This is the Quadracci Pavilion at the Milwaukee Museum of Art, designed by Santiago Calatrava. The “wings” are generally open when the weather isn’t terribly windy. They close and open each day at noon, just for grins. You can see what it looks like inside here.
The coolest thing? This is the view from my office window!
Happy Friday everyone!
Today, I’m thankful for…
Breathtaking moments…
A fresh beginning, every day…
Moments of quiet.
How about you?
Today’s Ten on Tuesday: Ten Things You Wish you Knew How to Do. Does this go perfectly with my learning theme, or what?
1. Woodworking. I love watching Norm build furniture.
2. Crochet. I can make a chain, but that’s it.
3. Dye. I have a sweater in a light pink that does nothing for me. I want it to be orange, or brown, or even plum or burgundy. But not that pink.
4. Make puff pastry. This is probably a matter of objecting to working with giant sheets of butter more than lack of sufficient knowledge to do the job. It’s also an idle wish – Pepperidge Farms is perfectly sufficient!
5. Stranded colorwork. I plan to conquer this one soon.
6. Make cheese.
7. Change a tire.
8. Speak a foreign language.
9. Stay up later at night. I’d get so much more done. But I just. Can’t. Do it.
10. Install a zipper. We’ve discussed my hatred of sewing, but I automatically dismiss any zipped cardigan pattern. This seems wrong, somehow.
I feel like I’m just getting warmed up. What’s on your list?
I was AWOL last week when many people were posting their first installment of Thankful Thursdays. Had I posted then, I would certainly have begun with the “big stuff,” like my lovely family, my health, my friends… You all know I’m thankful for those things. Today, I’m more in a “it’s the little pleasures that make life good” mood. So today, I am thankful for…
1. Coffee. The first sip at 5:15 a.m., as I’m firing up the computer and thinking about my day – it’s the best.
2. Cell phones. I know they are as much curse as blessing, but seriously – how did we live without them?
3. Cute shoes. 
No, really! There’s something about putting on a fun pair of shoes that gives me a real lift.
Happy Thursday everyone!
I’ve been thinking a lot lately about the choices people make in living out their days. It’s probably safe to say that there are as many approaches to life as there are people on the planet. Some of our proclivities are hard-wired into us, but some are truly choice. Do we choose a positive attitude? Do we choose to be courteous and respectful? Do we choose to lift others up?
This is a broad topic, but the specific aspect I’ve been focused on lately is how we choose to approach the always-present opportunity for learning and growth. I’ve noticed, and become somewhat sensitive to, a number of people tending to reject learning opportunities because they are “afraid.” I’ve done it myself – I used to say I was “afraid” of yeast and therefore avoided learning to bake bread. More recently, I thought I was “afraid” to try new knitting techniques (the cure for that was a shove into the deep end of the pool – lucky for me I have friends who are believers in tough love).
What are we really afraid of? Certainly not single-cell organisms or sticks and string. We’re afraid of failing, at worst, or even of just wasting precious time on an unsuccessful venture.
The thing is, what is life if not a string of continuous possibilities? Do we really want to slog through our days, merely doing what must be done, sitting down in our Barcalounger every night to watch a few hours of crappy TV, only to get up and do it again the next day?
One of the things I have come to love about the knitting blog world is the pervasive spirit of trying, and trying again. Knitters start things all the time – and nearly as frequently realize that the yarn isn’t right for the project, the project isn’t right for them, or that there’s just something else more fun to try. So they frog and move on. Nothing ventured, nothing gained turns into something ventured, nothing lost.
It’s not just about knitting, though. The idea of giving things a try translates to all sorts of pursuits. Cooking, for example. I find myself in discussion frequently with people who are what I would call “tentative cooks.” “Oh, that sounds good, but I wouldn’t know how to make it.” The idea of expanding horizons gets shut down immediately with the competing reaction of “I’m afraid.”
Well, phooey. Information is power, so how about letting that power conquer fear by arming ourselves?
To illustrate, I became interested in cooking in my early 20s. Well, really, I became interested in eating food that didn’t come in a box in the freezer section of the grocery store, or from a can. So I got myself a copy of the Joy of Cooking and read it, nearly cover to cover. I took breaks to try out recipes that sounded good. I mastered a few things and in the process learned that there wasn’t much to fear in trying. If you goof, well, that’s why God made garbage disposals. I still have that book, its stains and creases a testament to my efforts. I move on, obtaining more books, reading and reading some more about various cuisines, techniques, and ingredients, trying out all kinds of crazy recipes along the way. I screwed stuff up, I had some successes, I fed my friends, and nothing bad happened to me. So I kept at it.
Today, after all that reading, trial, error, and practice, I have a nice sturdy repertoire of cooking knowledge – and a lot of it is just instinct. I can tell you if the potatoes are done frying by their aroma. I know that a certain recipe is going to suck because the ingredients are lacking, or used in the wrong proportion. I know when the dough is sufficiently kneaded. I can put salad dressings or marinades together by the seat of my pants. Beyond all else, I know that when I just don’t feel like it, I can pull a frozen pizza out of the freezer and live to cook another day.
