“Vintage Kid’s Books My Kid Loves”= wow

So I haven’t even finished combing through the whole blog, but oh wow, Vintage Kid’s Books My Kid Loves  is amazing already. As you can probably guess from its name, the blog houses a collection of vintage children’s books.  A lot of them I recognize, but some of them I don’t.  And how nice is it to have them all in one place? Very nice.  I can’t wait to sit down and really look through it all.  Especially the illustrations!  I can’t wait to gobble them up.  I love that someone is blogging about this.  The only downside is that now my collection of vintage children’s books is starting to look pretty measly.  Well now I have something to shoot for!

Thanks for the tip ohdeedoh!

Story Corps

Does anyone else listen to Story Corps?  If you haven’t already checked it out, you should. Its pretty amazing. Story Corps is a non profit group that sets up sound booths around the country and then invites the public to do their own, informal, interviews of their friends and family.  Everyone gets a free cd of their session, but the really cool part is that every interview is archived and anyone can listen.  NPR does a segment on them every Friday I believe. But you can also listen to stories on their site or podcast.  I subscribe to the podcast and the only complaint I have is that its way too short!

When I first heard about it, I was like, “yeah, ok, that sounds cool…”  And then I didn’t actually go listen to an interview for months.  But then I heard a broadcast on NPR.  That’s when I got the podcast and listened to every one I could get my hands on.  

It such a simple thing really, but there’s something wonderful about listening to regular people tell stories about their lives. Sometimes they’re funny.  Some are incredibly sad.  They’re all pretty touching.  I find them fascinating.

And look!

They now have a book and a cd for sale!

Find out when they’ll be recording in your neighborhood.

Birthday Falafel

So it was my birthday a couple weeks ago. And you know, it was just lovely. Yummy brunch, farmer’s market, picnic in the park of falafel with margaritas-to-go and uh, sangria, and I believe there were a few drinks after. Fun fun fun.

For a while now, I’ve used birthdays as a time to take stock of my life. New Years resolutions have always felt a bit forced and a little arbitrary. Maybe its the winter thing. But reflecting on my birthday, which happily falls in the spring, makes much more sense to me. And for the first time in a while, I’m pretty happy with the way things are going. There has been some real growth, personally and professionally. There are some big projects under my belt, a couple wrapping up and a few to look forward to. I’m really excited for this new year.

 

Being a Beginner

You know what’s funny? The other day I was looking at some “before and after” photos of someone’s new office and was wondering why I don’t take those. I love looking at them– whether they’re mine or of something someone else has done. And they are so gratifying to have paired with the pretty “after” version. Well, working in my little roof garden last night, looking around at how small and pathetic it seemed, it came to me:

I hate taking the “before” pictures.

I take lots of pictures of the “after” part. And yeah, I know, having just the shiny, end result kind of defeats the purpose if you can’t remember where you started. I get caught up in “It doesn’t look good now!” instead of remembering that this is the starting point, and that it will look better and that its okay if its not great now. In fact that is the whole point of beginning something. To let it grow into something better. I’m not good at being a beginner.

Anyways. Here’s the garden now.

 ( And you can get a glimpse of it in its even earlier days here.)

In a month it will be all glorious with vines and such. But this is where it started.

Sunrise

 

This is an experiment. Since the beginning of this little blog, I’ve had to wrestle with the photographs in every post. Which makes it hard to put up anything on a regular basis. Which is annoying to me as I like to do this. Anyhow, I’m trying out flickr’s “Blog this photo” function. Does anyone else use that?
I’ve noticed that lots of blogs I like just post one photo at the top, as opposed to sprinkled throughout. Of course, I would prefer the sprinkling, but I don’t think I can do that with flickr.
So we’ll try this out and see how it goes.

Illustration Friday: Baby

I’ve been doing lots of drawings of baby animals for a long-term project I’ve been working on. I can finally see the finish line which is exciting.  Or the first, of probably many, “finish” lines.  Anyhow, aren’t these little piglets cute?

Boston Science Museum!

I mentioned a few posts ago that I was in Boston last weekend with our film We Are Wizards at the Independent Film Festival of Boston.  We were there for four days and had so much fun.  Not only did the screenings go really well:

But we had fun traipsing around Boston as well, which was a bit surprising as I don’t remember liking Boston all that much.  ( No offense Beantown-ers.)  I went shopping with my mom, got various kinds delicious sushi with my cousins, went bowling and had yummy brunches, but if I had to choose, the tourist highlight was visiting the home of  many happy childhood memories: The Museum of Science, Boston.

 

I remember going a lot when I was little. It was always a treat to take the train from Providence, or even brave the hour drive, and then be released into this awesome space where we would go tearing about.   (The Boston Children’s Museum was a close second favorite.) Admittedly, its definitely seen better days and is not as impressive as I remember, probably do to my current height, (everything seemed a lot smaller,) as well as a lack of funding.  

But still!:  The omni theater! The stairs that play music when you walk on them! The space shuttle you can go in! 

The Sequoia Tree I fainted in front of on a 7th grade ( 8th grade?) field trip!

