On Art & Editing

As Robb and I walked through the Met last weekend, we started to get into that lovely hour-three rhythm, where you stop reading every placard and accept that you aren't going to see everything. We spent far too long looking at a medieval crossbow and breezed right by the Monets, not really feeling too enthused about all that pastel. Right about the time our legs were starting to ache and we were searching the map for anything that contains the words "wine" or "lounge," we entered a room packed with people on a guided tour, all of them snapping photos of this painting. 

I thought to myself, is that a Vermeer? Is that the Girl with the Pearl Earring? And upon closer inspection, she was painted by Vermeer and she did indeed seem to have a pearl-ish bobble hanging from her lobe. But that face...I felt like I would have remembered such a ghoulish little girl. I snapped a photo on my iPhone so I could do further research (over a glass of wine) and we got the heck out of that crowded room.

As it turns out, it was not, in fact, the celebrated Girl with a Pearl Earring painting (she's down below). But the styling is so similar, the turn of the face, and the streamers hanging from the crown of her head. I almost wonder if she was Vermeer's practice model. Was he just gearing up for the main event? Though no information seems to exist on who these girls are (except the more famous one is clearly Scarlett Johansson), I did find it interesting to learn that Vermeer did not consider these paintings to be portraits—he described them as tronies, which means expression. He wanted to capture the suggestion of a personality and highlight unusual features. The Met website calls her face haunting, and I would have to agree. I also love this: "The essential element in many of Vermeer's pictures—the viewer's curiosity about a young woman's thoughts, feelings, or character—is found here in deceptively simple form."

I like this "essential element" in Vermeer's paintings so much that I've decided to borrow it in my own art form. Last week, I finished writing a very long short story (too skinny for a novella, too fat for short fiction...will she settle on a size in time for prom?). The main character in this story is a very lost woman, though I find her beautiful. And as I read through my sister's edits on my first draft, I'm trying to keep the character's visage in mind. Her unusual features, her perplexing behavior, and ultimately (hopefully) her redemption. I hope to be subtle, yet colorful and full of light. It is my ultimate goal to engage the reader's curiosity about this woman's thoughts, feelings, or character--all in a deceptively simple form. For that reminder, I will go ahead and thank Vermeer. 

Textile Porn

Some weeks have a theme. The theme might be something as trite as "I watched a lot of Friday Night Lights" or "I drank a lot of Syrah." Some weeks I eat almost exclusively Mexican food. Some weeks I play an inconceivable amount of solitaire on my phone. This week, however, the theme has been textiles. Which photographs much better, I must say, than Mexican food or video games.

I have Lena Corwin to thank for this week's theme. We have been shooting the how-to photos for her second book (her first book was the incredibly gorgeous Printing By Hand), and for this book, Lena and her team have camped out at the Textile Arts Center in Brooklyn--a wonderland for weavers, dyers, and screen printers. If it has to do with fabric, they teach classes on how to make it there. The works in progress on the looms scattered about the studio are swoon-worthy.

Also swoon-worthy are the textiles that will appear in the book. Like this screen-printed linen Lena designed. Just look at those crisp lines and that saturated dye!

And these woven place mats, with a solid fabric weft and sweet floral warp.

Even the wash rags at the Textile Arts Center are gorgeous, having mopped up countless ink spills in lovely shades of everything.

Back in my own home, I've had a few less exotic textile moments. Like this vintage dress I recently tried to alter. Check out those horrifying stitches around the armhole, made by the excellent teamwork of myself and the bobbin from hell. Last Sunday I worked up the nerve to take out the rat's nest of stitches, and now the dress is ready to wear. Win!

I also found a use for this funky upholstery fabric I've had kicking around for the last year. I've come to realize that funky fabrics are at their best on the inside of a bag--not all of us want to fly our psychedelic flag so loud and proud.

But on the outside? Why not keep it simple with a coral linen, accented by creamy white cotton straps.

Soon enough, I will start playing with some wintry wool fabrics for my HeyAllday Handmade bags. Not these ones, mind you. These ones are very fancy fabrics that I found at a men's suiting warehouse. Want to know how much they cost? Sixty dollars a yard, my friends. Oh but these cashmeres came in the softest blues and creams. I will dream of these woolens whilst shopping online for their more affordable brethren. (Any hot tips, people, let me know!)

