Happy Blending

It's a rotten, rainy, gloomy day and here are a few of the things I've Googled in between knitting like a fiend, eating potato chips, and watching The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie: Lady Jane Grey (The Nine Day Queen), Ariat Storm Stopper Jodhpur Boots, Anthropologie switchplates, & Louis Sullivan. Too lazy to warm up the scanner, so I'm posting this back cover of Romantic Range, which I had stored in my "Blog Folder". Whisky for cowgirls is thawing and revitalizing on chilly wet days, so this ad is selling the sold. The bonus is the lesson in economics, which paraphrases Dickens's prescription for a good life: "Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure nineteen nineteen and six, result happiness. Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure twenty pounds ought and six, result misery." I better quit visiting Anthropologie online.

Frosty Thoughts

The self portrait I took with my Mac was the only shot of eleven that didn't show blotchy skin, eye bags, or a myriad of other sags. Note the careful positioning of the hands, and the use of lighting to smooth away wrinkles. Usually I could care less about getting old and dumpy, but that's only because I don't go out in public much anymore! This shot shows me in my workroom thinking about my next knitting design. I really love designing my own stuff, because then there's so much less angst over mistakes. In fact, "mistakes" often lead to a serendipitous discovery of some cool new way to shape, as in the Yule Capelet I made for my Scottish yarn supplier. I "misplaced" the back panels but the wrap looks really nifty on, ruffly and Edwardian. Also featured is an arm-warmer made with yarn from same supplier in the Autumn Blackthorn colorway and the ZigglyZag hat chart, only with no "knit plain" rounds, and M1s instead of YOs. I find it really annoying to do zig-zagging stitch patterns 2-at-a-time-on-1-Magic-Loop, so who knows how long it will be before I make the other arm's ....

Hearth and Home

Last night my husband Buster and I went to the City Museum for a party sponsored by The Riverfront Times in celebration of their 2009 Best of St. Louis issue. Since I wrote a few blurbs for this, we got to go to the VIP area and taste some marvelous 17th Street Grill Barbeque without waiting in line. The City Museum qualifies as one of the coolest places on earth, and an opportunity to go there for free after dark is something to be jumped on. So we jumped, and wandered around watching people, playing pinball, enjoying the amazing exhibits, and swilling rotten wine out of paper cups. A favorite exhibit was the Urban Archaeology one, where interesting stuff dug up out of old privy holes is on display: face-shaped ceramic pipe bowls, china dolls, bottles, marbles, and of course, chamber pots. Seeing these artifacts made town life of 150+ years ago seem so human! Then we went out to dinner at the Missouri Athletic Club and had even more fun. I realized driving home through the grunge of the city's ripped back side, then on across the McKinley Bridge, that I've been feeling exiled ever since I gave up my pièd à terre on the South Side five years ago. Sometimes it takes me a while to figure things out! I lived in cities for 40 years before moving to Ex-Urbia. I'd always thought of myself as a country-loving environmentalist but I'm just not. If I only had to look at old buildings and concrete for the rest of my life I'd be much happier than if I could only see trees. To realize this has been a Major Psychological Breakthrough. There's no history in the country. Correction: there's no history I care about in the country. You can have your barn-raisings and quilting bees and crystal meth trailers. So, the goal for the next year is to come up with a long term strategy to get us out of exile. We're only 40 minutes from the Arch, and it's Pretty, but I guess I just love Ugly! (The image above is an old linen tea towel I found at The Salvation Army.)

Time to Fit in a Nap

I went to Nautilus today to try and get back into some semblance of a shape after weeks and weeks of inactivity. My fingers are super fit from knitting, but those are practically the only muscles in my body I've been using since the summer! It felt great to use other parts of the physique again — I even did 20 minutes on the tread-climber, an exercise in mind-numbing boredom unalleviated by music. Must bring the iPod next time. I'm determined to get my inner and outer strong lady back so I can not only lug the required 100 pounds of Ice Melter up and down our hill again this winter, but survive the mental stress of bad weather. After working out I felt super perky and even ate salad with sardines for lunch, but crashed shortly thereafter from the trauma of all those good intentions followed through on. Naps. I love naps, and am very skilled at taking them. So here we have the image of a crazy quilt from the Alton Museum of History and Art, to symbolize napping.

Halloween Spree

Went to Alton's world famous Fast Eddie's Bon-Air for a Big Elwood on a Stick this morning. Now that the smoking ban is in effect in Illinois the air really is bon there; no need for a shower after lunch. Then it was time for a browse through local antiquaries. In one shop I saw the most amazing vintage clothing: beautiful silks, satins, crêpes, and laces fashioned into 30s couture gowns. The workmanship and style was just incredible. I wonder whose attic was raided for these gems? Judging by the twiglike size, they all belonged to the same lucky girl. What parties did she wear them to? Where did she live? If she lived in Alton, did she know Eunice C. Smith? Instead of buying a long dress of fushcia peau de soie, I spent a dollar on this faded little doily. All the work that went into something three inches in diameter amazes me.

