Rose Campion

Sweet Summer Pretties- five Etsy faves (and a bonus)

2010-08-11T10:51:00.000-07:00

We're heading into the last days of summer, sadly. August is my favorite month, but it's always a little bittersweet because I know it will be over before I know it and then it's back to the grind of the cold. Still, there's a little time to grab onto these last lovely days and savor them. And here's a few of my favorite summer lovelies from Etsy.

I love this necklace from little black rabbitt. The artist uses one of my favorite things- old tin tray and arranges them into a sweet but simple necklace.

What can I say about this print from thewheatfield other than it's so pretty and I want one?

I adore those stacking vintage mugs and this set of four from Vintage Reinvented is particularly pretty. Perfect for sitting on the balcony, sipping coffee on summer mornings. Or, more likely, in the winter time, inside, dreaming of summer days past and yet to come.

I love theseRainbow colored party poms from Party Poms . I'd hang them up in my dining room and every day would feel like a party, wouldn't it?

Check out her Petite Poms too.

I don't iron. Life is far too short for that. But I do sew sometimes, and you need an ironing board for that. This ironing board cover by City Chic Country Mouseis so lovely and sweet. It might almost make you forget that you've already ripped out and resewn that stupid seam five times already and still haven't gotten it right.

And a bonus favorite from Toybreaker, for the guys, and other tie wearing folks. Not sweet at all. But with clipper ships. I have an enduring love for clipper ships and other tall ships from the golden age of sail.

We've already got our tickets for Tall Ships Chicago on one of the last weekends of the summer. I love this event. We went last time the tall ships were in the city and it was just amazing. I marvel every time I see one at the intricacy of them and the craftsmanship. They are so beautiful.

2010-08-09T18:43:00.000-07:00

There are no words that can express just how much I love this video. Just watch it.

40 before 40- cushions for the sofa

2010-07-27T07:07:00.000-07:00

So, I made some cushions for my sofa. To be fair, I had the fronts of the cushions done a long time ago, but they were sitting in my red chest for months, unfinished, waiting for me to get it together and sew them up. The white, aqua and yellow one was inspired by one I saw done by Emma Lamb, only I didn't have the same colors of yarn she used. I used leftovers from my stash. Oh, and I didn't save a picture of my inspiration, so I was working from my memory of the cushion. It's basically just a ginormous granny square. It was fast and fun to work up. The back I sewed using a thrifted velveteen big shirt in orange. I was able to save the button holes so that I can unbutton the cover, in case I ever want to wash it or replace the insert.

The multi colored one with the small grannies, I pretty much copied directly from Lucy, one of my favorite bloggers and crocheters, from her blog Attic 24. The back is just rounds of half-double crochet in leftover yarn from the front. The front did seem to take forever, but I think that's mainly because with so many colors, there were so many ends to bury. I wasn't able to think of a clever way to make this cushion removable, but each side was sewn separately, so if I ever need to get the insert out, it'll be an easy matter to just undo one side and sew it back up again. I thought about putting a zipper in, but that would have meant a trip to the fabric store. I'd had a certain momentum, working on these and I didn't want to lose that by taking a hour or two (or three- you never know with me and the fabric store) to go to the store.

40 before 40- the Starbucks Challenge

2010-07-19T11:53:00.000-07:00

One of my forty goals is to kick the Starbucks habit. At four bucks a time, I've been known to spend thirty dollars a week just on my morning coffee. Not to mention the temptation of muffins or scones, which are both not vegan and very hard for me to resist.

What you see here may not look like much, but it's the key weapon in my struggle to stay out of the Starbucks. It's a Coffee Toddy, the easiest, most convenient way I've ever found to make cold brew coffee concentrate. It's lower in acid than most other ways to brew coffee, so it's also easier on my stomach. I didn't run out and buy this. It's one of those things I've had floating around the house for a while, not getting used much. I've committed to making my own coffee and so I dragged it out of the high cupboard where it used to live. It's really easy to use and surprisingly quick, with a little planning. I buy the coffee pre-ground, rather than having to grind it each morning. It takes about five minutes of effort to set it up to brew, then it sits over night. In the morning, pull the plug in the bottom and ten minutes later, its all drained into the carafe. Throw the used grounds out and then it goes into the dishwasher for cleanup. Yup. Brilliant.

The other thing you see is the best cup for iced coffee ever. Seriously awesome. BPA free. Double walled so it doesn't sweat. With the straw included.

What I do in the morning is pour a couple of ounces of the coffee concentrate into my tumbler, add a four or five ounces of chocolate almond milk, then top everything off with ice. It's not exactly an iced mocha, but it's almost better in my mind. It's got just enough happy inducing chocolate without being so numbingly sweet like the Starbuck's iced mochas. Also, it takes like one tenth the time it does to stop at the Starbucks, wait in line, order, have them make my drink, and pay up.

Best of all, it fits into water bottle cage of my bike and I'm off to work with no fuss.

time for a new bike bag

2010-07-18T13:35:00.000-07:00

I'm probably harder on panniers than the average cyclist. I use them every day, rain or shine. I jam them full of gym clothes, groceries, books from the library, finds from the thrift store. Basically anything and everything I want to haul. A bike is to be used and panniers or some kind of bag and a rack really contribute to their utility. So much so that I can't imagine having a bike without at least some kind of rack even if I intend to use it for nothing but sport riding.

Anyway, my current bag, which is a Detours Toocan in green, a slightly different shade of green than this, is getting really shabby looking. During my dooring adventure a few weeks back, it also acquired a hole in the side. Not a big one, but it's growing. I've had it for maybe three years and it's served me well. It's super convenient because the hard rubber bottom makes it stand up on the floor, table, etc and the mouth opens wide for filling it up with my various junk.

This time though I want something pretty. Something cheerful. Most bike panniers are unrelentingly utilitarian, coming in any color you want, so long as it's black. Or black and safety orange. Or alternatively, you can find something pretty but that only carries five pounds of stuff

I've done a little digging and I've come up with a few bags that nicely skirt the grounds between utilitarian and pretty. Bags for people like myself who want to carry more than a loaf of French bread and a bundle of flowers home from the farmers' market, but that still want that kind of romance and cheer in their life. I'm not sure what to get. Why don't you help me pick one out?

First we have the Detours Toocan Juicy Weave. Made by the same people who made my current bag, it's very much exactly like it, only made out of woven, recycled juice boxes. How cool is that?

Next we have the Axiom Town and Country Shopper in navy polka dots. I love navy polka dots! It looks sharp and sporty to me. Sporty in the old sense of "plays tennis and rides horses in the country" kind of sporty.

Basil Mirte Shopper in Rosa/Color mix is maybe my top contender at the moment. It's so bright and it looks like you found it at Cath Kidston only it attaches to your bicycle.

On the other hand, words can hardly convey just how brilliant the Basil Mirte Shopper in Blue/White will look with my light blue bike. And it's just like Delft ware. I love Delft ware.

So, what bag gets your vote?

40 before 40

2010-07-16T11:48:00.000-07:00

Last month around my birthday, I wrote about making a list of things I wanted to do before my next birthday. I know this is hardly original, but bear with me, I think it will be valuable to me. One of my bigger faults is that I exist in a state of goalless fuzziness most days. I have things I want to do, to accomplish, but somehow, because I have no real, concrete plans or goals, not a lot gets accomplished most days.

It was harder than I thought, writing this list. Everything had to be concrete, with an actual, measurable result. I didn't want to put vague wishes on the list, like "do more X". The temptation was definitely there to make it all too self-helpish, or alternatively, to make it nothing but a "honey-do" list of things I want to do around the house. I wanted to have fun too. So, after a month of thinking about it (and to be truthful) procrastinating, here is my list of 40 things I want to do before I turn 40. I'll write posts here, detailing my accomplishments, the fun I might have, the improvements I've made.

1. visit Sharon in Milwaukee again

2. get up to the MCA

3. dye my hair- blonde?

4. Finish the quilt

5. Go on a biking camping trip

6. Break my Starbucks habit

7. Do a mini kitchen makeover so I can finally have the kitchen I want

8. Organize my dresser so everything fits, nothing is jammed in

9. See a Shakespeare play

10. Set up a dedicated sewing area in my flat

11. Make one dress a season, four total

12. Have at least one party

13. Finish the tattoo on my arm

14. Read at least one of the “classics I'm catching up with” a month

15. Organize and clean out the red chest

16. Take a painting class

17. Shoot 100 pictures a month

18. Buy my dream bike

19. Make cushions for my sofa

20. See one movie a month in the theater

21. Make a full deal fancy layer cake again

22. Go hiking with my sister

23. Go to bed at the same time as my spouse, pretty much every night

24. Go to the beach, at least once.

25. Make twenty more knitted hats for charity

26. Wallpaper the dining room

27. Wear every item in my closet at least once

28. Kayaking!

29. Have a professional portrait taken of myself and husband

30. Save 50% of what I earn

31. Organize my kitchen cabinets/pantry

32. Put at least 30 more of my books into circulation on “book crossing”

33. Go back to knit club (the first rule about knit club...)

34. Weekly pleasure rides, for as long as weather permits

35. Get involved with the new community garden here

36. Take a glass blowing class

37. Start and keep up a simple, short diary

38. Replace all the boring kitchen stuff with colorful stuff that will make me smile

39. Go to Ravinia for a concert and picnic

40. Go on a picnic, just because.

Public Service Announcement

2010-07-07T13:03:00.000-07:00

Seriously folks, if you're on a bike, wear your helmet. I had a little bike accident on Friday night. I was wearing my helmet and I was glad I was. I have no dramatic photos of bruises or skinned knees for you. Most of my aches and pains from the accident are internal (my neck is still out of wack. Chiropractor, here I come!). But I did hit my head and my helmet had a chance to do what they're supposed to.

See, that's the thing about accidents, you can't plan them. You can't decide that you'll always land in such a way that you won't hit your head. They happen so fast, without warning. So, really. Be safe. Wear it. It doesn't matter if it's too hot or if you're just going to be on the bike path. For what it's worth, the worst bike accident I've ever seen was on the bike path, between a cyclist and a pedestrian. Both were taken away in ambulances. Wear a helmet, because you never know when you'll need it.

Why did I never think of this before?

2010-07-02T12:04:00.000-07:00

I've worked at the same place for nearly eight years and yet yesterday, I did something I'd never done before. I took my bike out for a ride during my break. I don't know why it never occurred to me in eight years that I could do this. I've been wanting to get more rides into my life. Admittedly, an hour isn't a very long time for a ride, but it's better than not riding at all.

In that precious hour, I got to go for lunch at a place I love but have always considered too far away to go during my break. I did an errand that has been pressing on my mind, but that it seemed like I didn't have time for. And I rode about two or three miles. Awesome. The weather has been fantastic lately, perhaps even a little too cold for my taste, but sunny and fresh, so riding was a pure pleasure. I didn't ride fast, so I arrived back at work just as rested as if I'd sat reading magazines (my usual break time pleasure), not sweaty in the slightest and ready to go back to work. What could have been better?

It makes me think, what other ways have I been unconsciously stuck in my routine, that I could change for the better, just by thinking differently?

Just a few more pictures of London

2010-06-28T17:34:00.000-07:00

A summer house built for a Queen, just so she would have somewhere to have picnics. Shades of Marie Antoinette, eh? This rustic folly being much larger than most average homes. The queen, though was Queen Charlotte, wife to King George the III, interesting because between bearing fifteen children, she still found time to support the arts and music, including the composers Handel and Mozart, as well as be an amateur botanist, working on Kew Gardens, where this summer house and the delightful little palace, Kew Palace stand.

