Posie Gets Cozy

The Tiny Bit

Mmm, home alone. Just me, coffee, cats, and a corgi. I like it. It felt so good to get out of the house last night and go to Melissa’s, I could hardly wait. I was all dressed up at least an hour before I needed to leave, waiting with only my pie, my present, and the beer for Andy to get home. He was late, so I had another half-hour where I was just waiting in the quiet house, thinking. Add that to the half-hour I spent in the dentist’s chair after my teeth had been cleaned, waiting for the dentist to come in and tell me about my cracked filling. Sitting in the dentist’s chair for a half-hour with no magazine, nothing to look at but scary plaque posters, dental machinery (equally scary), dentist’s lamp (eeeew, creepy), or out the window, which from that chair-tilted angle revealed not a single tree branch, rooftop, or chimney, but just an expanse of wispy-clouded sky, you just relax. When she finally came in, she practically had to wake me up, I was so drowsy and vegged out. So all-told I had about two hours, two whole hours, of quiet solitude in which to ponder. Even though I said I wouldn’t think anymore. (I am stopping after this, seriously.)

I went to the library on Wednesday to get the essay I mentioned, Gary Saul Morson’s "Prosaics: An Approach to the Humanities" from volume 57 (1988) of American Scholar. This is an essay that’s available on-line as long as your local library subscribes to a periodical data-base and makes it available to you as a library card holder — Multnomah County library does, which is pretty cool; you enter your library card number on their web site and then have access to the stuff. (Don’t write and ask me how to do it, though — just be brave and give it a try, and if you can’t figure it out call them and ask, because they get paid to answer.) But otherwise you can walk right up to your local librarian who is just waiting for you to say, "Hi, I'm a taxpayer and I need to read this, please." And then in about two seconds she will print it out for you. And you will say, "My God, why do I never come here??? This place is awesome!!!"

Anyway, that is how you can read the article, which is well worth doing because I find its implications for novel-readers totally fascinating, and its insights for us crafty bloggers weirdly prescient. This will, of course, be a shallow interpretation of an exponentially much-better-thinker-than-I-am’s idea. As I mentioned, this essay is just one of two I’ve carried around with me from town to town over the past fifteen years (the other is Jonathan Franzen’s manifesto "Perchance to Dream: In an Age of Images, a Reason to Write Novels" from Harper’s, April 1996 — you could get that one while you’re at the library, too). I was sort of right, when I was remembering it here, though I barely scratched the surface and am about to barely scratch it again (go read it, seriously). But anyway, Prosaics, says Morson, is "a way of thinking about human events that focuses on the ordinary, messy, quotidian facts of daily life — in short, on the prosaic."

But the idea is that it’s not just about having mess, it’s not that having things messy makes you a better person or something, as I hope I didn’t imply. It’s that the natural state of the world is mess (both literal and theoretical, I think) and what is interesting about it — what is, in fact, profound about it — are the efforts we make to tidy it, continuously, in a million little ways resulting in a million "tiny alterations of consciousness." It’s the fabric — the background — created by the result of those efforts that, although not necessarily dramatic, is important, and maybe even the whole point.

I wrote a while ago that I hadn’t "seen" things this way before my accident, but clearly I had at least read of them being so, in this essay, years before. I guess what I meant was that I hadn't "known" them this way, before. Though the moment of the accident was a major event, it was a random disaster, tinged with the regret of negligence, but with its own vaguely inevitable bearing. The cleanup, however, was comprised of a hundred million intentional gestures, from scalpel-wielding to tear-drying to "get-well-Alicia"-letter-writing, made in effort to close the wound. I saw the janitor’s efforts and the surgeon’s, then. It all seemed the same, and equally neccessary, to me. My desperation required every form of effort — janitorial, social, medical — in order for it to be salved. I remember once after I had returned home but was still in bed, I had a visiting nurse coming to change the dressings twice a day, and one morning when she was there a bird flew into the kitchen. Panicked, it flapped through the apartment. I became hysterical, from my bed, and bawled, "Oh no! Oh no!" She left my foot to catch the bird and throw it back out the window as I cried. I don’t even know why I was crying; she came back in (after having washed her hands of course), shaken, then continued to dab away at my poor, shredded foot. One thing at a time. It could be no other way. The bird was free. My foot looked good that day. Dab dab dab, smile. Those moments are the things I remember and, at the end of the day, the things that changed me more than the truck itself. Morson says:

"Most historians and philosophers tend to focus on the big events — on wars, revolutions, dramatic incidents, critical choices, and decisive encounters. Individual people, too, tend to tell themselves the story of their lives in terms of exceptional events and big decisions. But what if the important events are not the great ones, but the infinitely numerous and apparently inconsequential ordinary ones, which, taken together, are far more effective and significant? . . ."

And this:

"It is often the small items in the background of old photographs that most powerfully evoke elusive memories of the past. The things barely noticed at the time and included only by chance may best preserve the feeling of life as it was lived. The furniture long ago discarded, a spot on the wall, a picture we had long ignored but that now suggests the habitual life we lived beneath it — these small items remind us of how it felt to live in a room. The intended subject of a photograph can seem much less important in comparison with its background; and perhaps that is one reason why professional photos without a background so often seem to miss the very point of photography."