Two Spooky

It's very spooky out, almost as wet and miserable as the Pacific Northwest at its worst. Just the sort of Swamp Thing weather to get one in the mood for Halloween. Here are two spooky images in celebration of my favorite holiday: a scared girl, and a stag breathing some weird mist, with bats hovering eerily above the field.

Fried Scrapbook

I realized today that I could just wander around taking pictures of the things I have lying out on view and have enough to blog about for 365 days without ever leaving the house. So that means, if I cracked open the trunks in the junk dungeon, I could stay inside blogging for thirty years or so, if someone would just bring me enough sausage to live on. I may be turning into something of a recluse, because that sounds kind of fun! I don't know where I found this scrapbook, so blogging about junk has not improved my memory for past events. So many junk stores just blend into one after awhile. This scrapbook is full of early 20s newspaper clippings, mostly about how to fry things.

1969 Green

Certain years have certain colors in my mind. I was alive in 1969 and it was the metallic green of this box and car. I remember: it had the sunny brightness of an ice cream parlor parking lot, the sweet hiss of a chain-link fence, and permanent pebble marks in its grazed knees.

Vignette in Violet

Shelves are crucial when you have as much junk as I do. My dream place to live, instead of being the standard nice house with a nice view, is a studio apartment on a noisy street with three walls of floor-to-ceiling shelves. Couldn't fit many husbands or other creatures into that set up though. So for now I'll make do with what I have! Here's a grouping arranged by color, starting at the back: a floral box holding a darling ceramic perfume bottle, which still smells faintly of Genuine Devon Violets (my romance-reading grandmother's favorite scent & color!), a bar of motel soap, an old-fashioned pin, some mini boxing gloves, and a turnip.

Moiré

Here we have an illustration of the adjective:
"(of silk) having a rippled, lustrous finish. Denoting or showing a pattern of irregular wavy lines like that of such silk, produced by the superposition at a slight angle of two sets of closely spaced lines."
I don't know where I found this wonderful scrap of silk, stamped with an image of a Crinoline Lady and her swain. There's another just like underneath, and that must be the cause of the photo's slight moiré effect.

I noticed after posting this that you can't see any ding-dang moiré effect at all on the blog. Oops! But I assure you, it was there in the camera's viewfinder, and in my photo editor. Well anyway, that's my offering for today. I wonder if these silks were used on old thirties greeting cards?

My Little Baby Doll

After a long drive looking at pretty leaves yesterday, Bridget kept on driving, and had a sleepover in St. Louis with her grandparents last night. The house feels so different without her! I'm glad she's enjoying city life: she likes sidewalks better than gravel roads, and my mom always spoils her with a blue plate chihuahua special of liver no onions. But we miss her dreadfully. She's our baby, and just can't be cuddled enough.

The Last Persimmon

Persimmon trees are the first to lose their leaves in the Fall, and their fruit is quickly gobbled up by critters. Can you see the last persimmon in our backyard tree? (Look upper left...) One sunset last year my husband and I noticed the silhouette of a huge raccoon climbing out on one of those skinny branches to grab a goodie, it was an amazing gravity-defying sight. Persimmons may have lost their leaves already but every other tree in my area is in full psychedelic glory, and yes the sky really is that blue today, no saturation meddling required! My parents and I drove up to the Riverdock Restuarant in Hardin, Illinois for some of the best beef brisket in the Bi-State this morning, and I can't remember ever seeing such mind-blowing Fall colors before. No camera could have captured them, which is just as well, because I forget to bring mine!

Fall Capelets

No one, not even I, believed for one second this blog would stop showing off my knitting. I knitted like a fiend while listening to all that Georgette Heyer and here's a gallery of the outcome. This fall is all about capelets! Top to bottom photos: The Woods Out Back (i.e. Fall itself), Elderberry Capelet, Ladies' Swamp Mist Capelet, Lichen Capelet, and Ladies' Gothic Capelet. Here's what I really need: more yarn! Oh, wait — I was cooped up inside for five weeks with a computer and a PayPal account and colorful offerings by Elvincraft, so look what happened:


My favorite is this Wild Tussah Silk (see Ladies' Gothic Capelet above for the lovely drape) in Early Autumn Hazlewood and Camisole Dawn, both custom dyes by Kate Duncan. The silk has the most unbelievably luxurious texture knitted up, heavy yet light like vintage lingerie. It's a pain in the ass to wind, since the slubs which give it so much character make it snag like fun, but my All-Powerful Reeling Machine and I finally managed: