Memento Mori

On our block early this week, all was ecstatic pinkness.


Looking south,




Looking north,




from my studio windows,








from the third floor windows,




all was completely, blissfully



P I N K.





Then the rains came




and the pink glory began to turn to brown mush.















Walking is a slippery, messy business.

It is not a smart idea to park on our block for a few weeks.



Petals are everywhere. Recent sightings: floating in dog's water bowl; on third floor bathroom floor; in raincoat pocket; ground into beloved heirloom oriental carpet; stuck to umbrella; in diswasher; in purse.





........


Meanwhile, a small, ancient dachshund comtemplates the cycle of birth, life and death.











Memento mori. Until next year.

The Pink Carpet

Thursday was windy and the cherry blossoms started to drop from the trees, blowing into piles, beginning the process of carpeting our block.

Night Vision

They're Here!

Kaboom! The cherry trees on our street have exploded into bloom.

To experience their full magnificence, you need to walk along the block under the thick pink arcade formed by their branches. People from all over Philadelphia make a great spring pilgrimage to see our block. In about ten days we'll have a dramatic, ankle-deep carpet of pink petals. The trees were planted 2 generations ago by a philandering husband as a romatic gift of appeasement for his wife. Urban myth? Possibly. Nonetherless, they now are cherished by the residents of our block. The trees bring us together every spring as we stagger up and down the street saying, "Can you believe how beautiful they are? Were they this incredible last year?"

The blossoms can be seen on North 21st Street between Brown and Parish Streets. They'll reach their peak this coming week, providing the rain holds off.

Seen on the street

They're coming, they're coming...

Interiors

I love finally getting inside the domestic nest of someone I've come to know in a different context. What they surround themselves with, how they arrange it, what they give priority to, the books on their shelves, and more, always provides insights. Our things tell stories about us.

This is a picture of my desk at home.

Glitter

Back before time was such a tightly regulated commodity, I made jewelry out of gold, silver and sort-of-precious stones. I learned how to do this at the Jewelry Arts Institute on the Upper West Side in New York. Like knitting, it became a happy obsession. But unlike knitting, it was not portable.
























(I love that the woman on the left is holding a cluster of necklaces)


I'm hanging on to my jewelry bench and tool stash, hoping and expecting to dive in again. Maybe it'll evolve into some combo of metal work, gem stones and knitting. I just bought this necklace, which is made of hand knitted red silk with thin chains invisibly attached by micro stitches. It's a visual and conceptual inspiration that feels wonderful on, a perfect blend.

Knitting While Dancing

Sir Mix-a-lot's Baby Got Back takes over Loop's Folk Shawls class and ladies go wild. Butts move.




After another round with House of Pain's Jump Around, Mistress Grace was all business with her dry erase board.

Here we have a lesson on how to read the lace knitting.

ahem.



Is it perfectly clear?



Thoughts wander to Louise Bourgeois' crochet drawings.







We're having a Bourgeois show this summer at FWM and the Phila Museum of Art is hoping to install one of her giant spider sculptures on the Rocky steps. I'm an unrepentant fan.

Meanwhile back at class, the kimono pattern emerges and Alchemy's Sour Grass bamboo is spectacular.





Yarn Harlot reading tonight at Loop. I don't think wild dancing will be welcome.

Alert!

I was sitting, knitting on my Alchemy bamboo Kimono shawl, having a glass of wine with dog & hub, when there was a bang. Uh oh. Someone breaking in the front door? Nah. Just a weird, unfamiliar noise made by the new, post-renovation machinery in our house. All would be familiar soon enough.

Knit, knit, knit.

Wanna get me a refill?

Sure. I put some in the freezer to get cold...






Fortunately the exploding wine's condom kept the cork from puncturing the inside of our brand new fridge.





The fortune for today:

Formerly known as Synaesthetica

My blog used to be called Synaesthetica, but no one could spell it. So now it's called Knitting While Sleeping, which I actually have been observed doing.

(The knitting is in the shirt)

Getting on with business, spring is here and my sap is rising. Our tiny back garden needs designing and planting, the house renovation continues to dribble along but is substantially finished, and unpacking all our worldly posessions and purging half of them proceeds slowly since it's boring. Meanwhile, my first knitted lace shawl is underway in Alchemy's deliciously tart Sour Grass bamboo.



Keeping up my standards for multi-tasking, I feel another new project is in order: FORTUNES. I've saved my fortunes from fortune cookies since 1980. They're in an old wood, bone and porcupine quill box I got at a flea market in London.



Over the past five years I've noticed that fortunes have taken a dive and are no longer true prognostications or even interesting. The smiley-faced monopoly of dull aphorisms has come to dominate the fortune market, crushing all the Mom & Pop weird fortune producers.



Clearly this is yet another depressing effect of the current Bush administration; they have no poetry in their black, wizzened hearts.

In my own puny effort to give back power to the people, I will dig through my fortune stash and resurrect the lost art form of the romantic, the ominous, the fanciful, the dead-on fortune, starting with an all-time favorite...



and another bonus fortune.



More to come.