Category: family life

beach and tree

April 21, 2012

 april 20

Yesterday's beach. Alice and I had the best time. We made footprints in varying hardnesses of sand, and tried to see if we could tell if we were walking backwards or forwards. We looked at longshore motion of sand, and did civil engineering on the tide running down the beach. We did a small faunal survey. We talked about the origin of the sand; up-stream or up-ice, or up-glacier from where we weere standing.

Today we visited Jenny, because she has commissioned a set of works for her bedroom. Alice and Jenny and I spent a happy half hour taping various sized and shaped pieces of newspaper to the wall to decide on the final dimensions. We eventually settled on the perfect configuration, which looked nothing like what we'd started with. Which is good – not letting pre-conceived notions interfere.

Today on the way home, I saw several of the trees, blooming with the most absurd pinky purple color. This one had a pile of dandelions around the base.

april 21

pi(e) day

March 14, 2012

pi day

Pi(e) day = March 14 = 3/14 = 3.14 = ratio between the diameter and the circumference of any circle.

Pie tally:

  • raspberry (with 18 candles for Aerin)
  • chocolate cream (with 24 candles for Abby)
  • 2 apple
  • blueberry (shown above)
  • three berry
  • key lime
  • another chocolate pudding

people tally (some people belong to more than one group):

  • 4 of us
  • 3 Vertssess
  • 3 Almanzars
  • 2 Abbys
  • 1 neighbor
  • 1 hiking club
  • 2 co-workers
  • 1 co-worker girlfriend
  • 3 Mt Holyoke students with various graduation dates

plus some I can't remember.

Pi day makes every one happy. It is like Thanksgiving, only with just dessert.

Black and white circles will resume tomorrow.

distracted and bemused

March 11, 2012

three circles and a pair of socks

I must admit to feeling like Edward Lear’s old man with a beard, because it is just as I feared – while I have no birds in my beard I am watching the snow melt under the (lovely lovely warm) weather and the strong contrasts are vanishing and flowing downstream.

The lower right is Friday, when Alice and I went to see the high school musical Grease, and came home too late to post anything. It shows the small patches of snow left in the shade of the pine woods.

The lower left is a pair of socks, finished Saturday and included because the palette is similar.

Saturday had no post because Alice and I got up waaay too early and drove to Cambridge with friends so she could go to a bunch of interesting and distinctly offbeat classes with other extraordinay middle and high schoolers. She took classes in Greek and Roman mythology, Maxwell’s equations for middle schoolers, introduction to soldering and explosions in chemistry. By the time we were done and home, it was well after everyone’s bedtime. I did finish the socks, and a circle. The circle is the one top right – it looks different because MIT has no sewing machines, so I used some black and gray markers to sketch in what I was thinking about.

The last one is from today, another reflecting tree, with the snows of yesterday upon it. The snows of yesterday are melting like crazy, and I’m going to have to work from memory or modify my point of view.

wooded hillsides

March 5, 2012

march 5

Going south and east into Connecticut yesterday, and coming west and north today, I found myself looking up into continuous hillsides of leafless trees. The snow line was right at the Massachusetts border, and the Holyoke range had ranks of deciduous forest rising along the southern flanks. I love being able to see into the woods in the winter, to see the shape of the land underneath. The trees feel like the pelt of a creature, and the whole landscape seems both living and sleeping. 

 

And here you can see us in our fancy duds, ready to drive away to a night of food, drink and iniquity. It was a good time. 

formal wear

March 1

March 1, 2012

march 1

I like March for a couple foolish reasons: March 4th is the only day of the year that is a command, March 14 is pi(e) day (3/14 = 3.14 which is a decimal approximation of the ratio of the diameter of a circle to its radius) and March 17 is Aerin's birthday. 

March is also black and white and shades of gray, and pieces of a larger thing. So the reason this circle doesn't look like anything is because it is out of context. I will show you the context soon. 

what I did this weekend, in three circles and a photo

February 20, 2012

three circles and a nephew

Top two, left to right: Today's circle, yesterday's circle which is kind of doodly but has a whale in it (yes, a pink whale; see Nightbirds on Nantucket, and also Burt Dow, Deep-Water Man) 

Bottom two: My mom's bionic knee (my apologies for getting it upside down mom, it was the direction you were in bed) and my outrageously, particularly wonderful nephew examining the February circles. 

twelve and a loaner sewing machine

January 12, 2012

twelve

I am deeply grateful to Timna for the loan of a perfectly lovely, working sewing machine, and a pointer to the people to fix my indisposed machine (Pumpkin Patch Quilts).  Audrey said there was a bakery and a bookstore to visit while they fixed my machine and the guy on the phone sounded very encouraging. So I am feeling surrounded by friends and competence. 

We attended the Winter Concert tonight. It was a very speedy one of its kind, with no jazz, and thus no jazz solos. There was some wonderful playing by the band (especially since I still vividly remember the 4th grade band, and their complete and spectacular failure on one particular piece) and three different vocal groups. Aerin was also in a small woodwind quartet that played two student composed pieces.  I got my knitting into a terrible tangle and had to stop until the lights came back on. Apparently I am still not quite as capable in the dark as I thought. 

fire! in a good way!

January 6, 2012

fire!!

Aerin's young man got torches for juggling, and hadn't tried them out yet, so we all piled outside to help. Aerin brought her fire poi too, and let Alice try them. It turns out juggling in the dark is hard, and juggling flame in the dark is really hard, because you can't see the handles, and you tend to focus on the flame, and it all gets pretty exciting pretty fast. The third picture is AYM working with one torch. The first one is Aerin noodling with one torch but not letting go, so it works more like poi. 

The poi, in contrast, are on the ends of chains and you spin them, so seeing them is a smaller issue, but the potential for whacking yourself in the head is higher. Which hurts like whacking yourself in the head with a (largish) superball, and chars pieces of hair and smells bad. But you don't run the risk of catching the wrong end of the torch in your hand. 

charismatic megafauna redux

November 23, 2011

charismatic megafauna redux

Santa Claus has worked through us. Or something like that.

Four large, very soft creatures for cousins, finished with help from the dinner guests (Thank you very much Cathy and Rachel!). Also they have been test hugged, and pronounced satisfactory. The pattern is from Simplicity, designed for fleece. It goes together quickly, and looks, well, adorable. 

Onward! 

never never (never) hurry

November 22, 2011

I have been spending time with Alice in the studio doing Santa Claus things.

We'd decided on making four more hippos and rhinos, two of each, for the young cousins we are visiting for Thanksgiving. We got fabric yesterday, lovely soft fleece, and cut out pieces for all the aminals. This evening, we sat down to make them. Alice was working on an essay on the yin-yang symbol, and I was stitching away. Once the first was done (a blue argyle rhino) Alice started stuffing while I finished the second rhino. I stopped for a phone call, and came back see that Alcie had stuffed the green butterfly covered rhino, but it looked….odd. In fact, I had stitched the head where the tail should be. I'll have to cut off the head and restitch it to the correct end of the creature. 

So I've paused to regroup, and to remind myself to slow down and make sure I have things correct. To my credit, the head is right side up, just attached to the wrong end. I'll deal with it when I've had more sleep.