the origin of the bomo-bag

I have at least five grocery stores within a 3 block radius of my apartment. The one right off the subway is open 24 hours. I'm always stopping in on my way home to pick up some forgotten ingredient or just a snack. It's so convenient. But the spontaneity this allows always leaves me unprepared to carry my new purchase home. Oftentimes I'll walk the few blocks to my apartment with a carton of soy milk or a bag of produce in my hand, but sometimes I buy more than I'll be able to carry without having to reluctantly take a plastic bag from the cashier.

I am also a sucker for a sale. I don't know how many times I'll be walking along and enter a shop to just browse before meeting a friend or going home or while passing the time and exit with a lighter wallet and a shopping bag in hand.

It makes me cringe every time. Just do a google image search of "plastic bag pollution" and your heart will break.

In January I went to Ikea with a friend. When we got to the check out we discovered that we would have to buy a reusable tote bag to carry our new Swedish household items home in. They were no longer providing plastic bags.

That was what did it because I am also a cheap bastard. I decided to make a tote bag that I could roll up and put in my regular hand bag so that I would always be armed.






This was the first one I tried. I sketched it out then used what remained of an old bed sheet for fabric.















I liked the idea of an elastic to quickly roll it up, but unrolled it hung off the side like an ugly hair scrunchie.











I did some tweaking, received some feedback from my friends and coworkers, and the Bomo-Bag (named by my coworkers) was the final result. I have to say, it's the best thing I've ever made for myself. Every time I use it, it makes me happy.

a year later

It's been one year and a handful of days.
I'm sorry to have neglected you. I've got some very exciting news. Stay tuned.
But for now, have a listen to some Magnetic Fields.

parentheses

In the last week a number of people have commented to me about how I like to cook. How misleading this blog has been! Here is my refrigerator on a normal day:
















I can't remember when I took that picture. Actually that day was particularly bad. There are maybe some vegetables in there right now, but also more booze. I don't even really drink at home. Everything is misleading!

Today for dinner I had some cheese and crackers, olives and grapes. I love Cerignola olives. I won't tell you how many I've eaten because it's too embarrassing. More embarrassing than that picture of my fridge.


if something in the deli aisle
makes you cry
you know I'll put my arm around you and I'll walk you outside
through the sliding doors
why would I mind?

be fruitful and multiply

My friends have had a baby. He is the cutest thing ever. Sometimes when he is sleeping, he'll chuckle and my heart breaks.

It was his dad's birthday recently and I knit him an ear flap hat. Then I made a matching one for his "mini me".

Again, I didn't use a pattern. I seem to have a problem with rules. Instead I bought some yarn (Debbie Bliss cashmerino aran and alpaca silk). Pearl at Knitty City helped me choose needles (US 10.5 circs) that she thought would give me a good gauge. I read a bunch of patterns online and in books at the bookstore, but couldn't find anything that I liked. So I kept an eye out on the street for people wearing ear flap hats and followed the good looking ones around. Good looking hats, I mean. I think I started and restarted about five times until I had what I wanted.

and voilà:



They look cuter when they're actually on real heads because the boy is only about four months old, but this is all I have for public viewing.

finders keepers

I have a friend. She's tiny. One winter, while coveting a pair of convertible mitts, she complained that she couldn't find a pair of gloves that fit her tiny hands. Since it was around the time of her birthday I decided to knit her a pair. It took about a year because I put them down and forgot to pick them up again! I used the Broad Street Mittens pattern from knitty using yarn I got from a knitting swap. I've made these before, but because the yarn (trekking) I used was so thin, the size was perfect.
















The best part is the thumb, which I took from Berroco Pele.































The saddest part is that a week after I gave them to her, she lost one.

God's Footballer

It's Super Bowl Sunday. I think New York is up against Boston. Something about Giants? The city is going to go crazy tonight if we win. I could care less.

the goals bring weekly wages
yet the glory of the sports pages
is but the worship of false idols and tempts him not

I wanted to make a tote bag for a friend of mine. A Say-No-To-Plastic-Bags type of tote bag. I didn't really have a pattern, but I didn't think it could be that hard. I went down to Purl to buy some fabric. One of my many bad habits is that I don't really plan things out. Overwhelmed by all the fabric choices, the simple tote bag turned out to be a more ambitious type of project as I bought extra fabric for a pocket and linings. And because I didn't plan out a pattern before I started sewing, it took about 5 times as long to make it and was way more frustrating than I would have liked. One day I'll learn.













































In the end it didn't turn out to be the simple everyday shopping bag kind of tote I was aiming for. I guess I got carried away.

a day in space

think about lying there when you're a hundred
a hundred and ten or whatever
looking back on your life and thinking:
well, what did I actually do?
what did I actually achieve?
"oh, I saw the pyramids"
big deal!
you can apparently see those from space anyway















It's been awhile since I've posted. It's been even longer since I've posted anything other than pictures and song lyrics so I thought I would write a bit for a change. Actually, I have a side-project in the works and was waiting to unveil it but it might not ever be ready so here I am, just as I am.

It's another New Year.

During the latter end of 2007 I read You Shall Know Our Velocity! by Dave Eggers while listening to a lot of Ballboy. The book was just alright and some might say the same about Ballboy, though I can't seem to get enough of them. However, I don't recommend the combination. I've been thinking of the feeling that they left me with. At first it made me want to go somewhere, everywhere, really quickly. So I did. I got on a plane and I went to a lot of places. Then I came home tired, broke and emptier than before I had left. Now I look around at my life and think: So what? You can see it all from space anyway.

Your life has been lived a hundred times. A thousand times. It's not all that great, really. Don't take it so seriously. Don't handle it so delicately.

I began to feel simultaneously bored and boring, which is another deadly combination. It's not nice thinking your life, and the lives of those around you, aren't that great.

It's another New Year. I've made some resolutions, resolutions to be greater. It's not going so well, but it's only January.