The Urbane Homestead

Finished, I think

I think this drawing is done, but I can never tell. It's done with Prismacolor and Derwent colored pencils on Stonehenge paper.

Household Archaeology

It figures

I like pictures. I like blogs that are mostly pictures, like Vicki's. I like pictures that illustrate text—for example, I think they can add a lot to those tedious blogs where people just go on and on about how busy their boring lives are. (Ahem.) My own photography tends to suffer from entropy, so I have lots of pictures of the first day or two of most of my travels, and none thereafter. But sometimes I get an idea that is best expressed through photography, and then I'm willing to keep at it; Window on the Day is just such an idea. I've been thinking about doing that project for several years now, and when I happened to think of it first thing on New Year's morning, well, it was clearly kismet.

And now kismet is biting back. My shiny little camera, which has spent most of its time since arriving here at the house a year and a half ago relaxing in its special cushioned bag with the Indonesian embroidery, put up with daily use for exactly one week and then broke. Doesn't it just figure? Sheesh.

I will plod on with an older camera, an early digital model that could usefully double as a doorstop. But somehow the tiny new camera made me feel like I was stealing a quick bite of the morning light, while this one feels like when you take a bite of something that turns out to be much, much chewier than you expected, and just when you're realizing that it's going to take you several minutes to chew it up into something you can actually swallow, someone asks you a question and the entire table turns toward you with expectant faces, waiting for your answer.

How we suffer for our art.

Oh! my! gawd!

Thinking about our trip to Argentina in June, I decided to do a little advance scouting and see if I could find any yarn shops there. Imagine, if you will, Howard Carter stepping into Tutankamen's tomb for the first time: the catch of breath, the flush of heat as the heartrate increases—in a flash, the blinding awareness that life will never be the same again. That is how I felt when I learned that Buenos Aires has, not just yarn shops, but an ENTIRE YARN DISTRICT.

The ridiculous and the sublime

First, the ridiculous: You Knit What?! have surpassed themselves with this indescribable "garment."

Second, the sublime: Who knew that the enormous could be as captivating as the miniature? Truly a new way of seeing the world.