For the ones that got away

Two years ago I bought cashmere yarn and I started to knit "Fetching" from Knitty. I bought two pairs of circular knitting needles that were sooo smooth and wonderful and I was so glad when I finally finished the pair on a flight to visit Drake somewhere or other. Then, tragedy struck.

It wasn't until I packed up after the visit that I realized I had left my freshly finished project AND my new needles in my seat back pocket. TRAGEDY!!! all you knitters know what I'm talking about. I (naturally) called the airline, but to no avail. Someone somewhere has a pair of cashmere fingerless gloves and 2 sets of super smooth circular knitting needles, and I have nought but a wistful memory....

It took me two years to re-knit the pair, but I finally did it. They're not cashmere. I couldn't suffer that kind of loss in this economy...

So I have this other blog now....

I'm afraid that my blogging may end up migrating entirely into my photography site. So Cam, as my sole subscriber, you should now subscribe to
http://altamarie.blogspot.com

I may or may not continue to contribute here periodically, who knows!

My other job

I find myself timing out my snacks and bathroom breaks in attempt to acheive things throughout the day. Make it to 10 AM and your reward is one plum. at 11:00 we will do some scanning and then at 12:30 a bathroom break. My acheivement? the successful passage of time. I have successfully acheived 2 hours of work. I have successfully gone 4.5 hours without using the restroom.

As an office interloper (temp) I find that these acheivements do stack up. No one cares if I successfully transfer calls, it's accepted. The fact that my one good kidney can last me 4.5 hours is a significant improvement in quality of life.

To be or not to be

I feel like I'm in third grade again lately. In third grade, when we were asked what we wanted to be when we grew up I remember thinking I wanted to be a singer, but I simultaneously thought that it didn't sound like a legitimate job. I think what I ended up with was Marine Bioligist. That sounded wicked smart, and fun- because you get to work with whales and dolphins up close.

Lately I've been wondering whether third-grade-me had the right idea. I have given serious and considerable thought to what else I would enjoy doing with my life- this again makes me feel like I'm in third grade as the options are:
Actress
Short essay writer
Photographer
Toy knitter/crocheter
President (not really-but again, I like to appear respectable.)

Truth be told, I really love performing! Let it be known! Is opera the only way? I dunno. But I think it's the best way for me. It's strange and seems totally unnatural at times and you have to find a way to make sense out of it, and communicate what you found to someone else, and hope they understand you in spite of the fact that you are (in many cases) not speaking to them in their native tongue-and for that matter, not speaking at all, but singing-loudly- in their face.

In the end, I have decided to forgo my run at the presidency and give this opera thing 110% (don't you hate people who say that they give 110%?) I have always walked a middle line, never fully committing to the opera aesthetic, but have decided to put away musicals and comedy (no!!) for a little while and focus on the singing. "Prima la voce" as they say. I feel like I'm in a 12 step program. My name is Alta, and I'm an opera singer. This means I must focus more time/energy into perfecting my vocal technique.
Here we go.

I will, instead channel all of my personal hilarity into my writing, and into my knitting/crocheting. I will also start to talk more about opera here. I've not done this a lot before- which surprises me. Just giving my loyal readership a heads up (Cam, and Mom)

A chorus line

I don't consider myself to be horribly uncoordinated, and yet there are moments when I feel that I should reconsider my self-evaluation. Last week (or was it 2 weeks ago? It all runs together) we had a dance call to determine which of the singers would be used as "featured dancers." (actually they call them "singing dancers" to distinguish them from the "real dancers.")

I will mention without a hint of pride that I have been a featured dancer twice in the past, and come to think of it, it was in two separate comic kick lines... which might explain it. Once I was a Russian model with a giant hat in an "impromptu-models-of-the-world" kickline. The other time was in Pirates of Penzance in the With Cat-Like Tread encore. We had glittery hats. I am quite sure that I wrote about it here. It simply gets no better than a Pirate kick-line.

Now to others that were in attendance on that fateful dance call morn, what I'm about to describe may not have even registered with them (unless they were among the fallen.) I should mention too, that I left my bag of dance shoes in NYC in the big rush to Des Moines after Drake's graduation in Texas. I decided that my black puma ballet flats would do. (no buckle, no tie.)

I'll keep this short, cause it all happened within a minute. So all the ladies are holding hands in a circle and we are to do a grapevine which gets progressively faster until we are running with this simple dance pattern. One of my shoes flew off, and one of them simply stayed on the floor where my foot had been and where the other 20 girls were about to step since we were holding hands and running in a circle. Needless to say everyone tripped and the tripping stopped only with the dance instructors intervention. The show must go on, and such.

I don't recall anyone actually hitting the floor, so much as a great and growing stentorian outcry as each colleague twisted an ankle or disrupted the pattern. I confessed promptly, since I was the only one left entirely shoeless in the course of events and hid in the back of the room for the rest of the morning.

I was not selected as a featured dancer, even a funny one this year. But then again I bet none of the selected dancers ever got to rock a Pirate Kick Line.... ;)

4 mile race with Brie

Ran a 4 mile race in Central Park today. That was fun. My time was about what it always is--about 48 minute (12 minute mile) A nice trot it was.

Didn't think I would end up running at all when I woke up at 5am with a migraine-- but fortunately I took medicine and it passed and I drank a "Sports Drink" and sucked it up and ran. It still surprises me that that's something I do now. Even if I don't do it as regularly as when I lived in the south...

Central Park is an awesome place to run a race. So much to see! Zoos and aquariums and weirdos. I love it

Reconstructing Papa Smurf

Before & After

Today I had intended to sleep all day. When this didn't happen, I had to think about something that would make me happy to get up and start my day. The smurf doll has been on the bookcase opposite my bed since we moved to Brooklyn in November and this morning when I sat up, I decided that nothing would make my day brighter than to reconstruct him. What could be better on a lazy Saturday than re-making smurfs??? What I ask you?!

This smurf has a long history. As many of you know, I grew up with Memere, and she was a constant crafter. She was constantly making stuff, and she taught me how to make stuff. There was a time in the early 80's that she was into toy making, did a bunch of dolls, and did a series of Sesame Street characters as well as some Smurfs. I wanted a Smurf SO BAD. She told me if I wanted one I'd have to make it myself. The pattern is complicated, so I started with a doll, and once I had finished that, I lost interest.

Flash forward 20 years to a couple Christmases ago, when Mem had laid out her whole inventory and told us all to take whatever we wanted. Needless to say, I went for the smurf, and he sat a spell in storage, and he sat a spell on the bookcase until this morning when my project began.

First I cut off his hat, eyes, nose, ears and arms. (I had no need to remove a beard, since my mom had ripped it off that Christmas. She said "I always hated that beard. It looks awful") Memere has 47 grandchildren. She was a toy factory. Needless to say, some of the details fell through the cracks. I had to undo about half of his head in order to get the stuffing out, and found something strange! She had stuffed him with an old cut up quilt! How resourceful that Mem is. So I restuffed him and put him back together, made him a new beard (hopefully mother won't rip it off, though she has already threatened...)

Ahhhh... what a great morning!