The characters of Leo Tolstoy (who Morson considers to be perhaps the greatest prosaic thinker) "achieve wisdom when they learn not to seek the great and poetic but to appreciate the small and prosaic," when they learn that the truths they seek are "hidden in plain view" like a picture on a wall we fail to notice though we "see" it every day. They learn that meaning is not "deep and distant, but here and everywhere." Selfhood is not something to be discovered but made, "an aggregate of habits, contingent facts, and clusters of order that continually interact with one another and with the hundred million diverse facts of daily life. . . . Our choices are shaped by the whole climate of our minds, which themselves result from countless small decisions at ordinary moments."

In participating in each "ordinary moment" we develop the habit of evaluating and correcting our thoughts in small, undramatic ways. Nevertheless, the moment — and the cumulative effect of these moments — matters. Chekhov, he says, always attributes ruined lives to daily pettiness and "petty squabbles." A reason, perhaps, to always let in someone trying to merge, to smile at the person who rings up your Big Gulp, to treat telemarketers with cheer instead of contempt? Countless small decisions at ordinary moments. You can change who you are with every one.

Morson says that of all literary forms, novels are best able to capture the messiness of the world, and in the great ones, "the texture of daily life is described with a richness, depth, and attention to contingent particulars that no other form of thought or literary genre offers. In novels we see moral decisions made moment to moment by inexhaustible complex characters in unrepeatable social situations at particular historical times; and we see that the value of these decisions cannot be abstracted from these specifics." Novels provide the details of peoples’ thought processes and experiences "thickly," and as we read them, we practice our reactions to particular kinds of people and situations. "Practice," says Morson, "produces habits that may precede, preclude, or preform conscious moral judgments in daily life." Novels for me, at least, have always been my religion.

It’s always been a curious phenomenon to me why certain books speak so strongly to certain people, and not at all to others. Apparently, there are a million infinitesimal reasons, specific and particular to each of us. (It also helps explain why it’s so impossible to tell someone else "what the book’s about," or why you liked it — only the process of reading it can really serve to say "why," and therein lies the paradox, no? Book reviewers and dust-jacket-copy writers would be unemployed.) Someone in the comments mentioned recently that they always watch movies to see what’s going on in the background. I do this too, and it’s why I almost never, ever remember the "plot" of anything, and I can almost never tell you "whodunit," though I can probably tell you what her wallpaper looked like, and if I liked her clothes, and whether the tone of her voice pleased me or put me off, or whether I thought she should’ve apologized, or been kinder there, whether she tried and failed — and all of those things are different than the things that you’d notice (and they are always different than the things Andy notices, and yet we are perfect for each other, etc., and how strange! and yet how not!) — but we each, we all, have our own things. (You see here, Jane, that I really do still love you even if you hated Prep!)

I don’t know exactly how blogs are like novels in all of this — I wouldn’t presume to know and I’m getting tired now and I bet you are too, but it’s somehow. I just know I’m happy to write mine, and happy to read others’, eager to see what’s in the corners of your homes, willing to show you mine, and I expect that the reasons why have everything to do with Prosaics, and my sincere attempts to be someone, however flawed and spastic, who seeks to improve, who starts with and believes in the small — and I bet you are, too, though our "smalls" are similar yet as varied as snowflakes. Morson says:

"Of course it is easier to remember the conclusion, summary, or interpretation of a work than the whole process of reading it. But if prosaics is right, then the process itself affects us as least as much, for good or ill. When Tolstoy wrote that the only way he could tell what Anna Karenina was about would be to rewrite it, he was, I think, stressing not the intricacy of his text as purely formal artifact, but rather the complexity of reading as a series of small decisions and moment-to-moment judgments. This process is not just indispensable to the point of the book; it is the point of the book. Like true life, art begins where the tiny bit begins."

Now, let's all go outside!

Simply Green-ish, Me?

Do you know Danny Seo? I know some of you do. At only 29, he is a most-illustrious and inspiring fellow! An "environmental lifestyle" expert, he promotes a creative, stylish, and eco-friendly way of living that he calls "simply green." I like it.

The very talented and regularly hilarious Felicia Sullivan from Harper Collins sent me a couple of Danny's books, Simply Green Parties and Simply Green Giving, a few weeks ago. I'll admit that I was slightly nervous; I don't really consider myself environmentally friendly. I mean [backpedaling furiously], I don't consider myself unfriendly, not consciously mean or anything like that. But in all the small ways that we have to make choices about what we buy, use, drive, wear, and eat, I will say that I am only vaguely motivated by environmental friendliness. I am more often motivated by something more like "how many things can I manage to worry about and still get what I need to get done, done." I do recycle faithfully, and shop as much as possible at local, independent retailers, and thrift-shop regularly, and occasionally make stuff out of other stuff. But I don't ride my bike anywhere and I have air-conditioning and I eat meat and I am completely baffled about whether to choose "paper" or "plastic" when I've filled up my own brought-from-home shopping bag at the grocery store. And I have no doubt that I make myriad decisions ignorant of their environmental impact all the time. I'm not proud of it; nor do I think I'm particularly unusual. Nevertheless, I do like to think of myself as someone who is interested in actively living a relatively "low-impact" lifestyle, and I am interested, like many of you, in simplifying my life even further, and making deliberate choices about the potential effects of my actions on a larger scale.

