weekend, O! weekend!

i've had this children's quilt on my couch for about the last 8 years. i made it when my friend eli & chava were expecting a baby. we had been friends up at humboldt, then in l.a. sometime before i finished the blanket we fell out of touch.

at this time i was trying to add pieced borders to my quilts. i'm particulary proud of the pieced stars in this one. :)
it's got a nice orange flannel back (another first for me back then).
pardon the wide, bland pic with the yard stick at the end. it was taken with my laptop for
someone interested in using it in a shoot. here is a nice detail shot:
those little shapes in the blue squares are fish. with smiles. i am very fond of this old fabric. :)

over the years i've considered giving the quilt to other friends who were having kids but never did. i like to make things with the recipients in mind, so giving it to another family just felt odd.

a couple of weeks ago, through the radness of f/b, eli and i reconnected! turns out we'd lost touch b/c he and his wife moved out of state. i'd completely forgotten. their family has since grown, and their youngest is a two yr old boy. i told them the story of the quilt and asked if i could send it to them. it's now in a box, awaiting a mailing label. this week it's off to my friends after all these years. awesome. (lord, my fatigue has depleted my vocabulary in a powerful way. sigh).

i'm happy about this for all the obvious reasons but also b/c now i have reason to make another quilt for home. woo! how cool would it be for all the blankets at my place to be handmade? one long-cooker of a project i have is to mend the afghan my grandma irene crocheted. just needs a little mending where the granny squares have been attached.

boy, this was a terrific weekend. got a few things done, did some knitting, watched "Dinner at Eight," had some unexpected social time with my neighbors, had two bagels, saw a movie, wrote a few postcards, went to the record store, and spent a good deal of time reading "wonder boys."

this evening as i rode my bike home from an afternoon at good & intelligentsia mmj's version of the velvet underground's "oh! sweet nuthin'" came up on the shuffle and just broke my heart. such a terrific song.
where effie st. crosses hyperion there is wide open view of the neighborhood. there were some low grey clouds over the hollywood sign and griffith observatory as the sun was setting. the area jacaranda trees are all in full bloom: luminous lavender everywhere! dotting the hillsides, along every street. one of those beautiful, cool evenings in the neighborhood.

(this pic came from a forum for landscape architects. i couldn't find a photo credit.)

and with that: off to bed. big week coming up: ira glass is coming to town for a this american life screening and i'm going to a new dentist. excited and a little terrified. my last dentist recommended gum grafts. this is how he became my Last Dentist. :|

further badassery...

most of you have heard my tales of world-wide sticker distribution, but if you haven't, here is the nutshell version:

last summer i made some bumper stickers to pass out to fans at my morning jacket shows as souveniers of the tour. for kicks. thought it would be a hoot. the stickers were printed with "RAMPANT BADASSERY" a saying i'd used to describe mmj's live shows.

i brought them to shows in several towns (and states *cough*) and passed them out to people i met there. i posted a thread on the mmj fan forum about the stickers and offered them to anyone who sent me a SASE (c'mon Zoom fans, i know you're out there!).

i gave a stack of them to the mmj road crew. one response in particular was, "fucking awesome!" glad to see they were well received. :)
as i sent the stickers out i kept a list of all the states that they went to. in detroit i gave one to a young guy who said, "i read about these!" ha!
a lot of people sent me cool stickers in return, or pix of their towns and friends. such a fun, cool thing to experience.

as i mailed the last sticker out (to a fan in New Mexico) the totals stood thusly: stickers went to fans in 26 states, canada, australia and japan!

last week i had my first unexpected "R.A." sticker sighting:

it was at the Decemberists show in l.a. i recognized two of the techs on stage as being part of the mmj road crew last year. after the show i got the attention of one of them to say hello. when he asked how i recognized him, i told him that i went to a lot of shows, then, "i made those "rampant badassery" stickers." he pointed to his roadcase which had one on the R.A. stickers on it. then he called over to the other tech i'd recognized and shouted, "hey, eric! it's the rampant badassery girl." which got a "no way!" and some gesturing toward the sticker on his roadcase. we had a short "hey those stickers went everywhere" conversation shouted across the security people sweeping out the crowd stragglers.

awesome.

in recounting this story enough people have asked me for stickers that i'm considering making a second batch. keep your eyes peeled for MACH II.

postcard-a-go-go!

since i was about 6 years old i've been a letter writer. when i was in college and couldn't afford to make long distance calls that weren't collect, i wrote even more. i bought and used a lot of stationery and postcards. when i got to grad school, not only did i not make phone calls, but my letter writing dropped off as i was busy getting up at 4am to script supervise my friends films. oof.

to get to the point: quite a few of the postcards in my apt i've been carting around for years. decades.

in the last couple weeks of april i learned that the postal rate was going up. at the time i had about thirty 27¢ postcard stamps. i determined to use as many of the 27¢ stamps (and postcards from my stash) as i could before the rate change. by the last saturday before the rate increase i'd written 27 postcards. WOO!

