crow, it's what's for dinner

I could blame my blogging absence on busyness and life stuff, but, really, it's this guy's fault:

Schmin. AKA, The Gloater.

He really thinks he's the shiznit just because he beat his mother in a photo contest.

Isn't he just pathetic?

Well, since you guys took enough pity on me to indulge in my little contest it's only right that I give you the results.

SET 1:

a. Shutterbug - Schmin


b. Shutterbug - me

Yeah. I know I know. A bunch of trees or the whole vast universe? No contest, which the votes revealed. I took a beat down on this one, 7 votes to 1.

SET 2:

a. Shutterbug - Schmin

b. Shutterbug - me

I believe my loss on this set is due to the fact that no one appreciates the magic of black and white photography anymore. Especially when it's flat and dull on a computer monitor. Feh. I figured the Where's Waldo quality of the deer in my photo would dazzle and mesmerize and lead to a win, but no. I went down 6-2 on this one, but at least my good friends V and Nat voted for me!

SET 3:

a. Shutterbug - me

b. Shutterbug - Schmin

This I cannot explain. I'll give Schmin his color photography and close-up deer and captivating water and earth, but 6 - 2 in his favor on this one? I think you guys are just being nice to him.

SET 4:

a. Shutterbug - Schmin

b. Shutterbug - me

Finally! Schmin - 0. La Mama - 8. (But of course when his photo didn't get any votes I thought, Doesn't anyone see the brilliance behind his picture? The movement? The palette? The emotion? ARE PEOPLE BLIND? THIS KID'S A GENIUS!)

SET 5:

a. Shutterbug - Schmin


b. Shutterbug - me

Oh well, at least I had a brief time in the sun. 6 - 2. Schmin's favor.

SET 6:

a. Shutterbug - me

b. Shutterbug - Schmin

Me - 5. Schmin - 3. This is where I thought I smelled a comeback.

SET 7:

a. Shutterbug - Schmin


b. Shutterbug - me

Schmin - 1. Me - 7.

I like rocks. Apparently other people have the good sense to like them too. I studied rocks in college. The course was called geology. It was conducted as a seminar because it was a general education requirement and --

okay I'll stop stalling. Final score -- Schmin - 29. La Mama - 27. BAH!

monkeygurrrrrl, I think you're gonna have to carry the torch. Defeat that lil' MG with gusto!

i am victorious!

For as long as I can remember, me and Schmin have had this competition thing going. Since he's the son and I'm the mother I'm obviously responsible for starting it (he wasn't born trying to arm wrestle me to the ground). My only excuse is that I've always had an inexplicable urge to beat him at stuff. It started with racing when he was, like, four. I'd take it easy on him, only doing short distances -- porch to driveway, parking lot to daycare center -- to let him train. As the years wore on, I'd set bigger and bigger challenges and dust him every time. I reveled in my victories. Anybody who pointed out that beating a five-year-old at rock-throwing didn't really amount to much was accused of being jealous.

But the Universe turns on the motto that payback is a bitch; one day the earth revolved and Schmin started beating me. At, well, everything. That's when I started playing the mom card. You know. The one where I remind him that defeating one's mother and rejoicing over it is both lame and depraved.

Ah, good times.

I can neither defend nor resist the drive to beat Schmin in a public forum. When it comes to the races, I'm an old gray mare ready for pasture as far as Schmin's concerned (I know, I've asked him). But I can still see, which means I can still take me one humdinger of a photograph. And so I am laying down the gauntlet.

Below are pictures taken by Schmin and me on our visit to San Francisco in March. Each of us had a camera, and with every shot much chest-thumping and many declarations of greater skill ensued. I won't say who took what so this can be a clean contest. With your help, dear reader, I can put that Schmin in his place for the love of crazy moms everywhere! Vote in the comments. The loser's buying dinner. I've already got my fork sharpened.

(I should add that each set contains one photo taken by Schmin, and one photo taken by me. So vote for either a or b in each set. To think, I write tests for a living.)

SET 1:

a.

b.
SET 2:

a.
b.
SET 3:

a.
b.
SET 4:

a.
b.
SET 5:

a.
b.

SET 6:

a.

b.

SET 7:

a.
b.
And just 'cause the photographers are so darn cute:

there's one born every minute...

a knitter, that is.