So, anyway. Anyway. I was vaguely nervous about receiving the books. I didn't tell Felicia that I was worried she was, er, sending them to the wrong person. I was ready (good lapsed Catholic) to feel more chagrined than inspired, somehow. WRONG. I needn't have had any fear.

Danny Seo is a regular guy, who lives in the regular world. When he writes I feel like he is talking to me, a person who also lives in the regular world, a person full of good intentions but with little money, a finite amount of energy, an imperfect understanding of everything, with forty-five things going on at any given time — and he is talking to me in a completely accessible way. The guy is so nice. Nevertheless, he has made it his mission to understand how the cumulative effect of our small actions yields big results, in ways both good and bad, and he explains it in such a friendly, understanding voice that you come away from the books feeling energized, inspired, and motivated. His voice is that of a very encouraging, very down-to-earth (no pun intended, really) friend who believes I have potential. Who knew I was doing so many things right? Who knew I could so easily be doing so many more?

These books, full of clever, simple projects for entertaining and gift-giving, have a message that goes beyond the collection of charming, individual ideas. All the beautiful (digital) photos are shot with found or thrifted props at Danny's house, and the book itself has been produced with environmentally friendly materials. (There is also something really refreshing about all of it coming from a guy's perspective, I must say.) In a lot of ways, the books do what our favorite blogs do (and Danny has a new blog, too): They show you how to make cool things, and talk about the stories behind the things — but they also include many thoughtful sidebars and resources, along with specific ways to easily become more involved in important environmental causes, and tips to help us develop the habits of conscious eco-friendly living in the smallest of ways. Just knowing about some of them means I will do them.

Felicia, you smarty; turns out you sent the books to the right person after all. Thank you!

We Travel the World, via Aimee

A few weeks ago one of our very best friends, Aimee, brought me the birthday present she'd been working on for . . . years. I don't remember for how long. She had, several times, every time a birthday for either one of us rolled around, insisted that she was working on something great for me, and, every time, I would insist that I didn't need anything, she should not trouble herself to give me anything other than a smile! You know, you have to say that kind of stuff. But honestly, I felt she was being tortured by my birthday present, which, of course -- I don't want my birthday presents becoming emissaries of pain and suffering, really. But, no, she had something for me; recently she finished it, and brought it over. When I saw it, I cried.

It's a handmade book called Alicia and Andy Abroad, designed, written, and illustrated by Aimee. Each illustration is a tiny original watercolor. Each "stamp" is hand-drawn. Each rhyme (which Aimee said was the hardest part of the whole thing) was charmingly, adorably, wonderfully invented by Aimee. Here's the book:

A is Alicia and Andrew abroad
L is for Lisbon which they did belaud

Iis the ink on the postcards they penned
C is the catacombs through which they did wend

Iis the ice on the dikes they did skate
A is the amir they met while they ate

A is for Audrey who bought French couture
N is the ne'er-do-well that she did allure

D is the duomo they saw through a scope
A is the audience they had with the Pope

N is the nightcap they sipped at the lake
D is the duchess who served them a cake

R is the relic on view in the tomb
E is for Exmoor where it was exhumed

W is The Wilhelm a'sail in the foam
P is for Portland where they'll soon be home

I posted this today because Aimee is flying home from a trip to China as I write this, and I'm thinking about her, traveling. Aimee claims she has borrowed heavily from the style of Edward Gorey, but in my mind this book is completely original. Each little watercolor is amazing. I am particularly fond of the many stylish hats and outfits Aimee has put me in. And her rendition of Miss Audrey is absolutely perfect. It's hard for me to talk about the book because I'm overwhelmed by it, and , obviously, it speaks for itself, I know.

Someone wrote to me recently and asked me to talk about inspiration, particularly finding inspiration after struggling with a creative block. When I am struggling -- not just with crafting inspiration, or work inspiration, but even life inspiration -- one thing that I do is find a project with boundaries, something that won't leave me wafting about for a scheme, something that allows me to relax into what's required, instead of floundering in a sea of endless opportunity, overwhelmed. Today, if I were feeling unsure of what to do -- not just what to make, but what to do -- I might make start a little book just like this, for someone special. I would write rhymes, and paint tiny pictures of fantastic places and things. I would dream some dreams for my friend, and make them real for her on the pages.

It All Awaits

Wow. Nothing to do today. Wow.

Nothing to do today.

Wow.

Wow. Is it possible? Has it even happened before? Not lately. I'm taking the whole day off. Of course, I feel like total crap and have a cold again -- AGAIN! -- so it hardly seems possible to do more than nothing, but still -- it's kind of nice to feel like crap without the added pressure of knowing that you're supposed to be somewhere else doing something else for somebody else who was counting on you. I don't think anyone's counting on me for anything today, thank God. And I really apologize to anyone who came into the store yesterday and had to see me in real life with a nose as red as a maraschino cherry and having a coughing fit that would've terrified a small child. I don't think there were any small children in there, but it was hard to see through the tears in my eyes that are apparently caused when your air supply is cut off due to extreme coughing. I shouldn't have been there. I'm so sorry.

