Making Cards

My landscape stamp set from the yellow owl workshop arrived! Needless to say, I was busy stamping away. Although the stamps are a bit larger than I expected, they came out nicely. I have old holiday stamps from Japan that I am also trying to incorporate into the cards. I found out fairly quickly that I can't roll out a large number of these, so I gave into convenience and bought some photo cards online, ending up with the best of both worlds. One project down, many more to go!

Distracted Winter To-Do List

Although there is always a tornado of activity around me, it's usually a pretty well organized one. This month, I feel like there is so much to do that I am not doing any of them well. As a follow up to my holiday card making venture, I was looking through some pictures that I could use for my cards. Then I discovered all of the fun I could have with my Flickr account and got even more ideas for projects. In order to stay on track, I decided to make a list of all of the things I intend to do this winter, so I could prioritize them, and get started!

* Display all of my unprinted digital pics into clearly labelled and aesthetically pleasing photo books
* Get my butt down to Mood, buy some fabric and tape together pattern for the Almost Pollini Dress, then actually sit down and sew it
* Get a job I actually like (I just had my second round interview - waiting to see if I will go on to my third and final round to get an actual offer)
* Make aforementioned holiday cards (includes purchasing card stock and ink pads)
* Assemble a photo calendar for my parents
* Finish knitted gifts (Beau, for my beau; sweater from rebecca using my sheep and wool yarn, some Elizabeth Zimmerman mittens featured in the Knitting Almanac, a scarf for my boyfriend's eight year old cousin... then there are projects that are not intended for giveaway this season but have been started - the Stardust, February Lady Sweater, River Forest Gansey - and those are the ones I remember~)
* Make the quiche featured here
* Finish reading the books I have started - Midnight's Children by Salman Rushdie, Look Homeward Angel by Thomas Wolfe, Accordion Crimes by E. Annie Proulx. I just bought Milan Kundera's Unbearable Lightness of Being, and Halfway House by Katherine Noel, so who knows?
* Organize yarn stash so that it is kept safely away from wool-eating moths and other vermin that may be lurking about! I just picked up some wine boxes on the curb that will be getting a makeover to serve just this purpose.

* As soon as it snows, go skiing

* Then last and certainly least - clean the apartment!

In almost every aspect of my daily existence, I am always trying to do something new; the only place where I stick to the tried and true is music. My soundtrack on the commute to work has been a strange mix of the whimsical and angry: Tahiti 80's Wallpaper for the Soul; Elliot Smith's Figure 8; Beck's Sea Change; Air's Moon Safari; Disturbed's Believe; Fiona Apple's Criminal (on repeat).

Now that I have written down everything I need to do, maybe I'll actually get them done, haha~

Holiday Card Making

5 years ago, when I lived in rural Japan and taught English to hormonal high school freshmen, I had them write letters in English to their future 20 year old selves. I promised that I would keep the letters for five years, then mail it back to them at their coming of age day, which is a Japanese national holiday in January for all those turning 20 years old for that particular year. Fast forward 5 years later, to 2008: I have the letters stashed in my parent's home in Ohio, and this year is the year that the kids (now adults) get their letters back. When I did the project with them, I never really thought through the mechanics of doing this 5 years later. While I have the letters and can easily send them via air mail, I thought it would be nice to send each person a personalized greeting card because I am sure that most of my students have long forgotten that this letter exists! Some ideas for greeting cards I have are: 1) using SnapFish to insert photos and a personalized message to make lots of cards easily and cheaply, or 2) acquiring these cool stamps from yellow owl workshop to make unique greeting cards using card stock. The former is more practical, but the latter appeals to my crafty side - I haven't decided what I am going to do, given limited time and resources. But card making aside, I think it would be fun to reconnect with that part of my life again - I am curious to see how my students fared during the past 5 years... We'll see what happens.
Note: The picture for this posting was taken by one of my students in my English conversation classes. This bridge was one of two bridges that connected Kiyosato/Hokuto to the rest of civilization!

