creative title goes here

Quiltin’ it up

kgriesmann — Sat, 28 Jan 2012 15:53:19 +0000

A long time ago I told Jessie that when she had kids I’d make them quilts. And wouldn’t you know it, Jessie (who never does anything half-heartedly) is about to have twins. So I got to make two quilts.

It was lucky I was unemployed or the boys may have gotten them as high school graduation gifts.

Well, and I had a lot of help from some furry, four-legged creatures.

Making the quilts was a good way for me to a) adjust to the idea of Jessie and Brent having two children, and b) think lots of good thoughts about the babies and make up some dreams of my own for them. I know they aren’t my kids, but I’m excited to see them grow.

The quilts are basically the same, but with different color borders and four mostly solid squares to match.

Every time I pulled the quilts out Oscar was all over them. He just wanted to show that he loves the babies too. Or he thought he needed a new blanket.

Congrats Jessie and Brent! I can’t wait to meet Vin and Whit! (I hope you know this means I will basically invite myself over at any time for as long as I feel like it. But I promise to bring food with me.)

I love this picture–we both look so happy.

Raleigh Obscura

kgriesmann — Thu, 19 Jan 2012 19:10:17 +0000

If you don’t live in Raleigh you may not know that it is one of the very best places to live. In the ~~world~~ country. At least, according to these lists (and others):

Forbes: Best Place to Live for Business
Bloomburg Businessweek: Best City in America
Portfolio.com: Best Quality of Life

Raleigh is not always the most interesting place to visit (every time I have visitors I stress about what to do with them), but it is a nice place to call home. Seeing all those lists come out caused me to do some thinking: If Raleigh is so great, there must be people who are doing things to make it great. Who are they? What are they doing? What do they like about the city?

I didn’t have answers, but I figured I could find them. This thought process turned into a writing idea — I could interview people who are doing interesting things in the city and write profiles of them. It sounded fun, but time consuming. And then I lost my job. So, with nothing but time on my hands I thought I’d go for it.

Anyway, after several months of doing interviews and writing them up and driving around the city taking pictures, here’s the product: Raleigh Obscura

Take a look, I hope you enjoy it. I hope to publish a post a week until…well, until I run out of people to interview or energy to write them up, I guess.

So Long 2011

kgriesmann — Tue, 03 Jan 2012 19:36:44 +0000

2011 was an odd year – there seemed to be a lot of changes and unknowns and odd little spots. Or, at least that’s how it appears now, three days into 2012, from where I sit on my couch. Instead of a countdown like last year or a year’s best list like 2009, here’s a year in photos, capturing one great memory from each month.

Freezing almost to death in New York City in January.

Skiing in February; also the very first photo I took with my iPhone.

Riding the greenway in...okay, this is from April, but I don't have a good March photo.

Celebrating Katie and Andy's wedding in Jacksonville, also in April.

Jessie shaved her head in front of her school in May. It was a very impressive thing.

Celebrating my dad's 79th birthday in Buffalo in June. Of course no one was looking at the camera...

A morning on RAGBRAI in July.

Sunset over Asheville in August.

Enjoying sunshine and beer at the Asheville Brewgrass Festival in September.

We went back to NYC in October, the weather was much better.

Visiting Hawaii in November for my oldest friend's wedding.

One adorable Christmas tree livened up my living room in December.

Childhood Favorites

kgriesmann — Fri, 09 Dec 2011 22:09:09 +0000

All of this talk of getting another year older made me remember a question Charles once asked me:

What was your favorite year growing up?

This was about two years ago, but I think my answer is the same: third grade. It was a pretty great year. Here are a couple highlights:

My friend Colleen and I were in the play Scrooge and got to skip school a lot to do performances for other schools.
Colleen and I also tied a hose to a tree and tried to swing off my roof by it. She went first and smacked right into the tree. I still laugh remembering this incident.
The fourth graders always organized amazing games of tag on the Upper Big Toy*, making recess the most fun ever.
I think I was the smartest kid in my class.
I learned to roller skate down this big hill in front of my house without falling down repeatedly. I was a really klutzy kid.
We had a dog named Ziggy who was adorable. We ended up getting rid of him (her? I have no idea) because it would always escape and go up to the local elementary school and run around causing a ruckus.

Of course, some bad things happened too:

One day a wasp stung the top of my head and the nurse put all this smelly stuff on it to make it stop hurting, but then no one would come near me all day. It was really embarrassing.
I started losing teeth (so late), a process I hated so much — just thinking about it now makes me cringe.

* Big Toys are those big wooden playground structures (like this). Our school had two: Upper and Lower, based on their relative location on a hill. The Upper Big Toy had a cool net thing you could play on, that’s actually where the wasp incident happened. The Lower Big Toy had big bars that you could do gymnastics tricks on and some tall(ish) pedestals we would stand on and chicken fight on when the teachers weren’t looking.

What was your favorite year growing up?

Crafty: Upgraded Bamboo Trays

kgriesmann — Tue, 06 Dec 2011 03:01:54 +0000

This post is one of two craft-related posts that are long overdue…back when Hurricane Irene came through I took advantage of the rainy day to sit inside and start a bunch of crafts. Most of them I’ve even finished — a huge accomplishment since most of my projects generally end up in craft-purgatory for ~~years~~ quite a while.

The first of the hurricane crafts: upgraded bamboo trays.

I’d been wanting some trays to cart stuff around on. I like to sit on the porch or the couch with some crackers and hummus, a book, and a glass of wine, but I’m lazy and get annoyed carrying things around.

I found these useful, but ugly, trays at Goodwill:

So, I painted them white:

Then traced out the inside onto a piece of scrap paper:

Then I traced the scrap paper shape onto some oil cloth and cut that out to line the tray with. I must not have done a very good job though because I had to trim quite a bit off. As I said, I’m lazy, so this step was sort of tedious.

Anyway, add some hot glue glue and (ta-da!) much improved trays: