Unfurnished Brooklyn

Stalked by the Board of Ed

Really. I've been meaning to register my daughter for kindergarten. Actually tried: went to what I thought was the correct school, only to learn that the one a couple of blocks further is actually her zone school. Go figure. And I've yet to get off my duff and sign her up.

But they've taken care of that. I received a letter today welcoming me to the (correct) school, and noting which class she'll be in, and what supplies to bring. Which is quite a list, let me tell you. After I got all misty thinking about my little Cheburashenka going to kindergarten (note: I almost typed college. Oy.), I wondered how they tracked me down. I never gave them any info! Probably from her pre-k, which is in another neighborhood; they are licensed by the Board of Ed, so they're probably required to notify parents. Or, par/guard, as I was referred to on the letter.

Already I'm picturing her in her knee socks (one falling down, of course), and her pleated skirt, beribboned pigtails, clutching her lunchbox, with her Spongebob back pack (what else?) threatening to tip her over backwards.

Waaaahhhhh!!!!

Okay, I'm over it.

Let The Eagle Soar*

This is what I thought of as I left the movie theater today. Because I had to cheer myself up.

I went to see Fahrenheit 9/11 today. I left the theater feeling numb. A lot of what was said in it, I'd heard already, but I also learned a lot.

And it brought up my issues about soldiers: I thought of my brothers, who'd joined the military (different branches) as a means out of the housing project we grew up in. They both quit: the first after his time was up, the second many years later, after serving in the Gulf War. At one point, I seriously considered joining because I wanted college, travel, and all the good stuff in the brochure.

I thought of how my brothers (and my sister, who married a military man) got out of our neighborhood. How they traveled, saved enough to buy homes (far from Brooklyn), and didn't fall into the lives that our neighbors fell into. I used to joke with them that while they were in the military, I was the one dodging bullets in the wars between dealers. It would've been safer to be in the Army, at that point.

I remember their visits home, bearing gifts from tours in Europe and Asia, dressed in their crisp uniforms... the older brother left as a skinny, gawky teen nicknamed "Bone" and came back this big, beefy man. Visiting Fort Knox for my other brother's graduation from boot camp, I was so impressed by all the polite, disciplined young men that would literally run to get something for me if I asked; heck, the fact that I was called ma'am by someone a couple of years older than me made me think soldiers were the bee's knees. My brother's letters from home cured me of that, though....

So I've had this weird affection for people in the military for years. I'd march in protest of war, then go and send care packages to my brother in the Middle East (and to his friends- once they tried the cookies I sent they were in high demand, and somehow I ended up corresponding with bored soldiers in my brother's unit who had no letters from home). I'm bringing all this up because of the film's footage of soldiers in Iraq, which are unlike those you'd see on Fox News (or most news channels, for that matter). Especially moving was the mother who had raised her family to believe that the military was a way out of their life in Flint, only to have one of her sons die in Iraq. I wonder what my mother felt... we never talked about it, how she felt still getting over the loss of one son to kidney failure, then having another flying Apaches in a war zone.

The scenes of people in Iraq before the war- children playing, people laughing... I cried, because I knew what the next scenes were going to be like. And then I cried some more.

Anyway, see it if you haven't.

*if you see the film, you'll hear this song.

Well, didja?

Didja ever have one of those days when everything went right? When you made all your subway connections, when every errand run went off without a hitch, when one of those errands takes you dangerously close to Knitting Hands and you don't feel the urge to go in? When no one did anything stupid in your presence, and you didn't make a fool of yourself? When you stumble upon a Mr. Softee truck that carries rum raisin ice cream?

Well, I had one. Tomorrow just might suck eggs, but tonight I'm going to lay back and enjoy this rare feeling.

Saturday was cool- I went to the Mermaid Parade and met up with Mala, only our second meeting despite the fact that we've known each other for at least 2 years and live in the same city (you're next, Red!). Later a couple of friends showed and I ended up getting whiplash on the Cyclone. And enjoyed it.

Funny thing about the Cyclone... no matter how many times you ride it you think, pfft! I can handle this. Then you get to the top of that first drop, hearing the clunking of the rickety old tracks and you think, aw shit! And then that first turn, when the wheels seem to lift ever so slightly off the track.... At that point, I turned to Lauren (the only one who'd ride it with me) and said, "you know, I hate this ride." Because I do. I hate it, and I love it.

What? Another Webring??

I'm going through the Knitblogger webring (instead of writing-heh), and I know I'll never get through them all in one sitting. I've noticed a few new rings have popped up, and I remember reading a blog that suggested there be a New York City webring. I think that's a good idea: I've stumbled on a few blogs of NY knitters, and there are a couple of blogs I've read for a while before realizing they were based in NY.

So I'm thinking of starting one. I'm pretty clueless about it; I'm reading up on Ringsurf about what this entails. I don't even know what to call it (NYKnit is out). But I think it would be fun to see what all the other knitters here are doing, instead of stumbling on them while zipping through the Knitblogger ring.

Any ideas?

I've also come to a conclusion (or rationalization- I'm good at those) about my overabundance of yarn. I keep it stored in a closet in the bedroom, and the only yarn constantly in view is in a basket near the door. It is a simple case of out of sight, out of mind. Or maybe not so simple. But anyway, I'm thinking of converting the small storage closet near the door into my stash closet. It once had shelves (did the previous tenant take them, leaving the brackets behind?); a few baskets, and I think it will look pretty cool.

I think I just want to pretend I have a yarn shop in my apartment.

The Stash That Ate Brooklyn

While searching for the elusive notebook containing my poncho-ized Charlotte stats, I broke the box containing my summer-weight yarn. I merely picked it up and the bottom fell out of it; with all the claw and tooth marks on it, I can guess what weakened it.

So then of course, I had to find new storage for it. Which led me to inventory the stuff. I did one for the winter-weight yarn that I put away in bins, but I've- ahem- added to the stash since then.

I've been thinking lately that I just have waaaay too much yarn, more than I can ever knit. And I've come to the decision that its bad, but not ridiculously so.

Yarn for complete projects: 20
Groups that can be combined for a complete project: 6
Strays and single skeins:15 (+ a bag set aside for afghan squares)

Twenty doesn't seem like too big a number until you think about how many skeins are necessary to complete a project, though some of them are summer shells and child-sized items. And I just realized I haven't counted the yarn in a big basket near the sofa, but that is yarn I'm currently working on. The Charlotte Koigu, two colors of Idea jeans, the red/orange Kersti, and some tank yarn.

All this yarn was purchased with the best intentions: I have a specific project in mind, and dammit I'm gonna make it. There was the Smiley's Hotel Sale incident, in which the yarn purchased got kicked to the curb for a whole lotta Noro, nearly all of which has been knitted up (there's one bag of Silk Garden that's still awaiting the perfect project). There are several colors of 1824 Cotton that were going to be gift pillows, but after making the first pair (and actually sending them off) I realized weaving in tons of ends ain't for me. I learned that lesson years ago after making my first and last granny square afghan, but I guess I forgot.

Some of what is reserved for complete projects was intended for Cheburashka, but I never know which project she'll actually like, and which she'll reject as being "too tickle-y." Even the softest of yarns can be deemed not worthy to touch her regal person. I'm tempted to stick a pea under her mattress to see how she'll react.

Six of the projects are for summer. I need to get cracking. Yes, Charlotte jumped the line; turnabout being fair play, the Kersti jacket jumped ahead of Charlotte. But that's going quickly, and yesterday I started the sleeves of the Idea Jeans pullover. I'm doing them at the same time, and shortening them to 3/4 length, so I'm doing alright. But all this is leading to... a yarn diet. I hate the word diet, and hell no I'm not going to call it a Richard Simmons Live-it!, so let's just declare a moratorium on all new yarn purchases.

For how long? I'd like to say for as long as I can stand it- but I'll be at KnitNY today and once there I may find that I can't take it anymore. Or I could say, until the new fall yarns make their appearance. But I've got next fall and next winter covered. I'm going to say September. And maybe longer, depending on what's out there. Oh, this is going to hurt.

But the pain will be alleviated somewhat once my Threadbear order arrives... hey! I ordered it before I was overwhelmed by the size of my stash. And besides, I feel good about it, knowing I'm helping them floor their new space. Maybe they'll name a tile after me....

Bitin' Em's Style

I'm chingalaka'd out again. So I'm going to steal Em's idea and post which movies of the IMDB Top 100 that I've seen (though she takes it the extra mile to 250).

See'em below, if you care to.

Parade O' Sueet

Too bad my crabby phase is over, else I'd just say "so what I'm finally getting around to putting up pics of the completed Sueets? Wanna make something of it?" All I can do now is point you toward the album, and slink away....