There was this brick garden wall in the charming neighborhood we stayed in that had wisteria, in full bloom, climbing all over it. I love wisteria, but have never been able to grow it, as it's a little too tender for Chicago's northern climes.

The reflecting pond and garden in front of Kensington Palace. The ranks of flowers so brilliant and beautiful, the garden so serene. I wish I could walk in this park every day.

Some of my favorite pictures from London

2010-06-15T16:17:00.000-07:00

Everything seemed to be in bloom when we arrived. Everything. Even the chestnut trees, which I'm not sure I've ever seen an actual chestnut tree in bloom before. They're very much like buckeye trees, which we do have in plenty around here, but it filled my heart with delight to see actual chestnut trees. Almost all of the chestnut trees in America died of the blight early in the last century. I guess there are some around, but they're hybrid Chinese and they're mostly all very young trees. Kensington Gardens and Hyde Park were both filled with massive, obviously ancient chestnut trees. So beautiful and magnificent.

We went to Covent Garden a couple of times this trip. My husband loves the buskers. There's tons of great shopping in the area too, including Cath Kidston. In the Covent Garden Market they have lots of lovely little stalls with handcrafted goods and vintage and antique wares. One could spend hours shopping in this neighborhood.

The bluebell woods in Kew Gardens are just enchanting. We spent the whole day wandering the grounds. When the bluebells are out, there's this haze of blue in every clearing it seems, under every tree, every where you look. Kew is such a magical place anytime, with trees from every corner of the globe and fantastic greenhouses, from so very Victorian palm houses to super modern desert houses.

This little staircase is in Hampton Court, the biggest of the three palaces I visited this time. Built by Cardinal Woolsey for his own residence and later claimed by Henry the VIII for his royal court, Hampton Court is simply sprawling. It's half Tudor, half Baroque, because William III tore part of the Tudor palace down, and rebuilt it, using Christopher Wren as his architect, intending for the palace to rival Versailles in size and magnificence. Thankfully, he ran out of money and never finished, so we have a remaining Tudor portion.

This picture is a little hallway off the part of the palace William III built and it leads up into the private residences. Even though no royalty have lived in the palace for three hundred years or so, it's still lived in. There are dozens of grace and favour apartments in this castle still. Can you imagine living in not just a palace, but in a palace owned by Henry the VIII? Also, I love the blue green of the woodwork, just the right tranquil shade of it.

This is the Chapel of the Old Royal Naval College, originally built as the Greenwich Hospital, a residence for injured and pensioned sailors of the Royal Navy. It's beautiful, isn't it? Just like a piece of Wedgwood china.

We spent a whole day at Greenwich, taking the Thames river taxi to get there. Which is about the most civilized public transportation option ever, by the way, with a decent coffee shop right on board! We saw baroque wonder after wonder, from a formal dining room with the most amazing painted ceiling to a small palace built for Queen Anne. But the chapel remains my favorite.

This carousel is on the south bank of Thames, near the London Eye and Jubilee Gardens. It just makes me happy to think about and too look at this picture of it.

Just a quick post

2010-06-12T07:07:00.000-07:00

I just turned 39 and I'm thinking about making up a 40 before 40 list of things I want to do before my next birthday. 40 wonderful, maybe wacky, definitely beautiful things I want to try that I haven't before. It's a lot to think up and about.

So, until then, I'll leave with a sneak peak of my London pictures. Bluebells, from the bluebell woods at Kew Gardens. God, I love Kew. It's simply one of the most beautiful (man made) places on the planet.

I love this

2010-06-03T18:29:00.000-07:00

Via Apartment Therapy who got it from the flickr user Cottonblue. And I just love this room. I actually love all the pictures of her home, especially the pictures of her blue and white kitchen. Make sure to follow the link and check them out. It's all so soft and granny chic. I'm really loving the granny chic these days.

What's interesting to me though is the vociferous hatred so many of the posters of Apartment therapy had for this picture. They hated the fact that they didn't match mostly. And I have to say, yeah, they don't match, but to my eye, they go together. The soft colors complement each other and the lines of the bookcases even work together.

To me, this row of bookcases has more style and more soul than the row of matched Billy bookcases with glass doors that I have in my condo.

So, what do you think? Cluttered and mismatched? Or sweet, unique granny chic?

five blogs I read every day

2010-05-26T15:59:00.000-07:00

Beyond the obvious ones, that is. I mean, beyond the usual big name design blogs like Apartment Therapy, SF Girl by the Bay, Decor 8 and Posey Loves Cozy, which of course I read everyday, but so does most everyone else. These are blogs that I like to think of as my little secret.

Does This Pen Write?. Devoted to office supplies, a great, secret love of mine, and particularly, pens.

Bohemian Hellhole. No, it's not updated every day, sadly, but I check every day to see if there's something new. I've never run across a design blogger who's aesthetic quite matches mine so closely.

Dottie Angel. It took me a little while to get used to the center justified format and the whimsicle, meandering text, but I just love every picture from this blog. She's doing a giveaway right now of the most gorgeous crocheted pillow. I didn't enter, because I can make my own, but so inspirational.

Lovely Bicycle. I think we all need more lovely bikes in our lives. And I just adore the pictures of the blogger's Pashley Princess.

The Mogg Blogg. Like Go Fug Yourself, but for interior design. Always screaming funny. Sometimes just makes you scream.

five things I love right now

2010-05-26T06:40:00.000-07:00

I love this Sweet Garland Venice Dream. I might hang it up with my string of cherry blossom lanterns. Or I might wrap presents with it. Or just spend hours looking at all the little maps on each dot.

I love this vintage princess phone. When I was a little girl, what I wanted more than anything to complete my strawberry and red and white gingham themed room was a white princess phone. My mom, quite rightly I suppose, didn't think a little girl of nine needed her own phone in her room. Now that I'm grown up, we don't have a land line and rely on our cell phones, but there's still a part of me that thinks it would be more glamorous, more elegant to place my calls on a princess phone.

This bicycle pendant would be just what I need to complete today's outfit. I love jewelry which lets the world know about my great love for my bike and lets me carry a little bit of the freedom and joy of biking with me when I'm stuck at work or in the store or wherever. This particular pendant is already sold, but etsy being the magical thing that it is, I'm sure the seller would be happy to make me, or you, a pendant very similar.

This garden party bunting is so cheerful. It's all things springy and cheerful and bright. I think I would hang this one in my bedroom, once I've finished my new vintage sheet patchwork quilt. This particular bunting is sold, but it would be so easy to make my own out of one of the sellers fat quarter bundles of reclaimed vintage fabrics. How cute would it look if you used lots of bright stripes with the florals?

We all need a little more Patience in our lives. I love Lisa Congdon and I love this painting. Perhaps it's my favorite of hers ever. It manages to make me smile as it inspires. How gorgeous are her color choices, right?

Back from vacation

2010-05-25T06:34:00.000-07:00

Hello Lovelies-

I had a brilliant time in London and took tons of photos. Over 500 in fact. I'm just dreading going through them to see if any are worthwhile. It was kind of freeing, having my digital camera and the huge chip and a fully charged battery, knowing I could take pretty much as many photos as I wanted. Still, going through them all. That'll be a task and a half. The computer has already spent ten minutes copying the files from my camera to my folder and it's not done yet. Maybe there's a more efficient way to get pictures from folder a to folder b, but I don't know it.

I'm sorry I didn't make a post about my planned trip. Mr. Campion has ideas about internet privacy and particularly didn't want random people on the web to know that our place would be empty for nearly two weeks. I guess he has a point.

In any case, soon there will be pictures of bluebell woods and palaces and a summer house folly that's bigger than most people's homes, but was built so a queen could have picnics in the woods.

Two new projects

2010-05-08T09:12:00.000-07:00

Both blankets. Of course, I need more blankets around this place like I need more holes in the head, but I can't help it, the crochet has me (ha ha) hooked. But so far I've only crocheted one afghan for the living room, this will be the second and I don't think you get into that special kind of crazy category until you've done more than five per room, right?

The stack of fabric is a bundle of vintage sheet fat quarters that I bought from Etsy. I'm slowly cutting them into 4 inch charm squares and the plan is to sew them into a simple quilt. I'm a little worried, because the last quilt I made was about fifteen years ago and I'm not known for patience in sewing. And a full size quilt takes plenty of patience. More pictures as I get further on.

Spring is finally, fully here

2010-04-22T07:35:00.000-07:00

Actually, this is a picture I took last summer, not of my place, but a house in my neighborhood that has a garden I particularly love. But it shows how green everything seems to have become suddenly, in what seems to be just the last few days. The trees have leafed out, the grass is no longer brown and the flowers, oh, the flowers. Tulips and daffs still out, lilacs just starting to bud out, the forsythia and kerria blazing yellow still. It's like everything has come at once this year. We had a handful of days that shot up to the eighties, but mostly it's been around a seasonal fifty or so degrees, just a bit of chill still, especially in the evenings. In short, perfect and glorious.

Another sure and certain sign that the year has changed though are the bike racks around town. While I'm not the only year round cyclist in my town, I'm one of a hardy few. I'll definitely see other bikes locked up or around town, but in January, there's never any problem getting a space at the bike rack. Yesterday, though, I went to a local coffee shop to meet a friend and every space was taken on the rack next door. Every space! I ended up having to lock up to a parking meter across the street. And lately, in front of my gym, most of the spots are often taken up with bikes. It makes me happy, it really does, to see people making use of their bikes.

When I first started riding everywhere for transportation, it was actually pretty lonely on the streets. I was often the only bike I would see on the street. Cars didn't give me much space or respect, I think because they weren't used to seeing a bike on the streets. That's changed in the ten years since I started shifting to bike transportation. Bikes are much more common now, though obviously much less common than cars, sadly.

My town is the perfect place to live car free, if you ask me, even year round, but especially in the good weather. It's small. Even the relatively physically unfit could ride from one end of town to the other easily. The streets are the human scale streets of an older town. No double lanes or highway like features. Plenty of stop signs and lights and other traffic calming features. We have most things that people need. No big box stores, obviously (though there is a Walmart I could cycle to, should I choose to do so. But. Ugh.), but we have grocery stores and coffee shops and clothing stores and office supply stores. We have a movie theater and bookstores and even a Ben and Jerry's ice cream shop. We're on two El lines that go into the city, as well as the Metra and plenty of bus lines. I can't think of a better place to live car free. And terrain is relatively flat which makes biking easy.

In short, it's perfect for the car free, bike rich life and I think more people are beginning to recognize that. I still dream of the day where we have bike pollution almost, like you see in Amsterdam, where you can hardly find a spot to park your bike at all, because there are so many.

Now that the winter's over...

2010-04-12T17:54:00.000-07:00

I thought I'd do a little bit about winter cycling. Basically, I'd have to say that it all comes down to this: it's not as hard as you think.

A good jacket helps a lot. I have this one. Add a fleece layer underneath and it's all I need for the coldest weather we get here in Chicago. A fleece hood is helpful too and maybe a pair of rain pants. I wear boots most of the winter anyway, so I don't wear special foot gear except for the very snowiest of weather.

What's more important than the gear is just deciding to do it.

There is a bit of an art when it comes to riding in the actual snow, but it comes with practice. I made it through this past winter and missed biking to work only twice because of the weather, which is to say when it was an ice storm. And there was one time I refused to go grocery shopping because it was so freaking cold, so we got the I Go car.

If you wanted to start winter cycling, you wouldn't have to be as hard core. You could decide to cycle on days when there is no snow on the roads, when it's not too cold. We have a surprising number of days in the winter here in Chicago where it's above freezing and there's no snow.