So, I'm going to sit here and watch my TiVo-ed episodes of Barefoot Contessa. Last weekend when I was feeling zonkered before my party even started, and begged for some pasta salad recipes (and thank you again for those -- gosh, that was so nice, and there are some great recipes in there that I really appreciate you taking the time to offer!) several people mentioned the BC (including one of my favorite comments, from MaryEllen, who said, "If you don't already own the Barefoot Contessa cookbooks, please pull yourself together and dash to the store to buy the first . . ." ). I just started watching her show regularly this spring and I am loving it!

Now, you know I love Nigella. No TV chef can rival my love for Nigella. (And my source for all that I need to know about anything, Lesley, tells me that Nigella is filming another TV show based on Feast for the Food Network for the fall -- and I feel like someone else mentioned this somewhere, too, but I can't remember who? -- nevertheless, yay!) But I have to say, I am so loving Ina Garten lately, too -- not in the least because, I'm sorry, but every single thing she makes looks delicious. And I think I have a bit of a picky palate. Not in a thoughtful, educated, good way (is there ever a good way?) but in, like, the palate-of-a-first-grader way. In the just-plain-vanilla-for-me-please way. In the elbow-macaroni-with-butter-and-no-black-pepper-for-dinner way. In the only-Mrs. Butterworth's -ever-only-her way. Like, I personally can't tolerate vinegar, even balsamic vinegar (which, as with flying, is a very inconvenient thing to not like, let me tell you), but when I see Ina make something with vinegar I always feel like I'm going to like it. For instance. Also, that cold, creamy shrimp salad the other day? Are you kidding me? I want to marry it, and I haven't even tasted it. When my nose clears up I will taste it and then I will probably marry it. Or just admire it lovingly with my head tilted and my hand over my heart, the way I do with the creature I've already married. Andy Paulson and shrimp salad seems like a great life. Anyway. Nevermind. I'm halfway done here, don't worry.

I also really like her, I think. I mean, one of the things that I love about Nigella is that her approach is sort of the opposite of Martha Stewart's in that it's not about "perfection" -- and I must say, of course I love Martha, or I love Martha's work (I'm not sure I would love Martha herself  -- I get very uncomfortable when I see her on television, for some reason, and always have to watch with my hand over my eyes because I feel like she is often kind of weirdly rude to people, and also constantly interrupts them), but I do just start twitching whenever she says, "Perfect! Make sure it's perfect!" And I'm thinking, "Perfect? NO! There is no perfect! Hasn't anyone ever told her that there is no such thing as perfect? Why does she keep droning on about something as passe as perfection? What does perfection have to do with anything? Aaagh!" God, it drives me insane. (Of course, she is clearly quite imperfect herself. But then, we, around here, do not require people to be perfect, we prefer them to be chock-full of imperfections, really.) I mean, honestly -- I think that whole perfection concept is such a turnoff, and implies somehow that if you can't do it perfectly, you might as well not do it, and that's just crap. (Unless, of course, you're like a brain surgeon or a tattoo artist or a contact-lens-maker or something, and then we are hoping that you are a natural or practised perfectionist.) But around the house, and in life generally? Just do it, man. Do it as well as you can. Whether it's perfect or not is so irrelevant. My natural sympathies have always been much more in accordance with Nigella's approach -- do it, live it, love it. Now while you can, while it's there to be done. And Ina, though not as big of a slob as Nigella, cooks like a normal person (though she has a more beautiful kitchen and much, much nicer equipment than a normal person) and that's the kind of role model I need. I even like Ina's nervous chuckle -- I mean, she just feels like a normal person who has something to offer and tries her best, and I herald that. And is that the cutest picture of her up there, or what? Adorable sense of joy on her face. Then again, she's in a bakery, in Paris, what's not to like.

Amazingly, I haven't gotten any of her cookbooks yet. Do you know why? Because my cookbook shelf is full to bursting. Yuck. So I must thin first, in keeping with my efforts to be the new-and-improved-Organized-Alicia. Who wants some cookbooks. Just kidding. It's hard to get rid of cookbooks. They're reference books. Maybe the basement. Anyway. I'm doing that today, and then if I feel better this afternoon, I going to go up the road to the bookstore and bring home a little prezzie for myself.

What I'm trying to say is that I'm excited, because I have not seen all her episodes, I have not even seen her books in real life, I've just looked at her web site for the first time today -- and it all awaits. I love that feeling.

A Midwestern Girl . . .

. . . I'll always be. Portlanders, did you feel that humidity yesterday? How the rain was wet (er, usually is) yet warm, as it rarely is in the Northwest? That's what Midwestern summer feels like, and I miss it. In the Midwest it's pouring rain and you're still hot. You gotta love that. This is my new Midwestern-summer/sleeping-porch bookbag, and one of my favorite Midwestern girl-books, Thimble Summer, by Elizabeth Enright.

