powerful forces were at work to keep me from finishing this quilt, but finish it i did. it's all in plaid flannels in the star log cabin pattern, and will be a birthday gift for my grandfather. the whiskery bits are ties that hold the three quilt layers together -- normally i machine quilt, but the wow is on the blink again and i needed to get this finished.
here's a single block, or you can see the entire quilt, or you can look at some of my other quilts.
while we're on the subject of names, let me tell you about another of my freakish little obsessions. i like finding names that make a complete sentence. as an example, let us consider
if you say it aloud, you think, "hm. i wonder where george went." you do. quit shaking your head no.
there are zillions of these. you just have to be alive to the possibilities. here are some to get you started. this list is in no way exhaustive.
the big fun begins when you start considering more complicated ones, with two words built into a single last name:
guys i once dated whose last names sounded like first names, in no particular order:
last night's low:
the weather forecast predicted lows of -15 to -25. bang on.
when i was in college, living at the outer orbits of campus, nancy and i used to walk to class* in winter chanting,
it's cold,we would also occasionally warble a formless ode to our thermal underwear:
i'm cold,
ya ya ya ya it'scold i'mcold
it's cold,
i'm cold
ya ya ya ya it'scold i'mcold...
longjohns, longjohns,
i like longjohns...
i miss nancy. we lost touch immediately upon graduation (i did, she didn't, but don't ask me how that happened). i've tried to look her up a few times -- do you know how many nancy lewises there are in the world? this is not her.
from the abcnews.com message boards, in a discussion about balsamic vinegar:
Subject: Re: Balsamic vinegar
Date: 01/27/2003 01:38:19
the first time i heard of balsamic vinegar-Emeril Lagasse was
useing it on his cooking show. that was in the mid-90's. some balsamic
vinegar will cost alot of money-i think it is thick when it is expensive.
i use a store brand $5.00 for 16.9 fluid oz.. it is a watery type. it is
better than regular bottled vinegar.
I don't think I would "cook" it down. you may be createing a cancer
causeing compound in it. use as "directed"!!!!
i'm sure the american cancer society is working on a bulletin about this hazard even as we speak.
courtesy of the register:
DoD offering admin privileges on .mil Web sitesCare to register a .mil Web site of your own for free? The DoD has gone out of its way to make it a snap. An unbelievably badly-protected admin interface welcomes you to register whatever domain you please (http://Rotten.mil anyone?), or edit anything they've already got. The interface is so ludicrously unprotected that it's been cached by Google and fails to mention that you must be authorized to muck about with it. Incredibly, default passwords are cheerfully provided on the page. [...]
All you have to do is find that page and you can set yourself up with a user account, manage your new .mil Web site, fiddle about with other people's .mil Web sites, and generally make an incredible nuisance of yourself. We are, of course, straining against every natural, journalistic impulse in our beings by neglecting to mention any useful search strings with which to find it.
hmm. julierobichaux.mil. hmm.
in the brochure rack at the grocery store today:
It's a big dream, but he's up to it: to someday join "The Few, The Proud, The Marines," just like his Dad and his Granddad before him. One look at this little "Devil Pup," and it's clear he's already got what it takes! He's hand-painted porcelain sculpted by artist Titus Tomescu, dressed in camouflage trousers and a USMC cover (cap). His sweatshirt features the "Semper Fi" motto and "Chesty." And his bulldog pup, "Li'l Chesty," has his name embroidered on his collar. Celebrate the proud legacy of the Marines for just $79.99 plus shipping and handling. Order today!
fine print:
Neither the United States Marine Corps nor any other component of the Department of Defense has approved, endorsed or authorized this product.
bumper sticker seen at the grocery store today:
unless you live in the tundra like we do, and get eight million television channels, seven million of which are about sports or god, you probably don't even receive cbc. and even if you do, you probably don't watch da vinci's inquest. and that is really too bad. (we won't even talk about all the curling you're missing.)
