Spring is my favorite season in NYC. I especially love the trees all over the city with the white blossoms. I am not sure what kind of trees they are, but they are everywhere. This is the East Side; photo taken from the Kips Bay Showhouse. My last apartment in NYC had a wonderful view of flowering trees like this.

And you cannot forget the magnificent tulips on Park Avenue every spring.

Is that not the cutest picture of a baby checking out the action?

The March 24, 2011 Boston Globe Sunday magazize featured a terrific article on the resurgence of knitting, sewing and handcrafts. The photos of the shops were bright and vibrant. I misplaced my copy of the article and had to make due with this photo, which is not nearly as bright and colorful as the original, but the sweet baby makes up for the lack of intense color. The article reported on the growing trend of do-it-yourself handicraft boutiques and interest in all things hand-made and the shift of today's generation away from the 70's anti-hand-craft woman's work to the pride of home/hand made.

People are beginning to realize the importance of creating for yourself as our world becomes increasingly high-tech, digital and faster and faster and faster. The slow movement is a terrific counterpart to the fast-paced 24-7 world we live in today. I love the slow, methodical work of knitting and stitching; it is relaxing and satisfying. Hurrah for hand work. A fitting sentiment for earth day - getting back to basics - do it yourself kind of activities - slowing down - enjoying today as it is - keeping our world alive.

If you are in the Boston area, check out the knitting shops below.

J. P. Knit & Stitch - Jamaica Plain

Gather Here - Cambridge "stitch lounge"

Stitch House - Dorchester

Hipstitch - Newtonville

Craftland School of Craft - Providence

Post Script:

Here is part of an interesting interview with Lisa Borgnes Giramonti of A Bloomsbury Life - this excerpt dovetails with my comments on the hand-craft arts or "home-arts". I did a post on Lisa last year and featured her wonderful needlepoint tapestries that are very funny and creative - click here.

Full interview with Lisa Borgnes Giramonti on Yell Softly - here

You create modern, witty needlepoint art (a phrase many, who haven’t seen your work, may consider an oxymoron.) What drew you to this medium? I particularly love your piece “Perky Boobies;” do you think that we are returning to an appreciation of the “home arts” like entertaining, embroidery and gardening?

Oh, Sariah, I hope so. I think this recession has forced us all to turn inward and to realize that the It bag we all had to have five years ago is a hollow substitute for the pleasures of a meaningful life. In the last year, I have been much more conscious of living large on a small scale. Friends come over, we cook, we entertain, we talk, we laugh and we have a deep appreciation for each other’s company.

In terms of my textile work, my embroideries and postmodern samplers are a compulsion; I can’t not create them. My mother and grandmother both embroidered, and I grew up watching them, but they always worked from kits and that never appealed to me. When I saw the Bayeux Tapestry, I had a sudden epiphany that I needed to embroider MY life and my words instead of someone else’s. And that’s what I’ve done.

"Purly Wurly Takes a Picture," 1998

I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud

by William Wordsworth

I wandered lonely as a cloud

That floats on high o'er vales and hills,

When all at once I saw a crowd,

A host, of golden daffodils;

Beside the lake, beneath the trees,

Fluttering and dancing in the breeze.

Continuous as the stars that shine

And twinkle on the milky way,

They stretched in never-ending line

Along the margin of a bay:

Ten thousand saw I at a glance,

Tossing their heads in sprightly dance.

The waves beside them danced; but they

Out-did the sparkling waves in glee:

A poet could not but be gay,

In such a jocund company:

I gazed--and gazed--but little thought

What wealth the show to me had brought:

For oft, when on my couch I lie

In vacant or in pensive mood,

They flash upon that inward eye

Which is the bliss of solitude;

And then my heart with pleasure fills,

And dances with the daffodils.

This poem was featured on the Writer's Almanac today; one of my daily reads.

The image of the daffodils "fluttering and dancing in the breeze" is perfect for today.

Years ago, my work commute was a long drive in heavy traffic;

the last leg of the journey was along a street lined with giant suburban houses,

most built a long time ago with good architectural bones;

one of the property owners on this street planted daffodils along the roadside; masses of them.

