10 cool random things

Gasp! My love! This is almost certainly the best Bowie tattoo I’ve ever seen. Found via F*** Yeah Tattoos.

This post at Five Green Acres shows you how to make your own Rose Water. Kind of incredible.

Lovely, lovely, lovely. I’ve been looking for examples of crosshatch shading on tattoos – if you guys see any, send them my way? Unfortunately I don’t have the source for this image.

Eep! This umbrella is adorable! There is a tutorial out there, but it’s in a language I don’t speak. But this looks easy enough, right?

Lovely, lovely, lovely. Found via F*** Yeah Tattoos.

Amy of A is for Ampersand created these gorgeous free banners for us all to use! I haven’t used them yet, but am pretty anxious for the opportunity. She also made a tutorial for those of us who don’t really know how to make these work on our photos.

GORGEOUS. I love poppies. Found via F*** Yeah Tattoos.

I really like these paper flowers; and I appreciate any opportunity to add to the “reasons to buy shredding scissors” list. Find the tutorial at Rock n Roll Bride.

Such an adorable idea. Found at F*** Yeah Tattoos.

I love this! I used to search so hard for brilliant wrapping ideas like this, but I haven’t been wrapping presents at all lately. Until I saw this, naturally. Welcome back to the age of adorable DIY present wrapping. Found at Craft.

On tenterhooks, or “My life according to David Bowie.”

Occasionally, I have the power to resist a silly meme. Occasionally. I found this one at Knitorious.

Using only song names from ONE ARTIST, cleverly answer these questions. Pass it on to 15 people you like and include me. (I’m not going to do that. But, you know, if you read this blog and you’d like to do this, please do! I’d like to read your clever answers.) Try it, you might like it! You can’t use the band I used, and try not to repeat a song title. It’s a lot harder than you think! Repost as “My life according to (band name).”

(I thought for a moment about being less predictable and choosing a non-Bowie artist, but … nope. Bowie it is.)

MY LIFE ACCORDING TO DAVID BOWIE

Are you a male or female:
“Girls” (too easy!)

Describe yourself:
“I Dig Everything“

How do you feel:
“Velvet Goldmine” (I don’t know. I’m just feeling super excellent this morning.)

Describe where you currently live:
“Suffragette City” (No, really.)

If you could go anywhere, where would you go:
“Reality” (I was going to say “Seven Years in Tibet,” but “Reality” is more accurate.)

Your favorite form of transportation:
“Quicksand” (What? It’s a form of movement.)

Your best friend is:
“Aladdin Sane“

You and your best friends are:
“Cat People“

What’s the weather like:
“Chilly Down“

Favorite time of day:
“Here Comes the Night“

If your life was a TV show, what would it be called:
“If There is Something“

What is life to you:
“It Ain’t Easy“

Your relationship:
“Wishful Beginnings” (This is actually one of my least favorite songs on his, on one of my least favorite albums. But the title is perfect!)

Your fear:
“What’s Really Happening“

What is the best advice you have to give:
“Survive“

Thought for the Day:
“Real Cool World“

How you would like to die:
“Magic Dance” (This would be awesome. If you’ve got to die some day, might as well make it an awesome goblin dance party.)

Your soul’s present condition:
“Beat of Your Drum“

Your motto:
“Can’t Help Thinking About Me” (Baby Bowie!)

13/30

Day 13 – A picture of your favorite band or artist.

(All images found via this isn’t happiness.)

Stone love – she kneels before the grave
A brave son – who gave his life to save the slogans
That hover between the headstone and her eyes
For they penetrate her grieving

New love – a boy and girl are talking
New words – that only they can share in
New words – a love so strong it tears their hearts
To sleep – through the fleeting hours of morning

Love is careless in its choosing – sweeping over cross a baby
Love descends on those defenseless
Idiot love will spark the fusion
Inspirations have I none – just to touch the flaming dove
All I have is my love of love – and love is not loving

Soul love – the priest that tastes the word and
Told of love – and how my God on high is
All love – though reaching up my loneliness evolves
By the blindness that surrounds him

Love is careless in its choosing – sweeping over cross a baby
Love descends on those defenseless
Idiot love will spark the fusion
Inspirations have I none – just to touch the flaming dove
All I have is my love of love – and love is not loving

This is a blog post.

After a downpour of pointless tweets, I made this promise. But I’m still nervous! So I’ll just blog instead. All night long.

