Penguin Girl

Apology: Dear NYC, I’m sorry that it’s been really cold these past few days. I know that I was sad that I might not have a chance to wear the River Wrap until the autumn, but this isn’t acceptable weather. It is supposed to be Spring. Yes, rain is ok, I understand the need for it. Unfortunately I actually felt the need to mutter the s-word in my description of how the weather felt late this afternoon. That’s not ok. I’ve happily worn the wrap the past two days and have been very warm but I’d be just as happy if it were folded with some cedar for the next seven or so months.

Moving on, this afternoon I took advantage of my husband’s corporate discount perks to visit two amazing exhibits at MoMA: Color Chart and Design and the Elastic Mind.

I’ll start with Color Chart (sorry, site is in Flash). Yesterday I spent quite a bit of time at Knitty City not creating, but wandering around the store complaining to everyone that I was looking for inspiration. I should have stopped by MoMA instead.. the Color Chart exhibit wasn’t as inspiring as I hoped, but something about the white walls and the squares of colour by artists such as Frank Stella, Gerhard Richter, François Morellet, Sherrie Levine, and Sol LeWitt among others has left me thinking beyond my normal limited colour choices…

Yet Design and the Elastic Mind was exactly the push toward inspiration I was desperately seeking. Some of the items I had seen before (one example), however, many I had not. Tomas Gabzdil Libertiny’s “Honeycomb Vase” is stunning. A NYT review of the exhibit may be found here.

If you have the opportunity I urge you to visit both exhibits. Yes, you can see much of it online, but the experience of seeing all of this innovation organized together left my senses excited.

As a last minute decision, last night I decided to stop by Stephanie’s talk as it really was on my way home. I missed her talk [I’m trying to convince E to drive me up to Webs on the 27th] but arrived in time to get my book signed and see some people, but not everyone I was looking for. I wasn’t really with it as I had a long day and didn’t really /talk/ at all with her when it was actually my turn. Spot kept jumping out of my bag at every opportunity and was constantly muttering something about sock yarn and lace, even though he and I have discussed the contents of my stash and my time commitments for the next few weeks. Sometimes I don’t know what gets into him. I think it’s PG being a bad influence. In any case, I really love these types of events because the community of knitters always inspires me and I make new friends (and push at least ONE person to write a public journal. Last year it was A, this year it’s (hopefully) E. I’m very happy to see both on wordpress). I was sitting in a chair introducing myself to E and hopefully not leaving the impression that I’m completely insane and waiting so I didn’t jump the entire line when a woman and her friend walked by and stopped to compliment the Wrap (Actually, everyone did; I’ve never had so many compliments on a piece of knitting before. Thank you everyone!). I spoke a bit about it and she suddenly asks, “Are you Penny?”. To which I replied at the same time she said, “Melanie!”. It was so wonderful to meet her in real space.. she was there with her friend T who has been her penpal for many years and they finally met in real person as well. I had a wonderful bit of tea with them after getting my book signed and we actually succeeded in crossing paths at MoMA this afternoon.

Lastly, my mum bought a new car. This pleases me as her Corolla is almost 15 years old and the back doors no longer consistently open (or one no longer did and sometimes the other sticks?). The Corolla was a good car, it drove me (I rarely drove it) all over while I was in high school, making weekly trips across the length of the Island for orchestra rehearsals and at least two trips a summer (more like three or four) up to Oneonta for music “camp”. Please say hello to Snowflake (the car). May they enjoy their time together in health and safety. A has a new white scion too, his is the bigger boxy one and I don’t know if it has been named (helicopter taxi might be appropriate). If the weather is ever not grey hopefully we’ll get a photo of the two together. :)

Writing is hard. I really have nothing for today. I’ve been avoiding writing the past week or so and that’s bad. Very bad. I need to sit down and buckle down like I have been with the spinning (and knitting and crochet) and practice. For both nonfiction (book reviews mostly) and fiction. I need to stretch those parts of my brain.

In random news: both my Mother and her partner A (who loves his new ‘copter [details on Weds]) are proud owners of Nintendo DS’s. It’s weird. Mum’s is Pink and A’s is red or black, I forget which already. It just seems odd that they have more tech gadgets than the computer engineer and computer scientist. Mom always enjoyed my her Gameboy and played more hours of tetris and dr mario than I ever did. She currently has a few games and has been playing lots of the “brain game”. Which honestly makes me really really happy. She bought it mostly because she is a home health aide for a teenage boy and there are only so many books she wants to read in a week. We all think this will be a good thing for her brain, whether she plays mind strengthening things or fun games. A brought home chess which is good because I never learned to play when I was younger and I don’t think my mom knows how so he should have fun with that.

I hope to site down now (it’s 9pm) and prep the remainder of the week’s posts in Scrivener we’ll see how it goes… I won’t hold my breath that I can plan these posts that far ahead.

I’ve been an off-and-on journal writer for 19 years. As part of the Anne of Green Gables RAL-KAL, I’m rereading one of my favourite series. My Uni has the Norton critical edition of AGG and I also found LMM’s journals (edited) there. LMM and I are most definitely kindred spirits and I hope in the coming weeks and months to write more about journal writing (and reading) in general, my approaches to it, and LMM. I’m happy I’m an Anne. :)

Approximately 19 years ago (this coming 14 Feb), I received my first journal diary (it had a lock). I wonder if it’s in some unknown box or if we tossed it in the move. I wrote it in pretty faithfully for the first bit. I wonder if I wrote there eighteen years ago today.