Knitting has been pretty much the same for me. I was lucky to have that latent muscle memory dating to the Nixon era, when my mom taught me to do a long-tail cast on, and then to knit and purl. When that little spark ignited a couple of years ago, I did what came naturally: I started to read everything I could possibly find about knitting. Blogs, web sites, books, magazines. It didn’t hurt that my friends pushed me along, simply insisting that I get out of my garter-stitch comfort zone and man up, already. Even though I said on occasion that I was “afraid,” and in fact botched some things quite impressively, nothing bad happened to me. I wound up the yarn again and moved on.
The bottom line? Life is much more interesting when we decide not to let “I’m afraid” stop us. I don’t ever want to stop learning. As 2010 approaches, I’d like to set some learning goals – or maybe even just one.
What about you? How do you feel about learning, and what would you like to learn next?
The United Way shawl for Lesli is done:
A fun knit, for a great cause, to be enjoyed by a lovely friend.
Knit in Dream in Color Starry in the Ruby River colorway on size US 6 circular needles. Unfortunately the glimmer in the yarn doesn’t show up in the photos, but it’s there.
I knit one extra repeat of Chart A and wound up with a fist-sized ball of yarn leftover – probably not quite enough for an extra repeat.
Now having knit this more elongated shawlette shape that’s so popular right now, I have to say I’m a fan of the finished product – easier to wear as an accessorizing scarf than the usual triangular shawl.
Happy Friday, everyone!
I had the great pleasure of a knitterly outing on Friday afternoon, with my friend Lesli and her visiting sister, Lori.
Unfortunately, I FORGOT my CAMERA and can therefore provide no photographic evidence of the event.
Sigh. Anyway, we met at Fiberwood Studio, where Lesli and Lori had been hard at it for at least 30 minutes before I arrived. They were in deep discussion about a sock pattern. Lori wound up with a sweater’s worth of yarn to make Nuss, which makes me swoon. She assured us she’d have no trouble toting it back to Virginia – as a seasoned knitter, she understands the importance of Yarn Room in one’s luggage. (She also picked up some needles so she could swatch during our post-purchase cocktail hour. Good woman!)
I did not buy any yarn, but I had a good time enabling my friends, who each *somehow* wound up with a $40 skein of bejeweled Artyarns mohair. I spent some quality time sighing over colors and textures and fantasizing about the gazillion projects yet to be.
We retired to a nearby pub after our venture to drink fermented malt beverages of the Belgian variety and cackle over purchases and works in progress. Lori brought her Clapotis (I still haven’t knit one, but every time I see one I think I should – hers is gorgeous!) and Lesli had her yoga sock (no heel, no toe). I displayed progress on the Traveling Woman (which, BTW, I finished over the weekend). We discussed the fact that both of my friends learned to knit in Austria during student time abroad – so they both knit incredibly quick and efficient Continental style.
It was a great afternoon. And since I have no knitterly photos for you, I’ll leave you with this autumnal shot.
Happy Monday!
Mondays aren’t so bad when the weekend is filled with sunshine and pleasurable activity. I did some cooking and baking, a decent amount of knitting and tea drinking, a bit of reading and napping, and managed to run a total of about 10 miles between the two days.
Not bad.
How was your weekend?
This is my maple tree, up close and personal-like.
I love this tree.
We’ve got lots of pretty fall color here, but the weather has been rather relentlessly gloomy (except when I don’t have my camera).
Made the first pot of chili over the weekend. You know summer’s over when the chili and jambalaya go into the menu rotation.
Somehow I horsed up the first pattern row of the Traveling Woman shawl and wound up with an extra stitch. Counting, re-counting and copious headscratching (with maybe a little soft swearing) didn’t take care of that extra stitch, so I’ll be taking that row out later, when I have time, light, and a steady hand. Sigh.
What’s random with you?
Look what showed up in the mail last week.
After the last book, I had mixed feelings about my continuing obsession with Claire and Jamie. Not that the obsession had waned one tiny bit. It’s just that Diana is so ruthless in her treatment of her characters, and after two incredibly harrowing incidents involving Claire in A Breath of Snow and Ashes, I wasn’t sure if I could take any more.
But here I am, and I’ve read enough spoilers in various reader forums to know that this ride won’t be any smoother.
I’ve decided to take my time and savor this book, since I read the last one over a crazed, eyeball-searing weekend and then mourned for two years that I had to wait so long to find out what happened next. Anyone else reading it, read it, or plan to read it?
 | Yarndude on Lakewatch. |
 | kathy b on Ten on Tuesday |
 | Carrie K on Lakewatch. |
 | Stacey on Lakewatch. |
 | kmkat on Lakewatch. |
