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. :|

craft on!

finished: the knit headband listed in the "now knitting" sidebar of this page.

woo!

it was an experiment, knit for my friend, jen. i would have gone for a solid color, but this cool cotton/elastic yarn came only in muted earthtones and the pink/raspberry variagated color.

i really dig it! i have enough yarn to whip one up for myself. it's been MONTHS since i've had a haircut, so i'm in the market for a headband or two.
technical bits:
the band is a strip of stockinette st with a 3 st. border on the sides. the border is made by purling on both the wrong and right side. creates kind of a horizontal rib. neat!
i just sewed the ends together in a way to make the seam flat. (i want to say i used a mattress stitch, but i think that's a sewing, not knitting term. eh. it's all mish mash of technique.)

i had been putting in some quality time on a whole cloth quilt. i'd hoped to have it done by now, but traded some sewing hours for live music in the last month. and i worked more than usual. maybe next week. ;)

ambiance: a solo jeff tweedy acoustic performance of "i'm always in love" just came on. i do love this song.
food & beer of note: al wazir, leinenkugel's amber

so long, farewell...

i consider it a mission. a task.

in an effort to not outgrow my apartment, i've been working on culling stuff from my belongings. stuff i don't use.
been working on it slowly, steadily for about a year. there are a couple areas of stuff that have been difficult: 1: music, 2: clothes
i'm not a fashion plate by any means, but i tend to keep clothes for ever. last night i was wearing coveralls i've had at least 10 years. last week, a sweater i bought at a thrift store when i was in high school.

this brings me to these t-shirts. the black one is from an FM rock station i listened to when i was in jr. high and high school. the back of the shirt says, "stick it in your ear."i cut the sleeves off and the neck out. i wore it to tennis practice in high school. and probably to the mall when i wanted to look cool (because sometimes my nazareth t-shirt was in the wash.)
the mottled, beige looking shirt is a 1982 cheap trick tour shirt. my mom poured bleach on it, not knowing it was in the washing machine. that's how it got it's color (this is NOT the only article of clothing that fell to this fate: my first 501's, my favorite yellow striped shirt. at a certain point i began doing all my own laundry for this reason). cut the sleeves and neck out of this one, too. back then, everything was cut for guys and had high necks: i cut the necks out of all my t-shirts.
i got the cheap trick shirt at a concert in hayward with my friend, patty sparkman, who had never seen the band before. (science fact: this was in the non-tom-peterson/ jon-brant days {see inset}).

there is a pic of me wearing this shirt, pre-bleach, in my sophmore yr. yearbook.

so. two weeks ago i took these shirts out of the "shirts in limbo" pile with the intent of either cutting them up for dusting cloths or throwing them in the trash.

they got as far as my sewing desk, where they still sit.

by the end of tonight, they will be in the bag of former shirts now in the service of wiping the dust off surfaces in my apt.

maybe.

SCREEN DOOR MACH II

brief update: the screen is mended, paint is re-touched, and is now back leaning in the kitchen door jamb awaiting proper installation. it will happen!! tomorrow i'm calling a shop in hollywood that installs doors. if it's not prohibitively expensive, i'm gonna make an appointment and get this show on the road! WOO, DAMMIT!
{this shot was taken after the torn screen was removed and paint touch-ups were in progress}

for the record:
beer of note: deschutes brewery, mirror pond ale
snack of note: trader joe's nuts about raspberries and chocolate trail mix

why i didn't see grant-lee phillips on saturday.

saturday morning i drove up to the greek theatre to buy some tix for a show. turns out the box office there is closed for the season. so. decided to use the out and about early on a saturday momentum to visit the DMV to replace my stolen (grr) car registration sticker. had to stop by the apt to look up the saturday hours. the information i found on their website stated that saturday DMV hours have been discontinued b/c of california's budget, which has yet to be set.

now. i remember that i can get this DMV service at AAA, so i head out. from the time i pulled out of my drive way, to the time i was pulling out of the AAA driveway: 45 min. done! easy!

back at the homestead i worked on a few things including the Never Ending Screen Door Project.