Why would someone want to do this? What is it that keeps me on the bike, year after year? Firstly, there's nothing quite so amazing as riding through an inch or two of powdery snow on streets that haven't been plowed, nor rutted up by cars, maybe with a few soft flakes still falling. There's the feeling of independence a bike gives, which for me, a car never did. But what I love most able winter cycling is the simplicity of it. I just get on the bike and go.

This made me smile today

2010-04-06T14:41:00.000-07:00

What made you smile today?

playing with my new Diana lens

2010-04-02T08:22:00.000-07:00

It came in the mail yesterday from photojojo, so of course I had to get it out and play with it a little. I've always been a little envious of the dreamy, almost but not quite overexposed, not quite out of focus pictures that a lot of bloggers take, I love the pictures ofSusannah Conway particularly. I struggle to get anything like that. My camera, when I have it in all auto mode, likes to take really clear, perfectly exposed photos that look more than a little flat to me. I thought the Diana lens would help with that a little. I'll say this though, its really easy to take a bad photo with the Diana lens, but I got a couple of really neat looking ones as well, almost the sort of thing I was hoping for.

It was almost kind of scary, taking off the lens the camera came with, even just remembering how to do it, thinking that I could be getting dust in there or whatever.

Sadly, my relationship with photography and cameras has been one of frustration over the years, mixed with more than a little fear. Fear that I'll do it wrong. Fear that I'll somehow manage to break the camera. Fear that I'll waste expensive film and (when I was taking a class) even more expensive photo paper. I took a photography class in college and that made things worse, much worse rather than better. I struggled with a poor quality camera and an instructor who lectured us on Ansel Adams but thought we should figure out such things as f stops and exposures ourselves, which was especially hard as I couldn't afford tons of photo paper to keep working out my mistakes. And not long after the class, my camera was stolen out of my dorm room, pretty much ending that phase of my photography.

I didn't take a lot of photos through my twenties and thirties. I had a point and shoot cheapie. I have some family pictures and vacations shots, but that's about all. I kind of yearned to take better pictures but not so strongly I did anything about it.

Then starting a few years ago, and mostly inspired by all the amazing blogs I read, I found myself really wanting to take pictures. Good pictures. Interesting pictures. Beautiful pictures. I saved my pennies and bought a DSLR. Of course, I wasn't suddenly magically taking the gorgeous photos I'd see on the blogs and my relationship with photography is still kind of fearful. Every picture is an assignment and I'm graded by the community of flickr- is my photo interesting enough to get any views or comment? I'm years behind in experience of where I would be if I'd kept taking pictures after my college course.

I'm trying to be less afraid of my camera. I bought a huge SD chip for my camera so I can take literally thousands of photos if I like. I'm trying to let the digital aspect of the camera change how I feel about photography in the same way that I let the computer change my writing- I don't have any hesitation in writing, they're just words. I change them, I rearrange them, I delete them without any second thoughts or regrets. I play around with things. Even write out whole blog posts and delete them before posting because they don't quite convey what I mean to.

The next step is probably a photography class, one more focused on the technical aspects, though I have to admit, my head starts getting a little swimmy when I try and think about things like f-stops and ISOs. Also, I need to keep taking pictures, to try and normalize this camera in my hands, so it is neither some technological marvel that seems smarter than I am about pictures nor is it a dense and impenetrable barrier to the kind of things I want to see. Just last month, I starting taking some pictures away from the "full auto" mode of the camera, trying out different ISOs and exposure times. That seemed huge to me.

A few of my favorite (yellow) things...

2010-03-31T12:16:00.000-07:00

The color of the week on the blogosphere seems to be yellow, with so many the blogs I visit regularly doing on feature on it. Must be all the daffodils in bloom or something. It's a color that I love but tend not to have around a lot for some reason. It can be so problematic- too bright, too pale, too gold, almost never quite the right yellow. I thought I'd take a little shop around my favorite place to shop, etsy to see if I could find some things that are just exactly the right yellow. Maybe I'll add one or two of them to my life.

This lazy daisy skirt by Made With Love By Hannah would be the perfect thing to add to my spring wardrobe. I mean, rick rack? Who doesn't love rick rack? And with green, orange and light blue accent colors, it'll be super easy to find just the right blouse or t-shirt to wear with it. Because I don't know about y'all, but I just cannot wear yellow, especially near my face.

I've admired this Coney Island print for a long time. It's in my etsy basket as I type. I love the way the turquoise pops against the yellow. I think it'll look fantastic in my living room, maybe over my turquoise couch.

Was there a set of pyrex bowls in your house when you were growing up? My mom had almost exactly this same yellow pyrex bowl set. Sadly, most of them broke over the years, but I think my mom might still have the big one with the daisy print tucked away somewhere. I'll always have a soft spot in my heart for daisies. My grandpa used to sing the song "Daisy Bell" to us. You know, 'Daisy, Daisy, give me your answer do'. It always makes me happy to sing that song, or just see daisies and think of him.

Lisa Congdon is one of my favorite artists on etsy and I love her Birch Forest No. 9. I love it for its simplicity and for how even over the computer screen it seems to glow with light.

I think I could get away with wearing these coral flowers around my neck, don't you? The coral softens the yellow. I could see myself wearing them with a simple white dress and a dark wash denim jacket. I'd do a polyvore set, but you can't import images from etsy to polyvore.

Always Remember, it's going to be okay. I love posters and prints with simple but not too soppy affirmations on them. Sometimes you just need a little reminder that, yes, really, it'll be okay. Or that you should just keep calm and carry on.

So pearly and lemon meringue and just plain gorgeous. If I were getting married again, I'd wear the simplest of gowns and just let this statement necklace to all the talking. I love how her work takes vintage bits and bobs and combines them into the frothiest of concoctions.

If I could, I'd hang a big wallpaper lampshade over a white marble top Saarinen table, and add in some vintage Thonet chairs. I've been fretting about my dining room lately, with it's Home Depot chandelier and Ikea curtains and wondering what I should do about it.

just a few things

2010-03-30T12:09:00.000-07:00

Interestingly enough, I went to my usual small, local coffee shop, where I often go after work to do a little writing, and instead of the mid-afternoon quiet that I was expecting, nay, even counting on, I discovered that they were shooting a commercial. I'm not even sure what the commercial is for. I'm pretty sure it wouldn't be for the coffee shop itself, which tends towards newspaper ads if they do any advertising at all. They have something along the lines of thirty people here, bustling around, some doing stuff, some just acting important. It's strange that it would take so many people and so much effort for such a short piece of film. The average commercial is what, fifteen seconds? They just put fake trees outside of the window. I guess the street scene isn't natural enough for the shoot or something. And in addition to the bright afternoon sunlight streaming into the windows, they've also added an unbelievably bright spotlight shining in from the outside. Every time I get even a glare from it, it's painful and leaves those retina spots.

I've been invited to participate in a photo mashup which excites me a lot. I'll put a link up to it when it goes up in April.

Also interestingly, just about a week after my rant about bikes and the quality of various ones thereof, my bike broke in a rather spectacular manner. Right in the middle of a busy intersection, while I was making a difficult left turn. I made it to safety and work only fifteen minutes late. But to quote my bike mechanic, "I've never seen one of those do that before."

It was my freewheel that broke. I have a single speed bike with a flip flop hub. Rather than run it as a fixie, I run on the side with the freewheel. For those not in the know, the freewheel is the little gadget inside a bike wheel that allows the wheel to spin without the chain (and therefore the pedals) moving. Mine snapped inside the cog, which in turn caused the whole gear to rip apart. It's not uncommon for the freewheel to break and I've had a broken freewheel on this bike before, but the bike mechanic had never seen one where it tore the whole gear apart like that before. The good news is I got it fixed for under $30. The bad news is also that it only took me thirty dollars to fix the bike.

See, it turns out that most freewheel and single gear combos are total junk. They're meant for little boys BMX bikes and if you use them for serious, year round riding, you can expect to go through them about every two to three years. I've been lucky and this is only the second time its broken in the eight years I've owned the bike. It bothers me that this part is considered to be almost disposable.

Luckily, there's one guy, out in California, who makes a freewheel single gear cog combination that won't break in a few years. It costs nearly $100. Shimano and other bike part makers charge about $15 for the same part. It wouldn't make sense to put the good part on a bike that you'd only keep for a while, but I plan on keeping my bike indefinitely. I'm going to pay for the good part. Quality parts for a good bike.

fun with polyvore

2010-03-24T18:53:00.000-07:00

I didn't realize until recently that you could use polyvore to mock up rooms. I had a bit of fun this afternoon putting this set together. It's about a million miles away from my real dining room and I'm not even sure I'd really like this for very long in real life. It was so much fun to play around though.

I will say this about polyvore though, it's hard to feel like one has really got the proportions of the room right with it. The images come up all kinds of different sizes and you kind of have to guess as to what's right. I'm pretty sure I got the Chinese sideboard way smaller than in is in real life and the target lamp lots bigger. The mirror though, that's probably dead on. It's huge in real life. I love it and would get it in a second if I had a space on any wall in my house big enough for a fifty inch diameter sunburst mirror.

Dining Room 1 by RoseCampion on Polyvore.com

Items in this set:
Wrap Dining Chair | west elm
walnut wallpaper - Fbw fl07
Closeup Page
Singapore Metal Burst Mirror - Wall Mirrors at Simply Mirrors
Barnwood Furniture, Rustic Furnishings, Log Bed, Cabin Decor, Harvest...

five things I want in my wardrobe right now.

2010-03-23T17:23:00.000-07:00

This necklace. I have a weakness for things nautical, and especially tall ships. I think it has something to do with my deep and abiding love of theAubrey/Maturin novels. Nautical styles are in again this spring, like it seems they are every spring, but I like this pendant because it nods that way without making it look like you're about to get on a yacht.

Another custom tea dress by Sohomode. I have one in fall colors, sort of a brown with white, orange, yellow and black floral print. The fall one I have, I toughen up a bit by wearing it with a thick black belt with multiple buckles and knee high black boots. A spring and summer sohomode, I'd wear with the belt it came with and coordinating espadrilles.

I'm not sure I even know where this dress is from. It's been in my clip file for a couple of years now and I still love it. It's part demure, part serious, all girl, with a little influence of Japanese Lolita fashion, without so much of it that a grown woman couldn't wear the dress.

See, there's a part of me that is super sad that Japanese influence fashion and the EGL stuff was nowhere on the horizon so many years ago when I was seventeen and could get away with such stuff.

The perfect crinoline from Porschesplace. I've got a number of vintage and vintage style dresses that just need this. This color would be fantastic peeking out from under the hem of a navy blue dress, don't you think?

The Iris boot by Green Shoes. Can't you picture them in red "vegan leather"? No? Okay, how about something still versatile and practical, but with a bit of panache, like the navy "vegan leather".

just a peek

2010-03-22T17:19:00.000-07:00

of the new afghan I'm working on. Nearly done. More pictures soon.

I'm just in love with this video

2010-03-21T18:04:00.000-07:00

I guess it's by the same people that do that ubiquitous Amazon.com ad, but I don't care. I love the paper cuts and the sort of Alice in Wonderland feel to the story and well, everything about it.

A little rant about Liberty of London at Target, but mostly about bikes

2010-03-18T17:29:00.000-07:00

I'm sure you, like everyone else in the blogosphere, has heard and read about the Liberty of London stuff at Target. I had been pretty excited myself, because I've loved Liberty for years, since I found out about it in high school *mumblety,mumbelty* years ago, when there used to be a Liberty of London store in one of the fancy malls up on the Mag Mile in Chicago. At that time, what I really coveted from them was this denim jacket lined in Liberty fabric. I'd still love one of those actually. I'd wear it with the sleeves rolled over a plain white dress during the summer.

