Hi! Remember me? I’m the one with the broken computer writing daily blog posts in my brain. It really is too bad none of you are mind readers. I’ve been writing a great brain-blog over the last couple of months.
This is hilarious. For the intellectual blanketfortian.
http://blog.buildllc.com/2010/04/couch-cushion-architecture-a-critical-analysis/
Untitled by Anthropology on flickr, via Design is Mine
It’s spring-like around these parts – we’ve got cherry blossoms and daffodils and tulips all around – but it sure doesn’t feel that way when I step out the door. I brought my mittens back out! Brrrr.
So, I thought a little warm cozy spot would be good for today. Off to find my wool slippers.
Where have I been so long? Oh, so much to tell about the last 2 and a half months!
I can pretty much date the blog neglect from the moment Mirabel started crawling. That girl is interested in life! And she could motor, right from the start. We didn’t baby-proof right away because we were moving (and then we didn’t move, but that’s a whole other post) so it was constant active supervision. Add that to no downtime during naps (I still have to wear her during all her naps) and my extremely slow writing pace and slower photo-editing, and you get no blog.
But, the move is averted, the house has been baby-proofed, and plans are being laid to get this little one napping on her own. So, expect to see me around here much more often.
Mirabel and I escorted Kezia, our house guest, to the airport today. We were a sight on the bus – suitcases and carry-ons and babies all piled together at the front. It’s been a fun and busy couple of weeks.
We had a beach picnic, went to craft fairs, walked all over fun neighbourhoods, went fabric and clothes shopping, spent a marathon 5 hours in Value Village (with the baby, she had a two hour nap in the carrier), ordered in sushi, cooked lots of delicious food, watched Grand Designs and made things from yarn, had a fun afternoon making mobiles with my friend Laura, played with the baby (who learned to crawl in that time), and best of all, I watched Kezia get giddy with glee as we entered Daiso.
But now it’s back to real life. Filling out applications to co-operative housing, babyproofing, planning for the holidays. I’ll miss having someone around to help mind the baby and share in the cooking on weekdays, and I’ll miss having someone (adult) to talk to. Thanks for making me breakfast every morning, Kezia!
My friend Kezia’s in town for two weeks and staying at our house, which seems to make blogging difficult. I think it’s a good thing that I’m out having fun and living life with nary a moment to write about it. But it’s not so good for my NaBloPoMo resolution. I’m OK with that, I think it has served its purpose, and I’ll be in here much more often from now on.
What have we been doing this weekend? Checking out neighbourhood houses and studios (oh, and art too) during the Eastside Culture Crawl. Buying yarn. Eating yummy food at restaurants. Having dinner and playing games with friends. A little bit of shopping, some walking in the rain, and a lot of cooking up deliciousness. Fun, fun.
See you soon, but maybe not tomorrow.
Missed another day – I had a friend arriving from out of town, the baby has a cold, and for the 10 minutes or so that I had to write a post, the internet wasn’t working.
It’’s been raining, so the photos I’ve been taking have been really unattractive, and definitely not blog-worthy. So much blurriness, or flash. So the one above is a collection of rainclouds that I crocheted, with little fringey rain. They’re pins, and meant to be worn as a kind of proclamation that you stand for rain, you get behind the drizzle, you have rain-pride. It’s what happens here, I have to try to love it in all the ways I know how, or it can really get me down.
We bid our worm farm a sad farewell today. I honestly thought I would be into keeping our little composting worms for ever and ever, I was extremely enthusiastic about them. The proof? I taught a mini-lesson in vermicomposting at a workshop I took, and I made a handout!
But, between the needy loveable and affectionate cat, the inquisitive, opinionated baby and a bucketful of silent worms that can be neglected for weeks on end and still be perfectly happy, where do you suppose my attention has been divided?
I still totally recommend vermicomposting to anyone – it’s perfect for apartment dwelling, it doesn’t smell and it really is easy. I’m trying to come up with a good reason why we aren’t doing it anymore, and the only thing I can think of is that it isn’t something I want to focus on this winter. Otherwise, it is great fun, and very satisfying to see the kitchen waste go in, and compost come out.
Luckily, our colony (what do you call a grouping of worms, anyway?) was not entirely drowned by my lack of focus, and my friend Andy carried them home, walking, at least 10 blocks, in a wet, blustery November storm. That, my friends, is dedication to the worms.
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Interested in vermicomposting? Check out City Farmer and their page on worm composting.
This evening I was sorting my yarn by fibre and colour and I was reminded of a project I did in art school, a component of which required me to sort something by colour every day during the month of October 2005.
And look! Here is my baby yarn stash (I was just learning to knit) sorted according to colour, probably for the first time ever!
Ew, apologies for the yucky photo taken on the yucky carpet, but at the time I was interested in basic documentation only, as the project was basically designed for me to run out of time to do anything properly.
I have had this compulsion to organize things by colour for as long as I remember. I used to go mental when my sister would use my fancy pencil crayons and replace them in the wrong order. I also would sort my skittles or smarties into colour groupings before eating them. I am not otherwise a very organized or compulsive person, but there is something so visually satisfying to see things all arranged by colour. I just love colour.
After this project was done, I continued my exploration into objects and environment and colour by creating an installation, at school, of everything we owned in our house that was yellow.
I’m having some issues with my geriatric iBook. So no photo – but text can be pretty right? What is the etiquette on photo usage in blogs anyway? Do I need to e-mail and seek permission every time, or is a simple photo credit all cool unless they expressly forbid it?
Some things I’ve been digging off the blogroll:
Monday morning treehouses on This Tiny House
Eat the Seasons on Backyard Farming
Revelations in crock pot cooking over at Blue Yonder
There would be more, but the cat just woke the baby up for the second time tonight with her super-hyper tearing about. Oh I can’t wait for the day that we live somewhere with interior doors.
This will be our view, for the next couple of months. Vancouver is rainy in the winter, that you know, but it can also be soul-crushingly dark all the time. Like in December, when the sun sets at 4:30pm, but it feels like it never really came up. This, however, is much better than the December I was in Finland, where the sun rose at 11 am or so, and set, oh, 2 or 3 hours later. Besides, winter is wonderfully short here – it was autumn until last week or so, and we’ll be seeing flowers in February.
There are so many things that make winter better. I love woolens – scarves, hats, mittens, socks, slippers. Rubber boots (mine have a cozy fleece liner). Soup with bread. Roasted root vegetables and miso gravy. Anything mulled – apple cider, wine. Tea, pots and pots of tea. Nests of blankets all over the house. Constant knitting. Baking. Stewy things in the crock pot. Hot baths.
Well, I’m half way through this blog experiment, and I must say that daily blogging seems to be developing into a pleasant habit. I’m not totally on the blog train yet – I have a hard time thinking about taking decent photos for the blog during the day when the light is good – but I’m getting there.Until tomorrow!