Quote of the Day: 40 means Diamonds

I also find it hard to deal with the fact that … almost forty, the age at which your options start to diminish because you are more or less locked into a life path. I read somewhere – and one of the signs of getting older is that I can no long remember where – that life is shaped like a diamond. At the start, your choices are few. They get greater and greater with each year until forty or so, when the choices you’ve made start to limit the ones you can make – until you die, which is general as much of a choice as being born is.

I don’t find this bleak, actually. I’m fairly content with the choices I’ve made and the ones I’m not at ease with are minor. The knowledge that my diamond is getting narrower just makes me more careful about my time and likely to enjoy where I am more. Besides, I’m tired of deciding and, in a way, welcome having less big stuff to think about. Your mileage, of course, may vary.

SweaterQuest: My Year of Knitting Dangerously by Adrienne Martini, Pages 147-148

The Shushing Librarian's Botanical Tour of New York - Part One

While Auntie Nettie is busy trying to get her etsy.com shop inventory organized, I thought I would take a moment to give you a tour of my New York, as seen through the prism of the New York Botanical Garden Holiday Train show.

Now normally, I don't get to pose like this, behind the ropes at the exhibitions, but the nice guard at the Haupt Conservatory let me take a photo nestled into the foliage by these townhouses. Then it was off to wander the rail lines to some of the nice real estate - like the Vanderbilt Mansion.

Whoops, I missed my train! That's what happens when you travel into the Big Apple from your rustic log cabin. You have to adjust to a faster rate of life.

Highlights from the trip included stops by the Apollo Theater and Grants Tomb. Just to clarify - the Grants are buried in Grants Tomb. It's not a place where Auntie Nettie's various fund-raising proposals go to die.

I think I need to build a patio like this one on the back of the cabin. Then, I'll borrow some decorating ideas from The Metropolitan Museum of Art. I'd like to replicate the Frank Lloyd Wright Living Room, with the moat from the Temple of Dendur, with the courtyard from the Chinese Garden Court.

Some other famous landmarks I saw include the famous Flatiron Building, the Schwartzman Building - the 42nd Street, "main branch" of the New York Public Library with Patience and Fortitude guarding the entrance. I'm planning a whole tour of the library very soon. I need to consult with my colleagues on the best way to shuuuush!

Then I decided to run over to Central Park to tour Belvedere Castle and to stop off by this little gazebo. There were so many places to explore, both in the Park and in the City, I'm going to do another installments of photos, just not with my fuzzy self in them this time.

I know I am a Red Sox fan, but one of my last stops in NYC was at the House that Ruth Built, Yankee Stadium. The roar of the crowd was infectious. What I was really trying to do was to sneak in some Sox Swag, to get the curse going again, but some burly bouncers checked my bag, and then checked me right on out of the ballpark. (See, they even had red pennants up in honor of this Red Sox fan.)

Sadly, my day in the City came too quickly to a close, and it was back over a bridge for this commuter.

Stay tuned for more of my pictures from my NYBG Holiday Train tour of New York.

Until then, please remember to support your local libraries and librarians.

Photo of the Day: Love Letters

Vintage Auntie's Day letter from Drew

I found this while I was doing some cleaning/organization this last weekend. He totally didn't send this to me for Aunties Day 2011, but I still love it all the same. It's tucked in the archival file I'm compiling of the letters and artwork that he's sent to me over the years. It is so wonderful to see how his writing has evolved and how his drawings reflect his interests.

Auntie Nettie's Attic Merchandise 2011 - July

After a few months of very little crafting output and much in the way of social butterfly-ness, I decided to buckle down and concentrate on working my way through the yarn stash. This dedication to craftiness also coincided nicely with some disgusting July heatwaves, where the thought of leaving the house was absolutely untenable. (I'm sorry, when the thermometer says 106 and the index with the humidity pushes it up past 110-115, I am NOT going outside!)