And the stuff from Target looked so promising. The gorgeous colors. The wild prints. Oh, my heart sang at the prospects of it all. I'm sure you felt the same way. I know you did. Most of us were out there, first thing Sunday morning, to buy. I got there at about 11 and everything was pretty picked over already.

But honestly, the quality of many things was somewhat disappointing. A lot of the women's dresses were that cheesy polyester chiffon. Most of the dishes were melamine. I guess I won't rant too much about that. I figured that the quality of the fabric and other wares wouldn't be quite up to the full priced Liberty for obvious reasons. Still, I was bit disappointed that most of the sundresses were polyester. As an avid dress wearer, especially in the summer, I was hoping for cotton, because in the summer heat, that polyester chiffon can feel very hot and sticky next to the skin.

Actually, what I want to rant most about is the Liberty of London bike. I've come across more than a few gushing reviews of this, including someone who called it the most beautiful bike they'd ever seen. Really?

I've to come to the conclusion that the person who said that hasn't looked at very many bikes. As someone who loves bikes, who rides bikes pretty much every day, who's owned more than few bikes in my day, the bike itself looks, well, ugly. It's got a very nice paint job. That's all it has going for it. Look at the form of the bike itself. It's ungainly and ungraceful. The tubing that forms the frame is chunky. From the pictures I've seen, the welds look no better than what you'd find on any discount store bike, which is to say, downright awful. The bike just plain doesn't have good lines to it. And that, to me, is more important that a good paint job.

Because if you're actually going to use a bike, that paint job won't last. Or at least it won't last in mint condition. When you ride a bike, things happen to it, especially to the paint. Little rocks fly up from your tires and chip the paint. You accidentally ride over a fresh patch in the road and bits of asphalt or tar fly up and spatter the frame. You lock the bike up and you hit the frame with the lock. Or it accidentally bumps against some thing or another.

A few years back, I had my beloved Country Road Bob stripped down and sent off to be powdercoated. As you can see in the link, I chose a robin's egg blue that is about as lovely as you'll see, with an opalescent finish. Three, four years down the road, and it's chipped and otherwise marred. But I don't care, because you know, I still walk up to where it's locked up and I think to myself, that is one fine looking bike. It's got lovely lines. The tubes curve gracefully. The geometry speaks to me. It looks both sturdy and sporty to me. And every time I see it, I am happy that I own it, no matter that the paint job is looking, well, like you'd expect on the bike that sees city roads every day, no matter the weather.

On the other hand, I don't think it's the most beautiful bike I've ever seen. This bike, to the right is about the most beautiful bike I or you or any random blogger will likely ever see on the street. This bike is the A. Homer Hilsen by Rivendell Bikes. Someone in my building has one. One morning, it was still there in the bike room when I was leaving for work and it was like looking at something that belongs in a museum. Insteady of the catepillars left by cheap welds, it uses gorgeous lug work that is picked out in contrasting colors. Its tubes don't curve, true, but its geometry just sings. The font they use for the name on the tube is artful and the headbadge is a work of art. Do yourself a favor and click through the link to the full listing for the bike. Take in the lugwork and head badge. Then get back to me on how the Liberty bike is the most beautiful bike you've ever seen. Sure, the A Homer Hilsen doesn't have Liberty flowers, but it's got style, serious style and that's better.

Of course, none of this even touches the most important part of any bike- how it rides. The A. Homer Hilsen will ride like a dream, I can guarantee it. It'll be light, fast and comfortable. You'll go for miles without seeming to put any effort into it. Even my Country Road Bob, when it's tuned and the tires are pumped, is a great ride. It's fast and yet I'm still nearly fully upright when sitting in the saddle. The swept back handlebars mean my position is nearly as fully upright as it would be on a cruiser style bike, but the thinner tires and better geometry, plus more efficient gear ratio mean I go faster with a lot less effort.

A lot of people go on and on about how comfortable a cruiser style bike is, and I won't argue that the upright posture and broad seat lend themselves to a certain comfort, especially to someone whose last experience with a bike was a mountain bike where the handlebars are often actually lower than the saddle, which is hard and narrow, so their wrists ached, their seats ached and they went slow and cumbersomely on a bike never meant for city streets.

I fell for a cruiser a few years back and I have to say, never, ever again, especially not a discount store cruiser (like the Liberty bike). They are slow. They're heavy. The wide seat chafes the thighs after more than a couple of miles. The gear ratio is set up for someone without a lot of leg strength to be able to push this heavy thing around without much effort, so it's not very good for going fast. The balloon tires are squishy, which feels good at first, but they make for a lot of rolling resistance, which means it's a lot harder to push them around. They say that an ounce of weight on the rims is equivalent to a pound of weight on the frame, and most cruisers are pretty heavy as is. Like forty pounds of frame. My bike, the Country Road Bob, is around twenty-five pounds of frame, which isn't really light compared to many bikes, but is like a cloud of candyfloss compared to a cruiser. A good, well-designed bike is just easier to ride. You go faster with less effort.

Oh, but Rose, I hear you say. That A. Homer Hilsen is $2000 just for the frame alone! Sadly true. It's my aspirational bike, the one I'll buy someday, maybe when I win the lottery. Actually, if I win the lottery, I'd probably get a custom frameset. But anyway, I heard that, for those who could get them, the Liberty bike was $500 by the time you counted in the extra shipping. And $500 buys you a lot of good, functional and even beautiful bike. My first choice for that kind of money, for someone who likes the looks and comfort of a cruiser would probably be the Electra Amsterdam Original 3. Schwinn also seems to be making a comeback from its days of being a horrible discount store choice. I like the looks of the Jenny. She looks so much like the Schwinn I rode when I was growing up. Or how about a Flying Pigeon, that bike icon from China?

Or spend just over twice as much and your options go through the roof. You could get an awesome cargo bike. Or better yet, a Pashley Princess, which truly is a beautiful bike in all the ways I can think of, as well as being hand built in England since the twenties, a design credential almost equal of Liberty, yes?

Any of the bikes I've mentioned is, to my eye at least, a much better looking bike than the Target Liberty of London bike, but more importantly, they'll ride better and more easily, last longer (do not even get me started on the non-repairability of discount store bikes), and just be an all round better bike than anything from Target. No matter how many flowers it has on it.

Halycon Days

2010-03-03T21:07:00.000-08:00

Ah, it was so lovely today. Over forty degrees and with actual blue skies and sunshine. I spent most of the day cleaning house. There's something about the bright light pouring in through the windows that highlights all the spiderwebs in the corners and the smudges on the switchplates. It's amazing how much better I feel about my house when I've spent some time with the old spit and polish. I suppose that's one of the first things to learn if you want to have a lovely house- clean it.

Normally I love rooms with color, but today I'm loving and feeling happiest about simplicity and big windows that let in lots of light. Maybe with lots of plants and gardens around.

Both pictures were taken Gene Stratton-Porter's Cabin in the Wildflower Woods, near Rome City, IN. The room is her solarium/greenhouse. It makes me want to repot plants and maybe start some seeds on the windowsill. Then curl up in her rocking chair with some crochet and while away the rest of the sunny afternoon.

I visited the Gene Stratton-Porter Historic Site i.e. the Cabin in the Wildflower Woods late last spring. Firstly, doesn't it sound blissful to you to live in a cabin in a wildflower woods? But almost more importantly, I wanted to see her cabin in the woods because of how I admire her, not just as one of the most famous authors of the early 20th century (her books sold millions of copies in the 1920s), but as a pioneering naturalist and ecologist. She fought against the draining of wetlands, like the Limberlost Swamp and took important documentary photographs of rare butterflies and birds in those wetlands. And her books, well, there's no cozier or comforting writer to read. I know that it's a fallacy to say that the past was a simpler, easier time, but her books really read like they're from simpler, happier times. Reading them now makes me feel like reading the Little House books did when I was a little girl- like everything is, or could be, right with the world.

Wishing you halcyon afternoons and spring flowers,

Rose

dreaming of spring and handmade challenges

2010-03-02T18:41:00.000-08:00

Yes, I know. Aren't we all? It's just that this winter has seemed to drag on for an unconscionably long time. Here it is, the second day of March and I've yet to sight so much as the little green tips of snowbells, which are often seen around here in February, much less something truly cheerful like a crocus. These flowers pictured, sadly, are no more. I took the picture last month, the month before maybe. I think I need to get some more potted bulbs, I think. I don't often get cut flowers or even potted plants because of the environmental impact of the flower trade. They use more of the really dangerous pesticides than any other kind of crops. Sad but true.

Also sad is the fact that the second picture was taken only a few days ago, and it's still more or less what it looks like out of my window.

Not so much snow on the roofs and the snow in generally is a bit more... gray.

As a bit of a sad note, my beloved Creative Zen Vision M, which I've had for about three years now appears to slowly dying on me. I'm getting a really worrying white screen half the time when I turn it on. So I bought myself a Sansa Clip plus to hold me over until I can send my CZV to this guy I found in California who can fix it. Yes, this is unheard of. I am getting a small electronic device repaired instead of just (completely) replacing it. The clip plus is about the size of a small matchbook. It'll be great for the gym, I think. But I love my CZV. It has a good solid feel that no other player has, and huge storage capacity. 80G. No kidding. It's not even half full despite my huge music collection, the back-ups of my picture files and a bunch of video.

Why didn't I just "upgrade" to an iPod or iPhone? Part of it is sheer stubborness on my part. Another part is the 'cool' factor of the ipod. Anything too cool or popular, I generally don't want anything to do with, especially the smug coolness of Apple. All I know is, I'll probably always have anything but an iPod.

Actually, all this tech stuff is why I haven't full committed myself yet to
Dottie Angel's Utmost Challenge to buy only thrifted and handmade goods for a year. I really want to do it, but you can't buy hand crafted tech, sadly. I did compromise with my MP3 player, but sending it to get fixed rather than buying a schmancy new player with android and a touchscreen and all the bells and whistles. I thought about it and decided that I wanted to stick with my old friend the Zen.

And yet, I find myself thinking I will have to get a computer replacement in the next couple of months. Yes, all of us are incredibly lucky to have a computer at all and I will keep this one going for as long as I can. But truth be told, I'm working on a computer that my husband didn't find good enough to continue using. Not all of the USB ports work. It doesn't really have enough memory to run Vista properly. It chugs and spurts along and every time I use it, I'm afraid the next time will be time it doesn't boot at all.

So, just out of curiousity, how do you all balance your need to respect the environment (i.e. not buy new stuff willy-nilly every time you want it) versus wanting happy, fancy new toys versus just plain having stuff that works the way its supposed to?

Could I, in good conscience, say I'm doing the challenge but state ahead of time that I will be buying X, Y and Z new in the next year? There are some things you just can't buy used or hand-crafted. Like sometime soon, I will need a new bicycle helmet, because the one I have is looking rather battered, and you know, better safe than sorry. You can't buy a helmet used. I'm sorry. You just can't. It's not even that it's gross (it is), it's just plain not safe.

Which is all to say that, yes, I'm still thinking about taking up Dottie Angel's challenge, but that it's just a little more complicated than just doing it.

stuff I want....

2010-02-24T10:21:00.001-08:00

Of course, there's nothing like thinking about going on a "stuff diet" to make you want a bunch of new stuff. Not handmade stuff. Not thrifted stuff. But shiny, pretty, brand new stuff.

