Laundry ethics

I'm hoping this isn't going to shoot all my laundry karma, but sometimes I leave my laundry in the washer or dryer. I'm careful to be there once it stops, but still, as my friend Ric pointed out, there are so many people who have nothing and stopping by the Laundromat (Would someone please come up with a good generic term for that place? Thanks.) would be a good way to get something. So it's always a little surprise to find my clothes there and unmolested.

I'd like to think that people just think that stealing someone's laundry is too low, but the night after my neighbor got evicted someone stole his TV. If people are OK with stealing from a man who just lost his home, then they are OK with stealing someone's clothes from the dryer.

Maybe it's that even though my clothes would cost me a lot to replace, they're not really valuable in a liquid-asset sense. (Let's go to the pawn shop and buy some jeans!) And usually someone else is in there doing laundry, which might be a deterrant.

Not OK

There's this tuna sandwich in the work fridge that has to have been there since at least Friday because it's clearly from the cafeteria, which has not been open since Friday.

I am all for leftovers and eating expired food that still smells fine. But with the bread, sandwiches have a short shelf life. And a tuna sandwich ...

Kitchen tip: You could probably save it if you took the tuna off the bread. This would work less well for peanut butter and jelly, but why would you ever have leftover peanut butter and jelly? You wouldn't.

"Wow, I am stuffed, can't finish this tuna sandwich. I'll just put it away for a soggy snack."

The swap tease

I promise I haven't been slacking off on the Crafty Daisies swap, just slacking off on posting about it. I've been inspired to try some beading, which turned out to be faster and easier than I thought.

For your first hint, I've gotten supplies and surprises from these stores:

Atomic Books
Atomic Pop
Lovely Yarns
Hometown Girl
Beadazzled
Plaza

Overheard

Exclaimed proudly on the light rail:

"22 and no kids!"

Playing in the dirt

The gardening season opened yesterday, with my first day of weeding. A friend and I spent about 7 hours in her Hampden garden plot (where I have little rectangle this year), most of it just pulling and pulling and pulling weeds.

It didn't seem so hard at the time -- and hanging out in the dirt is fun -- but last night I hurt from my calves to my shoulders. My weeding muscles in my right wrist still aren't happy. But I got to plant some cold-weather plants: lettuce, carrots and radishes.

I wish I'd taken before and after photos, because we accomplished so much.

Each week, they choose a theme

This American Life usually inspires me to think about my own response to their topic, so I thought I'd make it a writing project.

Each week, I'll post their theme for the next week's show, and then anyone who wants to write on that theme can e-mail me a link (or their essay, if it's not on a blog) at erin (dot) mediamixed (at) gmail (dot) com. E-mail me by, say, Monday, because that's when I get the TAL podcast, but that's not a real deadline.

Since this is the first week, here's two topics (the previous week's and the coming week's):

"What I Learned from TV"
"The Allure of the Mean Friend"

Socks that rock

To maybe someday make the Space Invaders socks, I have to figure out how to make some simple socks. I think I'm on the right track with this tutorial, though it would have been smart of me to use a thicker yarn so I didn't have 64 stitches in each round. (Is it even called a round?)

To learn how to make the little guys, I plan on making a pattern for a Space Invaders scarf. If it works out, I'll share, but I don't know how to read a pattern, let alone make one, so it will probably just be all unofficial.

I also love these monkey socks (no monkeys on them).

Purled

I was surprised at how quickly I caught on to purling (after a couple of evenings of trial and error). This very first ribbed scarf is made with a mostly cotton yarn for my mom, who wants a lightweight white scarf to go with a blue sweater. Now I just have to get to the post office.

Something I am not doing

That would be making curtains.

Since I moved into my place in December, I have needed curtains. I have huge windows that are too tall for anything off the rack. And they face south, so they spend all day capturing sunlight, making my place hot.

I have measured for curtains and bought all the hardware to hang them, but I have yet to buy fabric.

All the fabic stores are inaccessible to me. They're either on a bus line that I don't know how to get to or the light rail runs by there but doesn't stop nearby. I called one store and asked whether they were near the subway and was told, "Kind of?"

There is one that's close enough to a light rail stop, but I've been there, and there are no sidewalks between the stop and the store, which is on a busy, curvy road. Not fun or safe. (There is a bus between the stop and the store, but it runs about every 45 minutes, and I really don't need this to become an all-day ordeal.)

I even tried Wal-Mart, but finding 12 yards of the same fabric was not happening there.