While working on the five (5) large projects below, I also:

~ celebrated the four-day July Fourth holiday at home - minus the crowds and aggravation;
~ had DVD/movie marathons:
- including whole seasons of Drop Dead Diva,
- the first six Harry Potter movies in preparation for maybe finally watching the first half of the final movie and then going to the final, final Harry Potter movie,
- and Anne of Green Gables and Anne of Avonlea (*sigh* Gilbert *sigh*);
~ had very nice catch-up lunch at Bar Boulud and dinner at Alouette with visiting college friends;
~ wrote letters to my aunts, some of my great-aunts, and my honorary aunts in celebration of Auntie's Day;
~ and generally was a homebody dealing with paperwork, inventory, correspondence, and cleaning.

I also think I gave myself carpal tunnel. I know I definitely wore the color off of one of my aluminum hooks.

I made five large Diamond Crib Covers this month, working through 15 skeins of Bernat Baby Coordinates yarn. Their approximate dimensions are 45x34, they'll vary slightly in length:

ANA 2011-28: Baby Pink Diamond Crib Cover
(as of Oct. 2011, no longer available)

ANA 2011-29: Blue Bon Bon Diamond Crib Cover
(as of 08/11, no longer available)

ANA 2011-30: Lemon Custard Diamond Crib Cover

ANA 2011-31: Iced Mint Diamond Crib Cover

(best seen below)

(as of 04/2012, no longer available)

ANA 2011-32: Natural Diamond Crib Cover
(as of 05/2012, no longer available)

Five! Ouch. Time to move on to smaller objects.

And maybe to finish up some of the works "in-the-works," perhaps?

Still in progress:
2010: Multi-fiber chevron blanket2011: Potential Mobile of Hearst (created as part of ANA 2011-08 group)
Fancy Blue Scarf
Casual Rimmed Cap
As ever, if you see anything you'd like, just contact me for sizes, availability, and costs.

Coming SOON: You'll be able to purchase these via Auntie Nettie's Attic on etsy.com
Click here for a preview.

Photos of the Day: Summer's Bounty

Who doesn't love a Farmer's Market? We stumbled across this one last August in Logan Utah, in the park just meters away from my Utah childhood home.

Talk about grown locally. Some of the produce was from backyard gardens. Doesn't that "beet" all?

Of course, this being Utah, the land of industry and of Molly Mormon crafters, there were booths galore with quilted and stitched delights of all kinds. Many many an etsy.com shop were there in physical form.

Photos of the Day: Horse with No Name

Sadly, we just lost the singer, Dan Peek, who co-founded the band America in 1970. As a child of the 1970s, the refrain to A Horse With No Name was well known and I often break out singing it for no reason.

I especially end up singing it when I am reviewing this series of photos I took of a site-specific sculpture installation entitled The Mustangs, outside Snow Canyon in Ivins, Utah done by the artist Ed Hlavka, at his studio at the Kayenta Art Village.

For more about Ed Hlavka, click here. An article about the installation can be found here.

If you can't view the YouTube clip, go here: http://youtu.be/woP1ITeIQcI

Bet you can't get the song out of your head either. I miss songs where there is a) a narrative with an actual point, b) you can actually understand the lyrics, c) the lyrics are clean, and can d) harmonize - and the harmonies are excellently tight as can be.

Once a child of the 1970s, always a tiny bit of a flower child.

Happy Tenth Anniversary

It doesn't seem possible that it's been ten whole years since my baby brother got married. It just doesn't. Ten years. A couple of degrees. A few apartments. A house or two. Couple of cars. Three babies. And lots more grey hairs for J - but none for Christina. (How does she do it?!)

Technology has changed so much in ten years. I had to go back to photo albums - BOOKS! On.a. shelf! - to find print outs of pictures, taken with film and developed with chemicals, even. Pay no attention to a) the bad photos, or the b) snarky comments from a loving older sister.

Congrats you two crazy kids!
Here's to ten more years! Only infinity left to go.