Knives and Earthquakes (not together, one hopes)

Whew. What a week. I know I said that on Friday, but I thought I’d elaborate a bit. First up: KNIVES.

A week ago Friday I finally did something that I’ve wanted to do for a long time – I took a knife skills class!  I was super excited. After some persuasion I managed to get Jeff to come as well, because I knew he would be willing to be my sous chef if he knew how to be a pro about. I think we’re both getting new knives.  He wants the Shun you see on the left, and I want the middle knife. I have a chef’s knife already that I’m quite fond of, but I liked the flat edge of that one. I took the class (3+ hours jam packed with info) at Berkeley’s Kitchen on Fire with chef MikeC. I wish I could pass on every last bit of information to you guys, but um … well, he DOES have a DVD, I suppose. Seriously, it was a great class, the guy’s a great teacher, funny and yet very seriously knowledgeable about his subject.

I will say, after learning the techniques, that I don’t think I know anyone who wields a knife properly. Which is sad, because it’s so much faster and safer!

I spent today helping my brother move out of his apartment. He’s experiencing a few major life changes, both positive and negative, and I’m very happy to be able to be nearby so that I can help. I’m super pleased to report that he is going to graduate school next fall at the University of Nevada Reno to earn his master’s degree in environmental planning and policy, specializing in GIS use.  The cherry blossoms in the picture above are from outside his window in Placerville – it’s spring!  I will miss going up there to visit him, but I am really happy he’s going in a positive direction in his life, and I’m sure I’ll make it back up there on my own anyway.

I continue to spend time finishing items for the kitchen/dining area. As you can see above, the benches are nearly done, and I have a lot of commentary on building furniture in my head for another post. We have one coat of paint to apply and they’ll be ready for use. I’m sewing with piping for the first time for the bench cushions, which is giving me palpitations. I’m terrified I’m going to do this terribly wrong, but I’m forging ahead anyway. I have a seam ripper, after all. I don’t know how to build furniture either, and that seems to be going well despite all the many things that could go poorly. I’m definitely ready for these projects to be over, though. I’d like to move onto something else.

I, along with many others, have been watching the news from Japan about the earthquakes and tsunamis with horror and sadness. The news just isn’t getting any better. Like many others, I’ve donated to the Red Cross, and it’s really all that I can think to do. I went to bed Thursday night extremely grateful to be living in an earthquake-safe apartment building and working in a retrofitted earthquake-standard office. It’s not everything, but … when you live less than a mile from the not-insignificant Hayward fault, it’s hard to hear about massive earthquakes and not personalize those thoughts just a wee tiny bit.

Flickr user Dr_Speed (via Berkleyside) caught the photo above of the tsunami rolling through San Francisco Bay on Friday. That’s SF in the background and the Bay Bridge crossing the water. The Alameda docks are on the left and Emeryville (just south of Berkeley) is in the foreground. There’s also a video from the same vantage point. Not so big, right? Kinda slow. Now realize that wave has traveled more than 5,000 miles. Unbelievable.

With the exception of the tsunami photo these pictures are from Instagram – three weeks ago I decided to start a 365 project, and those photos are from that series. For those of you unfamiliar with this phenomenon, I watched several people on Flickr do one of these in various ways. Basically you take a picture every day for a year, often of yourself, and post it. Some people do a 52-week version. I’d wanted to do one, but never thought I’d keep up with it until I started using with Instagram on my iPhone. You take a picture and it applies an effect to it (or not), imitating a lomography camera or a 60s or 70s picture, or various other vintage and color filters. Since I usually have my phone with me, it’s simple to remember to find something worth looking at from my daily life and photograph it.

I’m hoping that this project reminds me to keep a sharp eye on what’s amazing and noteworthy around me in my daily life, instead of just letting the increasingly familiar landscape fade into sameness. Moving to a new place opens your eyes in so many ways, and I’d like to keep the magic of that viewpoint with me as long as I can.

Off to bed! I’m sure with the time change the morning is going to see unbearably early for this night owl.

The Truth About Memory

My last two completed January projects were started when I lived in south Austin, and since I moved out of there in October 2009, these finishes are a long time coming. This is my third finished small quilt, one of a set of four quilts in progress about thoughts I had while I lived in Austin about the fragility of life. Due to various circumstances, I spent a lot of time living with that thought, and eventually decided that I wanted to try to make things that expressed aspects of that theme, to give some sort of voice to how I thought about it all.