Whining

I don't normally like to whine because I think it's annoying, but lately I am feeling a strong inner whiner presence. The current state of the world is a pretty good reflection of my inner world - full of ups (the craziness of the election) and downs (the financial market meltdown). Up to now, the things happening around me were surreal - although my carefully acquired mutual funds have lost more than half their value, it hasn't affected my daily life that much, as I like to live simply (frugally). But recently, the financial turmoil has started to hit non-profit sectors pretty hard, including the agency I work in - everyday there is word of cuts but no one really knows when and where the cuts will land. My friends in Wall Street are not faring much better - some have been laid off, and the rest are working endlessly to prove their value. Right now I am fairly confident in my job security, and if I were like most sane people, I would be grateful for the job that I have and keep grinding away. Unfortunately, I am not like most people, and I decided at this precise moment to go job hunting, a process that I have half-heartedly done off and on since last January. Surprisingly, my job hunt has ended in a number of interviews, a much better result than when the economy was in an upswing; what kills me is all of the deception involved in going to those interviews... So there's the stress of deceiving my current workplace, as well as dealing with the jubilation of getting called back for second round interviews. The two competing feelings must be suffered through silently and alone if one must remain professional, no? It is a torturous process, but I suppose it is a necessary one. As I was feeling crabby and whiny, I got an unexpected pick-me-up; it was when I was browsing through the pictures taken during a recent trip to the Bronx Zoo. For some reason I got fixated by this picture; my co-worker who was not as amused as I was told me the animal looked like a pig in a diaper, which has no place in a zoo. That totally made my day!I think I am the only one who found this amusing, but we all have our unique coping mechanisms...

Voting?

I was at the polling place at 6:45 this morning in order to make the train by 7:30 to make it to work by 9 - how naive of me! The lines were wrapped around the block - much expected, but it was still crazy. It's a good thing that so many people came out to vote, but people were starting to get angry with the wait, and they were angry in a way that only New Yorkers can get angry, hehe. I think I should have brought an umbrella for the amount of spit that was flying through the air! A good thing that came out of is that the people standing in line together were chatting it up and being pretty friendly - such a rarity! I guess now we just wait with baited breath for the results...

Introduction to the Kati Roll

There is something so infinitely appealing about warm food wrapped up in greasy dough that almost every culture has it - I had a good helping of such food when meeting up with friends at the West Village. I never ventured around MacDougal Street much, because I always equated MacDougal with the bar scene, but I was pleasantly surprised by the eateries we went into last night. The first place we stopped at was the Kati Roll Company, which my friend lovingly calls his Indian-Burrito-Comfort Food-Place. For the untrained palate, the Kati Roll tasted like a mixture of meat and vegetables wrapped up in naan, which is a bit like pita bread. Other than the outward appearance, it's nothing at all like a burrito. As expected, it was very spicy - much spicier than I am used to, which my friend claims is a mark of its authenticity! The $5 price tag is icing on the cake. To cool our mouths off, we then stopped by the Crepe Cafe across the street and indulged in a strawberry and nutella crepe - yum! I don't keep nutella in my apartment anymore because it's too dangerous, so I was very happy with the reunion. Although I admit that it wasn't the healthiest of dinners (the vegetable-crazed part of me is crying), it was totally worth it.

Pics from Sheep and Wool

Here are some of my pictures taken at the Duchess County Sheep and Wool Festival. It's about a two hour drive from NYC, and it's as crazy as everyone said it was going to be - lots of knitters wearing their hand knit creations, accompanied by similarly outfitted spouses/partners/pets - it was very nerdy, but very fun to be around people who were so passionate! It was also very cold - I always forget that the city with all of its concrete and lack of trees makes the temperature 20 degrees hotter than it actually is elsewhere - thank goodness we were surrounded by skeins of yarn that we can conveniently drape over our necks! I promised myself to be good and not go too crazy with the yarn purchasing, as I am starting to have an unmanageable stash - I did get a good deal on two skeins of alpaca tweed that I couldn't resist - each skein was 600 yards, and winding that one into a ball was certainly a workout! I also got some salmon pink yarn that I think is going to be a Sideways Spencer, and I had to make one luxury purchase - a variegated superwash yarn from Brooks Farm (see center pic), which I think I am going to incorporate into a fair isle pattern - another idea I had was to do a yoke pattern, and use the variegated yarn for just the yoke part, as I only have 300 yards. Ahhh... so many decisions!