just maryse

Deep Thoughts

for the past few weeks, i've been thinking of taking a blog break. officially. possibly giving up blogging all together. i've been finding that i don't have much to say, or rather what i do want to say people might not be so interested in reading about. and if that's the case, if i'm going to write stuff for no one else to read, i might as well go back to writing a journal. but then again, my experiences with journalling aren't all that positive and productive. when j and i were on the outs i told my therapist that i was keeping a journal but what i tended to write about just made me feel bad. so he said, "then don't do it then."  DUH!

anyway, that's kind of why i'm on the fence about continuing. craftwise, i'm not up too much. a little knitting, a little zoom loom weaving. this weekend i went to joann's fabric and bought some fabric to make skirts and a dress for my niece (you know the kind, with the smocking at the bust that you just have to seam up the side. bubblegum pink with hello kitty at the hem.)

my life isn't very exciting these days. i went to NHSW last weekend, but because google told me that i should go to the wrong place (fuck you google maps) a drive that should have taken me an hour and a half ended up taking 3 hours - heh. i ended up leaving the festival empty handed because now it's safe to say that i own all of the wools and yarns.

workwise i'm winding down. i have 2.5 months left at my current job. i have a lot of ends to tie up, but nothing new has landed on my desk, so things are generally slow. my guess is that when the people who have taken my existence for granted (not in a bad way) find out that i'm moving on, there will be a fury of "omg what will we do now?" my layoff is not a cost saving cut where my job will be done from now on by some poor bastard that already has too much to do, so i'm not bitter. the project is ending. my funding is over (yeah fuckers -- the federal government does create jobs -- you fucking conservative fucks). federal government cuts (fuck you congress and your fucking sequester) means that finding another job may take a little longer than i had previously hoped. oh well.  i can use the time off. (i am bitter about conservative fuckers though - just fyi).

the thing is, i'll need to be very structured with that time off. my last day at work is july 31. j and i are going to france in august. so i've decided to not seriously look for anything until labor day. thing is a proper job search can take a long time. so i'd really like to use this time wisely. i have general plans. but what i've learned over the years is that general plans don't work for me. i used to think it was because i was lazy, which i didn't care for. but lately i've been thinking that it's something much more concrete and possibly fixable. and that's something i hope to work on with my therapist. 

so that's briefly what's going on with me. see? boring. not at all fun.

by the way, it's still macro may.

Eye Candy Friday

for macro may.

 

these were all taken with a 4+ filter attached to a 50mm 1.8 lens.

 

Macro May!

oh April, where did you go?

so tomorrow is May 1 and that's the first day of Macro May.  this is year 5 and to play along all you have to do is take as many macros as you can and post them in the flickr Macro May group.

 

technically a macro is a photo where the actual object being photographed is smaller than it appears in the photograph.  traditionally we see lots of macros of flowers and insects.  but it's fun to take macros of every day things.  it's a great way to get out of photo taking rut.

you don't need fancy equipment either. a lot of point and shoots have a macro setting - the icon on nikon cameras is a flower.  and you can get macro lenses for your iphone.  google "macro photography phone" and a bunch of links pop up with ideas. 

if you have a DSLR like i do, there are of course plenty of macro lenses you can use, but they can be kind of spendy. a fun alternative and so much more friendly to the wallet are macro filters.  i have a set and think they can be a lot of fun. 

i was going to give you some links but c'mon you guys can google that shit ;).

anyway! play along! it's fun!

 

Patriot's Day 2013 - Better Late Than Never

it's been 10 days since the Boston Marathon Bombing.  one suspect dead, the other one caught and now at an infirmary at Fort Devens in Central Mass.

here's the post that i wrote the day after it happened but never posted.

************

i moved to Boston in 1986 just a few months after graduating from college. i had visited for the first time a couple of months earlier, falling immediately in love with this beautiful city.  for years, i would join friends to watch the boston marathon on patriots day at various points along the route. or i would walk through copley after work when the last of the runners would be coming through. the ones that would bring a tightness to your throat because you knew just by looking at them that they were not natural runners. but their effort was that much more poignant.  much more impressive to me than the elite runners that had come through hours before. anyway, these folks never made it to the finish line, because the race was stopped a good 3 or 4 hours.

i think that unless you've been in boston for the marathon, it's hard to imagine what the day means to us. sure it's the runners. and the baseball game. if you've become a littel hardened like me - heh - it's also the hassle of having to deal with all of these people and traffic getting to and from your job. but it's also our official first day of spring, regardless of the weather. it's also patriot's day. a day that celebrates freedom as it's the start of the Revolutionary War.  so here we are. 

my chest is tight with heartbreak for the people who were hurt yesterday.

