining and never the kind that nourishes me in any way.
So now, here I am, for the first time in my 51 years of life, with time. I can’t squander it. Do you have any advice for me? How do you manage your time?
what do you call a dealie-bobber?
I don’t know what this is actually called; my dad was a draftsman for an architectural firm and I remember seeing him sitting at a table, with blueprints spread in front of him and a carmine pencil in his right hand, counting electrical outlets. With each touch of the red pencil on an outlet symbol, he’d click the thing.
here's how you use it
I keep it in the drawer with my other miscellaneous stuff next to the couch; now and then I see it and think “maybe I’ll use that to count rows” but of course I don’t. My dad died in 1982, and this is one of 2 things I have, of his. If you know what this is called, let me know! It’s probably just called a counter. 
But I like old things like this, old machines.
For a bit of knitted content, since that’s the ostensible reason for this blog, I set aside my circle socks to finish (or at least almost finish) Marnie’s wedding shawl. Here’s how it looks now, with the heel flap. I just adore the color changes.
heel flap done, ready to pick up gusset stitches
And finally, since I’ve mentioned that Marnie’s wedding is handmade, I thought I’d show you a bit of her invitation. She is a print-maker and artist and book artist, so she put it all together for a truly unique wedding invitation. Guests received a giant mailing tube in the mail; inside was a large woodblock print of the wedding cabin, done in the style of the old WPA National Parks posters. It’s amazing. She carved the blocks by hand, of course, and printed them all one at a time.
Also in the tube was a small handmade book providing all the details – the when, where, how, what else to see, etc. It’s so charming I wanted to show you a couple of things from it:
adorable, right? this is the front cover of the book.
When you open the book, you get the charming story of the beginning of Tom and Marnie’s life together. She handset the type:
the top of the page (click to enlarge, and you can read it)
the bottom of the page
Then there are a few pages of specific information, followed by the schedule of events for the wedding day. I draw your attention to one part of that page:
look in the red box. are they cute? YES.
I love this. I was never clever enough, or self-confident enough, to think about any options beyond the norm. It worked, and that was good enough!
But isn’t that adorable? Really? It’s not just me, right? She also included unique postcards in each tube for the RSVPs. Each postcard featured a great old woodblock print of the WPA National Parks. Ever the artist, she created a flickr set to show all the responses. They’re often quite wonderful; click here to see them.
We’re dying here in NYC; today it hit 102 in Central Park. Lest you southerners or westerners scoff “102, big deal!” keep in mind that people here don’t have central air, for the most part. They have little window units, if they have anything at all. Back in the 70s, people used to leave their apartments and sleep in Central Park when it was too hot, but then it became too dangerous to do that.
Stay cool, yo.
where the hell IS everybody?
riverside park
That photo was taken today – Saturday, a summer Saturday, at 1:30. It’s 87 degrees, calm winds. Really nice! SO WHERE IS EVERYONE?
This is New York City! Crowded, teeming New York City. BUT: This is New York City in the summer. It really empties out, at least in the parts of town where people live. I’m sure Times Square is its usual bloated bleeting mass of tennis-shoed, fanny-packing, camera-wielding humanity, but luckily, I don’t have to go there.
Parking is easy – spots everywhere. Sidewalks aren’t crowded. Parks are pretty empty. New Yorkers go to the beach – the Jersey shore, out to the Hamptons, anywhere there’s a spot to lie down with water nearby. And luckily, since I live on an island and am surrounded by other islands and a coastline on the Atlantic, there are lots of options. I usually sneak onto the private beach in one of the Hamptons during the summer.
Me, though, as a pale-skinned very white woman, I’m delighted to sit indoors, watch the sun streaming through my white curtains, bake something yummy, watch something engrossing, and knit my brains out. I’m so easy.