here's a synopsis:
Vancouver coroners, pathologists and homicide detectives inhabit a murky world as they attempt to solve the mysteries behind the unnatural, accidental or suspicious deaths committed in the city's back alleys and bedrooms. At times selfless, at times grudging, they all have agendas and history, passion for their work and ambition for their futures. Charismatic, controversial and mercurial Vancouver Coroner Dominic Da Vinci (NICHOLAS CAMPBELL) is the pivot around which this complex world spins.
now it sounds just like any other cop drama. but what sets it apart from shows like nypd blue or law and order: spinoff is how humane its cops are, how ordinary and low-key. you're never going to see mick leary in some junkie's face, spraying spit on his face as he tells him what a disgusting piece of excrement he is. what you will see is the cops treating the people in their world -- the hookers, the drug dealers, and the victims' families alike -- with compassion and recognition that they are, in fact, people, not perps and skels and vics.
if you're not already watching it, you really should start. 9 pm sunday, cbc.
five-word review of anne lamott's operating instructions:
sure likes her jesus, huh?
five word review of lord of the rings: the two towers:
they simply never stopped talking.
this is my best roast chicken recipe. the chicken gets butterflied, which helps it cook quickly and evenly, and it's roasted at very high heat for a crisp skin.
a picture of the wow system, with which i have come to a beautiful rapprochement:
jerry thacker, flagrant 'phobe and one of bush's appointees to serve on an hiv/aids panel, has withdrawn his name from consideration after the media reported his extreme position on homosexuality.
thacker says his remarks have been misconstrued, and that he is not anti-gay. i'd say he has a lot of nerve to make that claim after calling aids a "gay plague," calling homosexual behavior "evil and disgusting," and referring to homosexuality as a "sinful deathstyle." real freakin' christian, eh?
business as usual continues, and furious backpedaling ensues, with ari "his lips are moving" fleischer claiming that thacker's views are "far, far removed from what the president believes." hey, ari, if that's so, if bush doesn't support thacker's views, then how did thacker get nominated for the panel in the first place?
this panel packs a wallop.
full page at http://www.mnftiu.cc/mnftiu.cc/war18.html. warning: swear words and enough anti-bush sentiment to get you shipped down to gitmo just for lookin'.
the wow works now, thanks entirely to paul's gentle noodging. his suggestion was that i lower the needle bar even farther, so that it plunged as deeply into the bobbin case as possible without actually scraping metal. that has done the trick, and my stitch quality is as good as can be expected with a spacker like me behind the wheel.
last night i did a row of a fairly detailed pantograph. it looks good! the only places there were skipped stitches were in spots where i knew i was moving the machine too fast, even as i did it.
all hail paul!
richh died a year ago today. i only found out about his death a few days ago, when i was inspired, for some reason, to look him up on google. what a shock to see his obituary as the first link it returned.
i last saw him about five years ago in manhattan. paul and i met him and his girlfriend, kira, at republic on union square. we ate noodles. i vividly remember the scalding agony as my sinus cavity flooded with hot chicken broth, snorted in a moment of surprise. "i write, too," rich said to paul, proudly, earnestly. "and i know science. how about i do an article for you?"
the people in talk.bizarre knew a little bit more than the obituary revealed. apparently it was suicide, hanging. (i try hard not to think about how much he must have wanted it, how difficult it would have been for him to do.) they seemed to be under the impression that he was despondent over becoming disabled -- they didn't know he'd been disabled for years. he told one of them he'd been in a freak trampoline accident. that's the third explanation i'd heard, the first two from rich himself, years ago. he seemed equally eager for me to believe both stories, but a trampoline never figured in either.
he wasn't entirely paralyzed. he could walk with the aid of braces and a cane, but usually used a wheelchair, at least when i knew him. or sort of knew him. it's a weird measure of...well, something...that in the year and change that we were sweethearts, online and off-, he didn't ever clear that up.
though i only asked the once. it really didn't matter. the first i ever knew of his disability was when i met him in philly for the first time, after a long train ride and months of buildup. (the pictures I'd been sent were of his brother howard, and a fine figure of a man he seemed.) i was shocked to see him standing unsteadily on the curb, braced and caned, but then he began to declaim a salutatory poem, written by him and his best friend paul:
Welcome to Philly. Prepare to receive!