now, i've found i'm kind of on a roll. saturday i stopped by the post office for forty 1¢ stamps (sigh) to continue my postcard binge. i shot myself in the foot in re: depleting the decades deep stash of postcards in my apt, though, when i bought a 20 pack of postage paid Simpsons postcards at the post office. DAMN! it may have been a reaction to realizing that i'd just added 20 more postcards back into the supply that had me sit down and write another 10 cards over the last couple days.

still, i did manage to send at least three postcards i've had with me since the mid 1980's. that felt FANTASTIC! one of them was an aerial photo of the Red Lion Hotel in north san jose. i took that postcard from hotel when i was there ringing in the new year 1987 or 1988. i don't remember the year but i do remember having a terrific time and dancing with my friend walt to a band in the lounge. also managed to use a card i'd purchased at a dead show in about the same time period. it had some very grateful dead related art work on it.

all this card writing has usurped my knitting time at cafes, so i haven't been knitting at all. each postcard is its own thing, so they don't require a continuing attention and focus like a knitting project. timing is good for that kind of activity, tho.

assorted fun facts: weekend cafe total: 5, finished reading paul feig's, "kick me," began reading "wonder boys" again, came home tonight to the neighbors bbq-ing in the courtyard and was met with, "you want a piña colada?"

and now, time for bed.

people...who need people

"thanks again for getting that bee out of my hair."

what i said to petra that made a guy walking past us laugh.
fun fact: spoken at the l.a. times festival of books

how hot was my apartment that weekend?

the weekend of april 17 was a scorcher here in los angeles. i missed the heat, however, because i was in the state capital record shopping and sangria drinking with my old college housemates. (woo!) the weather there was perfect! and, as i was in "weekend with friends" mode, i was blissfully unaware of the heat back home.

until...

i got off the plane in burbank sunday night. at the burbank airport you deplane down an open air flight of stairs, not a jetway. i walked out of the plane, at 8pm and it was hot. still. not warm. hot.

cutting to the chase: my apt. complex was built for maximum cross breeze (many big windows), but with no insulation. my kitchen gets even hotter than the rest o' the place b/c the gas stove and water heater are in it.

i opened my cupboard to get a snack and i found that the container of mini peanut butter cups had become one mass o' melted snack food.
this isn't the first time this has happened. i have a bag of chocolate chips in the cupboard that has turned into a big block o'dark chocolate (good with peanut butter, btw).










also: them thermometer on my window fan read 98 degrees when i got home at 9:30 pm.

oof.

i am going to enjoy every light breeze and moderately warm day we have until the summer gets going.

saturday in two parts

friday afternoon i made plans with sang to hike on sunday. it was a loose plan with one goal: a good, long, semi-challenging hike. having made that plan let me focus all my housekeeping chores on saturday.
i woke up early, did six (6!) loads of laundry, dishes, swiffered most of apt., took out the recycling & trash, cleaned out the fridge, washed my kitchen trashcan, cleared away a stack of mail (ads, catalogs, etc). after all this was done i walked up the street for a pedicure.
after the pedicure i went to a cafe up the street for some reading. the following is a post card i wrote while sitting there. look for the twist:

5.2.09 Saturday afternoon...
"Perhaps all short stories can be understood as ghost stories, accounts of visitations and reckonings with the traces of the past." --Michael Chabon, from "The Other James"

I've been slowly reading a collection of short stories by Hiruki Murakami. I didn't know if was his writing, the translation, or my approach to his stories, but all of them had a dreamy quality. The voice in my head as i read them is calm and steady. just a minute ago i finished reading the M. Chabon piece noted above. as i read that line i had an "oh. of course." moment. so, in the last few minutes i've been applying that sentiment to stories i've read.
[oh. my. god. there are two crazy hyper chatty children running all around this patio. around my table shouting to their parents. they never stop making sounds. i can't even maintain concentration enough to finish this p-card. just try to get a bit contempletive in any public space in los feliz these days. pfft.
ending on a good thought: i'm going for a hike tomorrow w/my pal sang. i don't know where yet. we just made the plan to do it. i always defer trail selection to him b/c he's the man in the know.
--evonne


follow up: our friend travis joined us! we hiked a trail in the santa monica mtns. that included a scramble to sandstone peak, the highest point in the santa monica mtn. range. at the peak we sat in the crazy gusts of wind, holding our hats and ate oranges from travis' backyard.
man, it was gorgeous! many wildflowers still in bloom. stunning views of the ocean to the west and the valley to the east.
in this pic of NYPD Blue's editorial dept: sang is the 4th from the left in black, travis is on the right in the blue shirt.

i'm now going to watch more jeremy brett as sherlock holmes and hit the hay.

rad thing of the day: my thermos

i love this thermos.

for years i've been using a thermal coffee mug to tote my joe. i love this mug. but that mug has been sidelined as i left it at a neighbor's house weeks ago. in the interim i've been using the thermos.

when my neighbor, beige, moved to philadelpia she shed a few belongings. she gave this thermos to me.
it keeps my coffee hot for hours. this is important. it may seem to be overstating it that this thing is good at what it does, but i have several second string thermal mugs that are not effective: they drip, they don't keep stuff hot, they're awkward to use.

so.

my first ever Rad Thing of the Day post is dedicated to my thermos.
thanks, beige!