The Big Blackberry

Months later (no excuses).....we're in New York, which MixMonster has determined is no longer the Big Apple but the Big Blackberry. It seems we are the only people in New York who walk the streets and sit in restauarants without one.   

We're staying in  outside the city with bff and her family so it's the perfect combination of city and country, hangin' with friends and running around the city.  

Okay, and now it's weeks later, after we are back from NY, and also after my laptop and wallet were stolen from my office, and after an amazing workshop with Lexi Boeger, the author of Pluckyfluff.  Major hassle, major inspiration.  

As it turns out, the Big Blackberry turned back into the Big Apple on the day the new iPhone was released.  We were up near Central Park and had completely forgotten about "the big day" until we saw the lines at the Apple Store, wrapping around and around like a Disneyland queue, past FAO Schwartz, and as far as we could tell, all the way through the Upper East Side.  It was crazy hot, and we felt very superior walking past them in search of a geocache in Central Park.  There are several, but we found the one near the Carousel with really fun clues.  

Other New York adventures:  a trip to the Buddhist Monastery, three plays, a adult dinner while the boys asserted their independence and went to a fourth play.  Very romantic courtyard dinner, complete with a proposal straight out of the movie - he got down on his knees with a ring, right in the middle of dinner.  I immediately starting poking the husband, whispering, "OMG, OMG, he's proposing.  Get out the camera - they'll want a picture of this.  Hurry!"  We talked to them later and it turns out he's American, she's Croation, they've been living in Croatia and it was their first day in the states for a long vacation.  So sweet.  MixMonster and I started talking about his proposal, during which I was half-naked and bitchy.  In spite of this he made aring appear out of a silk handkercheif, and told me the magic word was "yes."  He still pisses off most of his male friends because he's just so damned clever and GOOD at gift-giving, and yet he's not whipped. Really, he's not.  Okay, so I get a little cranky sometimes, but never at him.  And the middle of the night when he's keeping me up with his snoring doesn't count toward my cranky quotient; any sleep-deprived peri-menopausal person would poke him in the ribs as much as I do at those moments.

NY Shows:  Avenue Q (for the boys, who know every song), The Thirty-Nine Steps (Monty Python meets Alfred Hitchcock - hilarious), and a staged reading of a new play in development by the folks who brought us Spring Awakening.  Other activities: Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island (we had to do that with the boys just to balance out the fact that we took them to Avenue Q and let them see Rent on their own!), a late-night walking tour of Greenwich Village, SoHo, Tribeca, Chinatown with friends who know every corner of the city and all kinds of wonderful fun facts about architecture and history.  And a visit to the Merchant House Museum.  

The Camp Pluckyfluff workshop gets its own posting - it was that inspirational.  

What is it with me and passwords? I'm sure there's a therapy session in here somewhere about why I can't remember passwords, even the simplest ones I create for myself. I haven't been able to post for two two weeks because...well, because even when I found the time to blog, I spent it trying to figure out what my effing password is. Can you say "lame-ass blogger?" Sure, I knew you could.

Yesterday I went to the Pasadena Bead and Design show with CosaMama, and we took a class in creative bead design. Essentially coiled wire, wrapped with shiny yarns. It was fun, and I started t think about weaving, even though I swore I would never do such a thing given the knitting and spinning obsessions. But I'm starting to accumulate enough hand-spun yarn that I am feeling a need to figure out ways to use it up faster than hand-knitting will allow. But I didn't buy one, because I'm not quite inspired enough yet. And Stitches West is coming up, with several design classes in the works for me, but I know there's some great design software out there, and I think I'd rather have that than a loom. For now. Unless the ever-indulgent MixMonster wants to research smallish looms. Really, though, I think I need to wait for MookMac (the "little" boy) to graduate and go to a college dorm somewhere (anywhere!), which will allow me to fumigate his bedroom and turn it into Fiber Art Central. That's a good five years away, which leaves me with too much fiber and too much yarn, no matter how I add it all up.

FiberScore since Jan. 29: 4 skeins of yarn; 1 baby hat made of previously hand-spun merino and silk, 1 Blue Moon sock and the mate cast on; 7 or 8 fiber beads; and 6 or 8 skeins of red KnitPicks "Elegance" ripped out of a shawl-in-progress that I was starting to hate, re-skeined and washed, now waiting to become a long red sweater-coat.

What I'm reading: The Best American Short Stories of 2008, edited by Stephen King and worth the price of the book just for Mr. King's excellent introductory essay. But the stories are pretty fabulous, too.

VespaScore: 0. MixMonster too sick to ride, and mostly too sick this week to even move much beyond the long journey from bed to sofa and back. I took care of him as well as could be expected from as far away from him as I could get. And I'm just too damned lazy to get the Vespa out and warmed up and down the driveway unless it's for fun. If it's an errand, forget it. I'll drive the car with the heated driver's seat, thank you very much.

No Fear

2008. The year of living fearlessly, except for things that involve heights and steep cliffs. Knitting and spinning? Those I can do, but I'm going to do more of my own work this year....which means getting over my fear of math. Vespa rides with Cosa Uno aka MixMonster? With pleasure...unless it's cold. I'll dress more warmly and ride more often. I go toe-to-toe with my children already, which seems like an obvious parenting skill, but not every parent I know can say that. I've even jumped out of a plane to cure my acrophobia. BTW, it didn't work - I jumped because I was afraid I'd fall out of the plane, and I was petrified all the way down. I'm still petrified on the edge of a cliff, the top of a Mayan temple, and a even some freeway overpasses. Aside from that, I'm moderately gutsy, but I've lived in fear of going public with my writing via blogging or having any sort of online presence, which in the world of fiber-worship seems inconceivable these days. It's not that I was lurking, exactly. It's just that I'm a little shy. So I'm going to write more fearlessly and join the cyber-fiber world. Starting now.