Here’s some summer music for you:
help me swatchers, help help me swatchers
There are some things we all know we should do – flossing our teeth at least twice a day, weight-bearing exercise as we age – and swatching, if we knit. I confess that I have never swatched, and I know I should but I don’t quite get it.
I understand the need to make a swatch if I’m making a garment that needs to fit in a particular way. Scarves don’t have to be swatched, I get that. Sweaters do. Yep, I get it. I know how to change needles to get stitch gauge but I don’t know what to do if my row gauge is off, even if the stitch gauge is right. Basically I just kind of do a bit of ostrich-dealing, pretend I don’t know anything about row gauge, and sally forth. It hasn’t been a problem, since I’ve frogged every sweater I started.
This time, though, I want to really make a sweater. Finish it, block it, take it to the end and end up with something I love to wear. So I know I need to learn more about swatching. When I’ve got spilkes, or when I’m not going to get to use a new yarn for a while and I’m just dying to do more than touch it, I’ll cast on 20-30 stitches and just knit a few rows in stockinette, to try to get it out of my system. Hardly swatching, but still, it’s a little fun.
I couldn't leave that Rowan Felted Tweed alone....
But there’s another thing about swatching I really don’t understand. I’ll read people’s posts describing swatching all the new yarn they get. Or they’ll say things like “my binders full of swatches were taking over the library!” and I just don’t know what that means. Even if I pretend I know what it’s like to design a sweater, I can imagine making very specific swatches to figure out the yarn and needle combination to get drape; the yarn and needle combination for different weights of yarn if I want to provide alternatives; and the gauge issues for pattern knitting. I get that. Is there some other use for swatching that I just don’t understand? Swatchers? (and I’m serious: how do you change needle sizes to hit row gauge, when the stitch gauge is right?!)
help me choose!
SO! Freedom is coming, along with more time to knit. Halle-freakin-lujah, that’s all I have to say. My last day at work will be July 7 (or sooner, if I get everything done). Marnie’s wedding is July 17 (but I’m heading up there on the 15th). In the short run, here are my deadlines:
- finish all my work stuff
- finish knitting Marnie’s wedding shawl
- finish an online course (6-weeks in length, week 3 begins today, which means it ends on Marnie’s wedding day)
So everything is coming to a head on July 17, and after that? Complete and total freedom, for a while, anyway. I’ll have to be scurrying around trying to line up work, and I need to do some deep house cleaning, but relatively speaking, I’ll have the luxury of some free time, which I haven’t had in …. um …. oh, since 1994, more or less.
green ishbel
My first goals will be to finish my Mondo Cable Cardigan and my lettuce green Ishbel. And whatever small sock-ish project I’ve got going, too.
I recently realized that all the projects I’ve been knitting I rate as “piece of cake” or “easy” when I complete the rav project page, so I want to challenge myself. Of course there is more than one way to challenge yourself – choose a technique you haven’t tried, a more complicated pattern than you’ve tried, or a larger project that requires stick-to-it-iveness. And here’s where you come in.
So many of my best rav friends make sweaters – lots of sweaters (I’m looking at you, Kelly and Jocelyn, among others). I’ve started several sweaters but never even finish the back, or up to the sleeves (until now with the Mondo cardigan). I start thinking it’s going to look dumb, or homemade, or that it won’t be flattering. And then I frog. So I want to commit myself to starting and finishing a sweater, but I want to give myself the best shot at sticking with it and ending up with something I love.
If you are on ravelry, here is my sweater queue (though obviously I’m not committed to the order, at all!). I have sweater quantities of Classic Elite Princess, KnitPicks Shine Sport, Madelinetosh Pashmina and TML, and Valley Yarns Sheffield. Have you made any of the sweaters in my queue? Or another sweater that you truly, truly love and wear a lot?
I’m inclined toward these – one you’d vote for?
[poll id="2"]
OR, of course, just tell me your fave!
show me your hands!
