I’m reading an incredibly inspirational book right now – Eat, Pray, Love – a friend from California sent it to me, and I had no idea how much I’d get from it.
It’s a popular book – a bestseller, even – and I just love the author’s tone. I love it so much that I put HP aside to read this for a bit. Elizabeth Gilbert unfolds the mystery of her journey in an easy, non-fussy or not-overly mysterious manner.
I feel like she assumes that I, the reader, may not know the details of the different prayer traditions, but that doesn’t mean I’m dumb. She writes “up” to me, while at the same time informing me. I’m enjoying this book quite a bit.
I’m finding it inspires me to get up and write – there’s so much I want to do right now. Not enough hours in the day.
My head is so full of ideas, design ideas, rambling wordy essay ideas, poem ideas (?!), kitchen ideas (stop the madness!), religious ideas (!!) that I need to just take some time and organize them – sort them out – write them down. Yeah, that would be a start.
One thing I do know is that today is Edward Hopper’s birthday. He’s one of my favorite artists – I love him, and Thomas Eakins.
This painting, which I put on my blog after our Duluth trip was actually a print of an original by Christina Mount Kapp, a Wisconsin artist I met at an art fair.
This is her grandma – Christine paints off of black & white photographs of regular folks – and I just fell in love with this painting. Of course I couldn’t afford the painting, so I got a print – which looks very nice.
It makes me think of the Sandberg poem, Red Headed Restaurant Cashier, and makes me think of Edward Hopper. It’s going to be the inspiration for our kitchen colors – she’s going to be hanging in the kitchen, our own Goddess of the Short-Stack.
FRESH AIR
My breathing sucks today. Partly because the air is just bad this weekend – I get emails about this sort of thing;
(The Minnesota Pollution Control Agency (MPCA) is forecasting an Air Pollution Health Advisory for the Twin Cities metro area from Sunday July 22 through Thursday July 25)
My breathing is also bad because last night my next door neighbors decided to set off all of their leftover fireworks, the wind was blowing toward us, our fans were on and the house was FILLED with that gunpowdery smell in minutes. It lasted for hours. Thanks guys.
SVENS IN THE HOOD
My neighbor is a funny kid (not in a ha ha sense). I don’t know him at all, but I hear him on the phone, swearing a lot, talking like a gangsta’, yelling at his girlfriend (at least, I’m assuming that’s who “Bee-yotch” is.)
The first time I heard him say, “Yo, yo, mah ni**er” (bear in mind this kid is so white he makes ME look café au lait) I thought he was saying, “Yo, yo, mah knittah!”
Obviously my mind is always on fiber. Well, it seemed appropriate for Minnesota…
MORE AIR?
But to get back to my breathing, thank heaven I have a nebulizer, which I used to good effect this morning.
Minnesota health care is a marvelous thing – back in NJ I’d just wheeze all day, then get very scared and maybe end up in the emergency room later in the evening.
I probably could have gotten a nebulizer, but my pullmonary doctor never brought it up, and the whole insurance thing just seemed more – daunting – back there.
Running the gauntlet of sometimes-not-so-nice medical staff was daunting, too.
Here, my doctor asked me (as she was giving me a nebulizer treatment in her office – NOT the emergency room – yay!) if I’d like to have a nebulizer, and her office did up the paperwork and I picked it up a few days later.
I’ve only used it twice since then, but those were bad days and th
ey saved me (and my insurance company) an expensive, scary and time consuming trip to the ER.
TWO INCHES!
And, back to my designing. I’m trying to line up several projects to work on while I’m Rochester, so I can go back and forth between them. I won’t have all my yarn with me, but in a pinch I could come back up. Not really. But I could. I’m waffling.
I’m trying to get the smaller stuff I’m working on done now, a bit early, so I can take the larger stuff with me. Here’s a little stool I did for a book – it’s a fun little piece, and will be fun to knit up!
Design is being able to say, “Two inches.” Period. No waffling, no what-do-you-think or maybe-it-would-be-better-if’s.
Even if you’re not 100% sure, you know you’re a designer when you have the ability to take a leap and say, “Two inches.”
That’s when you deserve the big bucks.
Having an assistant who can say, even more firmly, “TWO inches!” is when you deserve the bigger bucks.