I’ve been busy with my real job, which is a good thing, but it hasn’t left much time for other types of creating. The most crafty thing I’ve had to blog for the past week was this little needlepoint rainbow house that I found at Goodwill for 99 cents. It had a dingy frame, but I just spray-painted it with some paint I had around for another project and now I love it. The year 1981 is written in marker on the back.

We finished the bookshelves and I spent some glorious hours sorting through my long lost paperfriends retrieved from storage.

It may not look like it, but I actually did manage to do some serious purging. We took several boxes of books to Twice Sold Tales, where they were joyfully received and earned us $90 in credit. Also, one of their roving kitties delighted DandelionBoy by nibbling a steady stream of treats from his hand.

But even with all that free credit, I was forced to go to Elliott Bay Books and purchase Patti Smith’s Just Kids on Monday. I just couldn’t wait another day for the paperback to come out after listening to the two-part Bookworm interview. And as of page 113, Patti has not let me down. This book is wonderful – honest, eloquent, fascinating, empathetic, and inspiring. It’s been a torment to put it down every time I’ve had to, and I think this may end up being the first time in a very long time that I’ll finish a book in under a week. There are plenty of other more practically urgent things for me to do, but ever since the bookshelf project I have been powerless over the drive to glue my face to a printed page as often as possible.

I’m still trying to get the hang of making time to blog again. I hope you’ll bear with me. The past week was super-busy. I’m working on a new website for a massage therapist friend, making lots of stuff for the shop (nighties available by Tuesday at the latest, I PROMISE), managing a ton of house and finance stuff (including refinancing our car – FUN!), and getting repeatedly bitten by the spring cleaning bug (before & after shots may be coming soon). Plus, there’s that little matter of spending most of my waking hours with an extremely busy toddler.

This is a post I started almost a week ago…

One of the best things about sewing more is the opportunity to really listen to music. I listen to podcasts sometimes too (especially This American Life and the New Yorker fiction), but lately I’ve mostly been blissing out on indie pop and folk. I have to thank our extraordinarily talented PT nanny Shenandoah Davis for introducing me to a lot of it. Her music has been such a fantastic bonus to having her in our lives, and DandelionBoy loves her so much.

I thought I’d share a few of my recent faves:

Laura Marling – I’m warming up to her new album but the original EP and first album are amazing.

French Quarter - I had never heard of Stephen Steinbrink until his band played in a show at 20/20 Cycle with Shenandoah and some other folks. So young and so talented, and this little album is such a gem. I love every song. I’ve probably played this more than anything else the past couple weeks.

First Aid Kit – These Swedish sisters can SING, and that’s pretty much all I have to say about why their music is awesome. Thanks to Lori for the heads up about their show at the Vera Project, which was fantastic.

Samantha Crain – She blew me away when she opened for First Aid Kit at the Vera Project. She’s considered folk or even country (!) and some songs definitely fit that bill, but there’s a lot more going on here. Her MySpace influences give you a bit of an idea: radiohead, berry, sam cooke, jason molina, sleater-kinney, anais nin, breece d’j pancake, fritz scholder.

I’m also joining everyone else in loving Janelle Monae’s new ArchAndroid. I’ve even been trying to get my legs to cooperate in doing the tightrope dance. And, after burning out on it a few months ago, I’ve revived my love for the dreamy, exotic Suburbs of Goa stream on somafm.

DandelionBoy and I go to Goodwill about once a week to scout for vintage bed linens, clothing for recrafting, and whatever else is awesome and super-cheap. This week I was thrilled to happen upon this sewing machine craft book. Published in 1980, it has more of a 60′s and 70′s feel and it’s amazing! Full of great techniques and kooky projects. I wouldn’t do most of the projects exactly as they are, but it’s given me SO many ideas already. And there are a few freehand sewing machine embroidery alphabets that I’m sure I can use for future Vocabulary shop items. Score!!

I also found a child-sized guitar for DB for $3! And some bad-ass red heels for $5. But I was proud of myself for resisting a set of small glass dishes that was gorgeous but not practical. Because the shoes, of course, are practical. At the very least, they guarantee me a “free” dinner from my husband. :)

From Apocalypse, one of nine stories in Resistance by Barry Lopez

“And here is nearly the bitterest of blunt issues for us: What can love offer that cannot be rejected? What gesture cannot be maligned as witless by those who strive for every form of isolation? When we were young, each of us believed that to love was to die. Then we believed that to love was essential. Now we believe that without love our homeland – perhaps all countries – will perish. Over the years, as we have learned what it might mean to love, we have generally agreed that we’ve better understood the risks. In our nation, it is acceptable to resent love as an interference with personal liberty, as a ruse the emotions employ before the battlements of reason. It is the abused in our country who most weirdly profess love. For the ordinary person, love is increasingly elusive, imagined as a strategy.”