*************

i never finished the post. i just spent the week when i wasn't at work, in front of the tv watching the constant coverage. last friday, when the authorities essentially closed boston, cambridge and watertown, i was at home, 35 miles away, safe, where life went on as usual, wishing i were back in boston. the neighborhoods affected - allston, brighton, watertown - were my old stomping grounds.  and i felt so alone.

i have a lot more thoughts about everything that has happened in the past week and a half but maybe they are for another blog post.

i'm feeling better though. just yesterday i honked at and then flipped off (only after he flipped me off first. i am not an animal) a fellow driver who cut me off on the way home. so you know, things are getting back to normal.

 

 

 

 

Knitting

over the weekend, i saw a sweater pattern that I fell in love with and it became imperative that i make it RIGHT AWAY.  this is huge people, because honestly i haven't made a sweater for myself in 10 years. give or take.

anyway, one thing that needs to happen is that i must use stash yarn. just this weekend, i was at windsor button and bought yarn that i really didn't need. but i did anyway. because you know, it's closing and everything and that's really sad and i'm sad and i loved that shop! where else could you buy red heart and madeline tosh yarn UNDER THE SAME ROOF!  (you can find both in my stash, but my stash IS NOT A STORE).  (for a while, in ravelry, i had people looking at my stash page - not the will trade or sell page - but my main page basically placing orders for this and that. )

i digress. anyway, i'm looking through the stash and trying to figure out what yarn to use. i sometimes have difficulty in choosing the right colors and always have to remind myself to edit because it's too easy for me to go nuts.

for now i'm not going to tell you which pattern it is. not until i make my final yarn selection post swatching.  i don't want anyone to talk me out of it.

 

Topflappen Friday!

I finished my potholders for the potholder swap a few days ago and I have to say I'm pretty happy with them. I struggled this year.  There was a lot of ugly crochet for awhile, but I think everything turned out ok.

here are the fronts.

 

 

 

and here are a few of the backs.

 

for a closer view of all of the variations you can take a look in my flickr stream or on my ravelry project page.

 

It's a Wrap

it's a slow process to build up any kind of business especially when you are like me and don't try very hard. heh. but sometime in January, Julia of MothHeaven asked me if I would be interested in shooting her latest design. before I could give myself a chance to chicken out, i said yes. and we made a plan.

Mindy is a cardigan/jacket with all sorts of cable-y goodness. it was a lot of fun to shoot because of all of the fantastic details.  some of my favorites:

 

i love the back cables. could be my favorite thing about this sweater. 

 

i also really like the back collar. you can wear it up or down, but i definitely prefer it up especially if you've got a nice long neck like julia here.

this one's one of my favorites of julia. i doesn't show the sweater as well, but she looks lovely. i think anyway.

this one i know is horrible. i didn't even bother editing it because there was no way i was going to use it. but it is funny. and it does document the one injury we had on the shoot. photography is dangerous! and that switchgrass crap behind her is sharp, yo.

anyway, that's about it.

have a good weekend everyone!

Wordless Wednesday

Eye Candy Friday

today's eye candy friday is all about potholders.

the potholder swap 2013 is underway and i've been doing all of the crochet. i struggled with a design idea for several weeks. i like to come up with something somewhat original and i just wasn't feeling it. and i wanted to use all of my scraps.  so i finally stopped stressing and decided to go simple.  what could be simpler than the often maligned but greatly loved by me granny square.

 

i've made 6 in total. that one with the red centers might be my favorite.

if you still want to play along, just go to the ravelry potholder group (and if you don't have a ravelry account, WHAT IN GOD'S NAME ARE YOU WAITING FOR?) for the details.

 

 

although i haven't recreated the wheel here, i will probably write up the pattern, but not in time for the potholder swap deadline. but there's plenty of other ideas out there.  so get on it!

 

i hope you are having a good friday.

Inspiration

i love stripes.

 

unrelated to the photo above, today is j's birthday and he's not really much of a birthday celebrator.  but i did note a little whine this morning when he noticed there wasn't a card for him this morning.  but it's all part of my evil plan. i got permission to surprise him with a cake this afternoon at his job.  heh. it's going to be awesome.

that's all.