A Little Tableau

When Robb and I were on our honeymoon, we decided to leave the confines of our Caribbean resort and go across the street to an establishment called Tequila Joe's. I donned a faux denim romper, Robb put on his nicest cargo shorts, and we sat in the shade of the patio, sipping terrible margaritas. It should be known that the logo for Tequila Joe's is a cactus (that looks not unlike a pickle) wearing a sombrero and playing a saxophone. Lucky for you, I attempted to ride the mechanical bull at Tequila Joe's later that evening and this photo managed to capture the sign in the background.

While we were sitting on the porch of Tequila Joe's, a man by the name of Pierre approached us and asked if we wanted to buy any of his art. He had many pieces of art, this Pierre, most of which were painted with tempera paints in primary colors. I'm afraid Pierre didn't have much finesse. But then, as we were about to turn him away, he showed us this painting of an epic waterfall splashing down into a cool lagoon. There were the twin Pitons peeking above the clouds, actual palm trees with real color blending, and everything rendered to scale. That is, except for the two little primary color sailboats floating through the water. (Were they un-manned toy boats? Or was it just a very large jungle?) Pierre, I'm afraid, had taken someone else's work and painted his little boats over it, which was just pathetic enough that we gave him a twenty and declared it our first marital art acquisition. (It even came with a real plastic frame!)

Pierre's fine artwork now hangs in our living room against a dramatic red wall. Beneath the art is one of my great grandmother's Spanish dolls, and to the left is an old photograph of my great grandmother's brother, Pauly, who I learned recently had his heart broken as a young man in the 1930s. (He was a Protestant, but he married a Catholic woman and they had a child together. Their families, however, were not happy with the intermingling of the religions, so her parents convinced her to take the child and leave him; he never saw them again.)

Right in the middle of it all is a bowl I made in pottery class. It has no other purpose than to catch the errant pocket change and leftover skeins of yarn that pile up on the coffee table, but I like the way that it ties the corner together. The ridiculous painting, the stoic doll, the sadness of Pauly, and a little something I made.

So often these days I see little tableaus arranged in people's homes, and I know they mean something--at least I'd like to think they mean something--but I'm not sure what. In my home, anyway, every little thing has a story. And this was one of them.

Last Sunday

Last Sunday started off all wrong. We woke up in the morning and decided to go to the "dog beach" in New Jersey, so from a sleepy state in bed, Robb reserved a zipcar on his phone, and I set about making some iced coffee. We left the house in a rush, took the subway two stops to the most unfortunately named subway stop (Flushing), and then when we got above ground, Robb received a voicemail saying that the people who had our zipcar were going to be late. Real late.

We decided to cancel.

On the way back home--no dog beach, no ocean--I got terribly cranky. I wanted to swim, damn it! And here I was, locked in this ugly Brooklyn jail, all stupid concrete and asphalt. On the way back to our house, Robb noticed some people walking by us with towels over their shoulders on their way back from the McCarren Pool. He made me go ask them if the line was long, and they said, no, there's no line at all. We knew right then that we would go swimming...at the giant public pool that we had never been to! All this time, we had thought that it would suck, figuring it would be crowded, gross, with dirty kids running around everywhere. Not so...it was pretty and blue and big and open, and we swam some laps and snoozed on our towels. From that point on, the day looked up.

And as inspiration for this coming weekend--nay, the last weekend of what truly feels like summer--I wanted to post some inspirational photos from my last Sunday. It is my sincerest wish, dear friends, that your weekend will deliver.

This is a lettuce plant that bolted. Like, beyond bolted. I think it's pretty. It's also probably pretty bitter.

This is a supersteak tomato that soon enough will be ready for eating. 

And these are our wet towels and bathing suits, hanging up after a day of swimming. (The Ciroc towel, by the way, was my prize for winning the Michael McDonald singing competition one night at NitaNita...proud memory, for sure.) 

Here are two rising loafs of bread that I decided to make on a whim. They were very salty. Which is great if you like salty bread (I do).

Here are the almonds that I accidentally spilled in my purse. I had to dump them on the counter, which always feels classy.

And here is the binding on my newest Alabama Chanin dress. It's sloppy and it looks like straw, an aesthetic choice that I feel okay about.

Crafting in the Moment

Friends, I took a little break. It was not exactly intended, but not exactly surprising either. If I had to pinpoint a cause for this break, I would say it's an end of summer ennui, a large workload followed by a lovely vacation to California, and a series of moments when inspiration struck, but I was far from a computer.

