A while back someone made the graffiti rounds in our neighborhood, leaving this little guy painted on the sidewalks of multiple streets. When he & I first noticed it, we had different interpretations. I suggested the little guy was urinating, and he suggested it was a “more pleasurable” secretion. I’m not sure if our different perspectives were due to our respective genders or our respective outlooks on life.
untitled on Flickr.
Another great lunch. Hard-boiled egg, fruit salad, brown rice pasta salad (a gluten-free treat!). All homemade.
I feel satisfied when I eat healthy food. I feel healthy when I eat satisfying food.
There’s something about a storm as fierce as last night’s; I don’t know what it is. I turned off the lights and laid there listening to it, thunder vibrated the walls, and I kind of didn’t want it to stop.
“1952”
Clouds on Flickr.
A couple of weeks ago a friend gave me a knitting lesson. I tried to learn to knit back in 2008 via Knitting for Dummies but I was not able to decipher the illustrations enough to move from casting on to stitching. I got frustrated and dumped my beginner knitting gear on the curb outside of my apartment.
All I needed was to sit next to a patient person who could demonstrate and redemonstrate the technique, and to help me practice it. Since that first lesson, I have knitted for at least an hour every day. The maroon yarn in this photo is the first ball of yarn I ever knit. There are a lot of problem areas, but there are also some small sections of pretty great stitching! The blue and cream yarn is my second attempt - getting better, but still problematic. This yarn had a softer texture than the wooly maroon yarn, and it was a learning experience to see how the texture affected the tightness of the stitching (it was more pliable). The red yarn is my latest artifact of practice, and despite a few hiccups early on (skipped stitches misaligned my edges), my progress is evident. I’m ready to start my first project.
Being a meditative and methodical person, finding more value in the process than the outcome, my first project is going to be a simple scarf using the same basic stitching I’ve been practicing. From this scarf, I have every intention of expanding my skills to different stitches, and different projects - hats, beer koozies, and definitely a koozie to keep my De La Paz warm in the french press every morning.
The foray into making things from yarn begins on Monday after work when I meet my knitting mentor at the yarn store to select the materials to knit my first scarf!
When I work from home, I have a walk for lunch.
In issue 2 of Lucky Peach, David Chang paid homage to the blue crabs of the Chesapeake Bay and the surrounding culture — Old Bay, gas station beer, newspaper spread across the table. Having grown up on the Patuxent River, a tributary of the Chesapeake, it felt all too familiar and I was glad to have come from somewhere with distinct local cuisine. When I was a child we used to go down to the river with packages of chicken legs and kitchen twine, and we’d tie the the twine around the legs and drop them down into the water from the side of the pier. Laying flat on our stomachs, hot from the sun-baked wood of the pier beneath us, we’d watch the crabs gracefully make their way to the chicken leg and when they were close enough, we’d scoop them out of the water with a net and put the crabs into a bucket that we’d carry back to the kitchen.
Most weekends in the summertime we’d steam a bushel of crabs from a local fisherman. We’d cook them in batches, angry and alive, with Old Bay seasoning, their claws clacking against the pot briefly. With wooden knockers and butter knives we’d pry open the shells of the cooked crabs on layers of newspaper spread across the table, discard the innards, and spend hours meticulously picking out all of the meat from the shells and legs. It was social and ritualistic, slow and easy, a memory easily conjured with a nod from a celebrity chef who somehow found himself in southern or eastern Maryland picking blue crabs the way we do, where I came from.