• 7:12 p.m. Grady just pulled bell hooks’ “Yearning” off the shelf and is flipping through it quite intently. I love her a lot.
• 7:29 p.m. Grady just perfected her Peter O’Toole impression. If Peter O’Toole ever meowed with tragic importance, it sounded exactly like what Grady just did.
• 7:32 p.m. Grady and Winston are playing, tugging around two apron ties. It. Is. Adorable.
• 7:37 p.m. (Grady is currently in her energy-burst-before-bed phase. She does the cutest things first thing in the morning and right before bed.)
• 8:15 p.m. Aaaaaand she’s asleep.
• 8:23 p.m. I really like transparency. I even like how socially awkward people get when transparency is a priority.
• 8:29 p.m. Today I used the word “lucubration” in front of people who really obviously didn’t know what that means and I felt like an ass.
• 8:29 p.m. (It means nighttime meditation or study, particularly by candlelight. Yeah, it’s an awesome word.)
• 8:34 p.m. Regretting the choice to include the time before each non-tweet. It’s getting annoying/cumbersome.
• 8:49 p.m. OKAY FINE I’LL LOOK AT MY INBOX. #inquietude
• 8:51 p.m. Alright. I was going to “prepare myself” to type up a few free-writing flow-of-consciousness awkwardly honest e-mails, but instead I think I need to crochet a bunch of these stars and make some bunting out of them. Yeah, that should definitely be my priority. Sorry, e-mails.

• 8:52 p.m. For the sake of transparency: I was going to wait till morning to send the e-mails, so I could edit them down to an acceptable level of honesty.
• 9:21 p.m. One star complete!

• 9:23 p.m. It didn’t take me that whole time to make one star. I also did some other boring things.
• 9:33 p.m. Hint: When crocheting with thread, it helps to cut the fingernails on both thumbs and pointer fingers as short as you possibly can. Trust me.
• 9:58 p.m. Four stars done. Yaaaaay diversion projects.
• 9:59 p.m. How awesome would it be if some cool famous person opened an etsy store? Like Jason Schwartzmann or Sophia Coppola or Jesca Hoop or Tilda Swinton or DAVID BOWIE.
• 10:01 p.m. Also, how awesome would it be if Tilda Swinton were to play David Bowie in a biopic?
• 10:29 p.m. I can feel it. That bad time of night is on its way.
• 10:41 p.m. Ruh-roh.
• 10:49 p.m. Why is it that it always takes me so long to realize that any time I’m experiencing emotional distress (I know, that term does in fact make me qualify as a cyborg. I’m over it.) it’s always because of the Mel/mom dichotomy? I’m fairly certain I’ve talked at length about this thing but can’t find a link, so that probably doesn’t make sense to most of you. Whoever “you” are. But when mom-Mel and Mel-Mel aren’t on the same page, Mel gets distressed. This time it took full weeks to recognize the reason.
• 11:04 p.m. “Rectangle! America! Megaphone! Monday! Butthole.“
• 11:05 p.m. Alright. I want to wake up to the rest of that episode, so it’s lights out. Lucubration time, followed by restlessness time, followed by dream time.

Gratitude.

• This post, which inspired what I’m writing now.
• Mornings when waking up isn’t the worst thing in the world.
• This dress, which is the perfect intersection of comfort and prettiness:

• Noodle soup: now with extra noodles.
• My wonderful dad who is constantly shocking me with how much he loves me and Grady.
• That yesterday I used at least four words not exactly knowing what they mean, and none of my friends made me feel bad about it.
• Grady’s return to health, and her penchant for climbing into toy bins:

• Shakespeare.
• That one performance of The Vagina Monologues I got to attend.
• Men with facial hair.
• That I saw this picture this morning:

• Last night.
• My classes.
• That I’m finally comfortable enough with myself to post early-morning bedhead no-makeup pictures on the internet.
• That I can feel the sun on my face this morning.
• Nutella.

• The bookshelf by my bed.
• Every second I’m not thinking about money.
• The movement to save Planned Parenthood.
• This song, and the beautiful person who introduced me to it.

• David Bowie and The Detroit Cobras.
• That Grady thinks plain Greek yogurt is super delicious and still eats very little refined sugar.
• The freedom of making my own deadlines.
• All of my tattoos.

Shower-show-her

• This morning in the shower, instead of singing or something like that, I GAVE THE BUSINESS to all the imaginary people.
• (New awesome phrase (indicated as “new” and “awesome” by all-caps) courtesy of my awesome 9th-grade English teacher. She would probably not approve of the double-parenthetical.)
• By “imaginary people” I mean real people that aren’t actually in the shower or even in my house/city. So not like, imaginary friends. Real friends with imaginary presence.
• While I shower, Grady plays in the baby-proofed carpeted bathroom/walk-in closet area. By “plays” I mean “makes ridiculous messes.” Anyway, she’s started to act as my awesome maid when she hears the shower turn off. This began by her handing me my hair and body towels, but now she also hands me clothing from the closet or from the dirty clothes bin. And because I think this is so adorable, I’ll wear whatever she hands me for at least a few minutes. Which is why I am currently wearing a black maternity nightgown with cutoff shorts and an orange hunting cap.
• That is all of the interesting things that happened during this morning’s shower. Other than today’s “All Pin Ups all the time!” marathon, which is going swimmingly.
• (I probably took one too many Excedrin for this morning’s headache. My ribcage is rattling like a tuning fork! My fingers are typing like … something really fast!)