And hope you don't notice that mine aren't there, because I don't have any batteries in my camera. Oy.

Before I slink away, I'll say this: it is high time I start looking for a job. Party's over. And it occurred to me: I don't have any interview clothes. After 5 years of working where my uniform was jeans and a tee shirt, guess what my wardrobe consists of? Prior to that, I worked in a nightclub. Equally inappropriate clothing.
So I guess I'll have to go shoppping. Which I hate. Especially for Grown Up Clothes.

I need new jeans, too. I noticed that all but one pair of my jeans have a large tear, just below the left cheek. What is going on that each hole is in the same exact place? What's going on with my left cheek, people??

Ha- as I typed that, I went into my normal pose: lifting my left leg and stretching it across my right knee. Mystery solved.

Remember me talking shit about ditching my other projects for the poncho version of Charlotte's Web? Well, about that... see, what had happened was I wrote down my notes in a small notebook. The small notebook went bye-bye. It's got to be here somewhere; maybe Cheburashka put it in one of her bags. But I can't really do much until I find my notes. So I went back to the Shrek-green Idea Jeans eyelet pullover I was working on: the front is done, and I'm nearly to the armhole on the back. But then I was running errands in the city* and realized I needed some markers... and I was near Purl... and there was this Koigu Kersti, see... and the color was just amazing- a mix of dark red and reddish orange....

If you've ever touched Kersti, you'll understand that I had no choice in the matter.

I bought the last of the colorway, and all they had left was in 3 different dye lots. One light, two dark. But I've mixed it by alternating rows, and it looks great. I started to make the hooded cardigan in Vogue Knitting, but I made some changes: first, it's all in one piece (no pesky seams), and there may not be a hood since I'm two skeins short of what the pattern calls for. Unless of course I find some more and have to blend in yet another colorway.

How addictive is this stuff? I started on Saturday and I've got about 6 inches done on the body, and 4 inches of a sleeve. I'll start looking for that notebook when I can tear myself away from the Kersti.

* why do we in the boroughs refer to Manhattan as the city?

It's a little scary...

...how much this looks like me.

Even down to the Linda Evans-like tightlipped smile. And the "don't wanna deal with my hair" weekend bandanna.

Go get your'n here.

I figured out why I've been so grumpy this week. I don't know why something I've had once a month for 25 years still manages to catch me off guard. Heh.

Yesterday Cheb and I went on the Staten Island Ferry- a practice run for when I take her fishing. She loved it. Afterwards, we hoofed it up to Riverbank Park for the Sisterfire event, where we saw some great performances and met up with a few mamas I've known online for about 2 years yet hadn't met in person.

Cheb was rockin' in her "anarchy in the pre-k" tee shirt (which Mindy put me on to). Did you know that a cute child in a cool tee shirt is a babe magnet? Of course, I've been out the game so long it wasn't until I was riding home on the train that I realized: "Ohhhh, it wasn't really about the shirt at all. Dang."

The Advil is starting to wear off, so I'm going to bed. Hopefully I'll be back to normal tomorrow.

Reading Is Fundamental

Does anyone remember RIF? Is that still going on?

Bitin' Mindy's style:

BOLD = read

Beowulf (part of it)
Achebe, Chinua - Things Fall Apart
Agee, James - A Death in the Family
Austen, Jane - Pride and Prejudice
Baldwin, James - Go Tell It on the Mountain
Beckett, Samuel - Waiting for Godot
Bellow, Saul - The Adventures of Augie March
Bronte, Charlotte - Jane Eyre
Bronte, Emily - Wuthering Heights
Camus, Albert - The Stranger
Cather, Willa - Death Comes for the Archbishop
Chaucer, Geoffrey - The Canterbury Tales (parts, not all)
Chekhov, Anton - The Cherry Orchard
Chopin, Kate - The Awakening
Conrad, Joseph - Heart of Darkness
Cooper, James Fenimore - The Last of the Mohicans
Crane, Stephen - The Red Badge of Courage
Dante - Inferno
de Cervantes, Miguel - Don Quixote
Defoe, Daniel - Robinson Crusoe
Dickens, Charles - A Tale of Two Cities
Dostoyevsky, Fyodor - Crime and Punishment
Douglass, Frederick - Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass
Dreiser, Theodore - An American Tragedy
Dumas, Alexandre - The Three Musketeers
Eliot, George - The Mill on the Floss
Ellison, Ralph - Invisible Man
Emerson, Ralph Waldo - Selected Essays
Faulkner, William - As I Lay Dying
Faulkner, William - The Sound and the Fury
Fielding, Henry - Tom Jones
Fitzgerald, F. Scott - The Great Gatsby
Flaubert, Gustave - Madame Bovary
Ford, Ford Madox - The Good Soldier
Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von - Faust
Golding, William - Lord of the Flies
Hardy, Thomas - Tess of the d'Urbervilles
Hawthorne, Nathaniel - The Scarlet Letter
Heller, Joseph - Catch 22
Hemingway, Ernest - A Farewell to Arms
Homer - The Iliad (parts, not all)
Homer - The Odyssey
Hugo, Victor - The Hunchback of Notre Dame
Hurston, Zora Neale - Their Eyes Were Watching God
Huxley, Aldous - Brave New World
Ibsen, Henrik - A Doll's House
James, Henry - The Portrait of a Lady
James, Henry - The Turn of the Screw
Joyce, James - A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man
Kafka, Franz - The Metamorphosis
Kingston, Maxine Hong - The Woman Warrior
Lee, Harper - To Kill a Mockingbird
Lewis, Sinclair - Babbitt
London, Jack - The Call of the Wild
Mann, Thomas - The Magic Mountain
Marquez, Gabriel Garcia - One Hundred Years of Solitude
Melville, Herman - Bartleby the Scrivener
Melville, Herman - Moby-Dick
Miller, Arthur - The Crucible
Morrison, Toni - Beloved
O'Connor, Flannery - A Good Man is Hard to Find
O'Neill, Eugene - Long Day's Journey into Night
Orwell, George - Animal Farm
Pasternak, Boris - Doctor Zhivago
Plath, Sylvia - The Bell Jar
Poe, Edgar Allan - Selected Tales
Proust, Marcel - Swann's Way (I'm starting this week- blame Cari)
Pynchon, Thomas - The Crying of Lot 49
Remarque, Erich Maria - All Quiet on the Western Front
Rostand, Edmond - Cyrano de Bergerac
Roth, Henry - Call It Sleep
Salinger, J.D. - The Catcher in the Rye
Shakespeare, William - Hamlet
Shakespeare, William - Macbeth
Shakespeare, William - A Midsummer Night's Dream
Shakespeare, William - Romeo and Juliet
Shaw, George Bernard - Pygmalion
Shelley, Mary - Frankenstein
Silko, Leslie Marmon - Ceremony
Solzhenitsyn, Alexander - One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich
Sophocles - Antigone
Sophocles - Oedipus Rex
Steinbeck, John - The Grapes of Wrath
Stevenson, Robert Louis - Treasure Island
Stowe, Harriet Beecher - Uncle Tom's Cabin
Swift, Jonathan - Gulliver's Travels
Thackeray, William - Vanity Fair
Thoreau, Henry David - Walden
Tolstoy, Leo - War and Peace
Turgenev, Ivan - Fathers and Sons
Twain, Mark - The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
Voltaire - Candide
Vonnegut, Kurt Jr. - Slaughterhouse-Five
Walker, Alice - The Color Purple
Wharton, Edith - The House of Mirth
Welty, Eudora - Collected Stories
Whitman, Walt - Leaves of Grass
Wilde, Oscar - The Picture of Dorian Gray
Williams, Tennessee - The Glass Menagerie
Woolf, Virginia - To the Lighthouse
Wright, Richard - Native Son

Before I end up the protaganist of Alison's story, I'd better show what projects I've completed recently. They're in my photo album.

I've been watching some really depressing movies lately, so I need something a bit peppy. This week I've seen City of God and The Magdalene Sisters (which had me pissed off in the first five minutes, then weepy in the next ten).

She's baaaaack!

You know, you used to be able to find AOL discs every-freaking-where. Now, it's like trying to find the frickin' Holy Grail. But I found one.

And I'm too tired to update, but I really need to post all the completed Sueets out there. Hey, it's not like I didn't warn y'all I'm a bad knitalonger. Tomorrow- I'm tired.

We just got back from Cheburashka's gradulation. It was fun. There was the usual Cavalcade of Pre-K Stars, then a magic show. Then all hell broke loose when the pull-string pinata was opened- their inner sugar demons broke free and the sweet little things became all fangs and claws. And I caught it all on film.

Tomorrow, crafty pics.