I have a thing for hands – lots of people do, I think. I’ve never really liked my hands because they look just like my dad’s and grandmother’s hands, which is weird because I always loved my dad’s hands. They were not always kind hands, but I still thought they were beautiful. Recently I’ve started thinking differently about my own hands, because my daughter casually mentioned – in passing – something about my beautiful hands. It was the casual in passing part that produced the shift; she said it as if it were obvious.
I also realized, when looking at a couple of blog posts this morning, that when I see a knitter’s hands I feel like I know her better. In fact, I feel like I know her differently when I see her hands, as opposed to when I see her face. So I got this idea for a show of hands. I’ll show you mine if you show me yours? I’ve pulled a couple of photos I already have, and then I took some while I was kneading bread for a how-to-make-bread tutorial on my other blog, Luscious.
pay no attention to the face - i was trying to explain SOMETHING but i don't remember what. i like my hand, it does look graceful.
waiting to board the flight to Zagreb - Newark Airport is boring, unless you have your knitting with you. Ishbel plus leaving for vacation = happy me! But I like my hands here.
This one’s blurry because it’s an action shot, but I love seeing hands making things:
kneading bread
SO again, I don’t mean you need to show your whole self, just your hands. If you show them in a post on your own blog, leave a comment here with the link so I can go meet you. Whatever – let’s just have a show of hands!
why can’t i just say “i’m a photographer”?!
When do you shift from saying “I do X” to “I am a X“ From, for example, I knit, to I am a knitter. I design, I am a designer. I like to write, I am a writer. There is an important psychological shift that has pretty fascinating implications for health-related concerns – I have diabetes –> I am a diabetic.
This morning I was reading through a ravelry forum about photography. One woman said something like “I am a photographer blah blah” and she gave a link to her work. I really love photography; I have favorite photographers, books about the philosophy of photography and how-to books; I have a folder of photos of favorite photographs. And I enjoy taking photographs. So I clicked the link to see her work and it was really not good at all. Very poor lighting, trite, poor quality of the images themselves, etc. And she is a
me and my camera
photographer. My photographs aren’t anything special, but they are considerably better than hers.
So my point is not to boast about my photographs, because I’m not doing that, but rather to think about the identity issue. I don’t know why it’s so hard for me to make those kinds of claims – it’s not as if it matters! I could walk around saying “I’m a writer,” “I’m a photographer,” “I’m a baker,” etc., and it would not make one bit of difference to the world or to anyone. But I can’t do it. I like to write, I like to take pictures, I like to make bread. I see other people making the claim, and I’m always in a bit of awe at their self-confidence.
I can imagine possible reasons for my hesitation: it feels like bragging; it feels like I’m saying “I am a professional X” when I’m not, and if anyone looked at 
my ‘work’ that’s exactly what they’d think, that I’m full of myself, or lying in some way. I think another aspect relates to my thoughts about writing and photography; books have always been extremely important to me, and I hold writers in very high esteem. They have a kind of exalted place in the world, to my mind. Photographers less so, but good photographers can transform people, understandings, even policy. To say “I am a writer” just feels impossible. Salman Rushdie is a writer. Cormac McCarthy is a writer. Victor Hugo is a writer. Jose Saramago is a writer. I am not Rushdie, or any of those.
I also think that saying “I am a” invites people to ask if they’ve seen/read your work. It implies public or professional acceptance and reward. At a party: “I’m a writer.” “Really, have I read anything of yours?” “No, I just like to write.” Clunk.
But that’s not what people mean when they casually claim these identities (I think). The ravelry woman is a photographer because she takes pictures. Maybe I just need to get over myself and quit over-thinking everything. I do have a tendency to do that. In psychology, there is a construct called “need for cognition,” the meaning of which is pretty obvious. People vary along a continuum in their need for cognition, and I’m way way way at the top of the scale. 99th percentile, I’d guess.
paralyzed by gorgeousness.