I recently finished a fascinating book called Pigtopia, by Kitty Fitzgerald. It has a somewhat bizarre plot with one utterly revolting section, but the writing is devastatingly lovely. Here’s my favorite passage and a great example of the unique voice of the character Jack Plum, a disfigured and isolated man with a tender heart and love of pigkind. This is right after his abusive mother dies:

I gaze at the morningtime’s arrival up on all. The light of it, the warm of it, gliding and glistering along tree branches, grass, puddles, fetching the lifeglow what is from sun energies for all our living. Round nearby the river place, the trees is thick in together and full blossomed. The flowers is mouth wide as if calling tunes to the day coming. There is a silver mist remnant gliding upward for mingling in to the cornflower blueness of sky. Maybe this is soul stuff, energy soul stuff, rising at a forever rest place. In the case that it is, I whisper of goodbyes and make a small wave and I do breathe deep in the scent of Dad which is still strong in that space.

I also read Barack Obama’s first book recently, and I am so excited at the possibility that this man could be our next president. I’ve never in my life had anything close to this level of hope for a political candidate. He truly seems to be the real thing – an intelligent charismatic leader who’s coming from a sincere place, who can garner wide support without oversimplifying issues, and who has deep insight into the racial and religious divides in this country. With his organizing background, he knows how to negotiate diverse interests and build a movement over the long haul. He’s sensible about money but radical about change. It’s hard not to get starry-eyed. I’m supporting him, but I’m trying to brace myself just in case. He’s almost too good to be true.

As a kid, I loved Knight Rider. When you’re eight, there’s not a lot cooler than a talking car. For my little brother and me, Knight Rider was right up there with The Incredible Hulk and Transformers. [Sidenote: I know I'm not the only one out there who still can't read or say or even think "transformers" without playing the "more than meets the eye" jingle in her head. That's definitely a contender for most powerful earworm of all time.]

Anywho… now they’ve made a new two-hour Knight Rider TV movie. I probably won’t ever actually watch it. I’m sure it’s as bad or worse than the original show. But I still couldn’t resist looking into it a little. If you can tolerate the ad beforehand, this little interview with The Hoff is hysterical. Or at least it is to me. Something about that freaky man just completely cracks me up. And if you’re not already fed up with this little trip down memory lane, here’s the original Knight Rider Intro.

Yikes. I think this post proves that I burned up some brain cells today. Maybe I’ve been working too hard…

Today has been all about the magic of good friends — so it’s appropriate that I discovered this video today.

I haven’t been feeling too great lately. I haven’t finished any of the now much-belated holiday gifts I mentioned in the previous post, the apartment is a wreck, and I’m too tired to make excuses. However, I did finally post a bunch of pictures from the holidays, including a few things I made, up on flickr, and that’s enough of an accomplishment for today.

Also, because you deserve some joy today, I offer you 1 minute and 4 seconds of funny courtesy of sweetie. This is an excerpt of Ben reading at the Salon of Shame earlier this month from a story he wrote in high school. One morning he woke up and all the people in the world were gone, except perhaps Kelly (the girl he had a crush on)…

For my fellow Joss Whedon fans who thought of Firefly when they saw the previous post, I just want to make sure you’re aware of the new show in development. It’s currently scheduled for Fall 2008, but of course the writers’ strike is a major factor.

I really hope that gets resolved soon. If I were a studio executive — even if I didn’t care about common sense, fairness or human decency — the prospect of trying to fill my immediate schedule with bottom feeding reality shows would be more than enough to convince me that writers deserve a share of money made from their work online or anywhere else.

“In yoga we learn that although you are in this body, it is also a carrier for the spark of divinity. An underlying fear of death and clinging to life are there in each of us. But we can learn to let go if we truly experience our actual, infinite capacity. You let go and let go and let go and let go, until all that is left is that tiny spark of divinity. We always talked about that spark as ‘the firefly.’” ~ Molly Kenny

From this beautiful article about the Samarya Center and their new Firefly Project. There’s a fundraiser Saturday night. I’m inspired to limit my UCU budget accordingly. I’ve spent enough time at Samarya to be really impressed with how they’re using yoga to “help anyone — no matter their age, finances, or state of health.”

One other thing I’ve been meaning to mention, apropo of nothing…

Gina Gionfriddo’s essay in the current issue of The Believer completely rocked my world. Gionfriddo links her own painful disillusionment with Christianity with what Reznor expresses through Nine Inch Nails and ties it all back to British Romanticism and Freudian psychoanalysis. I felt like she was speaking directly to me. I thought I was done with NIN after Pretty Hate Machine and Downward Spiral served as cornerstones of my collegiate depression soundtrack (simultaneous with my full-time literature nerd phase when I was nuts about the Romantics and especially Mary Shelley). Now I’m really curious about the last two albums. I only ever heard a couple of songs.

Overall this is one of the best issues ever of The Believer. There’s a funny article about how to deal with music obsessives, a fabulous interview between Miranda July and the lead singer of the Blow, and plenty of other stuff guaranteed to make you feel cooler and smarter. Although if you’re reading this blog, I have no doubt that you’re already 100% smart and cool so read at your own risk.