The break, however, was not for lack of making things. In the past few weeks alone, there has been the completion of a second wedding quilt, dozens of rows knitted on a sweater, the construction of a six-layer pink ombre cake, and I made the acquaintance of a certain baby Frida, who modeled a particularly cute hand-knitted seed-stitch hoodie for me. And yet, I haven't taken a photo of a single thing. Not exactly intentionally. In fact, I really did mean to photograph them. But when Megan put the sweater on Frida, I completely forgot to reach for the camera. And when I gave the quilt to my parents, I declared that I would take photos in natural light the next day (and then proceeded to forget to do that for the next five days). The cake? Didn't bring my camera to the party...there was flourescent lighting in the kitchen anyway, so it would have been a wash.

But the truth behind the matter is this: I've grown a bit weary of the beautification of craft, the trendiness of craft, and the expectation of perfection. (And believe me, I know this sounds crazy coming from a craft book editor, since these three merits are absolutely part of the job.) But lately, I've found that there is something disconcerting about a perfectly executed creation, an impeccably styled photograph...rather than thrilling me as it once did, I've been feeling like it gets away from the heart of the creation. I guess you could say that I miss seeing the hand of the maker, the mistakes, the surprises. As I peruse some of the most vibrant DIY blogs on the planet and admire their offerings, I sometimes find myself wondering, is this what my life is supposed to look like? (Note: this is not what my life looks like.) The sensation reminds me of the anti-Martha battle-cry of the late '90s/early 2000s, when I would hear my mom cursing in front of the television as Martha Stewart demonstrated the how-to for some gorgeous decoration. "I hate her. But I can't stop watching!" (I might be paraphrasing.) Only now it's not just a single Martha...it's a whole internet full of Marthas with creations that we can't stop watching, and the trends that float through Pinterest repeat more reliably than a chevron bedspread. In recent months, I looked on in amazement as people from all walks of life considered the merits of filling mason jars with salad for each day of the week, and I still can't help but wonder how good Friday's salad will be and if the lettuce won't be just a wee bit wilty.

Not that I am immune to salad jar craft ideas! I am, after all, a person who not many months ago went to the trouble of making her own cheese, and I am also a daughter of the Sassy Magazine generation, who lived to tell the tale of dyeing her hair with Kool-aid and chamomile tea. I only started knitting in 2005 when the bandwagon pulled up in San Francisco, and I still to this day take on all manner of projects that will likely not look as good or taste as yummy as the variety that can be bought at the store down the street. Nevertheless, I will never stop making things. I guess the difference is that, in the last few weeks, I have just been trying to enjoy it for myself. The way I used to. Before the internet, before blogs, before everyone was an amateur photographer, before I started making books. There was a time when I used to make things only for the sake of showing myself I could do it, and showing someone else that I loved them. To that end, it's been sort of nice to take a brief hiatus, to live in the moment of making and giving without documentation. When Frida wore the sweater I made for her, I held her in my arms and rocked her about, completely forgetting to grab my camera. And that is probably a good thing.

This isn't to say I won't be sharing creations here anymore! Because, well, that would be pointless. There are still many many reasons to share and enjoy, just as there are many many reasons to sometimes take a break from sharing. I just wanted to let you know where I've been and where I am and what I've been thinking. Do you ever feel this way, too?

Finally, despite all of my grand declarations in this post, I did want to share one of my recent creations...the only one I did think to photograph. It is not very good and it is certainly not trendy. It's a watercolor pencil sketch I did at Alpine Lake, sitting on the shore with my mom and my aunt, each of us with a sketchpad in our lap and a grip of pencils in our hands. My aunt declared my shading to be wimpy and filled in the shadows of the lake for me, and later, my mom taught me how to wet the brush and blend the colors. This is one of my favorite creations, because it is laden with laughter, advice, sunscreen, and the memory of that perfect golden day.

Dithering in Brooklyn

I've been in this house for a few years now, and each year, I do a blog post about nothing but spring. Spring spring delicious spring. It feels like very familiar territory. Maybe because that's what this blog is all about. (Or, in my thesis that I haven't written, what I want this blog to be all about.) Bright colors, new life, the happiness of coincidence, the passage of a day. 