I made the bag yesterday, while the warm rain incessantly dropped down outside the studio. I had all the doors and windows open, and Maloy (our resident bluejay) hung out all afternoon on the birdbath, the bird feeder, the table, the pergola, the tree, the herb garden, the sidewalk -- he is always around, every day, all day. I've never had a wild pet before, ever. But I really think he is here to stay. I'm totally into this. I feel like he and Bridget, our little scrappy calico kitters, are very evenly matched, so I don't even have the usual bird anxiety I do with all the stalking felines in our yard. This bird actually hangs out on the sidewalk with a cat or dog only several feet away. It's so bizarre. It really is like they're all playing with each other.

It was lovely in the studio, my first real day of crafting in there since the big barfola and subsequent mop-up. The bags are made of the these sheets. I got the idea for the little layers of pleats from a Japanese craft book (ISBN 4-07-246480-5). I wanted a big bag, big enough to carry all my books home from the library, and a soft, floppy, summery sort of bag that would sort of suggest the coolness of clean sheets after too much sun.

When I go to the library these days, I don't browse, I don't think -- I do like a great arm-sweep across a shelf and tumble as many tomes as fit into a vessel. Not really, but sort of. I get as much as I can carry, and give them a good lookover when I get home. Hence, the need for an extra-roomy bag to carry the unedited selection of takeaways. I usually only read a fraction of what I get, but I love having the chance to leisurely try it all out, before I commit. I have no problem whatsoever saying "no" to books after a few pages. When I was a child, I went to this library several times a week in the summer. Sometimes I sat in it all day, because it was air-conditioned and had big traditional armchairs and living-room-like reading room and it was always uncrowded and quiet. Sometimes I got my haul and took it straight to the tennis club (across the street from the library), and laid out at the pool, reading, from 11 a.m. until 4 p.m., when swim team started. I was one very tan Italian-American child. When I got home I read flat out on my bed, often the only place in the house that one had to oneself, until it got cool enough to fall asleep, and often that was very, very late, if at all. But I miss that sometimes, too. Reading and sweating feels like home to me. I think I'm homesick, because I can't stop thinking about it, and no normal person misses that kind of heat.

This bag is made entirely of vintage sheets in groovy, mellow florals. Most of them look 60s-70s to me, which is what I was going for. Sheets that have been washed and washed and washed have that smooth, silky floppiness that is so nice. As I was ironing I would swear they even smelled like childhood -- like laundry and heat and calamine lotion -- maybe it's the little bit of polyester that must be in everything from the 70s. I put a pocket inside for pencils, paperback, and library card. I used lots of different fabrics, and left the pieces un-stabilized, so that the whole thing would be floppy and light. The only thing I worry about is the fabric holding up at the handle points when there are a lot of books in the bag. I reinforced them with weight-bearing zig-zag stitches, but I'm gonna load up this baby tomorrow and haul it around with me and see how it survives before I make the rest. I'm also not completely happy with the rickrack trim, which hides the unfinished edge of the first pleat. Next ones will have a separate piece of fabric stitched in a strip straight across. I think that will be better. The rickrack is just a little too much.

Do you know about Thimble Summer? Remember this, dear Martha P.? You were the only person I knew who had loved it, too. I bought this copy from Alibris several years ago, and I notice that it was reissued fairly recently in paperback with new illustrations, etc. But for me, the first edition is definitely what you want. It's the story of Wisconsin farmgirl Garnet, who finds a thimble she is sure is magic when a much-longed-for thunderstorm happens the night of the discovery. She spends the summer having adventures (including getting locked in the library with her friend Citronella and hitchhiking to a nearby town by herself -- I guess nine-year-old farmgirls did things like that in the 30s) ending with the county fair in September.  It's such a sweet book. I reread it this week and I think I love it more now than I did then. It won the Newberry Medal in 1939. The illustrations are so nice. They have a loose, unfussy, naive quality that just feels perfect.

I've got a lot more to do! This week was about catch up, and I still didn't get to everything. It's so irritating that I can't get ahead. It felt like a serious luxury to work on this bag yesterday. These will eventually, along with Friendly Birds, and Cagelets, and new Button Bobbies and Sock Critters, be available on the site in the coming weeks. I decided that I won't update the Posie site until I'm fairly far through all the things I'm working on; what happens is that I update it a little bit, and stuff sells, and then I spend several days packing it all up, etc., and it kind of messes up my groove. I just want to sew, man. Sew and read. No time to read. Just sew. Oh, and the Margaret Drabble is coming to you, lady Jane. Another one of my faves.

Wall of Charm

My friend from college, Jeanne Marie, offered me some books to supplement the Summer Reading List (which, let's face it, I am not too far through. By the time I crawl into bed every night lately, it is only mere minutes before I am snoozing, completely zonked out. But I aim to change that, since it is, amazingly almost June -- can't believe that -- so many books, so little time!). Anyway, JM was planning to send the books, and then she casually asked if I would like some old hankies that she had inherited through various means. I said (of course I said) Yes, please! I finally had a chance to open the box yesterday and completely flipped over these babies. (Oh, and the books are great, too [wink] -- thanks JM!) So, I need to check the comments on this post for framing ideas again, as this haul is going to be promptly installed in the downstairs hallway, along with the others I have. I'm loving these. So psyched here. So very psyched. Thanks for thinking of me, Jeanne Marie. And I promise I will be good and read something someday, too.

