Lovelihood

Finished the latest sashiko swatch. I've got no idea what this one, and hopefully a slew of similarly alphabetic motifs, will conspire to be. Likely, it will just hang on the boards for a few months gathering dust while interest in other projects waxes and wanes.

Nestled in amongst the visual mishmash of our books, so that you might not even see them if you weren't looking, are two of my latest artistic acqusitions in pastels, fingerpaints and glitter. Love.

For months the darkest corner of the house was the one our couch sits in. A lovely couch it is, custom ordered once the paychecks started rolling in again, a spot designed for lounging with a crossword puzzle or settling in with some needlework. That is, if there were enough light to make out anything between my face and the television. And I've got some binding to sew onto my latest project. So lighting that corner pushed its way up the priority chain this weekend, and we headed down to Ikea to pick up my favorite lamp, one we've previously owned and failed to move with us. You've likely seen it a million different times in magazines and other people's homes. Maybe even your own home. Not exactly an original. But I like the shape and life of it, even while I dream of brewing up some lighting concoction out of mason jars and cardboard tubes. Some other unlit corner, perhaps.

The children's haul from Valentine's Day, all strewn across the table is a pretty pleasing sight, even as we're trying to tidy up for the night. It's the first year that most of the Valentines were hand-addressed by fellow kids, and seeing The Boy's name in another child's snaky scrawl is a rather sweet thing. The Boy, of course, has no appreciation for this, instead fixating on the Skittles and fold-up racecar, which are admittedly far cooler than penmanship of even the highest degree.

The adults in the house have both come down with whatever it was that the two children of the house were sniffling through last week. So when The Boy repeately came down from what was obviously not a very productive naptime, and I shooed him away with orders to quietly occupy himself, I was really just hoping for a few moments to sulk in feverish peace. What he came back to me with was a quick and dirty valentine. So I put it up next to the nightstand and let him jump on the bed while I folded some laundry.

Y? Because we're still working on Valentines, of course. I'd started with the intention of completely eradicating all trace of the berry red paint from the type (maybe brushing it ocd-style with an old toothbrush), because it seems so demeaning for something so stolid as timeworn metal type to be stained with something so petty as craft-store fabric paint. But, y'know, juxtaposition and all. I kinda like it.

When we got home from lunch today and I saw that the mail had come, I lickety-splitted my creaky-kneed self (9 miles this morning, thank you very much) up to the front door to see if my long-awaited order from Photojojo had arrived. It had. Among the spoils was a wide angle/macro lens adapter that simply screws, like a filter, onto my existing lens. Macro! Basically, it's a custom-fitted magnifying glass, lo-tech stuff. But it was a fraction of the cost of a proper macro lens. So I've got no complaints. Now, I've got to wait for the sun to come out in earnest to play some more with this and the other goodies that it shipped with. I've also uploaded some more macro-tastic shots to the good ol' Flickr. In case you're interested.