The first year that I drove down that street in April

and saw all the daffodils in bloom

I gasped aloud at the sheer volume and beauty of the sight.

I was inspired to give my own burst of happiness to travelers

each spring

so I planted clumps of daffodils down on the roadside of my property.

Today, they still look beautiful;

the sand and salt from the winters killed off many clumps,

but for the most part

it is a sunny, happy display of spring.

Happiness can be yours just by looking at nature.

I smile and have a spring in my step each year when the flowers are in full display.

People have stopped and told me how much they like the flowers too.

weekend planting...

"....break them out of their narrowness."

Harvard professor Laurel Thatcher Ulrich on the use of the tangible in academic study. Here is an exerpt from the Harvard Gazette on Objects of Instruction

While Hamburger and Galison focused on the rare and the remarkable in Harvard’s collections, Laurel Thatcher Ulrich, the 300th Anniversary University Professor, and Ivan Gaskell, Margaret S. Winthrop Curator in theHarvard Art Museums and senior lecturer on history, extolled the virtues of the mundane and the everyday: a toothbrush, a chair, a piece of clothing. “My adventure has been to move into the realm of material objects and use them to study ordinary people in ordinary life,” Ulrich said.

Ulrich, the developer of the popular General Education course and exhibition “Tangible Things,” stood at the front of the classroom and pulled a quilt out of an old bookcase. The quilt, which was made in Missouri during the 1920s, was designed with dark blue hexagons. She said that she had students research the source of the design, which led them back hundreds of years to a study of Islamic decorative art, its migration through Europe and then to America. An examination of the cloth and its manufacture in the American South took students through the history of slavery.

Ulrich said that she wanted her students to work with artifacts to “break them out of their narrowness” and help them make connections between unrelated things like a quilt made in Missouri and an Islamic tile.

Observation is such an important part of learning. Connections: one era to an another. Everything repeats. We are inspired by the past. Read and See. See and Do. Listen. Start each day with the idea of learning something new. When I am in a funk and nothing seems to be working out I remember my mantra: make each day matter. What I mean by this is to use my senses to keenly observe the world around me. I am pleasantly surprised by something I discover. Small joys. All for free. Just open your eyes, your ears, your heart and you too will be amazed by a little nugget of wisdom or joy.

“You see cultural contact and exchange in ways that you cannot see in books and writing,” she said. “Students get really excited when you put them in touch with real stuff.”

My house on Christmas Day 2010

January 27, 2011

We haven't had snow like this since 1995

beautiful whiteness this morning

blue dawn

sounds muffled

coffee ready

Garden shed today and a month ago

Someone told me recently to look up and look out,

there is beauty all around us.

This morning I saw the lovely meringue cap on the lamppost above

see how the top twirls up to a point.

lovely

I thought it might be fun to chart the snow piles with the weathervane

Early December above - then it all melted

one week ago - January 19, 2011

look in the center of this photo

see the post sticking up out of the snow mound

January 27, 2011

You cannot even see the weathervane

Looking from my perch as I compose this entry;

the lattice has a whole new design.

Look up and look out;

there is beauty all around you.

wilton winter wonderland

homemade soup & homemade pound cake courtesy miss is

with homemade lemon curd by moi

a cup of lady grey tea

knitting by the fire

movie queued up

enjoy your weekend

great photo from slow love life

reminded me of my girlhood.

every autumn we would make a pilgrimage to the chestnut tree

and collect dozens and dozens of chestnuts

then store them like squirrels.

i even found one lurking in my desk drawer recently.

it dates back to one of my early hunts;

hard to believe, but true.

i never wanted to throw that chestnut away.

it would be like giving away one of my fondest childhood memories.

and then

two weeks ago

miss is, dh, and i were walking around the city campus

and we

found a chestnut tree.

such fun.

we stuffed our pockets,

filled empty water bottles,

and took our stash back to our respective rooms.

mine sit on my desk.

miss is ... has her stash too.

we think of our walk when we look at our stash.

they are nice to hold and roll around in your palm

and the color brown is wonderful, warm and rich in tone.

my stash also reminds me of my favorite book:

pride and prejudice

remember elizabeth's aunt, mrs gardiner,

in the book she reminisces about running to the horse chestnut tree at lambton

and mr darcy recalls his fun boyhood runs to the very same chestnut tree.

i will hold on to this recent chestnut stash for a long time

because i am an empty-nester now.