Did anyone watch the Nigella Lawson biography on the Biography channel last night? Were you as confused by the narrator's voice as I was? Was he not making it sound like a parody of Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous, or something? It was so bizarre. I watch Biography all the time and I've never heard that narrator before. Anyway, not important. I am completely fascinated and very moved by Nigella Lawson. This is the second biography I've watched about Nigella, and she actually spoke throughout most of this one. She says things like, "I always worry now that if children are too happy, they'll never read." I've never heard anyone actually say this. I think she could probably say anything and I'd listen. I have all her cookbooks, and I actually read them. I mean, I cook out of them, but I just drag them upstairs and read them page by page, too. I've learned a lot from Nigella. She believes in grabbing whatever happiness life allows, I think. I'm glad she's shared her story and herself with us. I wish she'd have a show again. I miss looking at her house.

Wow -- is that the sun I see here in Portland this morning, instead of torrentially downpouring rain? My peonies are smashed like fallen pavlovas (a Nigella word) all over the front lawn. Poor girls. I forgot to put those corset things around them again. I think Nigella's waist naturally is that small.

First Rose (Just Start)

Gosh, well you guys took yesterday's admission really, really well -- thank you for understanding! -- though Blair was a little disappointed at the degree of difficulty of that whole confession, which I thought was very nice of her. I'll admit maybe I was a tad dramatic. But that is my special Alicia way.

Nevertheless, I started thinking about creative blogs in general last night, and what I like about them. What I like about them most of all is how you can ultimately, eventually, "hear" people in them, maybe even hear them in a way you wouldn't necessarily hear them in real life, somehow, and watch their travels near and far. Don't we read novels for the same reason -- to find out how it was for them? To see how it was, might have been, maybe will be for us? I want to know. And my favorite blogs are not the ones that are most pretty, or informative, or most prolific -- they're the ones that have a voice. The ones where the people behind them sort of shine past the photos or the punctuation and grammar (so what about that anyway -- never let that stop you) or the crafts or any of that stuff -- I like voices. I like thinking, "Oh, she's gentle, " or "Bah! She's hilarious!" or "Wow -- how thoughtful," or "Mmm -- I see now," when I hear people -- and then I like it when those impressions grow and layer, like puff pastry, into something thrilling and full. I like watching people discover things, I like how the blog changes and develops by sheer virtue of  its happening at all, those magic moments when someone discovers something, understands something. When I used to write short stories, there would often be this point when the magic happened. You'd be writing (hammering) along, thinking you were going in one direction, when all of a sudden you'd feel this force enter the room, and you'd be channeling instead of writing, the way made clear, the old ideas suddenly facile and incomplete, the new ones crystallizing ahead of you as you scribbled to keep up. Then: You've gotten to somewhere new, a place you don't know, you can't know, when you start.

Have you ever read people's first blog posts? The stilted, brittle "Well, here I go, I don't really know where to start, er. . . . Is this thing on?" Every single one I've ever read feels like that, though in no time, the endeavor seems to find a rhythm, however shallow at first, and a momentum that encourages its author to continue, audience or not. An audience is nice, though it's not about that. (And, weirdly, there always is an audience, no matter how small or invisible, which I find strange and fascinating and reassuring -- you are not alone.) But a private notebook works, too.

Audience or not, I think there is every reason in the world to do it, just to see where it goes -- take a crap picture, take a good picture, don't take a picture, say something stupid, say something smart -- who cares. It's all for you, baby. It'll be whatever it is. Your job is to follow it, and see what happens. If it winds up meaning anything to someone else, that's a gift you can't expect, nor can you let it intimidate or particularly encourage you. How you distill it all is still a decision left up to you, yours fully. Annie Dillard, in my favorite book about writing (but to me it's also about all forms of creativity and expression), The Writing Life, says that putting a book together is "life at its most free. Your freedom as a writer is not freedom of expression in the sense of wild blurting; you may not let rip. It is life at its most free, if you are fortunate to be able to try it, because you select your materials, invent your task, and pace yourself. . . . The obverse of this freedom, of course, is that your work is so meaningless, so fully for yourself alone, and so worthless to the world, that no one except you cares whether you do it well, or ever."

I've always believed that everyone can write -- if they want to. I absolutely dread the title "Writer" when it's used to exclude or separate people, as if it were something special, like "Trumpet Player." Not everyone can play the trumpet (though of course, what's to stop you from trying, nothing, except needing a trumpet) but everyone has a pen and a piece of paper and a dictionary. And what is beautiful about writing is just that you've done it -- though you do have to actually do it, you can't just intend to do it. And many, many books have been written about how to get the marks to the page -- therein lies the rub! But that's why it's called "writing" and not "thinking." There's a difference. Annie says:

     "Every morning you climb several flights of stairs, enter your study, open the French doors, and slide your desk and chair out into the middle of the air. The desk and chair float thirty feet from the ground, between the crowns of maple trees. The furniture is in place; you go back for your thermos of coffee. Then, wincing, you step out again through the French doors and sit down on the chair and look over the desktop. You can see clear to the river from here in winter. You pour yourself a cup of coffee.
     "Birds fly under your chair. In spring, when the leaves open in the maples' crowns, your view stops in the treetops just beyond the desk; yellow warblers hiss and whisper on the high twigs, and catch flies. Get to work. Your work is to keep cranking the flywheel that turns the gears that spin the belt in the engine of belief that keeps you and your desk in midair."

