Digging Deep In The Royal Grey Matter

I didn't post yesterday because I was too enamored of reading, and I thought today might follow the same fate, but then I remembered the mantra: When all else fails, be random.

So I have this short video in my mind - I am young, maybe six or eight, and I'm in the kitchen of one of my mom's friends. We're making candies together and I know they contain honey. Other kids run in and out of the kitchen, trying to steal a utensil with the batter on it, but I know I'm helping her so I don't swipe the bowl with my finger. We drop the batter onto wax paper sheets to cool into shape and when they're done, we scoop them up into bags and share them with the rest of the kids. The candies are brittle, I think, and they taste of all the honey we put in them. They're garnet-colored, rather than the amber you'd expect from so much honey, and I have no idea what else goes in them. I carry them around with us, staring at their pretty, semi-translucent shapes and savoring them slowly.

I have no context for this vision at all. I can't really see the other mom's face, although I think her hair is dark. I can't name the other kids. I've had this scrap in my mind for a long time, probably since age nine or ten, but I can't even tell you which language it was in - was it in English or castellano? It certainly makes sense for me to be communing with an adult rather than other children, but I can't really think of any candies made with honey of that description, and neither can my mother whom I've asked about this. Honestly, I have no idea whether this is dream or reality.

Do you have any similar scraps in your mind's eye?

Again with the books!

I finished David Guterson's Snow Falling on Cedars just now. The style is courtroom drama mixed with introspective narrative. The trial aspect arises because a Japanese-American man is accused to murdering a fellow fisherman off an island in Puget Sound. The story takes place primarily in the 1950s, making WWII's events, particularly the internment camps loom large in the flashback scenes afforded to many characters. In some ways it's a provincial story about strawberry farmers, salmon fisherman, a sheriff presiding over his first murder investigation and their wives and friends. It's very small-town drama, and usually I get bored with that. It took me a while to want to read it at all (I bought it in August), and I think that's really why. I'm not one for the "quirky locals in Random Town, USA," yet I really enjoyed this book because the style enabled the characters' inner lives to find expression. There were some characters whom I loathed, but even they were imbued with motivations I could understand, with hints of humanity that made them genuine. Plus, the defense attorney's closing arguments nearly brought me to tears. When I searched Amazon, it appears my edition is on backorder or out of print (I bought it at used book store a while back), but it's well worth picking up. I think I finally read it because of another trial in the next book I've included in this post.

See, last Tuesday Hubster had a root canal. Pobrecito hombre thought he'd just saunter out of the procedure and ring me up to go get him, and I'd work through the afternoon. Not so much. I figured this out the day of, so I made a quick dash to the library for some engrossing material and walked out with Margaret Atwood's Alias Grace. I've mentioned having read and enjoyed both The Blind Assassin and Oryx and Crake here before. I've also read her state-side breakout novel A Handmaid's Tale in college. Her prose is different here primarily because she employs the dialect and style of a Victorian novel and not her usual contemporary pacing and word choice (although some of her cuts between letters and story and articles remind me of The Blind Assassin). The central character is based on a real woman convicted of murder in Ontario in the mid 19th century. Grace is deeply sympathetic and yet very reserved, and thus mysterious. She discusses the indignities of servanthood, of prison life, of daily life in the countryside, or low social status and of relations between the sexes. At the same time we glimpse the life of the psychologist (who is interviewing her, the conceit of the novel) who comes from the servant-having upper classes and knows nothing of what her life was like before the murders and their aftermath. The tensions in the book run deep, and the style goes for broke in drawing them out.

Ultimately, it was her prose that won me over yet again. It's beautiful. Every time I pick one of her books up again, I realize how much I've missed it. The way she describes the most ordinary object makes me see differently for a while. The second quote below is more beautiful, but the first stops me in my tracks every time I read it. I can relate, and seeing a facet of life described so well is the point of my favorite prose.

