And then we were 8

Happy Anniversary to us. It's been eight years since I strolled down a grassy walkway adorned with rose petals and daisy heads in my Birkenstock Gizeh sandals and linen dress to meet you in your linen suit, hold your hand, and tell you I won't let go.

Promise.

And I still love you. And I'd do it again. Without question.

But this time let's pick a date in June or July so it's not so hot and humid. Just sayin.

Why I ♥ Seattle (this week)

in three parts.

Part I: Ballard Corners Park. At which you will find an over sized concrete living room, complete with couch, arm chair, side table, and lamp.

And next to which, you will find the roundabout full of clocks hanging in the tree. Yes, clocks.

Part II: Almost Free Outdoor Movies. At which you are encouraged to wear costumes (I wore horns), and Bring Your Own Chair (BYOC), and donate $5, and where you get a pseudonym upon entrance. (I was Pluto. Joe was Scarface.) You also get to play trivia, take photobooth pictures with props, eat from your prepacked cooler, and chat with your fellow pseudonymed neighbors while waiting for the sun to set and the movie to commence. The movie: Peewee's Big Adventure.

Part III: Telephone poll art. Again. Still awesome.

ich habe genug

Joe brought home Maira Kalman's book (which was made from her visual blog in the New York Times), The Principles of Uncertainty.

I was immediately smitten: by her deluxe descriptions of things, her jaunty paintings, her handwriting a mix of lower case and upper case and cursive and block print, her outlook, her in-look. She paints portraits of people's sinks, and photographs couches that have been abandoned on New York streets, and is the curator of several amazing collections: candy bars and sponges and suitcases and whistles.

Anyway, I thought you should know about her. Because I'm happier now that I do.

Also: She's got a new gig going at the Times, about our country's history. Check it here.

Two (the age. not in the list.)

Brendan, my first (and only) nephew turns two today. That's only 730 days on earth, my friend. And that's not too many. But it is enough to learn how to sit, and stand, and walk, and run. And how to climb up on EVERYTHING and to say a few important words, like MaMa and DaDa and maybe even ThankYouHaveANiceDay.

In year number two, luckily, everything is still pretty awesome. Grass! Bees! Dogs! Firetrucks! Oatmeal! It's all great. Interesting. Worth grabbing and sticking your fingers into (and putting in your mouth). Worth screaming and dancing and shouting about. That kind of joy is hard not to join in on. And even though my sweet nephew is in Alaska, and I am not, I do hear him babbling in the background on my weekly phone calls with his mother (that would be my sister). And when I'm not holding the phone away from my ear to defend against the high-pitched shrieks, I'm smiling along in the joy and exuberance I can hear in his travels across the back yard (or living room).

My sister is busy baking him a little sister, a niece. And that will be exciting too. And in the mean time, he's going to have to grow into this sweater, which knit up a lot bigger than I thought it would. (Gauge? What's gauge?)

Happy Birthday, B. I know that once you're older, getting a sweater for your birthday will be lame. It's probably even lame now. But I have to get in the knitting before I become that crazy old aunt who always sends the itchy sweaters (for the record, this is knit in washable merino wool and is ANYthing but itchy). I hope you can forgive me that some day.

At the very least, you'll have cute photos of you in the sweaters to show your future girl/boyfriends when your mom gets the photo album out at dinner to embarrass you. So that interspersed among the inevitable naked bathtub photos will be some stills of sweater strutting, and you will thank me. Oh yes you will.

Scribbling

Oppy has some cool stuff going on over at the Scribble Project. The latest? A totem pole, where we all made a section for stackage. Good fun clean stuff.

Here's my section. Check out the whole line of over 100 totems here.

29

Finally. It's here. The February Lady Sweater, which I completed a few months ago but never got around to photographing. Until today.

It's about time. Amy is one of those amazing women you know who outshines even the shiniest nickel. That's because Amy has something I don't: patience. Infinite patience. (And mad artistic skills. And a proper cheese slicer on hand at ALL times.)

How do I know? Because this yarn is not just any yarn. This is yarn that Amy retrieved by unraveling a thrift store sweater. Once unraveled, she washed and hung the yarn to dry (to un-kink it) and then wound it into these beautiful skeins fresh for the knitting.

(You can do this too. Just google it. Instructions abound. Send skeins to your less patient friends. They will love you forever.)

This yarn had been sitting in my stash for...I'd say a good few years. Like, for example, enough years for Amy to have TWO children, and thus not as much time for such tedious (but thrifty, eco-friendly, and AWESOME) projects. So it's been awhile. Which is why I finally put it on the list. Enough, already, Cupcake. Make a FREE sweater out of your free yarn.

And this sweater was born. The Lady Sweater rocks. If you are on ravelry (and you should be if you knit or crochet), you can see that the rest of the world agrees with the rocking-ness of this sweater. In fact, 6,449 other knitters have made this sweater and posted their completed projects on ravelry. Another 9,346 have it in the queue.

Maybe it's becuase the lace is so awesome. Or the pattern doesn't require ANY seaming (which I hate) or that it's just an awesome mid-weather cardigan with 3/4 sleeves that works almost all year on the west coast.