knitting in the dark

I’m super excited to be knitting again - Penny has been blocked and I’m seaming her up and going to buy a ribbon for the wrap ties this afternoon. I’m also working on a pair of socks for my friend James that I promised him way back in the middle of December (!). But while my left hand was in a splint I had the time to catch up on some books I’ve been wanting to read. I’d been in a reading slump for months and it was nice to find that I can still enjoy a good book:

Freakonomics by Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner
Color by Victoria Finlay
The Know-It-All by A.J. Jacobs
Talking to the Dead by Helen Dunmore
Eat, Pray, Love by Elizabeth Gilbert
Lucky Girls by Nell Freudenberger
The Other Boleyn Girl by Philippa Gregory
The Complete Persepolis by Marjane Satrapi

and I am now most of the way through A Short History of Nearly Everything by Bill Bryson.

Lucky Girls and Talking to the Dead excepted, I really enjoyed and highly recommend each of these. The Other Boleyn Girl is complete fluff (perfect summer beach reading) but very good entertainment. Eat, Pray, Love is just as good as everyone says. And The Complete Persepolis was beautiful and absolutely changed my preception of graphic novels; I can’t wait ’til the movie comes to me via Netflix sometime in June.

Does anyone have one of those Amazon Kindle digital book-reader things? I think I want one (I’m envisioning a sort-of ipod for books in terms ease of use and portability), but I also think I might miss the physicality of turning pages and holding paper. I suppose if I started carrying that everywhere I wouldn’t get to do much subway or in-line knitting… audiobooks (especially on my ipod - which is many years old but still running like a champ) would allow me to do both, but audiobooks are so expensive compared to hard copies!

This is my sad left hand and wrist:

There won’t be any knitting for me anytime soon… well, at least until I figure out how to wedge a needle more securely between the fingers of my left hand (I give myself about three or four more days)! I got hit by a car (a van, really - one of those big cargo/commercial types) Tuesday afternoon. I was (amazingly for a New Yorker) in the middle of a crosswalk, crossing with the light, and not talking on my cell phone! The driver and I saw each other right before impact, so he was able to hit the brakes and I was able to put my hands between the rest of my body and the hood of the van. Right as he hit me I jumped down the street in the direction he was traveling so I managed to stay on my feet and not go flying onto my ass or head - I find it astonishing how quickly the body will respond to this sort of situation in order to save itself without any prompting from one’s brain! The only thing I remember thinking before impact was: “he’s going too fast - he’s really going to hit me - asshole!” (and my mother says I’ve been in New York too long…) After the adrenaline wore off, my hand started hurting a lot… which makes sense considering they think I’ve fractured two metacarpals!

Except for that whole getting-hit thing, I feel really really lucky. It could have been just so much worse; I’m quite happy to have walked myself out of the street to sit down on the sidewalk to collect myself and wait for the paramedics. And the driver stopped and called 911 and didn’t run! And it’s my left hand and not the one I write with! The little things for which I’m thankful just keep coming… Now, there are plenty of things about this experience that are frustrating and upsetting - and I’ve cried at the strangest times - but I am trying to remain positive, which is pretty easy when I consider what could have happened!

So I’m going to visit an orthopedist/hand surgeon Monday morning. The PA, xray tech, and radiologist from the ER visit and the doctors in my primary care office don’t seem to think I’ll need surgery or anything more than to wear a splint for the next month or so, but they want a hand specialist to go over the films and confirm the fractures and supervise my recovery. They gave me some big-dose painkillers, but I mostly just need them to sleep and only take them otherwise if my hand is swelling up.

I know it was a whole two weeks ago now, so I’m not going to bother telling you that Renegade was cool; I’ll just show you my loot. It appears I’ve started hoarding fabric this year as well as yarn… I never used to do this until I started reading craft blogs! Yikes! There’s just so much inspiration out there. Anyway, I spent a reasonable (mostly affordable) amount of money at the reprodepot.com booth:

The cherries are on cotton stretch jersey - I have plans for a t-shirt quilt to take to the park and beach and I think this will make a cute accent!

And these lovely flowers are on heavier weight upholstery fabric - perhaps for the back of a pillow or to recover the cushions on my comfy chairs…

And I just couldn’t resist (slightly less affordable) new art for a wall in my new apartment (apartment yet to be found):

It’s one of a kind and very cool up close. I love the red and icy blue details:

Speaking of new apartments, you’d think that a person could find an apartment for herself somewhere in Brooklyn with a reasonable commute time into the city for $1000 or less per month, but apparently not. It’s not like I want to live in Brooklyn Heights or Park Slope or anything (well, I want to, but I know I won’t be); I’d be very happy staying in Sunset Park or moving to Greenwood Heights. And small is okay (I think I could live in about 250 square feet), but it has to be a fairly clean building and there has to be decent natural light in the apartment since I work from home quite a bit. I just can’t bring myself to move even further away from Manhattan - not only does that make the commute longer when I have to go in, but it also makes a taxi more expensive on the nights that I need to take one.

My spring cleaning is well under-way and I have come up with a pile of things that I no longer need or want. The books that are still worth a little money I am selling on amazon.com and those that are no longer worth much I have listed on paperbackswap.com. (If you don’t know about paperbackswap.com, go check it out now!) Appliances and other such items I will eventually put on craigslist, but what do I do with the clothing and electronics that no longer work? Good news: the NYC Department of Sanitation 2007 Spring Cleaning Events are coming up soon!

