For Show and Tell, Blackbird would like to see a chicken this week. This one, with those exotic and sometimes-unfathomable names that IKEA has, is "Flaxig Tupp". Tupp means cock or rooster, although I don't know about flaxig -- so Tupp he is. I bought this when Laura was very little, along with his friend the goose, because of the wonderful character and expression in them -- now honed by a couple of years of being chewed on by small children.
Blackbird requests, for Elizabeth, to see our sugar bowl this week for Show and Tell. A few years ago, Albertson's had these willowware pieces on sale -- you know, buy $500 in groceries and you get $2 off a plate. No, actually it was a pretty good deal, and so although I use plain white dishes for everyday, I got a few things to fill in, such as this sugar bowl and creamer, and a few large platters. I love the blue-and-white, and I like that they're pretty but not too expensive for everyday -- and yes, Laura is playing with them even as I write, pouring pretend cream into the sugar bowl.
Well, there isn't much knitting going on lately, what with the temperatures in the daytime well into the 90s F (high 30s C) and humid with it. In other years, we've consoled each other with "but it's a dry heat," but can't do that now. We have to do our errands in the mornings before it gets too hot, and then we sit around and drink iced tea (me) and cold juice (the girls) and listen to summery music in the afternoons, or go to the library where there is air conditioning.
Show and Tell this week is our coffee maker. Ah. Well.... When David and I got married, we had a tiny cappuccino maker that David had picked up as swag from some job he was working on, and I used that for a long time, running it through its paces for each individual cup as necessary, but it eventually gave out, and, barring the almost-uncontrollable cravings I had for coffee during my first pregnancy, I've rarely missed it. This, I confess, is my coffee maker now --
It makes a decent cup of coffee, not particularly high-brow, but sufficient unto the hour!
In other news, this, since there isn't much knitting (or coffee, even), is what I will be working on soon --
Yes, it's going to be a "Turning Twenty" quilt! I've been wanting to make quilts for the girls for some time now, inspired by the beautiful things that people like Nancy and Jane create. Laura and I went to the crafts shop this morning, while Julia was at summer school, and chose twenty fat quarters and a couple of yards for a border. She chose pretty much all of the fabrics herself -- I merely pointed out a few that were pretty, and that a few others were a bit loud (a neon yellow and lime tie-dye, for instance), and laid them all out on a table so that she could judge the effect -- and she got some duplicates of those she liked especially. She loves bright colors, but still says that her favorite color is purple, so I was amused to see that that is generally the effect here. Wish me luck!
Blackbird, in honor of her eagerly-awaited holiday, would like to see our luggage. This, I must admit, is not my travel luggage, a random collection which is since our last jaunt packed away in the far reaches of the garage. I bought this case in London, years ago when I was young and carefree. I cannot now remember which shop -- there were so many! -- and it has no maker's mark, other than a discreet "Made in Italy" tucked inside.
I loved its boxy lines, its way of standing open at attention, the fact that even though it is rather awkward to carry (being so wide, with the handle in the middle, causing it to bump inelegantly against my leg), it is perfect for strapping onto the back of the roadster.
It in fact holds a part of my wool stash, and I'd gotten it down from a shelf in the closet recently to weed out the stuff that no longer speaks to me. I'm tempted to make the case a project bag now, but it would have to be something special ...
This -- which is Rembrandt Peale's "Rubens Peale with a Geranium" (1801), from National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC -- was supposed to be my Show and Tell a houseplant last week, since I had been so busy watering my family during the brief but blistering heatwave a few weeks ago that I forgot to water my houseplants, and they are both looking more than a little peaky at the moment. The Peale boys' father hoped that they would all be great artists, hence the names like Rembrandt, Raphael, Titian, and Rubens -- from what I've seen of dad, I suspect they hardly dared not to. I like Rubens -- he has a sweet Hugh-Grant-ish look to him, and I warm to the fact that he needs two pairs of glasses.
But hats, something we wear in the summer, that's what we're supposed to be doing -- I have a rather disreputable straw thing which I wear in the garden when necessary, but to be honest, I rarely go out in the sun. I can't find my hat at the moment -- hence the photo for last week's -- a few days ago it was being used as a kind of boat/hot-air balloon basket to carry Little People from one side of the living room to another, and I haven't seen it since....
"Show and Tell" this week wants to see a rock. I got this one some years ago from my favorite boss, who went on a vacation one summer and collected a small bag's worth of interesting rocks and pebbles for us in the Technical Services department. I chose this one because of its interesting shape, that fit so well into the curve of my hand. It is some kind of marble, and so I fondly imagine it from its once-cylindricalness to be the long-lost arm of some Grecian statue, perhaps even the Venus de Milo, broken off in the mists of antiquity, worn smooth by the sea, to be found by a librarian on a sandy beach in Mexico.
Here are my keys, in the first place that I look when I can't find them where they're supposed to be. My car key and one for the Club, and a house key are all that I carry now, after the heady days in which I had keys to the local public library. I also have a Ralphs card, solitary since the Albertson's one fell off, and a Swiss Army knife. The knife has lost its distinctive red handle plates, as in addition to its usual myriad uses, it makes a great teether for babies. Both of my girls used it to cut many of their front teeth -- in fact, now that I think of it, that's what happened to my Albertson's card as well, as I remember turning around now and then to see one of them sucking on the card and jangling the keys, with an expression of pure innocence.
Our local public library has a collection of photographs of historical buildings in the city -- they didn't happen to have one of my street itself, but here is one of the houses on it. This one was built in 1907, by, as it happens, the aunt of the family who lived in our own house. Not much is left of the original houses, I'm afraid, due to the building frenzy of the late 1960s and early 1970s in the area and the fact that the lots are zoned for apartments. I like this photo -- it's not particularly "vintage" itself, but I can dream about the way the street used to look, all tree-lined and bungalow-ish!
I've been a bit quiet lately, at least on the blog -- I've got that ennui that seems to creep around the blog world now and then. Sometimes it seems to take an incredible amount of time from other things in my life, things that I should be doing and things that I want to do. I've been busy with the girls and the garden these past few weeks -- the recent rains have made the weeds spring up in the backyard with appalling speed -- and I often find so very many beautiful things on others' blogs that distract me from the things that I have already found beautiful enough to distract me from the previous beautiful things.
This is the first of a pair, the Hedera socks, blocking yesterday afternoon. Eminently distracting. I stopped reading blogs for a few days while I was knitting, putting on some metaphorical blinkers, conscious of the other projects waiting patiently on the needles, and then the other day I started reading blogs again and saw Nancy's "Turning Twenty" quilt in progress, but no, no -- I'm not going to start quilting! not until I get a few more things finished around here! Even though it is incredibly lovely....
So here I am, sensing a reorganization of my life on the horizon --
Blackbird would like to see an outfit for Show and Tell this week. I asked the girls to dress up a Barbie for me, and this is what they came up with, "Sparkle-fairy" and "Barbie-sanita" on the left and right dressed by Laura (who couldn't limit herself to one), and "Theresa" in the middle, dressed by Julia.
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