living & dyeing

90th birthday

My grandma (my dad's mom this time) had a birthday yesterday!

 

The cake was on fire. Turns out the candles were those kinds you can't blow out. haha

 

isn't this a funny toothpick holder?

The kids took turns with my camera and went around taking "artistic" shots. Or something like that.

 

My grandpa loves to tell stories when he has a captive audience.

 

the whole family...

the river sings

Our words go beyond the moon
Our words go into the shadows
The river sings the endlessness
We write of our journey through night
We write in our aloneness
We want to know the shape of eternity
Who knows the way it is?
Who knows what time will not tell us?
Mountains, solitude and the moon
until the journey's end?
The river holds the lost road of the sky;
the shape of eternity?
Who knows the way it is?
Who knows what time will not tell us?
Where is the beginning?
Where is the end?
Why did we fall into days?
Why are we calling out into the endlessness?
Who knows the way it is?
Who knows what time will not tell us?

(english translation)

mohair weaving has commenced

Barenaked for the Holidays

killer socks

these will be my first pair of socks from the Cookie A sock-knitting book and they are, shall we say, challenging. I mean, not too hard or anything but they a) take a long time and b) require some level of concentration, which I'm not used to. Check out the yarn Lydia chose. whoo, bright!

Lament by Rainer Maria Rilke

O how all things are far removed
and long have passed away.
I do believe the star,
whose light my face reflects,
is dead and has been so
for many thousand years.

I had a vision of a passing boat
and heard some voices saying disquieting things.
I heard a clock strike in some distant house...
but in which house?...

I long to quiet my anxious heart
and stand beneath the sky's immensity.
I long to pray...
And one of all the stars
must still exist.
I do believe that I would know
which one alone
endured,
and which like a white city stands
at the ray's end shining in the heavens.

weaving with mohair

Got this lovely stuff in Lansing recently... mohair for weaving....

movie day

when I was a teen, I always always went to see a movie with friends either on Thanksgiving day or the day after (sometimes both). This year we settled for Netflix and saw this one (no, not with the kids!!):

The infected people were really scary!! I had to hide my eyes...

Thanksgiving day

so I was making cranberry sauce yesterday on Thanksgiving, at the last minute (ran to the grocery store and there were lots of people there! kinda surprised me) and you'll never believe what I did. I poured the very hot berries into the GLASS serving dish and it immediately exploded all over the counter. ahem. Yeah I should have remembered that you're not supposed to do that. The husband went back to the store for more cranberries and I cleaned up the mess with the help of my father-in-law. holiday fun! One of my daughters really got into helping in the kitchen, which was pretty cute.

 

my in-laws have two cats. This is Rembrandt.

home again, home again, jiggety-jig.

turkey cake

I scoured the web for the cool turkey cake I saw at Carlos Bakery last weekend but I couldn't find one. I did, however, find this very odd photo of a camera cake. fail. haha

 

happy thanksgiving!

made the hat

and I'm not even sure she likes it. If she doesn't wear it, I'm going to rip it back a bit and make it bigger so that *I* can wear it!

 

Christmas is one month from TODAY. Sobering.

The Cure...just like heaven

Dancing in the deepest oceans
Twisting in the water
You're just like a dream

new york, day three

my final day in New York was yesterday and it was another gorgeous sunny one. We took the ferry across the Hudson instead of the bus through the tunnel.

 

 

Then caught a bite (well, several) to eat at Junior's. Check out my "Something Different" sandwich. It's a potato pancake with beef briscket, served with mushroom gravy and applesauce.

 

and a chocolate shake to boot (in honor of you, Dad). Because you only live once and the plane I took back to Chicago might have crashed. If it had and I hadn't had this chocolate shake, I would have regretted it!

And now for some music:

new york, day two

view from the house:

 

Ella in the sun:

 

gyros on the street:

 

 

tiled hats weren't the only thing we saw in the subway. check out this guy:

and then we had the best hot chocolate I've ever tasted from City Bakery.

 

with homemade marshmallow. a-maz-ing.

new york, day one

yowza, the weather here is amazingly gorgeous. Sunny and warm. Had a couple of great meals yeseterday including a stop at the Cake Boss headquarters: for some yummies:

 

dinner at Gray's Papaya (awesome!!)

 

 

We saw this play too and it was really funny... great acting in a fabulous theater and our seats were in the second row! Oh and we rode the bus!

 

My brother in front of the Hudson:

 

love the hat! (and scarf too... I made that years ago, lol)

today I'm headed...

to NYC again! I'm visiting my brother and sister-in-law at their new place in New York! And I get to fly through the air... I've posted this before and I'm not even crossing the ocean or flying United but I love this ad!!

christmas carol

I heard this movie was pretty well done, I'd like to see it!