Unfortunately, the Brooklyn event is way out on the border of Queens and not centrally located, but the Manhattan Electronics Recycling and Clothing Donation Event takes place on Sunday April 22 from 8am-2pm @ Union Square’s North Plaza, which is fairly easy to get to from the closer parts of Brooklyn.

They will be giving away free compost (I still can’t bring myself to compost in my apartment, but if you have a garden bring a scoop and containers), collecting used electronics for proper recycling/disposal, and either Goodwill or the Salvation Army will be on site to accept clothing and linen donations.

Electronics accepted: computers, monitors, printers, scanners, keyboards, mice, tvs, and cell phones.

Clothing and linens should be clean, gently used items. “Place items in plastic bags and tie securely to avoid moisture contamination. Tax-deduction receipts will be available upon request.”

I’m encouraging all my family and friends (that means you!) to find new homes for their unwanted belongings instead of just throwing them away… and year-round, not just in April because of Earth Day or whatever.

I have not disappeared; my mother came to visit, but she left early this morning so I can get back to work. There has been some exciting progress on the shirt-stripe quilt (piecing is so my faster when your mother does all the trimming and pressing). But for now, may I present some daffodils purchased in Park Slope now sitting in my bedroom windowsill:

Today was my first day off in about two weeks and this is what I accomplished:

I cut 1,116 triangles out of woven blue and white stripe shirting cloth. That translates into 279 mitered corner squares which will eventually turn into a quilt similar to this one:

The recipe comes from this book: Kaffe Fassett’s PASSIONATE PATCHWORK - which I purchased for my mother years ago and she’s never made any of the quilts contained therein.

I’m going to make my version of the quilt one section wider, though, as the example is only 54″ wide and I like my quilts to hang over the sides of my bed rather than just rest on top. The extra section will leave add about 18″ to the overall width and will, therefore, hang over the sides nicely.

This is the first quilt I’ve worked on by myself and not in the company of my mother. The two quilts I made before this I did with her during school breaks - I haven’t been in school for years now but I want a new quilt. I’ve been collecting fabrics for this one for about three years; some were purchased on my trip to China in 2004 but most have been collected since then from a few choice fabric stores here in NYC. My absolute favorite fabric store in the city is B & J Fabrics (sorry purl patchwork, but at least you come in second over City Quilter, which I find annoying). B&J’s website sucks, but the selection at the store is AMAZING - and ever since they moved there’s actually space to see all the options and the help there is actually helpful and not snotty. They have a giant rack of Liberty prints, which I can hardly ever afford but I love to look at for inspiration.

And now I’m going to rummage around and see if I have a nice neutral grey or blue thread so I can start piecing!

I’ve started saving to buy an apartment (it’ll take me a while, like maybe four or five years - I live in NYC) but I sure was glad that I’m still a renter when the ceiling in my kitchen started falling down a few mornings ago…

I put a bucket under the leak and called my super. In approximately four hours there were 6 inches of water in the bucket!!!

Like the curtains? Oh, thanks - I made them myself (actually, that’s not true, my mother helped while on a visit). But anyway, the Polish guy that does all the handy-work in our building came to patch the ceiling this morning and arrived only half an hour after the agreed-upon time, which I think is really very reasonable and I work from home (ah, the joys of freelancing) so it’s not like I was trying to leave or anything. I think he probably won’t ever show up again to paint the patch, but that’s okay with me because when my lease is up at the end of July my roommate and I are moving out and moving on.

I don’t know why I didn’t realize this earlier - like in June when my aunt revealed that she was pregnant with her second child! But I have a new cousin who was born in December…

And baby socks are just the thing to use up all those sock yarn leftovers that I have laying lying around and can’t bear to throw away…

I know that it won’t be appreciated the way I enjoy my own hand-knits, but I would like to do more knitting for someone other than myself (well, and my father’s annual Christmas socks). And I can envision little baby socks flying off the needles in just a few subway rides!

It’s not a lot right now, but maybe it will stick and we can have a real winter for a little while…

Do you like the slightly ghostly streetlight photo?

Not like in Seattle, where my parents live - they’ve had plenty of snow:

Enough that my mother made some snowmen (which her dogs tried to eat):

One of whom got chased off by some neon alien finger puppets (my mother is hilarious, or at least I think so):

Then she sent me an email, subject: SnowBodies - The Exhibition:

“Celebrate the wonder of the snowform. A phenomenal look at the phenomena we call The Snowman.”

I wonder how many other young ladies similar to my age are such close friends with their mothers… it’s a very different friendship than those I have with other young ladies my own age, but my mother and I talk on the phone nearly every day. She gave up on “mothering” me a long time ago. And our senses of humor are nearly identical and shared with very few other people…

I scored big off the sale racks at Anthropologie this week. Last fall or early winter there was a black corduroy dress that I believe was called the Madeline jumper and I wanted it A LOT, but it was way out of my price range because I am cheap careful about how I spend my hard-earned money (I am a freelance theatrical designer in NYC, after all). One of my mother’s friends from highschool has a brilliant shopping motto: “Put it down and walk away.” I’m really very good about forgetting about these things usually… but I sort of regretted not buying this dress. And this week I found it on sale for about 25% of the original price! The zipper needs replacing, so the kind person at the cash-wrap gave me another 15% off! And I found a beautiful red all wool sweater with a fantastic collar for 1/2 price but it was missing buttons (therefore another 15% off). I don’t think I’ve ever been happier about spending $80 than I am with these two purchases. I’m slowly trying to transition my wardrobe away from t-shirts and GAP jeans and every little baby step counts…