Good morning!

 

The Gradinator: A Study in Movement

(Jenn, don’t look. You’ll get nauseous.)

I am obsessed with these.

And for today’s prompt: Describe the plot of the next book you want to read, even if the book doesn’t exist yet.

Okay. I’m excited about this.

So it’s basically a book that’s almost exactly like the plot of Firefly, the TV show. (I know, that makes me sound pretty unintelligent but this is my fantasy and you can back right up, imagined disapproving masses.) Here are the differences:

• Captain Mal has a first mate, and his name is Harry Truman. And he’s exactly like the president Harry Truman, but, you know, also a space cowboy. And they have a relationship akin to Kirk and Spock.
• It’s written by a Whedon/Steinbeck/L’Amour hybrid.
• You finally get to find out about the preacher’s mysterious past, and it is totally satisfying.
• In general, more nudity. And more knitwear while we’re at it.
• It’s longer. The most important thing is that this imaginary book is longer than the series was.
• David Bowie writes the foreward.

Edit: If that’s not enough Grady for you in one day, here‘s a video.

afternoon of June 25

Fragrant honeysuckle outside the window.

Sweet baby sleeping on my bed.

Good book waiting to be finished.

Fat cat hogging all the carpet.

Beautiful backyard asking for a hammock.

Bowl of cherries to be frozen.

All as zombie-bowie supervises. Not too shabby.

10 cool random things

Recycled paper flowers from Maya*Made. This would be cute as part of a mobile, made from old newspapers and felt birds or something. I am sleepy.

DIY $10 macro photo studio by Strobist. Every now and then I’ll make a really lazy attempt at this for photographing yarn. I’m trying very hard to be interesting, but so … tired …

Click that if you can’t read it, because it is hi-larious. Three cheers for Married to the Sea.

David Bowie interviewing Alexander McQueen. Um, amazing. You should read the whole thing.

Such a pretty tattoo. This is the first wrist cuff I’ve seen and liked.

Handmade gifts for men roundup from Whip Up. Making a gift for a guy is so difficult. I just finished one and am racked with doubt about it. Wracked? I have no idea.

Tee hee.

And more funny. This reminds me of a Dmitri Martin sketch about girls with cats that made me feel sad. Quick Winston update: He is faaaaaat. Grady is bored with him. And he has had a resurgence of energy in the battle to escape the house.

The Rebel’s Manifesto. Click that link and read the whole thing – I hope Grady reads this eventually. Be like this, baby!

Group weaving! I think this is so beautiful.

Curious Tuesday, Volume 2

Image via Wikipedia

I’m actually writing this on Sunday, but who wants two meme posts right in a row? I’ll schedule it for Tuesday. And this time, post your answers in the comments here, or the comments over at Gala’s blog, or on your own blog! I’d love to hear your answers.

Go here to discover the origin of Curious Tuesday.

1. Who is your favourite musician, NOT in terms of talent or aptitude, but based on pure sex appeal?

Do I even need to answer this? David Bowie. Everyone should know that the answer to this question will always be David Bowie.

2. What were some quirks of your past lovers that drove you crazy?

I’m going to use a single answer as a blanket: communication issues. I get the feeling that this will be one of my top 5 interpersonal annoyances for the rest of my life.

3. If there was a movie made about your life, what song would you absolutely INSIST be on the soundtrack?

Soul Love, by David Bowie. Of course. Press play!

4. What is your favourite quote right now?

Well, I’m listening to that song so at this precise moment it’s “All I have is my love of love, and love is not loving.” Aw. Also:

“Olympian gods, mark now my bedside lamp
Blown out; and be advised too late that he
Whom you call sire is stolen into the camp
Of warring Earth, and lies abed with me.
Call out your golden hordes, the harm is done:
Enraptured in his great embrace I lie;
Shake heaven with spears, but I shall bear a son
Branded with godhead, heel and brown and thigh.
Whom think not to bedazzle or confound
With meteoric splendours or display
Of blackened moons or suns in the big sound
Of sudden thunder on a silent day;
Pain and compassion shall he know, being mine,-
Confusion never, that is half divine.”
-Edna St. Vincent Millay (one of the four or five poets that don’t make me feel gross)

Also, there are a bunch in Another Country by James Baldwin, which I am currently reading, that I’d like to share, but alas I have lost the book. When (if) I find it I hope I’ll remember to pass on my favorite words and sentences.

5. Connect up with other nonpareils! Post links to your website, Facebook, Twitter, etc., here!

Um, I’m not going to do this because I am lazy and the baby wants to play. And I’d rather play with my baby than copy and paste a bunch of links.

P.S. Grady is whispering at me right now. And it is freaking adorable.