In memoriam

Happy Memorial Day. Say thanks to a Vet, find a ceremony to attend if you can, or spend 15 minutes thinking of those who went through unbelievable hardships and died to keep the USA free and honest.

Sheep and the Stalkarazzi

“Mom, what’s that woman doing in that car with a camera?”

“Duck down. Maybe she won’t know we’re here.” Sheep continue munching. A lamb pipes up, “I think she Kinneared us!”

“Don’t be ridiculous. we’re safe behind all this grass….”

(Yes, the Stalkarazzi did manage to get candids of the sheep that thought they could safely graze. It’s sad what a knitter with a zoom lens will attempt on a long trip home from work. And, of course, the sheep are there, just rather hard to see. Trust me — there are even little tiny lambs back there. Earlier in the year when both grass and sheep were younger and shorter, you could see the lambs nursing then running around like little woolen crazy things on springs.)

I’ve also done some drive-by kinnearing of Black Angus livestock in a field. My only excuse is the commute is deadly dull sometimes.

The commonplaces of shared lives

It’s hard to pull off writing dialogue for people who have a shared history prior to the story told. The shared secrets and unspoken meanings for codewords can be difficult hurdles for both writer and reader.

In Elizabeth Bowen’s “The Little Girls“, once you go back into the stories of the past, you see the connection to the present day inside jokes. And, in amidst the mystery of why people build bonds in childhood that extend into adulthood, there is some interesting imagery. A small sampling: “In movement the birds were like shaken silk.” And later: “Everywhere was breathless, heavy syringa bushes increasing the hush. The look of evening, caused by the high walls over which rose many and close trees, was premature: the tops of the trees still netted the brightness of day.”

The book is like a time capsule, in and of itself… the time periods described are 1914 and the 1960s England. Oddly enough, the 1914 “memories” seem less dated than the slang of the 1960s. I haven’t finished the book, but I suspect I’ll have more patience than other readers might. YMMV.

Faux Wood Computer

I was not able to take pictures of the sheep on my way home from work due to:

1. Lambs too short to be seen over the grass, alas
2. A blind curve and nowhere to pull over

I had the camera out, and then I decided not to risk it.

Instead, I give you a faux wood PC tower cover seen in a shop window near Dusseldorf, Germany last week. I’m back home, but i have lots of Project Spectrum fodder off my camera chip. Every so often, when at a loss for knitting content, you may get to see more from the one day I was off work.

The little “rock” on top of the tower is actually a faux wood grained computer mouse (cordless). Sadly, I couldn’t get a picture of the faux stone keyboard. It was in a box and slanted so there was a strange glare coming off the box lid. The sign assures the passersby that the PC housing is air brushed, as well as of superior quality. There are other sell messages on the sign, but some of them are cutoff or backwards, so I haven’t a hope of translation.

Yellow Sunshine

Yesterday, I was walking around in a suburb of Dusseldorf, taking advantage of 2 golden, rare hours of sunshine before I had to be on a plane. (We will not discuss the fact that getting to Germany is easy, but somehow every time I try to get home there’s some technical hiccup — this time the fog in NYC.)

I’m not sure what era this building is from, but its sunshiny yellow color reflects off the building and white auto to its left.

Cats and the new toy

I got a new camera, and so far all I’ve managed to do is annoy the cats with the bright light.

The Eyes of Reproach

Think she’ll forgive me?

Fog and the Flock

Sometimes, if you’re driving in the early evening and it’s foggy, you will see birds or deer in the gloaming, and the effect is almost grainy, like a bit of old film.

One night, while heading south on 83 into northern Baltimore, I stopped at Northern Parkway and waited at the light. The fog was lit up by 83 below the other side of the bridge. And in the dusky sky, lit from below by yellow and white car lights speeding like search beams, were a hundred or so sharp winged swifts darting to catch bugs in the evening. The ones backlit and closest to my intersection were in sharp relief, but the ones in the background were almost like stop reel animation.

I’m looking for inspiration for the new cycle in Project Spectrum, which is yellow, air, East, and wood and Spring. This visual event was magically brief, but I’m not sure how to translate it into the project (beyond getting out my woodcutting tools and doing a printer’s block of the scene).

A Day Told in Numbers

• 4.5 hours round trip commute (thanks to rain and roadwork).
• 9 hours typing frantically on a computer, trying to meet deadlines, and squinting at the screen. Perhaps computer glasses in my future?
• 2.5 hours at choir practice, standing and holding a music folder in front of me.
• Only 7 hours of sleep before I get to wake up and do it all again (except the music lessons will be at home, sitting, thank you very much). And I’ll have easy access to aspirin.