we drove over to beaver creek farm in lyme, connecticut, for their annual post thanksgiving sheep shearing. one year i collected their discarded under shavings from the bin and washed it in my washing machine. then the girls carded it and spun it and made cute little kitties from the yarn. this year i lusted after a full fleece! but that's all i did . . was dream about it. maybe one day! actually, the sheep shearing was not the real reason i made us get there by 11 am when they opened. the real reason was the horse drawn hay ride! nothing compares with listening to the clip clop of the horse's hooves and the creak of the haycart. the first year we did this there was actually some snow on the ground and i felt like i had gone back in time . .
the felted tote bag made it into the auction and the shawl didn't. i figure now i'm that much ahead for next year. m's bag and c's hat were beautiful (the hat softly lined with pink velveteen, and the bag with a lovely green and red floral print), but m was very aware of the number of bids the two coach products got as compared with her knitted item. we're always asked to contribute to the auction, but handmade articles don't seem to fetch the bids like . . . a coach bag! at least this year i made sure the minimum bid was decent and worth the effort put in. our friend who runs the auction noted that she spoke with another auction organizer from ps 9 who mentioned that it's important not to have too many items . . you need people to focus their bids . . she thinks there were too many items this year . . i have to agree . . ahhh, yes! the sad state of the shawl!! actually, it's already 50 inches long and i'm looking forward to fringing it.
ahhhh, it's november 21st! it's k's birthday. she has two shows of the importance of being earnest to perform today. last night was opening night, and it was a wonderful show. the performers did a great job and had all of us laughing. we won't get to see k much today, but we'll make her a feta cheese and spinach omelette before she treads the boards. i'm not even sure when we will have her birthday cake! maybe sunday, as saturday she has two performances and the rest of us will be at our church auction (shhh! don't mention the war! i mean, the shawl!) but i'll send her off with brownies for backstage.
see this wonderfully black handbag!! it wasn't always this beautifully black! it once was beige with a small brown print. it's journey to becoming black was fraught with chemicals and worries and maybe even a few grey hairs. should it be dyed? but the pot wasn't big enough. should it be painted with fabric paint? but it was $6 for just 3 ounces. maybe it could be . . . spray painted? oh, but the smell and the poisons that get emitted into the air! couldn't the director just change the line from "the black handbag" to the "beige handbag with the brown animal print?" no, of course not. so my friend consulted her local shoe repair man (the shoe repair man! don't we all consult our shoe repair man when we have a handbag problem? well, maybe it's time we did!) and bought two cans of black leather dye for $12. she donned her gas mask (doesn't everyone have a gas mask?! oh, but she calls it a respirator, so apropos for earnest, n'est pas? she bought it in a size small many years ago when she used a lot of turpentine to paint. i just love to think of her painting away in her studio with her gas mask on!) and went into the downstairs alleyway behind her building's basement and . . . sprayed!!! et, voila! le perfect handbag! anything for earnest!
i knitted up a bag for my church auction. it's the fulled lopi totefrom hello yarn. it was quick, as everyone said, and fun. i chose the heathered plum lopi yarn (from handknitting). many of my friends have used the lamb's pride bulky. i'll have to do that next time. i plan on felting it tomorrow in my friend's machine. i'm a little nervous that it won't shape properly. i'm also knitting a shawl out of twist from knitpicks and a beautiful rust colored chilean hand dyed wool from araucania that i bought from downtown yarns. i put off starting it for awhile as i couldn't make up my mind if i wanted to do a feather and fan or just plain garter stitch. well, since i'm down to the wire garter stitch has won out. however, i think it's too wide and i may run out of yarn. i may have to rip out the seven inches i've done and make it more slim. i don't have much time to mull this over. in the past i've restarted shawls three and four times. i always get so flustered over how wide i want to make it. what is wide enough for me is usually not wide enough for someone else. with this shawl i finally felt rather confident about the width, and now i need to check my yardage figures. the auction is saturday. i'm not in a good position. in fact, i'm feeling a bit worried and am very annoyed with myself. m and c and i are listening to the narnia series as we madly click away. we're at the beginning of the series with the magician's nephew, and we've borrowed our friend's cassette of the lion, the witch and the wardrobe. we would be happy just sitting on the bed and knitting for the next 72 hours, but we have a homeschoolers play of the importance of being earnest to see, and another family birthday. k turns 15 on friday! (and she has two performances that same day. we'll have to celebrate all together on sunday.)