Eighteen years and one day ago I had few concerns. My writing was of joy. Yes, I knew sorrow (I lost all of my grandparents by the time I was 7½). Yes, I knew pain (I fell off my bike frequently and hand-me-downs were more common than new). But thankfully, I knew love. Wow. Eighteen years. My writing over the years has changed; both from that day and that I’ve grown in all ways and manners. What does a child do? Say? I won’t deny I wonder “what if” frequently. (I do that for everything but especially in this case). I take comfort in events that help to remember. Some events are forever closed to me, something I struggle with often, but have slowly come to accept.

I have written for years and will continue to write. It helps. I won’t forget. I know I’m loved. I need to thank my mother for being the amazing role model and parent she is and for having that dual role that no child or parent ever wishes for. Thank you. I love you, both.

Mum’s partner A spent the night in the ER. We’re not sure at the moment what it is doing (he has diabetes and had a stroke 5½ years ago). They had a long road trip this past weekend and I’m hoping it is just exhaustion from that.
update 10:30a — he’s been up and out of bed this morning but as of now they are keeping him in the hospital. No word on why his speech was slurred and he felt so badly last night. Mum sounds much relieved (as am I). [A is not and will never be my ‘father’ but he’s been very good to me and i care deeply about him despite a very rough (I was 13) beginning].
update 2:40pm — they will keep him for observation another night. too much trip and not enough food it seems.

Also please keep N (a new mum) and her baby boy in your thoughts..
update 2:40pm — from what I’ve heard they are both well.

And everyone else too…

Thank you.

I slept quite well last night thanks to some meds. We went out to see mum & A today .. for the first time in too long. I had avoided going because I knew things would be weird without Cosette and I’m just trying hard not to think about it, but think back to last summer when it was warm and E was in London (waah) and I had a wonderful three days with mum, A, and my kitten.

No attempts at spinning today or this past week. I’m coughing again and just don’t have the energy.

While visiting, I showed mum a picture of the lace I was planning and showed her some other options. She lit up when she saw SwallowTail! I will be ripping back the one repeat I had finished for Miss Lambert’s shetland shawl and working on SwallowTail instead. I feel much better.. I think the pattern fits her quite well. Then it will be Icarus time for me! (finally)! And if I finish her SwallowTail and the baby knitting and the three pairs of socks I’ve set up and all the other stuff, I know the next thing I’m knitting for mum! ;) I showed her the yarn online and she hinted to another colour she liked. mhwah hah hah!

I’m on the foot of E’s socks. The worst part of today was that the sun was in my eyes both out to mum and back home to Brooklyn. Very little knitting was accomplished despite the 175 miles E drove. I still think I can finish in time for his bday on Tuesday. On that note I should finish some real work…

Ok. Who wants to trade some spinning lessons with me? [photopress:spin14jan07.jpg,thumb,alignright]I’m soo not getting this and can’t justify to E the cost of The Yarn Tree’s lessons (not to mention I think they’ll be on a class night again). I have a slight hunch I’d do better with a wheel but I want to get some basics down before I attempt to justify to E the cost of a wheel (well, I did that, he shot me down with where would it go, which is a very very good question, we are totally out of space here). Anyway, I thought did fine with yarn, but put fibre there? Yikes. I even got out the big honking spindle today with some more yarn, and I was ok with that. I see spinning as the relaxing thing to do when I don’t want to count. I can’t count. That is why the beret is in time-out. Grr. It looks like a jr girl scout beanie (circa when I was a scout, so.. late 80’s). Anyway, let me know if you are interested and in the area. We’ll figure something out. I want to be fair, but I just don’t have that much cash to throw around right now.

What if I distracted you with some stitching? This is a tree from a wonderful book I picked up in Tokyo this summer. E didn’t get that it was a tree. Oy, my stitches were more even when I was 8 (and a Laura Ingalls Wilder addict). I’m planning on adding some more to it eventually. It isn’t quite the right fabric for stitching but what I had.
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What if I distracted you with a blurry picture of Nibi? She’s really cute and makes us happy even if she’s quite spoiled and wants us to hand feed her while sitting next to a bowl (or a bag) full of food? (Please ignore the dirty house.)
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Or what if I told you I balled up a bunch of yarn tonight, including (finally!!) Lavender Sheep’s yummy custom creation? I will finish E’s socks soon so I can work on two other pairs (one is a gift pair, and giftee may or may not read this site so you won’t see anything for now). PG was mad at me for not modeling her lately. I tried to explain it is because I take horrid pictures and my goal this year is to be better. Lighting is a big issue for us here at PG’s nest, but there isn’t much that can be done. It was quite grey today and all photos had to be taken under artificial yucky yellow light. Sorry!
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I bought Sensational Knitted Socks last week using a Border’s Coupon and my holiday savings (Review tomorrow!!). It was thus even more affordable than the list price. I like this book and see why it has gotten wonderful reviews. I was looking for a Knitting on the Road or something but I think this will help me more right now. I just have to finish E’s socks (I’m halfway down the second leg). Grumble. Why did I say yes to another pure-black knit?

Can we tell I’m procrastinating work and school work? :)