Archive for June, 2007

Again, lacking cranes.

Monday, June 18th, 2007

But I have been busy. The jellyfish proceeds, and looks less like a jellyfish, although it keeps getting bigger.

Also, I learned a new technique: short row heels. Which are very slightly more satisfying to knit than flap heels, although I have to withhold judgement on whether or not they’re any good to wear until I have a full pair of socks, because I can tell you right now that just the one sock is no good at all.

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(I made the one on the right. I’m wearing the one on the left. I find, as does my cohort, that things get finished faster when you’re knitting them for someone else. As long as you like the other person, anyway, and they’re around to look at you mournfully when you’re not working on their thing…)

Also I got out my sewing machine (I wonder if Bernina is, perhaps, the Mac of the sewing world…) and started piecing some quilt tops – a wall-hanging and a full-sized one, as well as a couple of experiments which we’ll just call coasters and not look at too closely.

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I may have gotten overenthusiastic with the zigzag stitch, so consider it an embellishment and don’t look too closely at the applique technique – the full-sized quilt will be put together properly, I promise. That’s why I’m practicing with small decorative objects. Well, that and I can’t bear to throw away some of this scrap – which just screams crazy quilt, am I right?

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All I’ve got to do now is practice actual quilting, finish a useful blanket, and get my grubby little hands on the quilt blocks formerly belonging to – if I recall correctly – my great-grandmother. Which will make a lovely quilt, unless I’m quite mistaken, and absolutely must be hand-quilted. Durn it. That’s going to take actual time.

But that’s ok. I can handle taking some time. Really. Instant gratification is overrated. Proper strawberries grown in actual dirt without bizarre chemicals, however, are not. In fact, it’s the only way I like strawberries at all.

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Lurking on a side street.

Monday, June 4th, 2007

Harvard Square, near the Grolier Poetry bookstore (which, even though I almost never go in, is a neato-keen place).

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This crane actually attracted attention – from someone who was on a cellphone, even, and otherwise clearly not paying attention to his surroundings. Maybe there’s hope for observation skills after all, even in Harvard Square – which is populated, as far as I can tell, by the most oblivious people in the Northeast.

The sheer number of cranes I have left indicates that something needs to be done to step up their release into the wild, even if I’m giving myself a year to do it. Well, either that or get a little more focus. I’ve always said that too much focus makes life boring, though, and I’m not about to stop now. It’s not like having a frying pan on every burner and a couple in the oven is really a bad thing, is it?

A lone crane on a traffic sign.

Friday, June 1st, 2007

Near Ball Square in Somerville:

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This is one of the cranes made of extremely soft cotton paper, which I really thought would disintegrate fast – but it’s holding up remarkably well.

I am fond of the cranes as street art, although it’s amazing to watch people walk by and not notice them. I did overhear a small child and its mother talking about the one in Zing! Which, as you might expect, kind of made my day. I suppose the next step is to add cards, so perhaps people will notice and come look at the blog. It’s not impossible – after all, it is a finite but ever-expanding universe.

I think the next step might actually be to start using my good camera. The digital camera is lovely, and excellent for the blog given that I don’t have a scanner which works, but my (grandfather’s) Olympus has been languishing for quite some time and I would like that to change. It’s a very good camera, and it’s much more willing to work with me on things like depth of field and lighting, what with being an SLR with a decent lens. I don’t have all the filters or the telephoto, but that’s not a huge deal. In any case, we’ll see – I have to come up with a good place to take film for developing if I’m going to do that, and with Ferrante-Dege closed, I’m not sure what the options are anymore.