I want....

this perfume

a Diana lens for my DSLR

a new computer. In pink. With windows 7, please.

just about everything from the new Liberty of London at Target collection.

this dress from Monsoon.

Just a few things

2010-02-22T12:12:00.000-08:00

I've been watching the Olympics and crocheting up a storm. I've got 75 of the 100 or so granny squares I want for the new blanket I'm planning. At least I hope 100 squares will be enough. Have you been watching the Olympics? What's your favorite sport? I've always loved all the figure skating and ice dancing categories, but this year I've been loving the various ski categories, like super-G, which is funny, because I won't have anything to do with skiing in real life, as it combines two of my least favorite things- high places and the cold.

I took a fun and fast color quiz. Apparently my color is yellow, which I wouldn't have thought. Supposedly this means that I can't help searching for new ideas, methods and styles. And that is so true about myself.

My sister's baby is finally home from the hospital! He's such a cute little peanut. Seriously, he's too small for even newborn sizes, but just a little too big for the premie sizes. I've been told he won't be that small for long. His name is Oskar. How cute is that?!

I've been thinking about taking Dottie Angel's Challenge to only buy handmade or thrifted/second hand items for self and home for a year. More about that later.

This photo made me squeal with joy at the sight of it. The color. The little birds! If only I knew where I could get the paper, I would totally have an accent wall in my dining room.

The finished blanket

2010-02-15T10:00:00.000-08:00

It just occurred to me that I'd never put a picture up of the finished blanket. Honestly, I'm as pleased with this project as with any project I've ever done. It just came out so nicely. I wish the pictures had come out better, but this is the best one I could get. In person, the colors are brighter, darker and more saturated.

As you can see, I used Attic24's join as you go method of joining the squares together. It's just so much neater looking than any other method I tried and it's actually a lot easier than you think it will be. I highly recommend her tutorials in crochet. They're so clearly explained and photographed. I hope some day, someone asks her to write a book on crochet, because honestly her tutorials are better than any book I've found thus far.

Then I finished it off with six rows of granny triplets all the way round and a final row of shell stitch. I'm not sure I did it "right". It works, but since I figured it out by looking at the shell stitch on a vintage afghan I bought on eBay, who knows if it's the "official" way to have done it. Doesn't bother me too much. I'm a knitting heretic and often don't do things the "right" way in knitting (the way I do my perls makes most knitters go "what the hell are you doing?!). So why should crochet be any different, right?

Anyway, I have to say, I started this crochet thing most because I wanted a way to make a biggish baby blanket for my sister's new baby boy in a really short amount of time. And it was fast. Way faster than a similarly sized blanket would be if I knit it. But boy, has this become it's own kind of addiction. In the time since I finished the blanket, I've also crocheted the front for a throw pillow, no pictures as yet and 1/3 of another afghan, this time bigger and for myself. And I can't see myself stopping any time soon.

New Socks!

2010-01-17T23:11:00.000-08:00

In addition to the afghan I've been working on, I finished a pair of socks for myself. It was kind of exciting becauseI haven't finished a project for myself in some time. I've been doing so much charity knitting (Last month, I sent off dozens of hats to the Dulann Project). And then there's gift knitting I've done as well, little Christmas presents for friends at work, which sadly, I didn't get photos of.

So a finished pair of socks was exciting.

The yarn is mini mochi by Crystal Palace. In the ball it seemed a lot more pink and a lot less blue and purple but overall, I'm pretty happy with the result. As for the pattern, I hate to be vague, but I've been knitting socks with this pattern for so long, I'm not even sure if it is a proper pattern written up any where. I've made, well, I can't even tell you how many socks I've made with this pattern over the years. I've lost count.

It's a simple pattern. 72 stitches on the needles. Double points, thankyouverymuch. I've never been able to make the various circular needle techniques work for me. My sister is very much into socks on two circulars and always goes on about how much she hates double points and wonders how I can even use them. If you ask me, this is just another illustration of the fact that there is no one right way to knit. Circs work best for her, DPs work best for me.

I've got another pair of socks on the needles, just started. And I'm done with the afghan, but no photos as yet. Soon, I promise. And I've bought yarn for another crochet afghan, which I'll start as soon as the yarn arrives in the mail. Ah, yes, it feels good to be back at the needles after spending nearly the whole summer and most of the fall without doing a bit of hand work.

Doing what we can do.

2010-01-13T11:08:00.000-08:00

I'm sure you're all like myself, feeling more than a little shaken by the news from Haiti. The devastation is incredible, made all the worse by an infrastructure that was nightmare-ish at best before the earthquake. I'm sure you know already, but if you didn't, Haiti is the poorest country in this hemisphere and lacks decent roads, hospitals, schools and utilities like clean water in most places in the country.

You've probably heard about the Yele campaign by Wyclef Jean and of course, the Red Cross. I did the thing where you text Yele to 501501 to donate $5 to the Yele Haiti foundation. Red Cross also has a texting donation thing. But I also heard that there may be delays of that money getting where it needs to go. I don't consider the money I spent texting a donation wasted. In 90 days when the money gets there, work will still need to be done in Haiti. They money will go to good use, I believe.

But for a more immediate response, I looked to my favorite charity- Doctors Without Borders, and discovered that they already had a presence in Haiti and had treated over 1,000 people already and had more response teams and a portable hospital on the way. I donated as much as I comfortably could. And I'm asking anyone who reads this blog (and I know there are at least a few of you) to consider a donation to Haiti in some way, whether by texting Yele to 501501 or by clicking through on the picture link above to Doctors Without Borders and making a donation to their secure website.

Thank you.

I've learned to granny square!

2010-01-05T18:26:00.000-08:00

It's true. I've learned to crochet. I never thought I would. I'll admit, I had that knit snob attitude. You know the one. No need to explicate my sins of attitude any more.

But seeing wonderful projects around the web and on flickr and on my favorite blogs slowly and gently brought me around

I started simple. I got a real life friend to teach me the basics, then went home and made a few squares in plain yarn for practice. Then went out and bought myself an armload of Berrocco Comfort worsted weight and just dove right in. I picked the yarn because out of the washable/dryable yarns at the shop, it had the best colors. And since it's planned to be a gift, I didn't want to saddle someone else with handwashing. I've done thirty something squares out of the sixty four or so I think I'll need. I can't decide if I want to put the yellow border that I was planning on, or to just join them as is.

wanting pink

2009-12-14T12:45:00.000-08:00

Maybe it's just that it's been so dreary and gray here, but I've found myself obsessed with pink lately. Honestly, I'm not much of pink kind of girl. I hated the color when I was younger, only having warmed up to at all in my later years. Even now, I tend to favor the deeper, almost raspberry shades of it if wearing it. I tend to avoid the pastel versions. Despite that, I've been yearning for pink this last month, of all shades and tone.

I've been dreaming of a pink kitchen, just like this one I saw on Apartment Therapy. Maybe once the expenses of the Christmas season are over, I can start to save up to transform my little, dark kitchen, with it's blue-gray counters and floors into something bright and cheerful like this. So far all I've been able to do is buy one of those floral thermos flasks on eBay. Another pink kitchen I like on Apartment Therapy. And yup, another one of those floral thermos flasks.

Though I'm trying not to solve my mood problems with shopping, I did buy myself a new pair of pink boots. They're Crocs. I know. Was that a pink pig I just saw fly by? I'm hoping that the rubber bottoms will keep my feet dry in this winter that has been pretty wet so far, and the lovely pink color will lift my spirits. Sadly, I missed out on the bright berry pink pair and had to settle for the pale pink pair.

I want to move here. Right now. Right past winter and Christmas and into spring and white dogwoods and a little pink house. And a pink that's just right. Not too screamingly flamingo, but not so baby pale that you might mistake it for white. Picture by Catface3. I don't know who owns the house, but I envy them.

I've been reading Casapinka a lot lately. I love her style and reading her archives has kept me busy most of the weekend.

Isn't this a charming couple? Isn't the lady lovely in her pink kimono? I found them this morning at the thrift store, for $.49 each. They're salt and pepper shakers and were actually used as such. When I cleaned them up, there was still salt and pepper inside them.

Adorable pink kitty nose by Lissalou66. Don't you just want to kiss it? I wonder how she got the picture? Any time I try and get a closeup of my sleeping cat, she wakes up and walks away. Very camera shy, my cat.

seven things

2009-12-07T19:46:00.000-08:00

Giving to

Remembering my Great Aunt Katie and the ornaments she made.

The blog I'm loving most right now

knitting with

Comforting myself with

Listening to

Still loving after all these years

Something to share

2009-12-06T17:32:00.000-08:00

I know it's been a while since I've written in the blog, but I found this and I had to share.

There must be always in everyone's life some place for the singing of angels. Some place for that which in itself is breathlessly beautiful. Some place that throws all the rest of life in a new and creative relatedness. Something that rescues all experience from drab and common-place areas of living, and glows in one bright white light of penetrating beauty and meaning.

The common-place is shot through with new glory. Old burdens become lighter. Deep and ancient wounds lose much of their old, old hurting. Despite all the crassness of life, despite all the harshness of life, despite all the harsh discords of life, life is saved by the singing of angels.

Howard Thurman.

I hope you hear some singing of the angels in your life this holiday season.

Rose

"Greatest motivational poster ever"

2009-02-17T13:24:00.000-08:00

I know that a lot of people on Apartment Therapy and other design blogs have already condemned the "keep calm and carry on poster as trite, overdone and and generally un-inspired.

That said, I love my keep calm poster. It's hanging in my bedroom, right across from the bed, where I can see it first thing in the morning. I guess I love the poster because it's like a perfect nutshell summary of my life's philosophy. I'm not saying it's a piece of design genius or anything like that. I just love the saying. I'd be a little happier if I could have it more or less like it is, but without the crown on top, as generally I don't hold with royalism. But hey, it wouldn't have the historical resonance if it didn't.

Anyway, I found a great article about the poster and its history. You might like to read it.

My sister's new puppy

2009-02-13T16:17:00.000-08:00

My sister go herself a new puppy. This is Penny, who is a Jack Russel/Corgi mix. She's just about the cutest dog ever. And furthermore, she reminds me of Nipper, the RCA dog.

I hope to get to meet her soon. I love dogs. I wish I could have one, but living in a third story walk up condo without a fenced yard, or any kind of yard at all, it's just not a practical thing for me right now.

Someday, I'll write about and maybe post a picture of my late dog Sparky. I still miss Sparky and get sad thinking about him.

Let's get one thing straight....

2009-02-11T15:27:00.000-08:00

I am not a hero.

This is a hero.

I'm just a chick on a bike.

But seriously, some guy called me a hero as I walked out of the post office today. "You're riding in this?" he asked. And I was like sure. And then he said I was a hero. But, like I said, I'm just a chick on a bike. It's an every day thing for me. Even though the weather was about 45F and it was raining, it was still just another errand for me. I had my lacrosse rain jacket and my rain pants. I was dry as a bone under them. Sure, I didn't like going out in the rain to the post office, but it had to get done today, so off I went.

Its actually a pretty constant thing, people commenting on my biking in all weather. It was the first time I was called a hero, but I'm often told I'm somehow tougher than the average girl, that I'm amazing, It bothers me, because I think that this kind of attitude might stop people from giving the car free or car light life a try. It's not as hard as people think it is. And calling me a hero for doing it really trivializes what a hero is.

Just a few things...