I was only home for three days, but I went prepared, knowing that at some point during the whirlwind visit, I was going to find the time to teach my 13-year-old cousin how to knit.

My father is the oldest of 11 kids, so I have lots of cousins, age 13 and otherwise. Many of them are fair game for knitting, but I chose this particular cousin, S, because she's had to come up in the school of hard knocks. One of our aunts is raising her because her father, my uncle, is in prison and her mother is on a batshit crazy crack pursuit.


In spite of it all, my cousin is a lovely girl. She's smart, matter-of-fact, funny, and self-contained in that way that's necessary when you've faced a lot of uncertainty. Drugs and prison overshadowed my own childhood, so I understand where she's coming from. My aunt worries that S spends too much time alone in her room, but I don't. In high school, I'd spend entire summers holed up like that. I can't say I grew into a social butterfly, but I can hold my own in polite (and impolite) company. S will be fine. I know it.

When you're the kind of girl who likes to engage in a lot of me time, it helps to have yourself a good handcraft. And so I went to Toledo armed with Lion Brand and size 13 needles for S. I gave them to her on Saturday night, while we were hanging out at my sister's graduation party, and taught her what to do. Not that I had to show her much. A few instructions once or twice and she was off.

It wasn't long before she was showing a family friend how to knit. It was very sweet and very fun. After our friend left, S kept working on her scarf until it was time to go home.

The next day was to be my last full day in town and naturally I had a host of plans and committments. I wasn't thinking I'd have to add S's house to the list, but when we met at our grandmother's she mentioned that she'd gotten up that morning and worked on the scarf until it was done. All she needed to know was how to "close" it. And so we drove to her house.

I showed her how to bind off, which she picked up in about two seconds, and voila:

You have to love a girl like this.

a bit of swank

What I want is to complain about how overwhelmed I am with the new jobby-job, because, damnit, I am. But I haven't held my new position long enough to be that ungrateful. Besides, it is because of my overwhelming but much-appreciated job that I was able to afford a trip home last weekend. In between celebrating my sister's AS degree in nuclear medicine technology (yeah, she's smart like that), sitting with my grandmother who's battling cancer, attending a longtime friend's baby shower, and hanging out with Mister Stevens and THOASKATB (The Husband Once Again Sometimes Known as The Bubba) I asked myself, Hey, what would a Toledo yarn store look like?

I kinda expected Toledo's premier (and only, as far as I can tell) yarn store to lean on the acrylics with a heavy elbow -- from its post in a strip mall. But it turns out swank has come to town in the form of the Yarn Company. Check out the rag yarn. I bought the second ball from the left in the front row for an embarrassing amount of money (thanks, job!) seeing as it's just strips of fabric tied together, but I couldn't resist the colorway, or the idea of whipping up a fall scarf on 17s and setting it off with a bright and lovely aurora borealis brooch (okay, except for the aurora borealis part, I stole the idea from someone on Craftster. In fact, this person). Sure, I could sit around tearing up my own fabric, but I'm not that stressed.

Mister Stevens and his underwear welcome us to the world of fiber.

Don't I love it when they behave themselves in the presence of yarn.

The Yarn Company is a pretty sexy place. The owner wasn't in, so I couldn't ask where she got the inspiration for the decor. One of my favorite elements is the checkout counter, shaped like a horseshoe, which doubles as a scarf burlesque show.

A couple more, because, Oh, why not?

The requisite "Take a picture of me! I'm in yet another out-of-town yarn store!" But this one's all about my new best friend, Clapotis.

Yarn really brings people together.

a little corner all my own

I'm obsessed with flickr's Corners of My Home group. I can't seem to get enough of peeking into other people's corners, yards, work rooms, bedrooms, porches, drawers, kitchens, broom closets -- you name it. This photo is my contribution to the group. If you check it out on flickr, you can read my notes. You can also visit the rest of the Corners photo pool. It really evokes the stuff of life. There's some beautiful and moving photography there, not to mention a smorgasbord for you if you happen to be nosy like me.

neither fast nor easy

In my blogging absence I've had a wonderful 40th birthday party, gotten myself a full-time teaching job, decided that one of these old days I'm going to move to Austin, and had a noticeable downturn in finished knitting projects (and a serious upturn in new projects cast-on but not finished).