Just yesterday I walked to the local Buffalo Exchange to buy some new jeans (yup, ripped the crotch on another pair...what is it with me and my chafey thighs?), and I thought, I'll just bring the camera. You never know what you'll see along the way. And sure enough, there were these purple flowers. A sea of them, in fact, crashing upon my head. To say that they are bursting from the tree would be silly. They are a floral infestation. They are positively frothing. This tree is at its ecstatic zenith. If a tree could have an orgasm, this would be it! May I look at this photo and always remember how lush it feels to stand in the presence of a tree this joyous. 

It seems that each spring, there is a day that feels like this, when you just know that everything is going to be okay. 80 degrees, a sweet perfume of blossoms, followed by a strawberry banana smoothie called Girlfriend Getaway from a local eatery. (Seriously, it's a very embarrassing smoothie to order: "One Girlfriend Getaway, please!") 

Not ten feet from the ecstatic purple tree was a border of tulips hanging on for dear life, their giant voluptuous petals starting to lean back against the air. Oh, dear sweet sinewy tulips...I wish we were able to grow you in our yard, but alas, we have gremlins that chop off your head before you even bloom.  It was a serious problem last year, but this year its fatal. The gremlin has perfected his system. Thankfully, daffodils are not delicious to the gremlin, and we have lots of those. 

Earlier that day, before the jeans shopping and the Girlfriend Getaway and the insanity of the purple flowers, I worked in our backyard and Camper followed me around, a loyal devotee. I gave him a bath and then made him sit outside. I read Nancy Drew; he chewed on a bone. Later we went for a very wimpy run (my jogging is pretty much his natural walking pace). There were squirrels to chase and old Polish ladies to sniff, so I can only assume he had fun.

Camper also helped me transplant my tomato plants to a bigger cup size (which is not meant to sound like I'm talking about bras, but if I were, I guess you could say that the plants went from an A-cup to a C). There's something about going from that tiny plastic cup to a big old pint-sized plastic cup that just drives my tomato plants wild. Over the next three weeks, they will undergo a massive transformation, from puny little sprogs to robust burly plants. Part of this growth spurt is because, when I transfer them over, I thin them down--my least favorite gardening task. Of the two or three little tomato plants growing in each cup, I have to decide which one looks the strongest, which one has the best chance at survival, and that's the one I get to keep--the rest of the sprogs get yanked. It always feels like such a waste, but I know it's for the greater good. Perspective, Liana! No wimpy tomatoes!

So this is weird. Yesterday, when I was thinning my poor plants, I realized that all of the stems were purple. Are the stems of tomato plants always purple at this phase, I thought? I've been growing tomatoes for four years now, and for the life of me I don't remember purple stems. I took this tangled sprog photo above to share with you all.

And then my inner Martha Stewart stylist said, no, Liana, line them up all pretty. No one wants to see that tangled mess.

Around this time, I looked up from my tomato stem styling long enough to notice that my special mutation daffodil--my dear old friend--had bloomed. Ah yes, my double daffodil, growing beneath the cherry tree. It's become ritual now, me and this daffodil. It's always late to bloom, having two heads to sprout instead of one. I prop its head up with my hand and we say hello to each other. Each year, I look into the heart of this flower and try to see where it starts being a daffodil and where it stops. It has none of that decidedly buttercup shaping. It's not even a classic yellow. It's almost more of a dahlia, but now that's not quite right either, is it. Each year, its genetic memory winters over in the bulb, and it remembers to grow up exactly as odd as it did the last year. A gorgeously strange mutation, like no other in the world. And it's in my backyard. Mine mine mine. I feel very lucky indeed.

Flamenco Sketches

 

We are back, my friends! Back from our travels, our adventures, our eye-opening experiences. Oh, it is always so fascinating to go to another country. Even going to Canada is fascinating (I remember once going over to Windsor and being fascinated by the whole new array of snack foods...like ketchup-flavored Ringolos!). But Spain felt somehow even more exotic than Canada, if you can imagine. Especially as we headed south from Barcelona and went down to Andalucia.