2009-02-10T19:43:00.000-08:00

We had a great time in London. This picture is just outside of the Victoria and Albert Museum, which was only about six or so blocks from where we stayed in Knightsbridge. Their collection of fashion and decorative arts is second to none. I could have stared for hours at their dress collections. I think it bored Mr. Campion a bit, so I had to cut my time there shorter than I would have liked. I hope I can go back sometime soon.

I'm trying not to forget about charity, even though times are tough and it's tempting to cut back. I just made a donation to little dresses for Africa. They look to be a great charity, run entirely by volunteers and they promise that 100% of their donations will go to help children with AIDS in Africa. The highest rates of infection in the world are in Africa and its the children that suffer most.

Also, a deadline is coming up soon for Afghans for Afghans, a charity that I've supported for some time. I've knit about fifty baby hats for them. Please, if you knit or crochet, consider making a hat or blanket for them. Make sure to read their guidelines carefully.

I bought some fabric for throw pillows. I chose Amy Butler's Midwest Modern. I think it'll look great with my aqua colored sectional.

I've gotten rid of my leather purses. There's a lot of great cloth and vinyl bags out there. I haven't gotten rid of my pregan leather shoes yet, but it seemed right to phase leather out of my purses. Here's one great vegan bag.

So far this winter, like for the last eight winters, no weather had been able to keep me off my bike. I've braved 10 below and snow and even icy roads after an ice storm. The only weather that came close to scaring me was the ice storm. I still maintain that nothing is more fun than riding in a couple of inches of freshly fallen snow. I also feel a bit safer on the road because of this year's. Christmas present.

Ukelele Orchestra of Great Britian

2009-02-01T10:13:00.000-08:00

There are simply not enough words in the English language to tell how great this video is. It's like it encapsulates everything about my musical tastes, sadly enough.

The reverse graffiti project

2008-12-01T05:21:00.000-08:00

I love this. The artist works in reverse stencils with a power washer to create an image out of dirt. Bringing such beauty out of that which we believe to be ugly and foul, well, that's just powerful.

Fashion meme

2008-11-16T19:31:00.000-08:00

I'm posting yet another meme from And-Old-Lace, who I know from over on LiveJournal. It just seemed like a lot of fun. One thing about me- I do love me some fashion. It's my current obsession and has been for a while.

A: What accessories do you wear everyday?
My watch. I've got a great fondness for watches of all types, but in particular I love my Invicta. It's a men's tank style chronograph, black face, silver case and trim, black band.

B: What is your beauty routine?

I wash my face with Cetaphil. Hair is conditioned most days with this all natural leave in conditioner, then thrown back in a headband most days, cause it's a funky length and growing back. I'm just not into the whole putting a face on thing.

C: What was the last item of clothing (for yourself) that you purchased?

Sadly, a very boring and practical cuddledud type long underwear shirt for layering. Hey, I was cold.

D: Do you use a dresser, closet, or both?

I have a small closet, 3/4 of a huge dresser and a big rubbermaid tub down in the storage room. The curse of my life is inadequate storage.

E: What type of earrings are in your ears right now?

None. I never wear them.

F: What type of figure do you have (measurements)?
pear. 46-41-51, so, slightly pear shaped, with a thicker middle.

G: Do you wear glasses?
yes

H: What type of handbag do you carry?

I've got several that I rotate, different styles. My current favorite is a shoulder bag completely covered in glass beads. That sucker weighs like 10 pounds, before I put even a lip balm into it, but it's so cool.

I: What is your ideal style?

I love an eclectic look. Right now I'm rocking a seventies secretary/rocker chick kind of look.

J: What is your favorite brand of jeans?

None. i have yet to find a brand or style of jeans that can do for my figure what even a rather mediocre dress can do.

K: Do you wear knee-hi stockings?

I wouldn't say never. I do own a pair, but I haven't put them on in a good two years.

L: Do you *have* to wear matching lingerie?

No. I understand the impulse, but given my larger bra size (40DD), I have to go with the bra that is supportive rather than pretty and I just can't make myself wear plain beige panties to match.

M: Do you wear makeup?

Almost never. It makes me break out.

N: Do you wear nightgowns?

Jammies only kind of girl. I can't stand the way nightgowns ride up while I sleep.

O: What outerwear do you put on when going out on a typical winters day?

That depends if I'm heading out on bike or not. If I'm going on on bike, I generally look like this. If I'm heading out on foot, I'll wear my new dress coat

P: What is your favorite perfume?

Guerlain Mitsouko

Q: Is your motto "quality over quantity" when it comes to clothing and accessories?

I like them both, but I guess a little bit more of the quantity. I get bored with clothes fairly easily.

R: Do you wear rain boots?

Never found a pair that didn't look bad on my calves of might.

S: Do you wear socks or slippers when your feet get cold?

Socks are more handy. I think I own a pair of slippers.

T: Do you have a set of travel luggage?

Does this imply a matching set? In this case, no. I've got a smaller size rolly suitcase. I travel with that and a large purse as carry on. If it doesn't fit, it doesn't go.

U: What is your daily uniform?

Summer- dress, cardigan if the dress is sleeveless and I'm going to work, matching shoes.
Winter- dress, such sweater or underlayers as the cold requires, tights, boots.

V: If you are married, did you wear a veil with your wedding dress? If not, how did you do your hair?

No. I hated the symbolism. I wore a fresh flower clip in my hair. Which I hated and still makes me cringe when I look at wedding pictures. I was going to just let it dry curly and my mom forced me to go to her hair dresser, who proceeded to blow dry, poof, shellack and generally ruin my hair.

W: Do you wear a watch?

Always. I collect them actually. I've got several and have my eye on a number more.

X: What item of clothing always makes you feel beautiful?

I'd rather be interesting than beautiful or pretty any day.

Y: What is your favorite type of yarn?

Koigu Painters palette premium merino

Z: Do you prefer zippers or buttons?

In theory, buttons, in practice, zippers.

What's your fashion style?

I don't think I could add anything more really

2008-11-12T13:48:00.000-08:00

Five things I've been doing, other than blogging

2008-11-10T17:06:00.000-08:00

Shopping: This is only one of the many fantastic vintage dresses I've bought on eBay lately. I love shopping vintage. Not only does it mean that I get a dress that nobody else has, it's good ecological sense. Re-use is the first and most important part of the three Rs. And I love how a vintage dress is cut to suit my, ahem, womanly figure without my junk being out all over the place for everyone to see. Most of the new dresses I find in my size are wrap dresses, or low cut V necks. The idea is to play up ones "assets", but too often, I feel like I'm flashing everyone when I'm wearing one of these dresses. Most vintage dresses are more modest while still giving a good look to my figure.

Oh, and oddly enough, it's cheaper than buying new. Most of the dresses I've bought lately are less than $30. Even the most expensive vintage dress I've bought is only about an average price for what I used to pay for a new dress.

Watching: Dexter- season 1. Actually, I was able to watch this as a download from Netflix, rather than having to wait for the physical discs. So very convenient. Almost like I actually had a television. Darn the internet for making the fact that I don't have a television increasingly irrelevant.

Also, oddly enough, I went to school with Michael C. Hall. We're both Earlham grads, class of '93

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_C_Hall

Of course, while he's been grabbing Emmy and Golden Globe nominations, I've been. Um, really, what have I been doing?

reading:
Death Comes for the Archbishop

I loved this book. Such an inspirational book, with gorgeous descriptions of a part of the country I've never been to but hope to visit some time. In the end, I thought this book was about the power of love.

Doing: Going to the gym, specifically, I've been taking Pilates twice a week. I love it. It makes me feel so strong, capable and graceful. I do both a one on one class and a group session during the week. I wish I could afford to do the one on one twice a week, because I feel I make so much more progress when I do this, but darn it's expensive.

Listening:

This video made me cry the first time I saw it, just after election night.

single word meme

2008-11-09T10:24:00.000-08:00

Just a little meme from Posy Gets Cozy, one of my favorite blogs. Hope it gets me back into the habit of posting again. It's just so easy to be lazy and ignore the blog.

http://rosylittlethings.typepad.com/

Where is your mobile phone? charging
Where is your significant other? lazing
Your hair colour? blondish
Your mother? forgetful
Your father? cranky
Your favourite thing? books
Your dream last night? perturbing
Your dream goal? contentment
The room you're in? messy
Your hobby? knitting
Your fear? driving
Where do you want to be in 6 years? prosperous
Where were you last night? home
What you're not? thin
One of your wish-list items? balcony
Where you grew up? college
The last thing you did? laundry
What are you wearing? stripes
Your TV? non-existent
Your pets? hiding
Your computer? ripping
Your mood? doubtful
Missing someone? nephews
Your car? Car?
Something you're not wearing? bra
Favourite shop? eBay
Your summer? mourned
Love someone? persistantly
Your favourite colour? sunset
When is the last time you laughed? LOLcats
When is the last time you cried? today

So, there you have it, my life, in single word form. Do it. It was kind of fun.

And I promise to actually try and post to this blog now and then. It's been a lazy fall and I haven't actually done any crafting, knitting or the like. Plenty of reading, plenty of watching DVDs, not so much on the useful activity front though. More later today, perhaps.

for want of a nail...

2008-09-05T20:26:00.000-07:00

The war (eventually) was lost, so says the old rhyme. It's funny how the little things can just cause total chaos to develop.

I'm generally fairly neat around the house. I like to keep things picked up and in their places. I can normally go from my normal state of the house to company ready in 20 or so minutes. Well, an hour if its my mother-in-law. But things are just gross at the Casa Campion tonight.

As an example, I buy a few more t-shirts and dresses. All of a sudden, my closet and the little canvas dresser I have to keep in my closet for t-shirts and the like go critical and clothes just explode out it, so it seems. I've been thinking about a real dresser for my bedroom anyway, so I buy one at the Howard Brown resale shop (an AIDS charity around here, with the best used furniture). Suddenly, I'm having to get rid of this glass door bookshelf where I kept my purses, my extra linens, the extra quilts, sweaters, etc. It's just too crowded in there for a ten drawer dresser and a six foot tall glass bookcase. Well, not everything that was in the bookcase and the closet overflow fits in the dresser. So I have to do what I probably should have done in the first place and thin out the deadwood among my clothing. Well, that's now in the living room, waiting to be taken to the thrift. And the extra quilts are stacked on top of the dresser still. I hate things in stacks on top of the dresser. Cannot abide them. At least the inside of the dresser is as organized as these things get with me. I like things neat and tidy, but have never been able to convince myself of the virtues of folding underwear or arranging my rolled socks by color.

Then the kitchen cabinet started to fall down. It must have been slow and gradual, but I didn't notice until the other day, when I realized I could fully shut the door on my crockpot. I've got this huge crockpot and even in my largest cabinet, I can't fully shut the door on it. I've got my eye open for a smaller one at the thrift, but until then, I've always just kept the door partly open.

Of course this meant immediate evacuation of every dish, wine glass, teapot and rubbermaid storage container we kept in that pair of cabinets. They're now all over m dining room. I'm going to use it as an opportunity to prune and weed out the deadwood there. There was a lot of weight in that cabinet, china dishes, crystal, and so forth. I'm going to get rid of quite a bit of it I think. But yes, for now, it's all over my dining room. Coffee cups are on every shelf of the dining room bookshelves. A stack of dishes on the dining room table.

I had a handyman out this afternoon and they've been repaired. It turned out that there weren't enough screws used and the ones that were used totally missed the studs and that we were lucking that it didn't come tearing down catastrophically in the middle of the night, taking all our dishes with it. I sometimes wonder where else in the conversion process did the developer of our condo cut corners and when I'll find that out the hard way.