Lots of highs, some managable lows, and the job is the biggest thing. It's hard to craft when you don't know where your next meal is coming from. I shouldn't say that (of all the things I've missed in my life, a meal is not among them), but it sounds sufficiently dramatic. I've come to know that the bigger issue is that, in not having a job, I felt purposeless and idle, even more so than I felt broke.

I've long fancied myself a free-ballin' artiste and, as such, pooh-poohed any sign of structure. Funny how turning 40 is like a kind of flashlight, illuminating the dark and muddy places in your thinking and allowing you to see what's been hiding in those corners all along. The truth of the matter -- and I'm working to accept it -- is that I need structure, and I need to feel useful. This need for structure has duked it out with my need to just, as the rappers say, flow. The grace of clarity that 40 has brought has shown me that it's fine for me to claim my place as a writer and to keep seeking opportunities to live in that place, and that this does not have to be in conflict with working for The Man. That's the part I had trouble with. Jobs have always given me the sense that somebody was trying to yoke me. I've worked a zillion jobs, like anybody else, but only now am I coming to understand that the key is to accept my employment choices, and everything that's come with them, as my own. I will cut myself enough slack to admit I've had some sucky jobs. Most of the time I've worked as some kind of admin assistant, which happens to be the kind of work I admire other people for being able to do but absolutely hate to do myself. Some twisted part of me (stemming from my damaged childhood, no doubt) preferred the kind of job where I could hide, and doing admin work, temporary at that, kept me anonymous, like a migrant tomato picker. All the while something inside me cried out with the need to do work that made me feel connected.

Finding my current job was tricky as all hell and it took a long time, but when it came, it came without a hitch. Two interviews, a couple of weeks, and bam, I'm an English instructor. Full-time with benefits. Oh, and a gang of students I can't hide from in the least. I started this month and so far, so good. I'm sure I'll be posting about my many triumphs and tribulations here, alongside the things I make while living through them. What I can say now is that this is the first time I've had a job and felt self-directed at the same time. (Possibly I felt this way during my Pizza Hut years, since I was working to support a kid and get through college. I thought of going back to the Hut a few times, but I think they still wear polyester and sun-visors.) It's too early to say if it'll come, but the ultimate gift from me and God would be for me to have the balance to hold this job while doing serious writing of my own. If I can get both plates in the air, I'll feel like a real true grown-up.

Now let me ask, What's work without a little play?

One of the best birthday gifts ever is the sewing machine I got from my lovely friend V. My birthday was in May and, with the new job, I didn't think I'd get a chance to use it for a few more months. But last weekend, on the shopping outing that yielded the Yarn Ball that Ate New Jersey, Natalie and I stopped in F&S Fabrics on Pico Blvd to check out the stock and inquire about sewing classes. We'd gone to Sewing Arts Center in Santa Monica (which is how we wound up at Stitches from the Heart, right next door) but decided against having to take a fixed number of classes, on week nights, where we'd have to use the shop's machines and end up saddled with "lounge pants" (think pajamas) as our finished projects. UGH. F&S provided the solution, with its 2-hour class sessions with ample time slots on weekends. Each class is $35 and you can take as few or as many as you'd like. I think $35 is a good deal, especially now that I've been to my first class (yesterday). Years ago I looked into classes in Manhattan. At the time, they ran about $70 for the same amount of instruction I'm getting at F&S for half that. Plus, the staff at F&S is a real trip, from a diva who has apparently fallen on hard times but still can't be bothered to wait on you, to a brother who looks like he ambled in off skid row and never left (you'll possibly want to look down your nose at him, but you'll find its too late, he's already busy snubbing you), to Shirley, who appears to be the manager but maybe isn't but is absolutely sweet and sassy. Then there's Christina, the Goddess of Sewing Instruction (I don't think it's any wonder that "Christ" is in her name):

Brilliant, patient, kind and funny. She really knows what she's talking about and, equally important, how to get it across to people who have no clue about sewing, fabric, machines or anything but want to make cute skirts.

Here's a little essay to illustrate the day:

How was I supposed to know a pattern is no place to jot my sonnets?

At least I'm planning to use fabric to make my skirt, unlike some people:

A few more (see the rest on my Flickr site):


Moment I'm most proud of:

And a surprise visit from a season 1 "Project Runway" star. (There's gossip behind this photo, but I'll save it for another day):