t-minus-16 hours

hmmm...so, first, I was trying to come up with a good birthday-related song lyric for this title aside from the obvious, but could only think of the lyrics from the Sugarcubes' "Birthday," which, well, not a cheery song. So, instead...a countdown. Tick, Tick. And, these days the daughter's favorite read is Museum 123, so we're counting all the time!

So far in the last 72 hours (realizing just now that this actually "counts" tangentially as a "work in progress" for WIP Friday), a list of things to count:

One school lunch party relatively successfully accomplished:



Thirty animal-shaped soy butter sandwiches are not as easy to manufacture as one might initially think, as it turns out.



Ten party favors are ready to go, and the climber has been assembled outside for entertainment purposes.



Twenty-four cupcakes are cooling in the kitchen, awaiting decorating tomorrow morning. The above are a few from last year's batch, of which I was inordinately proud. Who knows what I'll do this year? I despair of coming up with a flip-flop decoration...I toyed with the idea of making them all look like flip-flops, but really, they all just looked like peace signs. And since I can't get her to put on sandals to save her life, much less flip-flops, really, why should I slavishly follow the invitation theme?

One messy house remains to be cleaned, and tomorrow I still need to make panzanella, guac, and something else relatively substantial for folks to nibble on. We also have to set up the basement in the very likely event (there is an 85 % chance!) of rain.

At least we can get used to these things slowly, when she's two, and too young to really be upset that we were not properly thematically coordinated across all elements of the party. For now, she's just happy helping us straighten "her space" a little:

Cleaning Up!

Whenever I have a pending writing project, I tend to go into neatnik overdrive. It's a delay tactic, sure, but it also helps me get my mental space uncluttered, even if the ex-cluttered space is far away from my writing desk. The other day I sat down to work from home for a bit and kept running into my stack of Japanese crafting magazines that were awaiting scanning. I realized something needed to be done...I clearly couldn't put these beauties






into this messy crafting closet





It's actually a fantastic, high-ceilinged, walk-in closet under our stairs. It's cosy, and I could even imagine fitting a sewing table in there and going to town. I've always meant to make it a place for all the craft supplies, but things ended up going in piecemeal when we moved in, and it never got better. So, inspired by the much more elaborate studio clean-ups in the blogosphere, I cleared everything out and put it back in again, in much neater fashion. And, as you can see, I even hung some craftiness on the walls of the closet. It's a true little placid nook now!





The drawers are better than before, though not perfect. I reserved the bottom one for the Almost-two's craft supplies. Check out how pitifully small my stash of fabric:



I have dreams of a giant stash of fabric on these shelves, once I get the sewing machine skills dusted off:



I need to bring up all my collaging materials from the basement, too. Collage things are so much harder to keep track of, though...all those little pieces of uncategorizable paper and miscellaneous scraps. One day, maybe I'll tackle all that, too.

Meanwhile, the Almost-two has been cleaning up at the rummage sales. Her haul from last Friday, to the tune of $12.50:



And I actually have been managing to get some writing done since! Amazing--though all this good work activity will have to be put on hold for a bit as I kick into full-birthday mode. Today I managed my first pizza for the Almost-two to have at school while her non-allergic classmates celebrated another girl's birthday with the traditional Pizza Hut Delivery party. I wish my food-styling skills were a bit more, um, developed...the pictures I took of this culinary milestone were, sadly, not terribly munchable. Maybe next time.

no book yet...

This week has had a little bit of everything...the almost-two was home for a school vacation Wednesday-Friday last week, so we spent some time visiting estate and rummage sales. A few bargains were had, but it was too darn cloudy today to take nice pictures. I'll post them soon.

In the meantime, I was finishing off one project, finally:



(this was a kit i bought in Edinburgh last summer, thinking I'd knock it off on the plane ride home. Then I bought the new Harry Potter, and I started coming down with a really awful cold, and all I did on the flight home was sleep. And now, one year later, I'm finally finished with it...sigh.)

two batches of cupcakes, one much more successful than the other...



and then, taking the almost-two to tea for her best friend's second birthday!



yes, they let them use real china...check out the concentration. I wish I had taken pictures of the tea sandwiches I made her...I had fun with the shapes. Cucumber sandwiches shaped like flowers, avocado-and-tofutti sandwiches shaped like hearts, and little circular chicken salad sandwiches. None consumed, of course...



(recognize the cupcake? she ate that.)

today, a less gentle activity: cleaning the gutters. No images here...in fact, the less said the better.

Grey.

like the cloudy day we've been having.

Goody

A quick post, as I am frantically crafting tonight (results to be posted soon!)