The chaos from that has even spread into the living room. See, I left the phone book I used to find the handyman out on the coffee table and as everyone knows, the instant you leave something out like that, it just starts to collect clutter around it, kind of like how the planets coalesced out of bits of rock and dust gathering together by force of gravity. So now, in less than a day, my coffee table has gone from completely empty to "can just barely see that there's a coffee table". How does that happen so quickly?

Also, it's amazing how few things it can take to turn ones possessions from manageable into "I must declutter my life immediately, my things are taking over!" Things were fine, until I brought a few things home from my Grandfather's house that my family is cleaning out. All in all, I brought home less than a suitcase full of stuff and yet I feel overwhelmed. For instance, there's this hat box. I brought it home with three hats in it. How could three mere hats feel like too much? But the only place for the hat box to live is on top of the dresser and see above for my feelings on things kept on the dresser. There's also this glass pitcher with solid white spots on it. Does that replace the white ceramic pitcher? If not, where can they both live.

I'll stop whining about this soon and by tomorrow I'll be working at getting my house back together to its normal state. For now, though, the chaos seems overwhelming. I don't think well when my surroundings are in disarray. Still, I suppose this is one of those few disadvantages to living in small surroundings like we do now. Back when we lived in a house, I could have shoved all of this stuff into the basement until I was ready to deal with it. That's not an option now, so if I have more stuff than is liveable, I just have to live amongst it until I can get it resolved. No picture today though. Who would want to look at all this?

Ten things- the letter b

2008-08-26T20:27:00.000-07:00

And_Old_Lace, who I know from over on LiveJournal was having a game. She assigned me a random letter, then I have to come up with ten things starting with that letter that I love. Then I write about it in my journal. Should be easy, right?

1) Obviously, books. All of them pretty much. I love the weight of them in my hand, the smell of the pages whether its a crisp new book just out of the carton from the publisher or a musty old book that has spent aeons in the back corners of the library. I love the serifs of the fonts and the feel of paper under my fingers. I sometimes see someone around who has one of those Amazon Kindles or the Sony Reader and I feel sad for them. See, they're not reading a real book. Oh, maybe they're reading a real novel or non-fiction work, but those electronic files in portable devices are not, nor ever will be real books. Rant over. Heh. I guess this sort of thing happens to you when you work in a bookstore for seven years.

Above picture by Austinevan and used under creative commons license. Isn't it beautiful.

2) Boho. I know. I should hang my head in shame because the boho thing is so over played, but I love it. Whether its the interiors of Wary Meyers or dresses like this I envy and covet them. By the way, if you've got any idea where I can get a dress like that one, but in my size, let me know.

3) Birds. It makes me happy beyond all reason to look up into the sky and see them flying. In particular, I find large flights of pigeons to be particularly moving. On the ground, they're these pudgy comedians, wobbling their head back and forth as they walk, puffing their feathers and chest out. In the air, they are so graceful and free. They're precision flyers too, as if some group mind is controlling them, and yet not, because while they move together, its not as if they are in formation.

4) Bandshell. Or in particular, the Jay Pritzker Pavilion in downtown Chicago by Frank Gehry. It's like the waves of Lake Michigan frozen into a moment of eternity.

5) The Big Bang Theory. I don't have a TV, so I only get to see episodes when I visit my sister (and her Tivo!). I love this show though.

6) Bossa Nova. I love this album and this one. But this is my favorite song. I love the Bossa Nova for the joy of the sound. Even sad songs, no, especially the sad songs have it. Perhaps there's a little wallowing in how beautiful love lost is, but that's kind of the point.

7) Beans. Probably one of the most significant parts of my daily diet now that I've gone veg. I'm not a huge fan of soy beans or chickpeas, but just about any other kind is fine with me.

8) the BVM. In a bathtub. I grew up in a primarily Catholic town, so there were a lot of these around. Even though I'm no longer a Catholic myself, I still look at them fondly and with a bit of nostalgia. We didn't actually have one ourselves, but I always wanted one when growing up. My grandmother, who lived just down the street from us, had an inside statue of the BVM that was actually quite beautiful and over two feet tall. I think she brought it back from a Church trip to Italy.

9) Brasilia by Broyhill. I'm particularly enamored of the coffee table by them, based off the Cathedral by Oscar Niemeyer. I nearly bought one on eBay but determined that its really too big for the space. It made me really sad to not get it though.

10) Billy Collins

I know I've been m.i.a.

2008-08-25T18:25:00.000-07:00

Do I have a good excuse. No, not really. I've been writing a novel in a month, supposedly. Just like NaNoWriMo except I've elected to do it without the support of everyone else doing it. I'm just sort of stupid and stubborn like that. Except I'm pretty sure I'm not going to make it. I've got like 20k words to write still to reach my goal and less than a week to do them in. Urgh. Some good vibes might be nice at this juncture.

I've also been working on a project with recycled materials, including a wool sweater from the thrift store. More about that later. I'm excited though. I think it looks pretty good for being one of the first things I've done with a felted sweater. It was already felted at the thrift store, so I didn't feel guilty about cutting it up.

In other news, we've gone more or less vegan sort of. I've been letting myself have a brownie which no doubt contains eggs and possibly milk when I go to the coffee house to write. It's really hard to write without a brownie for some reason. I'm rationalizing it because my favorite coffee house doesn't have any vegan treats. But every meal and treat made at home for the last three weeks has been vegan. Things I'd never thought would be in my fridge, like almond milk and soy yogurt are in my fridge. Oh, and this dreadful vegan cheese that Mr. Campion just had to try. Definitely better to give up the cheese completely than suffer that again.

In other other news, my back has been more or less out of order for two weeks. It keeps sending me messages about how it's sorry for the inconvenience and so forth. I've just started seeing a chiropractor and its been an improvement. She's so nice and most importantly, she hasn't blamed me for what's wrong with my back. So often when I've gone to a regular doctor, whatevers wrong with me has been blamed on me, either by implication or outright statement. Anyway, I go to a chiro that uses the activator method. You'll never go to a neck cracker again once you've had gentle treatment by the activator method.

Thunderstorms and musings on the car free life

2008-08-04T20:25:00.000-07:00

We had ferocious thunderstorms tonight, complete with tornado warnings. In fact, I can still see flashes off in the distance of lightening far away, with the faint rumbling of thunder. Luckily, the tornado warnings came to naught, at least around here. I did discover just how loud the local tornado siren is though. We're literally across the street from it. This is how loud it is- it hurt my ears, even with all the windows shut. It drove my poor little cat frantic to the point where she was running all over our condo, looking for some place to hide from it. Oh, and we lost power for about two hours, starting while I was making dinner. Luckily, we have a gas stove, so I was able to continue cooking, once I got out our emergency camping lantern. Every once in a while, I think about wanting one of those new induction electric stoves with the smooth top, for easy cleaning. But then something like this happens and I come to my senses.

But earlier in the evening, before I had started dinner, I had been sewing. More on what I'm making later, but as sometimes happens, I ran out of thread. White thread. How did that happen? It always seems like I've got about eleventy billion spools of white thread floating around the house. Normally, I just would have hopped on the bike and ridden the two or so miles to Hancock. It's not a far ride, nor particularly difficult. There's one super busy street to cross and one parking lot I go through where you have to watch out for cars not looking where they're going. But it had been raining all day, more or less. It was raining then. The sky was looking threatening, though I hadn't heard of the tornado warnings yet. It didn't seem like a great idea to head out into bad weather, not when it was an optional thing. Oh, and it was about twenty minutes until the store closed.

At that moment, I had one of those thoughts. I get them very rarely. It was the "if only I had a car" thought. If only I'd had a car, I would have hopped into it right then and gone off to get my thread. You don't think a lot about the weather when you have a car, or at least not until it gets pretty extreme. As it is, I didn't finish my project tonight because I didn't have a car. Which isn't to say I'm complaining about this. I wouldn't have been able to finish my project anyway, most likely, because of the power outage. Though if I had that thread, I would be sewing now, instead of blogging.

But, it made me think- was it necessarily a bad thing that I'm having to delay my project a little?

I was about to plunge right into a rolled and machine sewn hem. This delay gives me a chance to think about other options. Do I want to see if I can find some matching fabric and make a bias binding instead? What about some other form of trim as an edging. Instead of going to Hancock's, tomorrow after work, I could take the time and make a trip to Vogue Fabrics, a bigger and better fabric store.

Not having a car prevented me from having something I wanted right then. Is it always such a good thing to have what we want right now. I recall reading somewhere a while back that the secret to success and happiness, according to some psychology researchers, is the ability to defer gratification, at least for a while. Perhaps, if I did have a car, I could have convinced myself that no, I didn't need to go right away, but one thing I discovered during the period where we were "car light", before we went totally car free, is that when you have a car, it becomes very tempting to use it. Very hard to say no to just a few little trips.

I could go on about carbon footprints and how much money we save by not having a car (hundreds a month, even without a car payment), but the truth is, I love not having a car because it allows me to live life more at my own speed. I get nervous going too fast. It always feels like a little bit of my soul gets left behind and takes a while to catch up to me. I get scared about the danger, going as fast as a car can go.

But more than anything, I can be car free because I love my bike. I've always loved bikes since I was a little girl. A bike is freedom, to me. I'm taken back to childhood, when it seemed a miracle that I could move that fast, that far. Back then, a bike could take me away from my house, to the library, to the fabric store (I learned to sew at a fairly young age), to the lake where I could stare for hours at the reflection of the sky in the still waters. Even now, I can remember those feelings as I pedal.

The picture above is my bike, which is a Country Road Bob, single speed, by Van Dessel Cycles, with a custom paint job in Tiffany blue, with a pearlescent overlay. I had the drops replaced with a mustache handlebar and the stem raised about as far as it could go, to give me as upright a posture as possible on the bike.

The storm is picking up again. I'd better wrap this up and put it up, just in case I loose power again. Lord, what an evening. I've never seen weather like this.

Five things I'm loving right now.

2008-07-31T20:29:00.000-07:00

The mere idea of the Something Storemakes me happy. It's like a surprise present to yourself.

It could be anything. One person got an iPod shuffle, but I suspect most people get things that cost considerably less than the $10 per something price. They say that it'll probably be new, but that it possibly could be antique or refurbished or just about anything. I think we all need more beautiful randomness in our lives.

I've been rather dutifully slogging my way through Northanger Abbey. Yes, I'm still not done. It might help if I stopped reading other things for a while, but I can't help myself. I've been tearing through the His Dark Materials trilogy. Yeah, they're juvies. I read juvies sometimes. Just because a book is meant for a younger audience, doesn't mean it won't speak to someone of any age. The young girl character Lyra is so brave and bold. She makes me wish I had been her when I was younger, instead of the shy, reclusive bookworm that I was. I just finished book two of the three this afternoon and if I hadn't gotten home from my Girl Scout trip so late, I would have rushed off to the library to check out number three, the Amber Spyglass.

"Ice Cream" made out of coconut milk. I tried the chocolate last night and it is so good. I like it better than real ice cream, I think. This product from Turtle Mountain is dairy free, soy free, and sweetened with agave, to make it lower glycemic. Oh, did I mention, its really yummy. If I can still have ice cream, or rather, something like it, but better tasting even, then that makes it a lot easier to consider the vegan path.

I've been loving the website Cake Wrecks. It's seriously even more hilarious than the late, lamented blog "You knit what?!". No pictures here because I'm not sure of the copyright status of the pictures, but go visit and you'll see what I mean. Each time I read the blog, I start laughing so hard I get the hiccups. Just be warned that there are a couple of cakes of dubious taste towards the end of the page.