The chasm between thinking about doing it and doing it is huge. And small. Writing is just like making things, and making things -- making dinner, a dress, a garden, a letter, a sock, a fun afternoon -- is magic. Unmysterious magic -- you just do it. Crank the flywheel. If you want to paint, get a paintbrush. If you want to make a stuffie, get some wool felt (or, hell, some acrylic -- just get some). If you want to write, get a pen. Do something, anything new that you've always wanted to do -- even something that you don't even know you want to do yet. Who knows what you will discover? Play tennis. Get a dog. Learn to surf. Crochet one granny square. Do another one. Start a blog. When that gets boring, pick something else. Leap. No one will care if you don't.

There you go. A toe touched down on the other side. Get ready to take off again; you're flying now.

Box of Beauty

Yesterday, after posting about all the mail, I left for the shop and when I got there the girls had about six boxes all stacked up waiting for me. More mail! Well, mail and orders received for the shop. It was the most exciting thing to happen all day, especially since Typepad was down and I couldn't check up on everyone the way I wanted to. It took me all morning to get through the boxes -- if only all mornings were filled with such work! -- and at the bottom this, the pink box of beauty.

At first I didn't know who it was from because it was shipped from a UPS store and it had the UPS store's return addy. (I must say, though, they used the most adorably diminutive pink peanuts to fill the box and packed it very, very well.) But then I remembered that Lisa O., who lives in NYC, was going to Tinsel Trading to do a little freelance shopping just for me. Yes, I am a bumpkin, a hayseed who has never been to New York! Fear of Flying is such an inconvenient phobia when it comes to getting the cool millinery flowers you want, I tell you! But not if you have a Lisa O. who offers to fill up a box of beauty for you! Thank you, Princess Lisa O!

Oh joy, it was bursting with petals. And ladylike little pouches stitched by Lisa to hold all the tiny stars, tinsel trees, paper flowers, extremely tiny buttons, vintage wallpaper pieces, pad of crown-printed paper, and little bundles of fabric from Purl Patchwork. (Lovely job on those photos, Leisl!) The box was like opening a little tiny treasure chest. Every little thing was wrapped and tucked and waiting to be discovered. It made me think of doing something similar for my nephew Perry, who turns four in a few days. (I had grand plans for making him four stuffies, but time is quickly running out, as usual.) But it would be fun to have a little box filled with four of a bunch of different things -- four pieces of candy, four balls, four coloring books, four cars, four little animals, etc., all wrapped individually. I'm not sure what four-year-old boys like. I think they like little stuff that they can carry around, don't they?

If you haven't heard of Tinsel Trading, this place is incredible. They've been featured in lots of magazines, and whenever you see cool notions and trims and flowers that you've never seen before, and you think, "Good grief! Where did they get that?" and you turn to the back of the mag to check, chances are the stuff came from Tinsel Trading. The story of the store (and its sister stores), written by the granddaughter of the man who started the company in 1933, is so incredibly charming I can hardly stand it. My favorite line from it is "As the years went by, my grandfather found out that not everyone was interested in metal trims." What?!?! Who are they? Anyway, the man was obsessed with trims, and he bought boxes and boxes and boxes -- like an unbelievable number of boxes -- all stored in the basement of the shop, some for over seventy years. After he died, Marcia began trying to organize the incredible amount of inventory he left behind, and she also purchased the contents of a barn filled with millinery flowers from the '40s. A whole barn. Anyway, it's too much to tell here -- it's like a fairy tale, somehow. And they have a book coming out this month, which will be featured on Martha on Friday. I lifted this picture from the book from their web site -- I hope they don't mind. But aren't these slippies pretty? I would never wear them, I would just set them out like this, and look for that pumice stone. . . . Where is that thing. My feet would need to stay at least three yards away from these beauties.

Also, thanks to your comments I think we've got the concept for our new band, Organza Apron, pretty much complete. So far, in addition to the ukulele and pennywhistle, we will have a kazoo, cow bell (ha!), tambourine, jawharp, mouth organ, galvanized wash basin with yarn as strings and broomhandle for neck, maracas, spoons, largerphone, and of course the triangle. We will be wearing aprons, of course, and cotton lawn and Leisl J. will be dressed in Amy Butler fabrics, red lipstick, and liquid eye liner. We will make people pay us in peonies but we'll give them change in French lavender. If they must throw things at us we'd prefer rose petals. We'll sell tea towels instead of t-shirts, and of course Lisa will be our lead singer. She is a rock star.

Oh -- almost forgot -- if you sent me the Christopher Moore book and the Ann-Marie MacDonald book, can you let me know who you are? They've both come from different places, I think, but I couldn't find cards in them and I wasn't sure who they were from. But thank you!

Ella Posie Looks Pretty Now!