To give you a brief and probably inaccurate history lesson*, most of southern Spain was once occupied by the Moors, who were Muslims that came up from Africa (southern Spain is just a hop-skip-and-a-jump from Morocco, after all). And with thanks to the mighty Pyrenees mountain range that separates Spain from France, much of Spain, especially the south, was sealed off from the rest of Europe for a very long time--including the dark ages. So while the rest of the people in Europe were knocking two rocks together for luck and eating their left foot for sustenance, Spain flourished under Moorish rule, building amazingly grand palaces, and encouraging intellect in the city centers like Cordoba and Granada, with Jews and Muslims and Christians all coming together to share their latest learnings in grand libraries (until the Christians decided to take it all for themselves in the 13th century, which paved the way for that whole crusade thing). But despite the reconquista, a lot of the cultural traditions and the architecture from that time can still be seen today. And because Spaniards were so shut off from the rest of the world for, you know, a few centuries, all sorts of strange traditions were born which are still practiced today. Two of those traditions are bull-fighting and flamenco. And because I am not so big on blood sports, Robb and I decided to go see some flamenco in Sevilla.
 
The thing is this: flamenco is absolutely a living and breathing traditional art form, and if you walk down certain streets at certain times of night, you can see glimmers of dancing, you can hear the hands clapping, and not-shy voices burst into song. But if you want to see a show--like with the long ruffled dresses and the castanets and the whole nine yards--you have to go to one of the places in your guidebook. Which is how we wound up sitting elbow to elbow next to a tour group from Japan, drinking kool-aid flavored sangria. But the good news is that the performers were phenomenal.

About 30 minutes into the show, I went to jot down a thought I kept having about symmetry in my journal (more on that later), and then for some reason, I started sketching what I saw on stage. Robb and I kind of giggled at my line drawings and so I handed the book and the pen over to him.

 

When I looked over at what he drew, I almost snorted sangria out of my nose. His rendering of this poor, lovely singer on stage looked not unlike the Crypt Keeper. 

He handed the book back to me.

Now, in my professional art training (i.e., one semester of basic drawing skills at community college 15 years ago), I really grew to like the type of sketching where you look at the object, not at your hands, and you just let the pen move as your brain is seeing it. What you wind up with on paper is never ever actually what you are seeing, but you do manage to achieve all sorts of curves and expressions that actually do match the object--much better, in fact, than if you tried to drawn them exactly. And sometimes you wind up drawing something that looks like what a drunk Picasso at age 9 might have produced. (I like to imagine that the woman's right breast, above, is not sagging, but has "movement.")

Robb's style is much more precise (see isn't this fun?). See how this man's guitar is in proportion to his limbs? Well done! I was also very impressed by how he captured the player's man-bun on top of his head.

My guitar player, however, was a little less proportional. Why he needed to have such a large head and such tiny legs, I am not quite sure. But he makes a nice match for Robb's passionate, twirling senorita.

 

And I finished with this drawing, knowing when it was time to leave well enough alone. I looked down after I finished her skirt and thought, well now that's actually kind of elegant. And then I put the pen away and enjoyed the rest of the show.

It was such a strange thing for us to do...go to a live performance and sketch throughout. But I must say, it was actually an amazing way to appreciate what was happening on stage. I find that if I just keep my eyes on the stage during performances, I sometimes start to tune out...all of those hand-claps and the heels clacking a million miles a minute, it all starts to sound the same if you aren't careful. But somehow having a pen in hand occupies a corner of your brain that allows you to really hear, to really appreciate the shape, the movement, the curves, the flow.

OK, but really, why did Robb and I start sketching during a flamenco performance? 

I think that, perhaps, we were inspired by our surroundings. What I will remember most from this trip is that there was art everywhere. Or what I call art. Which reminds me, this is what I wanted to say about symmetry. As humans, we can't get enough of it. Our eyes love geometry and repeated shapes. But where true artistry seems to come into play is when the symmetry is flourished. A flamenco dancer's even micro-stomps are not just a series of even beats--they are accented by half-time hand claps, and the rest of the space is filled in by the finger picks of the acoustic guitar. Meanwhile, on the walls of the Alhambra, ancient plaster walls were stamped over and over and over again with a swirling floral design, leaving an impression that is still there 600 years later. Stand back and it seems random. Look close, and you can see where the design begins and ends. As long as we can detect the steady pulse, it is no longer chaos and we can follow the path of the artist. We can understand the creation, and sometimes even the person behind the creation. And that is what I learned about art in Spain.

And because I firmly believe in the practice of showing, not just telling, here are some photos of some of the prettiest examples of artistic symmetry I saw in Spain.