This video by Sigur Ros. It just makes me happy every time I hear the song. Even better to see the video. The band is from Iceland and I believe they sing in Icelandic. I've got not the slightest idea what the lyrics mean, but that doesn't seem to matter. I know, I can tell just from the sound of the song that its a song of joy and hope. This is the first time I've run across Sigur Ros, but they'll definitely be added to the playlist of my life. In a weird sort of way, they remind me of what I love about early Jane Siberry.

Going vegan?

2008-07-27T18:39:00.000-07:00

So we just checked out Vegan with a Vengeance from our local public library. We've been vegetarian in this house for a little while. For us, it's primarily an environmental thing. Simply put, growing animals to eat uses resources and adds to global warming. It's just another thing we saw that we could do, just like when we rearranged our lives to make it easy, we were able to give up our car and go car free.

But I've been thinking, what if animal products such as eggs and dairy are nearly as hard on the environment as meat. I've also read that some people consider the "vegetarian" stance to be ethically unsupportable, that the only way to be a real vegetarian is to be a vegan, because by their nature, the production of eggs and dairy leads to the creation and death of animals. Most chickens that stop laying enough go to the stew pot. Milk can only keep coming year round by the making of lots of calves and almost all of the males don't survive long.

I'm not certain. I do know that it would be pretty hard for me to go cold turkey vegan. I'm not overly fond of soy and sometimes don't feel well if I eat too much of it, so that limits how much tofu I can eat. And I'll be honest, after trying it several times, I really do loathe the taste of soy "milk". It's certainly easier to not worry about things like am I getting enough protein and other nutrients when I'm eating dairy and eggs. I love milk and cheese, the taste of them.

For the moment, I'm not going to give them up completely, but I have decided to try and eat far less of them. I'm going to try and always use oil instead of butter when cooking. I'm going to try and learn to drink my iced coffee black. And maybe I'll even learn to live without swiss cheese on my tempeh reuben. And I have to believe that the changes I've made to my diet are helping at least some, even if I do give into an omelet once and a while.

This beautiful photo of vegetables from a market in Helsinki was taken by the flickr user Philocrites. Isn't it just gorgeous? The rest of his photos are beautiful as well.

2008-07-24T19:50:00.000-07:00

Just a quick post. We went to the Art Institute tonight and saw this show. No pictures because you weren't allowed to take pictures in the exhibit. But I will say that my favorite work was this small sculpture of the Oba (Benin King) meeting Queen Elizabeth II and this pair of leopards. They're so cunningly crafted. Make sure you zoom on the picture to get a good view of the surface details, how they made the leopard's spots. I love the grin they seem to have, with their bared teeth.

The picture has nothing to do with the main topic of the post. I offer it as proof that I haven't been entirely idle. Click on the small photo to see it larger. The rolled edge and garter stitch are visible that way.

The tastes of summer

2008-07-20T19:04:00.000-07:00

Green beans for dinner tonight! We had green bean and couscous gratin. And I sauted the extra beans with some oil and garlic, just until the outside of some of them got a little crispy, kind of like they serve at the Chinese place. And of course, there was also zucchini. You gotta eat those up fast this time of the year, before they all grow up to be baseball bats. I ate plenty of baseball bat zucchini growing up as a kid. You know, that time of the year when it shows up in everything Mom puts on the table, in soup, ratatouille, stir fry, even hidden in quick bread. Yes, these are the tastes of summer.

2008-07-18T20:15:00.000-07:00

I've really been loving the work of Lisa Congdon lately. If you haven't seen her latest stuff, you should check it out. She's just done a show of portraits of pigments, the real old pigments that they used before chemistry made producing all the colors so easy. I'm enormously fond of the Indigo portrait, but her Bone Black portrait is very strong and very graphic. Also, I love her malachite portrait.

I hope its okay for me to use this image for my post. I'm not sure of the copyright and etiquette issues here. it's just so beautiful I couldn't resist.

Five things

2008-07-17T17:32:00.000-07:00

eating: Peaches. We still haven't finished all the peaches that we bought at the farmer's market last Saturday, and it's just the start of the season thankfully. I know some are partial to Georgia peaches, but to me, the best will always be Michigan peaches, and that's what we get at our farmer's market.

thinking about: How am I going to arrange all my random pieces of art on the wall over my Chinese chest? It really intimidates me, especially when I all the amazing ways that people have done mixed arrangements of art. And it's not just these ones you see that have to go up on the all. They're hiding a whole other layer of prints. And the sweetest little Chinese screen I have with Japanese maples and a couple of little birds.

listening: Tegan and Sara- The Con. Where have they been all my life? I've needed a compelling new band to listen to and I've finally found it.

wearing: Every chance I get, I've been wearing my new dress by Jane Bon Bon. Well, not to my work, because I don't want to chance getting it dirty. But if you're a dress wearer at all, check out her etsy store. She's especially nice for the full-figured. Her specialty is the "braless dress". And she means it.

Jane

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reading: Northanger Abbey. I'm not sure I like it. Catherine is not as foolish as Emma but nowhere near as sensible as Fanny Price.

A new project and indulgence for me

2008-07-15T14:07:00.001-07:00

I bought the Tanglewood bag pattern and patch kit from Posy Gets Cosy

I'm really excited. And I'm a bit scared at the same time. It's not that I'm not an experienced sewist. I am. I've sewn for over twenty years now, making a lot of my own clothes at various times in my life. I've made full size bed quilts and covers for the cushions of my sofa.

But there's a lot of precision sewing going on here. The seams are going to have to be straight as a yard stick. Looks like that bias tape is going to require a steady and delicate hand. These are not my strengths as a sewist. I like the bold design and gesture. The aforementioned large quilt only looks good until you look closely at it and notice that not all of the triangle points meet up. A state fair blue ribbon winner it is not. Even now, after twenty years at the machine, my straight seams still have some wibbles and wobbles in them. I'm especially worried about turning the square patches into the patchwork fabric. The rest of it doesn't worry me so much. But if I don't get that first step right, no matter what I do, the rest of the bag will look wretched.

Still, I'm excited. It's one of the first cloth bags I've seen that I've truly been excited about. I can't wait to get my patch kit. I just hope I can find someone to hold my hand as I start it.

Picture above taken from the Posy Gets Cosy website.

Saturday's walk

2008-07-14T18:08:00.000-07:00

I'm fortunate to live in one of the prettiest places around and Saturday, we got up early and went for a walk. I brought my camera and I've just downloaded the pictures. I thought I'd share a few of my favorites. It was early and bright enough that the shadows formed clear dapples on the sidewalk.

I don't know why I love this garden gate. I just do. I think maybe it reminds me a little of New Orleans. I've never been there, but I've always wanted to go and in my mind, it's full of iron work like this. So, rather than a Coney Island of the mind, I've got a New Orleans of the mind. I blame Anne Rice mostly.

I was happy to discover that one of the churches near me has a labyrinth. This labyrinth is a simplified Chartres. Have you ever walked a labyrinth? It's not a maze. So long as you stay on the path, you can't get lost. You wind in and out, turning and following the arcs of the circle until you get to the middle. Medieval cathedral builders would put a labyrinth, usually under the crossing so that people could do a sort of mini pilgrimage, even if they couldn't make the full trip to Jerusalem or other holy spots. We spent a few quiet minutes walking the labyrinth.

http://www.lessons4living.com/chartres_labyrinth.htm

I'm obsessed with taking pictures of this bridge. I love the textures and colors that the rust has made on the green paint. The beams and girders give it such a gorgeous geometry too. This is just a railroad overpass. Metra trains, freight trains and the El all use it to pass through my town.

I came across a huge pot of the most gorgeous Elephant Ears. These are a tender annual in this area and most people just grow them in pots, rather than have to lift them out of the ground every year before frost. It always astonishes me how huge they can get in even just a month or so of summer. Again with colors of green and the geometric structure. I could stare at these leaves for hours.

I've always loved day lilies, or as we called 'em back home, ditch lilies. This house had a massive clump of them growing against the garage, the lilies floating above the strappy leaves like an orange cloud. But what were almost prettier than the lilies were the shadows they left on the siding.

2008-07-13T19:29:00.000-07:00

This is the tail end of a huge ball of yarn. There's about enough left at this point for one baby cap. I know this for sure, because by the time I'm posting this, I've made the cap.

I make baby hats for charity, I've made lots of them over the years and later I'll post more about a project I'm working on with them. But for now, about the yarn.

I feel particularly proud of this yarn because I made it. Well, sort of. It's reclaimed merino wool from a thrift store sweater. There's tons of instructions on how to do this all over the net, but basically you find a sweater that is fully finished, not serged together, which cuts the yarn and gives you lots of short pieces when you try and pull it apart. The you rip apart the seams and start unravelling. This can be kind of challenging when you have a young cat in the house.

Then, once it's all unraveled and you've skeined it up, you dye it with kool-aid. I love dyeing with kool-aid because it's about as non-toxic as dye gets. I mean, I wouldn't want to drink the stuff, but it's not bad for dye. In this case, the yarn was a truly uninspiring light mushroom gray. I over dyed it with red and blue koolaid, in a one to three packet ratio, using maybe sixteen packets for this huge skein. Make sure you get the little packs of kool-aid, not the kind with sugar or sugar substitute added already. Toss em in the pot with a bunch of water, set on the stove to heat up. For this batch, I added a little vinegar for acid, to see if that would help the color be more vibrant, but you don't have to. Kool-aid is totally acidic enough as is. Wash your yarn. Rinse it well. Make sure you use cool water, and don't rub the yarn at all. You don't want to felt it on accident. Then, toss the skein in the pot and simmer until the dye is all exhausted from the pot.

You can space dye and hand paint with koolaid too, but I like just plain kettle dyeing. It gives a very subtle kind of effect, showing that its a work of the hand, with lighter and darker areas. But you don't get the sometimes crazy contrasts and pooling of colors like you often see with a hand paint.

The thing I love best about this yarn is that you're recycling something that might well have gone to waste. There's so many old used sweaters in the thrift stores. Sometimes they get so many old clothes that they have to bundle them up and ship them to developing nations, which can wreck havoc on local, indigenous clothing and textile industries. And while you're not really killing a sheep to get it's wool, there can be an environmental impact from over grazing. Not to mention, yarn production, though it doesn't have to be, can be an industry that is a heavy water polluter.

Out of one men's sweater that was just going to go back to the thrift store I bought it at, I got one adult plus size shrug, a toddler size sweater and at least ten baby caps.

More about how baby hats can help save the world later.

2008-07-12T18:05:00.000-07:00

Okay, so I wouldn't go so far as to use the word bucolic to describe today, but I came close. I believe the word halcyon also slipped to the tip of my tongue once but didn't quite escape. In short, one of those summer days. The ones we all dream about in the middle of winter. You know, clouds doing the cotton candy thing, looking all impressive and threatening but never actually letting fly with the downpour. Even now as the sun is setting, the sky is that astonishing rosy color between apocalypse orange and refulgent pink. The color that no camera ever captures quite accurately. Just gorgeous really.

Oh, and it's also the days that I think of as the middle of summer. Before too long, we'll meander into the decline of Fall. It's the days that I start to feel panic. Am I making the most of this summer? Am I taking enough bike rides? Going to enough summer street fairs? Spending enough time at the beach? Eating enough zucchini and peaches? In short, am I living life to the fullest, stocking up the good times for the long, dull winter ahead? I think maybe one can never eat enough peaches, but the answer to the rest, for this summer at least is "maybe", instead of the "definitely not" of previous years.

I'll leave you with a photo I took at the start of summer.