Out with the old, in with what’s better.

I gave John Henry Days a chance (a 121-page long chance, technically) but I give up. Not the book isn’t well written or interesting. My only criticism is that it’s all too male. Or masculine. Difficulty determining which term is correct.

And obviously, that’s more of a comment about the reader than the book itself.

So anyway, I give up! I’m ditching Colson Whitehead and picking up Sheila Ortiz Taylor’s Faultline. Which I’m certain holds no threat of being too manly for my tastes.

After about a page and a half, I was totally sold on Faultline. Not to count the chicks before the eggs have hatched, but I love this book. Favorite part so far:

“To me it’s saner having three hundred rabbits than obsessing over someone else’s having three hundred rabbits.”

(You may have probably haven’t noticed, but I never got around to reviewing To the Lighthouse. This is mostly because any attempt would make me look like a complete ass. I’m considering posting a round-up of good quotes like this, but the book doesn’t lend itself to excerption.”

Knitting book review: Sock Yarn One-Skein Wonders

I usually don’t like to rag on other knitters, because I love every knitter there is. But I’m kind of pissed about this book.

I love the “One-Skein Wonders” books. Granted, each book comes with some truly heinous patterns, but usually they pass my test; meaning that in a perfect world I’d knit over half of the patterns. But their latest installment is a huge disappointment.

I pre-ordered the book in April and it just came today, so I haven’t knit anything yet; this isn’t a review of the written patterns, just of the pictures, really. But I’ve been stocking up on sock yarn since I bought it, anticipating it’s glorious arrival. Alas, I have been let down.

But here’s how the patterns are panning out for me:

• Patterns I can tolerate: 20
• Patterns I despise: 54
• Patterns I like: 23
• Patterns that I will likely make: 4

Not cool. Usually with the books I buy, I can tolerate about 20% of the patterns, despise 5%, like 50%, and will end up making 25%. I’m so mad at this book for sucking, when it could be so awesome. Using sock yarn for non-sock projects is so much fun. Blerg.

Grady’s antics update

Photo by Kaitlyn Waters, Grady's aunt.

At dinner tonight, I was reading a book to Grady that aims to teach children what noises various animals make. Each page has a picture of an animal and lists the animal’s name and the noise they make.

We turned to a page with a brightly-colored frog on one side, and a vaguely Winston-ish kitten on the other. This is always Grady’s favorite part of the extremely abstract plot of the book; mostly because of the kitten.

After reading this book to her about a hundred times, it is necessary to my sanity to improvise additions to the plot. If I have to say only “Toad, burrpp; bee, buzzzzzzzzzzzz; alligator, snap snap; etc” one more time I may lose my already-tenuous grasp on the English language.

(For example, I had to look up “tenuous” just now after writing that sentence, to make sure it means what I think it means.)

Anyway, tonight’s improvisation was about the dangers of the treefrog. Grady is unabashedly orally fixated, and I figured now is as good as any time to teach her about licking brightly-colored animals and their brightly-colored poisonous excretions.

“Don’t ever lick a frog like that, Grady,” I said. “You can lick neutrally-colored animals, but never those with red or orange or yellow on them. That’s science’s way of telling us that an animal is poisonous.”

Grady looked at the frog for a moment, pointing at it with her overused left pointer finger. And then she licked the picture of the cat.

I KID YOU NOT.

 

Symptoms: lethargy, poor vocabulary, occasional paralysis, occasional mania

The amazing (and great to work with, if you’re looking for a photographer) Randyl Neilson took portraits of several staff members of the UVU Review for an upcoming orientation issue, and I love the photos he took of me and Grady so much, I had to post them here. You can find him on facebook, too.

Obviously an outtake, but I still like it. I’m so happy I had my favorite yarns with me.

The book is James Baldwin‘s Another Country, which I’m reading for a second time. It’s fantastic the second time through.

Oh, I love her smile. She’s such a great 9-month-old.

I’m incredibly awkward in front of a camera – Randyl did a great job with the nervous unweildy poses.

I love this one. If I ever write a mega-pretentious femininist-mysticism-conspiracy-theory book, this will be on the jacket. Or a book about yarn. That’s probably more realistic.

Note: Bubbles taste bad, and they feel weird in your lungs and they make your eyes very … not sad or in pain, just confused.

And a bottle of beer. Sorry mom! (By mom I mean mom/Jennie/Dani.)