Tiles on the walls of the Alhambra, a Moorish Palace built in the 13th century.

Plaster relief in the Alhambra, created using molds.

Original flooring in the Alhambra. (BTW, on these very floors, Columbus asked Isabel and Ferdinand for a little cash to go to the New World.)

Star shapes cut from the ceiling. Highly impractical, but very beautiful.

A newer palace at the Alhambra, it wraps around in a perfect donut.

Lovely scalloped ceilings in the Mezquita of Cordoba.

More scallops in the Mezquita.

Newly planted olive trees, as far as the eye can see.

And perhaps my favorite artwork of all--this sketch on a blackboard at a bar, just some person with chalk making the most perfect matador and bull I could ever imagine. Oh, to be so gifted...

*Note that everything I stated in this blog post has been learned from museum pamphlets, B&B hosts, and Rick Steves. No facts have been cross-referenced or closely researched, which is to say that nothing here should be used for book reports or when trying to "make a point" at a party.

Warning: This Post Has No Photos

I would like to preface this post with an apology: I'm sorry that I've been so talky-talky and not crafty-crafty these past few weeks! Much like a typical, predictable human being, I do believe that I've been using the end of year/beginning of year markers as a time of reflection. And while I have, in fact, been "making" things, I've been holding out on you, dear readers, because I've got some other shit on the front burners and I have a hankering to sort it all out. And so, I choose to use this wee little platform to foist my thoughts upon you (er...I mean, share with you). Don't you feel lucky?

I'll begin by telling you that I have been reading The World According to Garp. I have an obsessive tendency to finish every book I start--even books I hate--which was how I found myself reading all of A.S. Byatt's Possession as well as John Irving's most recent book, Until I Find You, in which I am almost positive he had no editor (or a very scared editor--someone who felt too intimidated to turn on the track changes and just have at the manuscript).

It was funny that I hated that book so much, because I loved John Irving's earlier book, A Prayer for Owen Meany. Have you read this book? You should really read this book. I read Owen Meany slowly--very slowly. It was the first book I had ever read where I simply did not want it to end, where I loved opening up the book and being in Owen's world for just a few pages each day. I was 19 when I read it, so who knows how I would feel about it now. But I am certain about this: the best part about Owen Meany is that it had a great ending. Oh, how I delight in a great ending! It has to be one that you didn't see coming. It should be fairly equal parts unhappy and happy. It should be insightful, and complex, and rich. The composition should be unfussy. It should sting your eyes a bit. It should have that airport feeling, of departures and too little oxygen. Since Until I Find You was a total let-down and Owen Meany was one of the most satisfying books I've ever read, I thought I would give John Irving a tie-breaker.

The World According to Garp was actually written before Owen Meany. I have 53 pages left to read and I have no idea how it's going to end. Or what the book is about really. But I like it. Much like Owen Meany, it's about the characters. Unlike Owen Meany, I don't particularly like the world that the characters are living in. But I do appreciate this: that the main character, Garp, is a writer, and that every step of the way, he struggles with his imagination, and goes long stretches of time--years, even--without writing.

I can relate to Garp's struggle.

I read a passage earlier this week, spoken by Helen, Garp's frustrated wife: "You should do your own work, Garp. Just your own work. You used to say politics were stupid, and they meant nothing to you. You were right. They are stupid, they do mean nothing. You're doing this because it's easier than sitting down and making something up, from scratch. And you know it. You're building bookshelves all over the house, and finishing floors, and fucking around in the garden, for Christ's sake. Did I marry a handyman? Did I ever expect you to be a crusader? You should be writing the books and letting other people make the shelves." And then at the end of her speech: "That's the kind of thing people do who can't write."

Oh Helen, how right you are. Friends, it has come to my attention that for the last several years (or maybe even the last decade),  I have been literally fucking around in the garden. From playing in bands to starting an Etsy business, I have done plenty of things that I enjoy (and I am extremely glad to have had those experiences), but I have not hunkered down and sunk my teeth into that activity for which I feel the most passion. I need to be writing.

Not to say that there is anything wrong with knitting, crafting, cooking, baking, or fucking around in the gardening. In fact, I think the reason I haven't been writing all of these years is because I was not sure of my topic. What do I have to say? I'm no expert. Who cares about my feelings? That's what a journal is for! This blog--this blessedly wonderful acre of land in the vast woods of ye olde internet--it is mine all mine, and it has become the topic that I was looking for all along. How did I not see this? For the past year and a half, I honestly thought I was honing my skills as a crafter, but the truth of the matter is this: I'm only a so-so crafter. I'm no great designer. I'm no artiste. And I have no interest in becoming a bag-making entrepreneur.