yes! (for those of you familiar with said screen door, it is, at present, lying on the floor of my dining room, torn screen and moldings removed, fresh coats of paint covering the scratches and dings from The Incident {sigh})

decided to walk to kaldi cafe in atwater. it's a great walk that takes me around the reservoir on rowena, over hwy 5 and the los angeles river. i really wanted to see the state of the river after two days of heavy rain.

armchair birder note: no birds on the reservoir. hmm. there was a flock of what looked like geese on the bank of the river. it was a bit far from the hyperion overpass to see.

at kaldi i had a rich americano, sat outside and read some roy blount. it was cool, but not raining and the sky was full of dramatic cloud formations. when it got too cold to stay out i got another americano and headed to the little knittery. .

i hung out there, did some knitting, chatting. when i got up to leave it was about 6:30. as i put on my sweater i looked out the window: downpour. i reflected on the decision i'd made hours before to wear a fleece jacket, instead of a rain jacket. to carry a wool bag, not a nylon backpack. to wear hiking shoes instead of my impervious muck boots. to bring my dinner-plate sized travel umbrella instead of my full sized, morton's salt girl umbrella.

when i headed home from atwater on foot, it was pouring rain. this was the heaviest rain i've ever walked in. and i lived for six years in humboldt county without a car. i've logged a lot of time walking in the rain. as i was walking over the hyperion bridge back to los feliz huddled under my umbrella, a car drove by, through the rain running down the gutter of the overpass and DRENCHED me. instantly. it felt like someone threw a bucket of water at my back. i turned to look down the road and saw the traffic light change, and watched two lanes of traffic headed my way.

it felt like someone was hurling buckets of water at my back in 2 second intervals for the next 2 minutes. a couple times, i put my umbrella down to cover my back, but it was raining so hard my head was getting soaked.

i was able to keep my head, and therefore headphones dry, so at least i could listen to music as squished home. there is never a bad time to hear ray charles.

when i got home i went straight into a hot shower. just out of the shower: lightning. decided to stay in, listen to some sarah vowell's "partly cloudy patriot" and continue on my crafting jag.

beer of note: mendocino brewery's eye of the hawk
snack of note: trader joe's mini dark choc. covered graham crackers.

i did miss grant-lee's little room show. again. dammit.

photo is of me during happier rainy times: june 2004, bonnaroo. pic taken by suzie. :)

shabby-dig-it-freddie!

last night at about 11:30, i put down the endless striped blanket i was knitting and thought to go to bed. then i noticed the unfinished glass of beer: celebrator. in my top 3.
so, i picked up lynda barry's "the freddie stories" to read while i finished my beer.

i don't know if these are strips from lb's strip, "ernie pook's comeek," or only in this book. they are so beautiful and crushing. i didn't want to stop reading until i could finish with a story that had a hopeful ending. finally got to bed at 1am.

lb stands alone.

there she is.

:)

it's what the kids call a barn burner!

**ok, so this isn't a letter. but i just got home from this fantastic fun night and wanted to add it to the page.**

worked a little late tonight *cough* but managed to get to the old crow medicine show only about 10 min late. they were playing two sets with no opener. i passed up the bar to get down on the floor. the place was packed and people were dancing. a lot! lots of whoops and hollers from all around. this crowd did not need any warm up time.

this band ripped it up! i danced my socks off and sang along. boy howdy.

here is the bonus bit: during the second set david rawlings came out to play with ocms. "wagon wheel" --> "tell it to me" --> "cc rider" --> two more songs i can't remember. holy cats.

then. for an encore: david, gillian welch and jakob dylan joined the band for "the weight." man alive, the whole room was singing. wonderful!

additional, side bonus: i was wearing a gillian welch tour shirt that doesn't have her name on it. it's a cool shirt, i get compliments on it, but no one has ever recognized it as a g.w. shirt. tonight 2 people at this show commented on it and one man said, "you must have been stoked tonight!"

yep!

fun facts from tonight:
--i made a friend! met another woman during the set break. we shared some hollers and high fives and looks of "hell yes!" when ocms pulled out some amazing songs.

--met a couple from tennessee who'd just moved to los angeles. they'd seen the band several times back in tn and were excited to their guys in their new town.

--the guy next to me dropped his full beer getting quite a bit of it on my arm, shirt and right shoe. i danced in a beer puddle the rest of the night. somehow, it seemed kind of fitting. :)