Wheaton in England

when I studied in England one summer, we took a Shakespeare class and adopted the last line of this quote as our motto:

"There is a tide in the affairs of men, which taken at the flood, leads on to fortune.
Omitted, all the voyage of their life is bound in shallows and in miseries.
On such a full sea are we now afloat.
And we must take the current when it serves, or lose our ventures."

--Brutus to Cassius, Act 4, Scene 3 of Julius Caesar:

mittens for Lydia

mittens are so quick and easy!

 

 

I have so much of this yarn, now I'm doing a hat!

knitting with some handspun

Got out this yarn the other day and am making mittens for one of my girls. I have tons of it though so I could make two pairs plus hats or something like that. I spun this last year I think. So pretty!

winter to spring

one of my 10-year-olds yesterday:

"Mommy, it looks like winter has already passed and we're all the way to spring!"

*sigh* Don't I wish.

second sock

coming along on Anabel's second sock. The second one always goes slower than the first (have I mentioned that?) becuase I get bored. yawn.

pokemon drawings

So the elementary school had a book fair. I got the 8-year-old a how-to-draw Pokemon book. Well, the whole family is getting into it and I told them two nights ago that I'd draw one of the characters that night after they went to bed. I did pretty well, see?

 

here's the original:

 

So then yesterday I did another one, just cause the first one was so much fun! haha

 

 

These were not traced, I did actually draw them. But notice that I drew them in the exact same pose as the picture. I'm not good enough to render various poses. Still, it's fun! I may do all the characters in the book!

Oh, and yesterday I took my longest ride yet--south on 1st avenue to Archer, past 294, along the county line, to 83 north and then 56 east (Butterfield) to Washington and home. Took about an hour and a half. The thing is, the bike just wants to go and go and go. It never wants to turn around. So I need to work on making myself stop and change direction and do more lane changes and such. But I feel pretty proud of myself. And I love my bike. It's got great pick-up, I was going 55mph on 83 and I felt totally calm. Intersections are way trickier than speed. Anyway it's supposed to get colder this weekend and next week too so the riding season really may be over. boo.

"he said I looked

happy and sad at the same time. and he was right. that's exactly how I feel."

"I feel that way too sometimes."

"Really?"

"yeah."

the producers

we watched the 2005 version of The Producers over the weekend. The one with Matthew Broderick and Nathan Lane. So funny.


Rode the bike in lunch hour traffic up Thatcher and to 171 for a bit on Monday. I did well and wasn't too scared. I turned left at an unprotected green light that turned red as I was turning. I rode for probably 10 miles total. Gotta scout out some different routes. But it's almost too cold to ride anymore anyway. I'll do that over the winter so that when spring comes I'll be ready.

socks for Anabel

My girls liked their socks from last spring so well that I'm making each of them another pair. I let them choose the yarn. Ana chose this green Lorna's Laces and I'm making the Waving Lace Socks (which I've made before--very fun pattern!) The first sock is finished already...

 

The colors are very accurate in the above photo. I took other pics under a lamp and the colors look different, more yellowish:

 

Anyway, I've started on the second sock so hopefully by the end of this week, she'll have another pair to wear and I can start on Lydia's pair. Wait until you see the yarn SHE chose.

truffles

so the kids and the husband surprised me yesterday with birthday truffles! one of my girls found a recipe for these in a kids' craft book (of all places!).... see how yummy they look (and oh, they tasted even better than they look, if that's possible)

 

 

 

The husband also took me out to dinner for sushi AND I went for a ride on the Albatros (which is how I think of my red Magna, like the red plane Richthofen flew. Not Fokker, since that was the one that was shot down)! Gosh I think it was one of the best birthdays I've had in awhile!

"You live like this,

sheltered, in a delicate world, and you believe you are living. Then you read a book… or you take a trip… and you discover that you are not living, that you are hibernating. The symptoms of hibernating are easily detectable: first, restlessness. The second symptom (when hibernating becomes dangerous and might degenerate into death): absence of pleasure. That is all. It appears like an innocuous illness. Monotony, boredom, death. Millions live like this (or die like this) without knowing it. They work in offices. They drive a car. They picnic with their families. They raise children. And then some shock treatment takes place, a person, a book, a song, and it awakens them and saves them from death. Some never awaken."
-- Anais Nin

The Lopi sweater!!

 

 

This is the "Britt" sweater from The Best of Lopi book. I made the size medium and it fits great. The sleeves could be longer since I have longish limbs (heh) but all in all, a really nice sweater, perfect for the cold weather. I love Lopi. Even though it does tend to be a bit scratchy. You definitely need something cottony soft underneath.