we had a fun evening at the isadora duncan dance foundation. lori belilove wrote the foreword for a new graphic novel out by sabrina jones about the life of isadora duncan. the publisher, hill and wang, hosted the evening with free flowing champagne, strawberries and crackers and cheese. sabrina signed copies of her book for the adults and children, and lori danced two isadora dances that were beautiful and inspiring. unfortunately, my camera batteries died out (as all too often happens) and so i'm settling for a photo of the autographed book by sabrina and lori. of course i drank a lot of champagne (it's not too often i get to do that) and i managed to knit a bit on my shawl that i'm cramming for my church's auction on saturday (see church auction items). it was a fun night and m and c and i skipped home with our friends. i almost brought back a cute rickety chair i found on the curb, but settled for a picture book of tuscany instead (found on the steps of the house that sits next door to liv tyler . . when walking by in the evenings with their lights on, m and i always admire their cherry red dining room walls . . ) earlier today, m, c and our friend and i ate lunch in union square. a funny little bird was hopping around with the sparrows and pigeons. we had never seen this little fellow before in the city. i'm not sure what name he goes by.
we made a trip to purl on sullivan street to buy fabric for our sewing kits we're making in our handwork class. it was fun browsing through all the prints! m was very upset to come home and find that the fabric she had planned on using wasn't large enough. when i said we could revisit the store, she complained that it wouldn't be as much fun without her friend along (in the maroon top and striped pants). ahh, c'est la vie . . !
. . the holiday season is upon us, from your local duane reade, to brooks brothers, to columbus circle. though i must admit, i could stand for seemingly hours listening to the carol of the bells at columbus circle. i'll have to get a little movie of it.
m and c and i attended a ballet concert at the manhattan youth ballet. it wasn't very well publicized. we hadn't even received an email about it. but i found a piece of paper announcing it on a little cafe table in the company's building. so i decided we should go, and i'm glad we did because it was lovely! the third piece, of which this is a picture of, was called "pas de quatre" and was originally danced by four of the greatest ballerinas of 1845. each student portrayed one of the ballerinas with fittingly period gestures which looked quaint in our time and caused the audience to 'giggle" with delight. one of the students was made up as marie taglioni, and though her make-up caused her face to be a little stiff, she looked uncannily like the famous dancer!
it was a rainy walk to the guitar recital tonight. (and i just had to take a detour to downtown yarns to get a another pair of needles that i needed.) but i made it back in time to film this song. several of our friends' children also played, really well! it was a very inspiring concert.
we spent the day backstage at hostos community college in the bronx (#2 train to 149th and grand concourse). m and c wiled away the hours playing soccer with their toes.
yes, this is the sock you can see me knitting while standing on line at the polls. it's my very first sock and i love working on it. i'm always daydreaming while i'm knitting about all the dozens of socks i'm going to make for family and friends. i certainly knit more quickly in my head than in real life.
we were all winding down after a dance performance at the world financial center (it was a busy day!) and ready to go to bed at 11 pm when our radio announced that obama had won. we couldn't believe it! and then we heard the cheering and car horn honking from outside and so we kept traipsing back and forth from the front windows to the back windows yelling and cheering with the outside melee, and the girls got out some bells they had and some pot lids and they were just banging away on them and adding to the craziness . . and then of course we had to call all our friends whom we had just seen a few hours earlier and exclaim over the wonderfulness of it all . .president-elect barack obama . . "how sweeeeeet it is!"
there were two performances by the limon company at the world financial center today. one was at 12:30 pm, and the other at 8:00 pm. during each performance i was carried away to another world and awoke each time shocked to be alive on this particular election day. these excerpts are from the afternoon performance (rehearsal photos are here.)
we drove over to beaver creek farm in lyme, connecticut, for their annual post thanksgiving sheep shearing. one year i collected their discarded under shavings from the bin and washed it in my washing machine. then the girls carded it and spun it and made cute little kitties from the yarn. this year i lusted after a full fleece! but that's all i did . . was dream about it. maybe one day!
