hand eye crafts

 Two all-caps titles in a row.  🙎 This was a gift to Hannah last Christmas.  She has it by her door, so she sees it each time she leaves.    It's worked so far.

 I spent yesterday in Atlanta with Hannah.  As I got near her place, I pulled up behind this truck at a light: I so wanted to yell at the driver: "WHERE'D YOU GET THAT GREAT LION?"

Other companies that make chocolate milk do know that Hershey's makes chocolate milk, right?  As in, why do they even keep trying? This is the top of my dresser from the other night.  We all know I love little lights.  I thought it was pretty.

I've spent a large part of today watching Netflix's new documentary on the Space Shuttle Challenger.  Whether I was just a product of my era and would have been a space/NASA fangirl anyway, or whether my Aquarius-ness played a part, too, I don't know, but space and NASA have long been loves of mine.   That day, I was at work at U of Alabama, listening to the launch on the radio in my office, about to go to class.  I went into the room and told the students, and several of them came back to my office to listen.  When some of them went to find TVs, left with me was Frankie Buffington.  He was in ROTC, and that day was one of the ones where cadets wore their uniforms all day.  He sat down and folded his hat and his books onto his lap. We just sat, dumbfounded.  He was a quiet guy anyway, but he was utterly soundless.  And teary.  I'll always associate him with that day.

That would be "Tiny Needle Tuesday/Throwback Edition". Here's a piece I made in 1985, which my mother had hanging in their front room/sitting room/parlor/fragile room*: I've always liked this.  The framing is especially nice. *So named by a very young Hannah, 'cause there was lots of stuff in there that caused people to say, "Careful!"

When your boots are extra-clicky, and the store is practically empty, you get an unexpected echo, but you still wind up in an expected place.

I have tried two and a half times to get this cross-stitch Advent calendar going.  (The half was when I caught my mistake not too long after I started working.) I may not have a photo for TNT after all.

I'm not sure other people in my age cohort feel this way, but it seemed to me growing up that Raquel Welch was THE Beautiful Woman.  Reading that she has died made me sad.  Also, from recent history, I was quite upset about Lisa Marie Presley's death.  On to Less Heavy. Bought myself some cashmere ( Clinton Hill Cashmere ) and am making myself a bandana-shaped cowl.  You all know how lovely cashmere feels, so I needn't go on. Though I'm not fully re-immersed in counted cross-stitch, I'm edging that way.  Back in mid-November, I bought an Advent pattern, with the true goal of working on it daily.  For lots of twisty reasons, I wasn't able to do that, but I do  want to get to it.   That itch, plus Briton beginning to stitch, has had me looking in online stores.  This may be the best pattern of all (as of yet): How amazing, huh?   Twinnie , I may be joining you on Tiny Needle Tuesday.

Hero.

Watching the Super Bowl.  This is my yearly refrain: "Just let it be a good game."  More often than not, it isn't.  Fingers crossed for today. I think this is the deepest into a year that any Super Bowl has been played.  I certainly don't remember one ever being played on my birthday.  

There has been extremely scattered rain here the past two days, and my sinuses have heralded its arrival with pain that belies the scarcity of water from the sky. I made something called Cinnamon Milk Bread tonight.  First time I've used my bread machine since, maybe, Christmas?  It smelled really good baking, and tastes excellent.  It's got cinnamon, sugar, and pecans --- what could go wrong?

Retail algorithms have my number.

 Music in the car still vexes me.  I promise not to talk about it anymore. Thankfully, this arrived a few minutes ago and made me smile.  Briton, a proficient latch-hooker, mentioned a while back he'd like to try cross-stitching.  On Christmas, I gave him two little kits: one of a snowflake, all one color to be easy to learn on, another of his favorite animal: Perfection.

The new car is the reason I found out about the ostrich and alligator upholstery.  The man in charge of accessories at the dealership is a fellow fiber artist, and he and I had a lovely conversation about textures and colors.  Upholstery can also come in bright yellow or red or blue or pink or orange --- you don't have to limit yourself to black, tan, or gray.  It turns out that the man owned one of my favorite little shops downtown, now, sadly, defunct.   There are adjustments to make when you have a new car.  I've usually always said that once I get used to the brakes when I'm driving something different, I'm good.  With this, it's the gas pedal.  Oh, and the digital EVERYTHING.  There's a back-up camera.  And no CD player.  I have to get music through Bluetooth, which I have absolutely no experience with whatsoever.  Look, I could pack my own music in the Highlander, including cassettes.  

 We have a habit of naming things in this family.  Lots of different things.  Pets, of course.  We always rotated turns naming our animals, Hannah always supplying middle names (Lily Potter, Erin Rose, Rupert Harris).   We name characters in stories we tell,  people we see and decide to build narratives about.  Hannah even names inanimate things.  For instance, her dress form --- here showing off my finally completed rollback sweater is Melanie. All this to say that I'm wondering about a name for a new thing today.

I may be the only one who can't cast on onto circulars. Only Daddy and I could, uh, appreciate ostrich skin.  We've both had ostrich skin boots.  Alligator skin is also an upholstery option.  Daddy had some gator boots;  I've never taken that step.  (Ha!  "Step"!)  I do have eel skin.  Daddy had some elephant skin ones, which I've surely mentioned here before.   No one else has heard of "closing off" stitches.  I do think that's going to be my go-to phrase from now on. No delivery service will be getting my business tonight: it's quite rainy. One of Daddy's namesakes (there are three) --- my son Briton --- is making appearances on two local podcasts this week.  He and his movie podcast buddies are being featured on one that spotlights various and various types of artists in Athens.  He'll be the only guest on a bibliophile cast, talking about movie adaptations of books.  He's very excited about both.  

. . . who can't cast on onto circular needles?  I cast on onto straights and knit the stitches onto the circulars. . . . who had never heard the phrase "close the stitches" used instead of "cast off"?  Frankly, I like it more. . . .  who won't order Instacart or DoorDash (or Bulldawg Food here) if it's cold or rainy or "too" late?  (Growing up, I refused to go out to eat on Thanksgiving.  I thought it was unfair that the resataurant folks had to work.  My mother brought this up a LOT.  It was probably her favorite "Remember when. . ." story about me.) . . .  who didn't know that ostrich skin upholstery is available in cars?  Daddy would have snapped that right up. . . .  who can never (EVER) tear the boxes with microwave crisping foils correctly? . . .  who  explains a blog post by saying, "I can't get this song out of my head"?