Legs akimbo! Hormone, my sleeve!
and it really didn't matter at all.
every time i hear a shirt hit the floor (often, considering my housekeeping), i remember him insisting that "shirt" was an onomatopoetic word, stuttering the final "t" sound to mimic the buttons clacking against the wood. (his stubborn assertion that "pants" also qualified held significantly less water, in my view. when he tried to make "pants" onomatopoetic, he sounded like cookie monster on crank.)
or the time he fended off the fumbling advances of a would-be director who wanted to cast him as the elephant man by brandishing his cane, swashbuckler style, and yodeling, "what's the play? do i get to carry a sword? I SHALL BE D'ARTAGNAN!"
or the time he earnestly told my mother he was working on a novel. mom acted impressed, and made polite noises. "oh, yeah," rich said proudly. "thing is, see, it's taking me a while." *pause* "those things take FOREVER to read."
i am locked in a battle to the death with my wow machine. it's winning.
the wow is a sewing machine whose neck has been stretched to allow you to get a big quilt under it easily. in theory, it's a big improvement over other home sewing machines, especially in conjunction with systems like the handiquilter or the superquilter. in theory, it allows you to stitch bigger patterns with a greater range of motion than a traditional sewing machine allows.
these machines are heavily in demand, because so far there's no good alternative for home machine quilters (though i'm hearing there's one on the horizon from the people at handiquilter -- i am heartsick that i didn't wait). i got it in november, after being on the waiting list for eight months. i expected a learning curve, and after ruining two charity quilt tops on it, i resigned myself to spending several more months mastering the machine.
it's taken some tinkering. most recently, the machine wasn't forming stitches at all, so i had to lower the needle bar, which hadn't been plunging deeply enough to let the needle enter the bobbin case properly. that fix seemed to work.
however, now the problem i'm seeing is even stranger, and still has to do with stitch quality. i can get the machine to make very nice stitches in two directions (toward me and from left to right, both from the needle end of the machine). the stitch quality goes promptly to hell, though, when i push the machine away from me or try to move it right to left.
operator error, you'd think, right? my first thought was that i was moving the machine faster in certain directions than in others, but when paul watched me he furrowed his brow and said, "i don't think it's that. you're moving like a robot."
i'm taking a machine quilting class at quilt university, and the suggestion i got when i asked about this was to try rethreading. i will try it again, and a new needle, and cleaning out the bobbin case, and sacrificing a goat, and reading the entrails of the chickadee currently on the bird feeder.
yesterday i spent a good five minutes trying to get into the car. my remote wasn't working, and i couldn't get the key into the door lock. i was about to call aaa in frustration when i realized...
...it wasn't my car.
it was a car twin, same model, color, and year. it was parked right next to my car, closer to the store, so it was the first one i saw as i walked out into the lot.
i should have known it wasn't mine, but at first i didn't see the bumper sticker:
tori amos has a newish album out, and the radio station i listen to in my sewing room plays cuts from it in pretty heavy rotation. it's hard to hear it now. when i first knew rich, he made me a taped copy of little earthquakes and mailed it to me, telling me, "i have the idea that if you could sing, this is what you would sound like."
i know now (and, really, then, too) that his comment was absolutely characteristic of rich: extravagant wooing with a willful and joyous disregard for the truth. the fact is, i can't sing a note, though that certainly doesn't stop me from bellowing tunelessly at the slightest provocation. i hoot at the very idea that i would sound like tori amos, with her high, sweet, tremulous voice, and her lyrics that just drip with pain -- songs about rape, rage, and the catholic church.
it was sweet of him to say so. or he meant it to be.
When you gonna make up your mind?
When you gonna love you as much as I do?
When you gonna make up your mind?