This quilt is called The Truth About Memory. For me the fragility of memory is wrapped up in the idea of the fragility of life. When you lose someone, there are pictures and belongings, but what you really have is your memories. It’s the same with our own pasts – as we move through the linear progression of life we lose pieces of who we used to be and create new pieces, and our memories are the layers that create the present.

technically, this is looking back through time …

The trouble is that memory is fragile, just notoriously faulty neural pathways. As a long-term journal keeper, I know how unreliable memory can be. I can’t tell you how often I’ve realized my version of a memory is wrong, or the details are glossed over, the years were switched, I forgot names and places. Some events disappear. Illness, age and stress all contribute to this ongoing distortion and loss. Sometimes that’s good, sometimes not so much.

these little lines represent confusion …

This quilt is meant to represent pseudo-linear memory. The silk is primary experience/event memory, and shows how recall is sometimes good and sometimes twisted or incomplete. The embroidery is little memory threads, a glimpse, a noise or smell, small anecdotes, fuzzy scraps of information, or simply pathways linking one stream of memory to another. Lines twist, appear and disappear at random.

This visualization is a combination of what I think when I hear about “neural pathways” plus my personal experience of unreliable memory. Also shown is that I realize my clearest memories are those with emotional ties. For example, my first memory is from age 14 months when my brother came home from the hospital. I remember being out in front of our house looking down at his little face. It’s just one simple picture in my mind, but 34 years later it’s still with me.

hand-stitching on the back of the binding

So what’s here is real memories that are essentially indecipherable to anyone but me, because I doubt anyone else thinks of it quite like this.

Details: The backing is oatmeal linen with appliqued strips of pieced kimono silks. The embroidery is DMC variegated pearl cotton in one of the peach/brown colors (4124 maybe? I lost the tags) and ivory. It’s machine appliqued, hand embroidered. The binding is machine sewn on the front but the back and corners are hand-tacked.

The cat is now sleeping on top of it, so I guess she approves.

Winter Storm

If you’re ever down in Monterey, I recommend Asilomar Beach. It’s one of the prettiest beaches that I’ve been to. In winter, anyway. It’s probably not bad in summer, either, but the waves won’t be as fierce, and the sky won’t be as brooding. I think I rather prefer days like this on the beach to sunny, warm days. The ocean just seems to have more personality during the winter, more insistence. I wanted to sit there all day and watch the waves and birds and anemones, but it rained and I had to go back so I could go to work.

If you go up the road a bit, there’s another beach (closed to the public) that’s reserved for harbor seals. Despite chilly rain, these fat seals were perfectly content to lie on the sand and sleep (and wallow). I’m always amazed at how well animals are adapted to their environments. I saw a few seals playing in the water, and one baby seal who tried to beach himself using the waves and ended up facing back out to sea. He didn’t seem worried.

Just two more days of work to survive, and then I have a whole week off. I’m going to enjoy the hell out of all of those days. I have been trying not to bog myself down with too many plans, to not get to a point where I’m stressed about how much I have to do, or think about that bag full of stuff from Home Depot that I need to do something with. I’m hoping one entire day involves sitting on the couch drinking hot tea wrapped in a blanket watching movies and crocheting. I’ve gotten another 20 hexagons completed on my blanket, but the shawl I began in November languishes, and most of my other sewing projects are currently stuffed untidily and sadly into a grocery bag.

At least the sewing machine is now usable. That hasn’t been true for four months. I’d like to spend another entire day sewing next week, maybe two. I’m close to having everything put away, giving me plenty of room to work. I arranged my fabrics on a shelf in rainbow color order the other night, and it was lovely to see all of them again. I am pulling some out, for I have curtains and cushions to make, a jacket to finish, a quilt to complete. I did a lot of sewing work last year that I never talked about here, things that I started but didn’t finish because of time constraints.

I wish I had caught the clear green-blue of these waves better as they danced around the rocks, but the day was too dark, and the rain and wind much too insistent. Storms like these, and the dark and cold, make me want to take a nap. I find storms oddly comforting. I could have curled up in the car and listened to the rain and had the best sleep of my life, I think.

This will be my last post until next week, so I hope you and yours have a good holiday and safe travels, if that’s what you’re doing. I neglected to wish anyone a happy Hanukkah, which has now long since passed. I personally favor the solstice as a winter marker, but that’s also now past. Either way, have a lovely weekend.