This is what happens when you have yarn that’s just so perfect, you have to pick a pattern that does justice to it and shows it to its best effect. I am paralyzed. I have a bunch of madelinetosh in my stash, and want to make something really beautiful. I’m thinking of the Daybreak shawl, which has been made 43 times with madtosh sock. (Sorry for the ravelry links, if you’re not on rav. If not, why?!)
So I have 3 skeins of tosh merino light, in filigree, and my new skein of eyre light in jodhpur, but I don’t know how well they’d go together. Since I have 3 of the filigree and one of the jodhpur, I’m thinking the green would be the main color. What do you think, seriously?
do you see a daybreak shawl in these yarns together?
I just can’t decide. I really ought to swatch them together. That’s the only way to answer this. Still, if the combo strikes you in some way – great or awful – please say so! I’m just as interested in the bad as the good.
Have you read Veronica, by Mary Gaitskill?
Have you read Veronica, by Mary Gaitskill? If not that one, any other by Gaitskill? I get to select our book for next month’s book club, and while I’ve been eagerly waiting my turn, finding out that I’m up next has thrown me into a bit of a tizzy. I realized anew just how personal reading choices are, and while I’m pretty sure it would be impossible to pick a single book that would appeal to this whole crowd, I’d like to select something that would grab them. It’s a bunch of really smart professional women, and I’m the oldest, and the only mother. My boss is in the group, as are three co-workers and one former co-worker.
So I’m thinking Veronica might be interesting, but I’d sure like to hear from anyone who’s read it.
creativity boot camp. you know you want to do it.
Luckily I don’t have to shave my head, or worry about the current [flabby] state of my abs and pecs, because this boot camp is all about creativity. And it’s FREE. Sign up? I just did. It runs June 6-18.
I don’t know what to expect, exactly, but it might show up in my blog posts during that period.
My kids are extremely creative; my oldest daughter teaches 1st grade (and is Teacher of the Year, hell yeah) and she can whip up the coolest things without even thinking about it. The kids in her classes are lucky ducks. My second daughter is an artist (buy her work here please, at monkeyrope press…but you have to move quickly because her stuff is selling like hotcakes!). The work in her shop is her commercial stuff; she’s very much a conceptual artist too, but that work shows up in galleries rather than in her etsy shop. My son is just so gifted verbally, and he’s hilarious and creative without giving it a second’s thought.
Their father likes to draw, and I make a lot of stuff, so I guess they came by it honestly, but they took our meager gifts to new heights. I wish I were more creative; I’m a pretty good technician, but I wouldn’t say I’m creative, except with language now and then.
So here’s to boot camp, and to more creativity in the world!
gotta learn this new thing, what’s wrong with me?!
Fear is a funny thing. It’s a good thing if there’s a bear chasing you; fear makes you run fast. But it’s a silly thing if you’re afraid of learning a new knitting skill. Really, Lori? Afraid of Judy’s Magic Cast-On? REALLY? Come. On. It’s knitting, and I am holding the sharp pointed sticks. I can just stop at any time. Nothing terrible is going to happen; the worst thing would be if I got sweaty and was nervous and not figuring it out and therefore feeling stupid.
Is that it? It makes me feel stupid, like I don’t know anything? I already know that I don’t know all that much! But I’ve become comfortable. I can knit top-down socks with no stress. I get it, I know the tricks, I don’t make mistakes. On the other hand, I also don’t have very much time to knit, so when I do get to knit, I want to be knitting, not sweating with anxiety! But on the other hand, I also want to grow, and challenge myself, and learn new tricks, so as soon as I finish the wedding shawl, I’m going to do it: Judy’s Magic Cast-On and toe-up socks.
YIKES!
two socks at once! Double yikes!
Once I’ve got the cast-on figured out, I’ll learn the little heel tricks you use for toe-up socks. Then, with all that confidence surging through me, I’ll tackle continental knitting. I see big things in my future.
Read other bloggers talking about new skills they want to learn here: knitcroblo4
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