'Cause things are gonna change so fast.— tori amos, "winter," little earthquakes
it's a giant pain in the ass. unless you cut everything perfectly on-grain, you will be in a heap of trouble before you know it. and because flannel is so stretchy, trying to match up the lines in adjacent patches, especially on a bias edge, will drive you to drink. and swear. loudly.
woke up at 6 this morning with a cat on my head. it was the last in a long series of tries on lunch's part to get under the covers with me. i finally gave up sleeping as the bad job it was and went into the den, where i built a fire and settled onto the sofa under a quilt. shortly thereafter, lunch trotted in carrying his worm in his mouth, as a peace offering, i suppose, and was so winning that i let him hop up and snuggle with me. as i type this right now, lunch is once again nestled close, weighing down my right arm with twelve pounds of catmeat.
breaking news: oh, boy, oh, boy, i just ordered lunch a toy worm wearing earmuffs. he'll look even more ridiculous toting it around. but i'm pretty sure he can take it. he has borne indignity before.
most of the time, the internet seems marvelously democratic (that is, when you can manage to forget the gaping digital divide). the barriers to entry are so low that almost anyone can have a voice. there's something exciting about that idea...until you're looking for a casserole recipe.
beneath the gloss of my sincere and heartfelt liberalism, i confess there is an inconvenient elitism lurking, poised to spring upon evidence like this:
Broccoli Casserole10 White Castle hamburgers
4 Pkg. chopped frozen broccoli
1 Med. box Velveeta (R) cheese
1 Stack Ritz (R) crackers
1/2 Stick butterPlace 10 White Castle hamburgers side by side in a large casserole dish. Cook 4 packages of frozen broccoli, drain and layer over White Castles. Melt cheese and pour over broccoli and White Castles. Crush 1 stack of crackers with 1/2 stick of butter; sprinkle over top of casserole. Bake at 350 deg F. for 30 minutes or until topping starts to brown.
...as an iron-clad reason why publishing on the internet should be limited to those with, you know, taste.
must cut this short as i hear the tumbrels approaching. let them eat white castle. vive la révolution!
we just got back from the grand opening of small dog's retail store. waitsfield is about half an hour's drive from our house, dangerously close. we've gone there frequently in the past and skulked around the warehouse while our orders were prepared. our faces are familiar to them: the guy who loaded paul's new computer into our car remembered exactly what i'd bought a few months ago. we've spent enough money there that i was surprised not to see even a modest shrine erected in tribute.
the place was packed. now, vermont has a higher concentration of, well, smelly hippies than most places. and those smelly hippies seem to have a lot of smelly dogs. today small dog simply brought them all together. i would have appreciated the moment more sincerely if i hadn't been so busy pushing the nose of an inquisitive poodle OUT OF MY CROTCH, GOD DAMN YOU.
tonight paul and i went to burlington and saw a dance performance by momix. props they used included, but were not limited to:
One of the largest props in Opus Cactus is a three-dimensional sculpture designed to support the full weight of multiple bodies. Developed by company members Berman and Brian Sanders in their “free time” after rehearsals, Dream Catcher incorporates the structure. The piece gives a hypnotic look at the ebb and flow of weight as dancers counterbalance one another. Like a warped jungle gym, the sculpture consists of rounded poles pieced together to form an object that rocks, rolls and rotates across the stage while dancers hang, swing, pull and push from it.luckily many of the pieces they performed were in triplicate: three dancers spread out across the stage moving in unison. the man seated in front of me had an unusually large head, and however i craned my neck i could see only half of the stage at any one time. i tried staring very intently at the back of his skull, but i could not make his head explode, no matter how hard i tried.Berman and Sanders say they realized the potential for this structure after finding it in Pendleton’s yard—left there in 1991 by Alan Boeding, who has built a number of movement sculptures for the company. “Over the years different dancers have played on the sculpture,” Berman says, “but Brian and I wanted to create a complete dance.” One evening over pizza, the two got to work. They laid out an outline structure of the vocabulary and then went back to the studio to set their movement to music. “From there we began to tweak the piece into its current form,” Berman says.
Wonder how they travel with such a structure? Says Berman: “MOMIX has been touring with sculptures for years. The Dream Catcher sculpture is not only designed to dance on, but also to be taken on tour. It disassembles to a relatively small size.”