"If I am good enough and quiet enough, perhaps after all they will let me go; but it's not easy being quiet and good, it's like hanging on to the edge of a bridge when you've already fallen over; you don't seem to be moving, just dangling there, and yet it is taking all your strength." (p5)

"When you are in the middle of a story, it isn't a story at all, but only a confusion; a dark roaring, a blindness, a wreckage of shattered glass and splintered wood; like a house in a whirlwind, or else a boat crushed by the icebergs or swept over the rapids, and all aboard powerless to stop it. It's only afterwards that it becomes anything like a story at all. When you are telling it, to yourself or to someone else." (p298)

I've been reading a lot lately. It helps to have some Atwood for the stats since she never fails to make me shun more important creatures like, oh, my husband in favor of the story and the words, the gorgeous words. Still, we'll see what I think of my next book, the famed Anne Rice's Interview with a Vampire which I picked up after The Historian made me wonder about vampire lore and curious to see what all the fuss was about. Verdict to follow.

Invisible Zipper Foot Of Relentless Wretchedness

I like Steven Colbert's "On Notice" feature on The Colbert Report, so I'm going to rip it off in the time-honored tradition of imitation and flattery.

Coats & Clark Invisible Zipper Foot? YOU ARE OFFICIALLY ON NOTICE. If I weren't out of other options at present you would most-certainly be "Dead to Me,." As it stands, I'll have to replace you when I find an alternative, a proposition I've found very hard, despite your obvious suckitude.


You are made out of plastic. And not hard plastic either, this stuff is WAY TOO BENDY to be used in a mechanical devise. It shifts all over the place and I broke three (3!) needles on a shirt I was making, I mean YIIIKES, you'da thought I was trying to install a zipper with about the same kind of plastic as my freakin' zipper foot. (cursing redacted)


Oh, and you comes in parts. Look, C&C, your thread (while mediocre) is fine really, and your zippers are great - I buy them all the time. BUT IF I WANTED TO PLAY WITH BLOCKS, I WOULD HAVE AVOIDED THE SEWING MACHINE ENTIRELY, MMMKAY? Save the Lincoln Logs for antiquey-themed talking pictures and make my zipper foot strong plastic or, better yet, METAL (which I can't seem to find at all).

And I don't care if you ARE cheap at $2.29. NO! NIET! NEIN!

That is all.

Royal Gloating Post

Not even I can spare the self-indulgence to post for an entire week about just two gift projects, so I've decided to condence Royal Gloating Week into exactly one post. See, I'm learning and growing and maturing and whatnot. Please save your "ABOUT BEEEEEP TIME" exclamations for your personal time. On with the show and tell!

My sister-in-law spent a good portion of our visit to the "Crack For Obsessives" Container Store hunting for a new, roomier makeup bag. She'd had one forever and it wasn't cutting it anymore. She walked away empty-handed, and I had a brilliant, totally-unrelated idea: I should make her a makeup bag for Christmas. I know, inspiration is such a mysterious thing. Two weeks later I found myself staring at some fabric and my own, diehard makeup of two years and puzzling over how to craft my pattern. I pulled it off and the first makeup was born:


The exterior fabric is a home-decor scrap I got at a pillow-designer's yard sale for $3 per pound of fabric scraps ("sweet shopping dreams are made of these"). The zipper is one I bought for another project and commandeered because I was on a roll.


Bag interior including lining pockets, modeled again off my own bag. Bag dimensions are 10" wide by 6" high by 3" deep. The four interior pockets range from 3" to 5" wide.


I used the pattern to create a second one which appears on the right for my younger sister-in-law, who I'm told uses it for iPod accessories. I also added yo-yos because I think they're the cutest things ever and I wanted to see if they were as cute in real life as in this pretty tutorial. They are.

The gifts are apparently much-loved by their new owners. I'm very happy with the results myself. If anyone cares, I can post a tutorial, but I'm guessing most of you prefer the Target method of makeup bag procurement. To each his/her own.

Picture Post: 2007 Icebreaker Edition

What I Did On My Christmas Vacation:


I took lots of ill-advised photos.


I accepted some lovely gifts (in an awkward fashion, apparently.)


I adopted a badass pose while sporting pearls and gesturing "I love you," instead of "Rock on!" (Also while wearing the new sweater and shoes my brother gave me in the Christmas exchange which do actually rock, unlike their new owner.)

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I stared at this adorable kitty, whose name is Curie - as in Marie, as in the fabulous scientist. Oh, and she snuggled with me.

Oh, and I slept a lot, which I am currently not doing because of this post, so goodnight, me hearties. More tomorrow.