Baltimore, I am so disappointed in you.

Scarf No. 2

I finished my second scarf. Now I'm learning how to purl. DIY Network's Knitty Gritty has some videos on knitting basics, which can really help if you're having trouble visualizing instructions from a book.

Found objects

I had these extra bike tires sitting around uselessly and taking up precious inches in my pint-sized bedroom. I also had this disturbingly blank wall above my couch (fine, it's a futon) in the living room. Now, I don't have either problem.

Each hangs from a single nail. Weight-wise, this shouldn't be a problem, but the tires are pretty thick and just kind of perched there.

Plastic bag bag

Mod Cottage has a tutorial on how to turn your old plastic bags into a no-sew grocery bag. I made something similar (but uglier) out of newspaper bags a la instructions from the Ready Made book, but I had thought your typical grocery bag might not be sturdy enough.

Photogenic snow

It's just about gone, but lots of people captured Baltimore's snow.

Troy, who took that first photo offered some advice for snow photographers: Bracket your shots. The snow can trick your light meter, so take one shot as your light meter indicates, but also some underexposed and overexposed. (Some cameras have a setting to do this automatically.)

Check out Troy's snow photo set.

Snow-day pizza

My mom would always make pizza on snow days, and it's snowing in Baltimore. I don't have the day off and didn't have time to make it, but here's a pizza dough recipe.

I have never used this recipe, but it looks like it will work. It says to use water between 95 and 115 degrees, but I think that's too hot . I would go for something that feels lukewarm. Otherwise, you could kill the yeast.

Another snow day favorite was fried dough (or Italian doughnuts) made with some of the extra pizza dough.

Art -- Creating and collecting

The New York Times Magazine makes a case for photography as this century's painting in a profile of Jeff Wall, "Where Jeff Wall has Taken the Photograph."

"One thing that Wall knew for certain when he took up the profession in the
late 1970s is that he would not become a photojournalistic hunter. Educated as
an art historian, he aspired instead to make photographs that could be
constructed and experienced the way paintings are."

Photography seems so accessible as a viewer and as a creator because we consider that there's an element of luck (in addition to patience and having a good eye). But where Jeff Wall has taken the photograph is to a place where the artist's vision is as important as it is in other artistic media. He does not see the picture in front of him; he creates it.

The Times Magazine also features the home (and contemporary art collection) of philanthropist Constance Caplan. The article doesn't say where in Baltimore this is, but I think it's way north, by Lake Roland, possibly in Baltimore County.

I'd like s'more

Some people don't like s'mores, but I do, so I made some s'more brownies. Mine didn't toast up as well as the Food Network's. But I had people waiting for me on the street below. Besides, the Food Network probably made their "toasted marshmallows" out of toasted mashed potatoes or something for their photo shoot. Potato brownies, yum!

Too bad the ground's still frozen

My carrot seeds arrived on my desk yesterday, so now all I need is the last frost and some other seeds and to start some tomato plants, and then it will be time to get outside.

I've been wanting to plant some basil inside because I have huge south-facing windows that make parts of the apartment greenhouse-like, but casual attempts to find potting soil have proved fruitless.

Inspiration

Need some photo ideas? Thanks, Photogamer!

This is like the Day Before Christmas pool on Flickr only more specific.

I got lots of good ideas at the end of the day

I found all the good Valentine's Day crafts too late, so all I had were my modified cards (because the prototype had been revealed) and some orange cranberry muffins.

And I didn't take photos of any of it, because I am a planner like that.

The cards were like the original, only I cut some squares of transluscent red paper and tied it on top with ribbon (fed through two holes this time -- yay) so they opened at the top.

The muffins looked mostly like muffins.

Embrace your knitting mistakes

Let's say a scarf has 400 rows of 20 stitches each. That's 8,000 stitches. If you're a beginnner (like me), you're probably learning a new technique with each scarf. (My first scarf I learned how to just do a knit stitch. My second, I'm learning how to make stripes.) So it makes sense that by the time you get to your second 4,000 stitches, you will have figured out quite a bit about what works for you concerning your new technique. Who cares if you're not perfect from stitch one?

It's easy to think that if you struggle with your first row, you're going to struggle until the end of your project, so you better get that first row just right. But that's not true, and you'll drive yourself crazy and learn to hate knitting if you think that way.

Instead, remember that you're getting better -- and knitting is getting easier -- with every stitch. It's only supposed to be fun.