Slow life continued...

the garden

Giant sunflowers at the local grange fair, August 2010

Inside the exhibition hall

Hand knit: slow life.

Not first place, but a ribbon nonetheless.

It was the grange fair that motivated me to finally finish this sweater

which has been on my needles for, dare I admit, four years.

Reading outside on a summer day: slow life

stopping all chores and plans

devouring a book in an afternoon

That is just how I enjoyed Dominque Brownings's new book,

Slow Love.

I absolutely loved it. It is a great follow-up to Eat, Pray, Love.

Browning continues writing about slow life on her blog,

Slow Love Life ,

of which I am devotee.

This idea of slow life brings me back to yesterday's Swan's Island post. The Swan Island newsletter reports on Dominique Brownings's visit to their studio. I encourage you to read the newsletter. click here.

The owners of the Swan Island Studio say this:

"Our approach for the past 20 years has been the same:

do things right, slowly and with love,

and the rest will somehow fall into place."

I tried to slow down these past two weeks. I was on vacation from the day job. The plan was to get my daughter off to college and then to work in the studio to prepare for the autumn MRR Design season. Sometimes things just do not happen the way you expect; life intervenes.

My true passion for creating things has nothing to do with what I do daily to make a living. MRR Design is my escape from my daily work routine. I create one object at a time, by hand. Nothing high tech about it. I am trying to build the business but it is hard to do 2 days a week. But I will persevere. I am good at that.

I will continue to pursue my passion at night, and on the weekends. Especially now that Miss Is is off to college, my days of daily, active mothering are over. Sad indeed, but exciting too. Life is evolving. It is thrilling and rewarding to watch Miss Is grow. I tried to do things right, slowly and with love as I raised Miss Is. I think it worked; Miss Is is blossoming into a young woman. Everything is falling into place. So now I have to work on myself, to do things right, slowly and with love. And hope it all falls into place.

I am trying to find balance. I am looking for answers. I am trying to rejuvenate my spirit because my happy demeanor has taken a few hits lately. So I scrapped the idea to work hard in the studio during my two-week break from the day job. I wanted to relax. To sit quietly. To think. Often my reverie was interrupted. But I kept trying. I simply sat down and decided to finish knitting a sweater that I started years ago. The goal was to finish by the grange fair. And I did. Slow life in motion. I started with skeins of yarn and two needles. Steady and slow like the turtle, then voila - a beautiful, cozy sweater. It is a bit short, but I am pleased. Every time I wear it, I will feel happy and accomplished. So now on to sweater #2, on the needles for 6 years or more. I am determined - it will be done by Labor Day.

Note the pink and white blanket pictured in the middle of this post; it looks like a Swan Island blanket. I found the blanket on Martha Stewart's now-defunct shopping site years ago. Maybe Martha was inspired by the originial Swan Island blankets.

Beautiful upholstered chairs made from Swan Island blankets.

Read about Swan Island weaving here

Weaving - the process, from the sheep to the dying bin, to the loom, to the bed.

Slow life, slow process, and a beautiful result.

Read about the picture above here -

This room was part of a designer showhouse in Camden, Maine designed by Deborah Chatfield

The chairs remind me of my daughter's desk chair. I love the effect of using multiple fabrics on the same chair to create an object that is fun, happy, colorful, and functional all at once.

Slow, local, organic, are popular words these days.

According to the Writer's Almanac, Alice Waters opened Chez Panisse 29 years ago. Lots of slow motion there...slow cooking...slow life...

If you are interested in learning more - click here - go to August 28th entry.

LINKS - can lead you down the blog hole to new and interesting places -

just like this quote I read today on swissmiss:

"One aspect of serendipity to bear in mind is that you have to be looking for something in order to find something else." Lawrence Block

More on the idea of slow life tomorrow...