But I sure do like to write about it.

Perhaps my most wonderful discovery is that none of it has been wasted time. The hours and hours and the intense energy that I have poured into creating items for my Etsy shop or working in my garden--this has proved to me that I have the time and I possess a great amount focus. So why not put it toward the thing that I find the most exciting. And perhaps the most terrifying.

And so, the year begins with a slight cosmic shift. The blog is still called Knit Yourself Pretty. And it is still about making your life feel pretty through the act of making things--whether the project turns out nice or not. The posts will still contain pretty photos. I will still make things; some of those things will be ugly. But I may be saying it all a little differently from here on out. After all, I'm a writer first, crafter second. Now I know.

Nothing Gold Can Stay

On the very top of Bernal Hill I found myself thinking, isn't there a photo of me in this very same spot from just over 5 years ago? I wasn't quite sure of the direction I had been facing, but I remembered the day. We had taken kites up to the top of the hill and let the wind whip them up into the air.  They got all tangled now and then, which led to a game called Kite Fights in which you would try to intentionally take down your pal's kite. I sat on the hill and watched the boys play. I wonder if I knew then that I would be leaving. Sometimes you know things before you say them to yourself, and in certain moments--particularly the sweetest ones--you can feel a golden glow of nostalgia, a pang of loss for what you are currently experiencing. Or as Ponyboy would say, nothing gold can stay.

And so, on this recent trip to San Francisco, I took a photo of myself in that spot. Everything was different, and yet everything was the same. I had a chill in my bones. You'd think five years in New York would have toughened me up, but I just couldn't get warm on this trip. I had forgotten how San Francisco homes lack those powerful radiators that dry us out at night in Brooklyn. I was always cold in San Francisco, but I got used to it...seven glorious years of frozen toes and summerless summers. It was ironic, I thought, that I was wearing a gray turtleneck and a black pea coat, my non-silly sunglasses--a New Yorker costume on a grassy green hill. Five years ago, I donned a cruddy red zip-up jacket from an ex-boyfriend and my Elton John sunglasses. My reddish hair was greasy and it whipped around my head. I had not yet discovered my anti-acne/anti-aging facial cleanser (that was in 2008), but the lipgloss has stayed the same (Burt's Bees in Raisin).

It rained in the morning. My friend Megan is pregnant and she was missing the taste of beer--compounded, I bet, by my presence in her kitchen--and so we decided to take a walk. These San Francisco walks were the very beginning of our friendship, up 20th Street to Sutro Tower (when the fog rolls in, the top of the tower looks like a ship lost in the ocean), or, as always, up to the top of Bernal. And with our feet marching forward, slightly out of breath, we talked and talked--the kind of talk that is about nothing specific, but feels greatly important. I guess you could call it dreaming. But on this chilly day, five years later, with everything different but everything the same, there was a great rainbow that spanned the entire city, starting at Coit Tower and stretching over into the Bay. It was almost cliche, and it was definitely indulgent--like dozens of red roses on Valentines Day--and yet I loved that nature had given us this most obvious of gifts. And there I was, once again, already mourning the moment that I was in, for the rainbow clearly couldn't last and I would soon be going back to New York, where we have no grassy green hills to speak of. But perhaps one day I will learn that a life is made up of many happy afternoons--none of which are to be mourned, and none of which can ever be repeated--and that this is okay. (After all, nothing gold can stay.)

Pretty Stuff

It's Friday. Why not look at some pretty things? These are all, in fact, pretty things that I have had the pleasure of looking at in person in the last few weeks. I remember a creative writing teacher saying to me once, "notice what you notice." And so here I am, noticing what I notice. And sharing them with you. (I usually just share this stuff with my hard drive, where I then promptly proceed to forget it exists.)

I feel like each photo should have a "Deep Thoughts" type of caption, or perhaps a motivational slogan. But alas, most of them go like this: Brooklyn, pretty.

At the top are a collection of chairs made from twisted champagne wires. And this is a pretty street in Park Slope.

 This is my street this morning.

And these are my boots beneath that tree.