 

 The electric/lightening show!– well we unfortunately missed that, but we did get to play with this:

 

Plus there was a show on squamates — “the order of legged and legless lizards.” ahem.  That includes snakes by the way.  It was alternately a bit sad, ( those glass terrariums always seem really small, especially accompanied by a placard saying something about how these specifics lizards love to “travel great distances in a day,” ) and then just so cool I mostly forgot about being sad.  Sorry little guys. 

I tried to take photos that captured the cool patterns and texture of their skin.  It mostly didn’t work.  But a few of them did.  

 

Aren’t they pretty? And look at this cool little guy!

 

 

 

First Growth

 I spent some time gardening on my roof yesterday.  Apparently my landlord is going to do some work on the actual roof today, and I still had old soil spread out to dry that needed cleaning up, plus lots of seeds to plant and new compost to use, NYC Paydirt, from the Lower East Side Ecology Center. It was such a lovely few hours.  Sunny, with little sprinkles of rain.  The cats scampering around.  

Since its on a roof, everything is in pots and containers.  Yesterday I planted cat grass, Moon Flowers, Morning Glories, Catnip, Snap Dragons, some kind of runner bean vine, and Bachelor Buttons all from seed.  We’ll see how they do.  (An aside: I noticed this morning that the new Illustration Friday subject is Seed.  How perfect! ) I’m really hoping to have lots of leafy vines to wind up the fencing and over the new chicken wire we put up to keep the cats in.  But wouldn’t it look lovely?

I also have basil and four little tomato plants growing in one pot and two ornamental grasses my mother gave me last year.  They looked amazing and huge last summer and I’m really hoping they do just as well this year.  The potato vines look a bit sad so far, but hopefully they’ll catch on.  The tarragon and mint came back from last year.  Which is funny because I assumed they were annuals? But that was a nice surprise.  In fact, they’re doing so well it was time to pinch some off.  

That meant mint and tarragon in the breakfast oatmeal this morning!  

According to my favorite gardening site, You Grow Girl, “lightly brushing your hands against tomato leaves stimulates a growth hormone in the plant encouraging radial (aka stockier) growth.”  Isn’t that nice?  I have to go pet my tomatoes.

 

 

 

Illustration Friday: Wrinkles

Hello IF readers!  Hope you’re having fun with the subject I picked out…

Does anyone like Naked Mole Rats besides me? Anyone?… No?  Well, that’s too bad.  Yes, they are a little gross, like anyone would be without any fur and just lots of wrinkly skin.  But they can do all kinds of cool stuff– like move backwards just as fast as forwards, chew through almost anything– even concrete. And they have special blood that processes oxygen so well that they don’t need much of it.  They live in colonies and have a queen, similar to bees.

Are you in love yet?  

If not, you should watch Errol Moris’ Fast, Cheap and Out of Control.  

 

And then you’ll understand what you’ve been missing.  

 

 

I Crochet!

So this past winter I picked up the book Kids Crochet by Kelli Ronci.  For a while now I’ve been jealous of various people in my life who are avid knitters.  And not just ordinary knitters– You should see what Mandy made me for Christmas!  Its ridiculous! and deserves its own post, which it shall have. So you’ll have to wait for photos.  Though you can see more of her ridiculousness at her blog, This is Knit. I mean, a tweed 1930’s coat?! Argyle this and that?! Are you kidding me? No, she’s not kidding.  Anyhow, these people happily tote their amazing knitting projects here and there, and I’m left feeling lame that knitting and I never clicked.  Though all of these people have tried.  They really have.  But then I discovered that book. (I’m pretty sure I have Lena Corwin to thank for that.  Her drawings are so lovely…I’m drawn to everything she does. )

I don’t know why, but crocheting feels so different to me. More manageable somehow.  Nice and relaxing.  In a flurry of productivity, I even made a few crocheted Christmas presents.  It was very exciting.  But, here’s the confession: I never actually learned to follow a pattern.  Um.  For some reason that’s been really daunting to me.  I’m so happy to learn new stitches and kind of figure out how to cobble things together and make stuff up as I go. But start-to-finish directions, uh no thanks! not for me apparently.

But then I decided to make a little baby bonnet/hat.  And the whole cobbling-things-together method was suddenly frustrating and just not cutting it.  So at the library I picked up this kind of– well, I’m sorry to say it– dreadful looking, little book at the library.  ( Is it just me, or is crocheting just catching up to the hipness that is knitting at the moment? Not to be a huge snob, but who is designing these books?!  Color blind people, who for some reason want crocheted mouse pads and shrugs circa 1987.  Anyways.)  However gross the various projects looked, the directions were really great, and that’s what counts anyway.  And it had the baby cap pattern I’ve been looking for!  

I decided I was going to follow the pattern exactly.  I understand this might seem like a no-brainer for most people, but its new territory for me.  I measured the gage. I bought a new hook so I had just the right size.  I counted stitches.  I learned a new stitch… And it seems to actually be working!  

At some point this:

Will turn into this:

I just know I can do it.