On another note, today sucks. Yesterday sucked. Two nights ago sucked. I probably won’t blog about it, because I’d be embarrassed. But will I embroider about it? Of course I will.

A few of the many reasons why Anais Nin is the shit.

“Each friend represents a world in us, a world possibly not born until they arrive, and it is only by this meeting that a new world is born.”

“Love never dies a natural death. It dies because we don’t know how to replenish it’s source. It dies of blindness and errors and betrayals. It dies of illness and wounds; it dies of weariness, of witherings, of tarnishings.”

“Life shrinks or expands in proportion to one’s courage.”

“And the day came when the risk to remain tight in a bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom.”

“The only abnormality is the incapacity to love.”

“There are very few human beings who receive the truth, complete and staggering, by instant illumination. Most of them acquire it fragment by fragment, on a small scale, by successive developments, cellularly, like a laborious mosaic.”

“When we blindly adopt a religion, a political system, a literary dogma, we become automatons. We cease to grow.”

“I disregard the proportions, the measures, the tempo of the ordinary world. I refuse to live in the ordinary world as ordinary women. To enter ordinary relationships. I want ecstasy. I am a neurotic — in the sense that I live in my world. I will not adjust myself to the world. I am adjusted to myself.”

“When one is pretending the entire body revolts”

“I, with a deeper instinct, choose a man who compels my strength, who makes enormous demands on me, who does not doubt my courage or my toughness, who does not believe me naive or innocent, who has the courage to treat me like a woman.”

I could just keep going and going with quotes and pictures of this magnificent lady. In many ways, she is the exact opposite of me – she is what I despise or fear sometimes, sometimes what I wish I could be, sometimes what I was and have lost. Every time I see any book by her, no matter how many copies of that book I already have, I just have to get it. I have no choice. Her early journals, one of the few books I do not yet have, arrived in the mail today from Paperbackswap. Swoon.

Um, I went to a thrift store.

I never really write about shopping anymore, though I continue to do it. Dressing my new post-pregnancy body continues to be difficult – this doesn’t mean my body is better or worse than before, just different. My years of experience knowing what something on a hanger would look like on my body are now kind of useless. And excuse my over-editing-to-compensate-for-bad-photography. Anyway,

Here’s what you can get at Saver’s on Memorial day for $90. If you get there early like I did, and leave your baby at home, that is.

Clothes for myself:

Lightweight cotton printed Forever 21 mini-mumu.

Grey SO skinny jeans, black Xhiliration dress, grey Gillian & O’Malley nightgown, maroon plaid Westernwear snap-up.

Clothes for baby:

Cherokee dress with pockets, 24m.

Yellow Baby Gap caftan, 3T. A toddler caftan! Love.

Baby Gap dress (3T), Kenneth Cole Reaction denim dress (18m), Cherokee dip-dye dress (3T), Baby Gap pink floral dress (2T), Brandless pink courdoroy dress (24m)

Old Navy blue floral tiered dress, 2T

Baby Gap denim jacket (2T), The Children’s Place sweater (12mo.), Carter’s fleece jacket (24mo.), Baby Gap fleece peacoat (18-24 mo.)

Ralph Lauren t-shirt (18 mo.), Baby Gap polka-dot t-shirt (2T), Genuine Kids blouse (18 mo.), Cherokee henley (3T), Cherokee cardigan (24 mo.)

Old Navy tank (18-24 mo.), sprockets t-shirt (3T), Blueberi Boulevard smocked blouse (2T), Plum Pudding Ltd smocked blouse (2T), Cherokee blouse (24 mo.)

Nick Jr. green pants (18 mo.), b.t. kids jeans (12 mo.), sprockets jeans (18 mo.), Disney leggings (18 mo.), tagless leggings (12 mo.), Hanes sweats (12 mo.), and Okie Dokie sweats (12 mo.).

Etcetera:

Books: “Chrysanthemum” by Henkes (an adorable book for Grady), “The Mold in Dr. Florey’s Coat” by Eric Lax (a father’s day present for my dad), “The Book of General Ignorance” by John Lloyd and John Michinson, “Live From New York: An Uncensored History of Saturday Night Live” by Tom Shales and James Andrew Miller, “The Heart of a Woman” by Maya Angelou, “War and Peace” by Leo Tolstoy, and “The Fountainhead” by Ayn Rand.
A pillowcase to be used for the material – probably made into a dress for Grady.
Some stripperiffic brown heels.