Wacky Hair Day

Let's hear it for the brilliant administrators at my daughters' school, who chose this week, as the holiday excitement is mounting, as Spirit week. It has kept Haley and Anna distracted with planning for pajama day, wacky hair day, twin day and inside out craziness.

Any woman who was capable of doing her own hair in a remotely "stylish" way during the mid-80's can pull off some wacky hair, let me tell you that right now. Those younger Mommys can't touch my wacky hair!

Museums

One of my new favorite blogs is Yarnstorm; I love everything about it, the balance of color to white space, her photographs, her sense of art in all things, not just knitting. I will set myself up for scorn here by saying that I HATE museums with very few exceptions....but I love me some art museums. So it is that I recommend checking out Yarnstorm because she's posting some lovely photos and chat about meandering through Paris. I would kill to return to the Louvre, although my memory of it even as an 11 year old is quite vivid. Add to my envy the fact that my parents will be returning to Spain in the spring and making a visit to the Prado and I'm about to wet myself. We went so many times when we lived there that it seemed rather ho-hum by the end of our tour...

You might guess that I'm a modern art kind of girl and that's so. I do enjoy the Masters but there are only so many rain-drenched lily ponds you can truly admire---or is that just me? And portraiture? Sorry. Leaves me cold. As a person who appreciates the creation of beauty by humans (as in music, painting, writing.. knitting...) I certainly do respect the effort and work and skill of those artists. But in as much as I feel strongly that art is defined by the individual, personal experience of an object, event or sound, you have to find what resonates for you. And I dig the modern stuff. I'm so happy that Rob and I have similar tastes in that regard; its something I didn't really think about until we were married but could have made decorating our home and planning vacations more challenging...

I guess I'm rambling about this because I feel a little guilty about living within 20 minutes of our Nation's concentration of museums. I've been to most over the years but that's been enough for me---with the exception of the various art museums. But I think the Smithsonian National Gallery of Art is too stodgy (though a beautiful building...). For modern art and collections of fine crafts, we have a couple of institutions that attract great exhibits; we try to hit those several times a year. But I've kind of decided that I'm going to defer my kids experience of the other museums to their school field trips. I simply do not enjoy walking slowly past exhibits, hoping for an open space near the placards to read a bunch of stuff about period garments and why I should care about the particular thing behind the plexiglass.

I will blame my father, man that I love for sure, for turning me into a girl who loves airplanes so I've got to get my wee ones out to the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum in its new digs.

I know that a trip to DC and the Smithsonian museums is a trip that some folks make with their kids once in their lifetime. Those must be overwhelming for all involved: typically during our miserable DC summers, lots of museuming all smashed into five or seven days, lodging and travel costing so much. I think its best to take your time so please, bring your kids every three years, stay at my place, see a couple at a time and check out everything else we have here in DC. Its an astonishingly rich place to live in terms of cultural experience.

How could something be this great?

While surfing off of Brooklyn Tweed's site this morning I found a great project at So Much Yarn, So Little Time. How could I have not seen these adorable knitted toys sooner? I want to cry! Nonetheless I've ordered the book from Amazon and I'll be knitting them soon enough. My girls are going to LOVE them.