Invitation to the girl's birthday party, inspired by greetingarts, whose participalific subtitle I was not aware of when I wrote mine--I swear!!!

And, because they make me inordinately happy, these nummy purchases from my San Francisco trip...



The anklet is my official nod to summer, given to me by Camille after her annual Carribean junket last year.

If this picture were decent enough, I'd use it for color week, but I'm too shy, and my photographic skills are too lame. If the girlie and I see any good black when we're out and about tomorrow, maybe I'll brave up and post something else...until then, g'night!

when green is all there is to be

I am working on knitting a sweater for my nearly-two-year-old daughter. It is the first real thing I have ever knit (knitted?). See, I don't even know whether the past tense of "knit" is regular or irregular--a novice I am.

Lessons I have learned while knitting this sweater:
1. Next time, use big needles and big yarn. (Maya told me I'd discover this one.)

OK, so that's the only lesson so far. But let me tell you, it's a vital one.

I have so far managed to finish the back to the point that I have the neckline on a stitchholder:



and I am halfway through the easy (pre-neck) part of the button side of the front:



Aside from a few panicked moments when I thought I'd dropped a stitch (I have no idea how I would pick it up again, Debbie Stoller notwithstanding), things have been tripping along rather well. At least, until last night, after I took the above pictures...accomplished knitters may already see what I would not see until many rows later in the evening, which was that I reversed in the middle of a row. I ended up having to unravel quite a bit, and had some very scary moments there when I had a terrible time catching the stitches from the seed stitch portion of the row. But, all is well now, and I'm ready to start up again tonight, once I've amply recovered. I still have high hopes of finishing it up in time for her birthday at the end of the month, but that will take a few more evenings with this



and fewer puttering around with things like these



I also need to learn to photograph flowers properly sometime.

Wine with dinner:



Oh, and I'm also supposed to be writing a book this summer.

...she walked a crooked mile...

While I was in San Francisco last month I never made it to Lombard Street. This makes me a little sad. I became a bit obsessed with it several years ago when I was there visiting my friend Colleen, who was already a fan. We drove down it many times that trip. Though I got carsick on another occasion (and, as it turns out, I have been carsick every! time! I've gone to San Francisco), it was never during a spin down Lombard Street.

I am currently also preoccupied by pictures of Lombard Street, and there are plenty of artists who fuel my ardor.

Ellie Marshall, 1987:



John Kraft, 2004:



Helga Strobel and Diggory (Colleen sent me this postcard):



Even a Limoges box!



900 Lombard Street is also, of course, the address of Scottie, Jimmy Stewart's character in the phenomenal Vertigo, which I absolutely need to watch again:


(Outside the apartment, looking away from the crookedness)

Stewart doesn't do much for me as a romantic lead, but check out this "Rescue at the Golden Gate Bridge" shot. Kim Novak can swoon like nobody's business:



Yarnstorm's reflections here about collecting things really struck a nerve with me. (It's probably easy to tell that her whole blog, graceful and stylish, is having a tremendous influence on my own blogging style, if I can even presume to have one in my second post, for goodness sake.) It works in the abstract too, I think--before I started writing this post, I never thought I'd go here, but I'm starting to realize some of the pull of Lombard Street: it looks like my life recently. I mean, just look at all the present participles up there in my "description" subheading. Certainly they're related, but in a way that keeps one tacking back and forth all the time. I'm just starting to get used to it, but I want to bring things in line a bit more, straighten out the path. I've been spending most of the past month digging out from under the detritus of the past two years--three, really, if you count the year of pregnancy/first year of a permanent job. I'm hoping I can use this space to reorganize my mental storage area a bit, so that next year my life is a little less like this:


(Peter Lee Brownlee)

and a little more like this:


(Road and Telegraphic Poles. East Yorkshire. 1 IV '04. David Hockney, 2004.)

A girl can dream.

Easily Distracted...

I really need another hobby, don't I?

I imagine starting will be the most difficult thing, and not blogging cynically. I don't want this to be a cynical blog, though I suppose the snark will creep in around the edges eventually anyway.

The best way to avoid snark is through beauty, right?



(The Daughters of Edward Darley Boit, 1882. John Singer Sargent. Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.)

This is hardly an unknown painting, but it is so brilliant. As the daughters get older they disappear into the background, removing themselves from recognition. At the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston they recently acquired the pair of giant urns from the Boit heirs, and now they flank the huge portrait--the urns in the painting are about 3/4 size. When I lived in Boston I made frequent pilgrimages to this painting, which was displayed in the same room as this much snarkier near-contemporary:



(At The Opera, 1879. Mary Stevenson Cassatt. Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.)

And now, to return to my sheep.