I love the light in our shop. For a room that only has one very high transom window, we get an amazingly sparkly sort of warmness. Lots of our new spring things are in the shop now, including new paintings by a local painter named Robin Carlisle. I am in love with her work. I have a huge crush on every single painting she brought in. I couldn't have dreamed up paintings more perfect for this space.

I want this one, the big huge one, for my hallway. Bad. It's 3' x 5'. It's so pretty I keep being distracted by it. Robin is originally from Santa Cruz, California. Her work has a light, luminous touch that reminds me of that warm, light, magical state. These are acrylic-painted panels -- 1' squares, 2' squares, and the big 3' x 5', from $120 to $800. We have about fifteen of them and as a collection -- all houses -- they just sing to me. It's a pleasure to sit in here today, surrounded by all this lovely light, and the tiny houses.

I had such a good day yesterday, full of busy-ness and lots of visits and good work and fun. My friend, the illustrious Andy Greer, came and hung out with me for the morning, and reminded me of how much I miss him, and my Missoula friends -- it's been ten years since we all finished our MFAs at the University of Montana, and that just seems impossible, somehow. Andy is here as part of Wordstock, a voluminous literary festival I'm now wishing I was able to attend today (but I'm here in the shop). Readings, workshops, a book fair, author dinners, and various speaking engagements are happening all over the city, with over two hundred and fifty authors (including such luminaries as Joyce Carol Oates, Gore Vidal, Dave Eggers, and Ira Glass) hanging out for the weekend in P-town.

If you're headed out to the festivities, go see Andy read this afternoon at 3 p.m. at the Benson Hotel. He'll probably be talking about or reading from his book, The Confessions of Max Tivoli. Tell him you know me -- he thinks I know everyone in Portland, but really it's just that he happens to have met the exact twelve people I actually do know. But now that he's so big and famous I don't tell him that.

Yesterday I was happy to meet the lovely Laura and her boyfriend, another Andy, who are from England, here traveling around the Northwest. I was introduced to Laura through our mutual friend Megan, who, as you know, really does know everything. I've been thinking about Megan a lot, because of my crocheted blankie project (which is going well, and oops I forgot to say thank you to everyone who made color suggestions -- going to print that out and take some of the finished squares to the LYS and decide about halfway through, I think -- you'll see), which has been fun in no small part because I got to reorganize all my crochet hooks in my sweet little vintage fabric holder from The Organized Knitter, Megan's business. I love Megan. I met her years ago -- I don't even remember how -- and her presence always upgraded the offerings of the Holiday Bazaars we used to do at Ella Posie. Laura brought me these beautiful paper lanterns, which are going up in my bedroom, or maybe my kitchen, tomorrow. So, so perfect for me. Thank you, Laura!

More Little Cabinets Get Cleaned

Isn't this the prettiest little box? It came a few days ago from Julie, Arthur Golden's personal assistant, who is a secret blog reader. I'm embarrassed that I am, as I told Julie, probably the only person alive who hasn't yet read the book or seen the movie, but that makes the treat all the more sweet. She also tucked in some beautiful French soaps and some Memoirs of a Geisha tea. What a gorgeous canister. That's on the windowsill in the kitchen now. What a lovely surprise -- thank you, Julie! Honestly! Delightful.

The soap is in the upstairs bathroom cabinet -- perfect timing since I was just sort of cleaning up and reorganizing both of the bathroom cabinets, as you saw yesterday. This is upstairs. You saw the other side of the room a few months ago. I was inspired to primp this cabi once again by Lisa, as well, because she gave me that pretty blue box of Italian soap on the very top, and now the jasmine one sits in the middle shelf. You can never, ever have enough fancy soap. That diamond postcard came a couple of days ago from Hillary -- apparently, my friends are now able to read my mind. Did you know how happy these treats would be in my little shelf? So it would seem! Thank you!

I love the way cosmetics look, though I am very picky about them, about what's inside the package. I have the littlest, teeniest-weeniest ever-so-under-control addiction to Kiehl's products. Yes, my eye is twitching, but really, I'm okay, it's okay. Um. I'm supposed to save them for my guests -- my friend Linda in L.A. stocks her guest bathroom with Kiehl's (and probably her own bathroom, come to think of it) and when I stayed with her I'd just be in the bathroom forever. Just standing there in the shower, soaking in all that Kiehl's goodness. People waiting for me to come out so we could go to Universal Studios, and I'm washing my hair twice. I returned from my visit to her last year and promptly went out to stock my upstairs shower (which guests use but I really don't) with Amino Acid Shampoo (which smells like coconut) and Vanilla Body Wash and other stuff. I was so touched that she would offer these luxuries to her guests, whereas all I had for my own were the castoffs and rejects and scuzzy half-filled bottles of generic suds. I have ambitions to be a better hostess than that, I really do. So now there are beautiful little bottles of Kiehl's in the upstairs shower, and occasionally, when I feel the need to be extra-nice to myself, I use them. Though sparingly. (Linda's a lawyer.) If you come visit you can stay in the shower as long as you want, and wash your hair three times if you want, and I will be so totally cool with that! Really! Seriously! I'll be downstairs with the Suave, but you, you should be absolutely reckless, just crazy wanton with the Kiehl's, dear. It's worth it. I completely understand.