A great moment from 'Treme'

Wendell Pierce, Lucia Micarelli and Michiel Huisman on a sweet little 1930's tune called "Ghost of a Chance." Season 1 is over, which means it's in reruns now for HBO subscribers - and should hit DVD somewhere down the line. Great ensemble acting, well written, and the music is sublime.

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Oh, sasha_kahn, this one's for you.

Veni, vidi, wiki

After a crazy-busy week at work, and the Oakland disturbances, I was in semi-slacker mode this morning and didn't feel like sewing.
I did toss some brief entries onto the West Kingdom wiki thingy, mostly my names with a photo and a "please go to" link to my website. I did put up a page on the HOCM though, complete with Hikaru holding a sake cup and looking adorable.

I was in one of those want-to-get-out-of-the-house modes, so I bopped down to the Beanery for a chai, resisted the siren call of the Feel Good Bakery and headed up to El Cerrito as it's about the time of year they put linen on clearance. I found a Pepto pink linen/rayon jacquard at JoAnn's, which I will probably overdye. The color totally violates my No Pink rule - it isn't even a nice pink, but it was a nice weight and I liked the simple geometric repeat and the 60% off markdown. It'll probably end up as an under-kosode of some sort. No good plaids or stripes - plaids were popular in 16th c. Japan and I think I'd like to do something in a plaid at some point.

I also found some 5" wooden rounds, so I grabbed them for lantern bases. I have some ideas for improvements on my kaga-chochin design: I want to do another set with shades that can be moved up and down so one doesn't have to reach down inside past the handle to light the darned things. Having seen a real one at Genji Antiques some months ago, it might be nice to build some better ones based on the design I observed from handling that one. 

Ran into Linda W. at Moe's in the textile section on the 2nd floor and pointed her at a copy of Fashioning Kimono, which I don't actually own and don't really need to own at the moment. However, it's a nice book with lots of modern kimono designs in it, so I thought she might want to look at it. (She messaged me this afternoon and ended up with a 2 volume thing on Imperial Chinese silks instead.) . I did score another Kodansha volume, this one on domestic architecture. No luck finding anything on Francis Xavier or Mendes Pinto, though Moes unhelpfully sticks all the non-British Isles, non-medieval European history along one wall, so I would've needed specific author/translator names to conduct a more successful hunt. (Geez, they break up Asia into separate sections by country....)

Had a Skype visit with allison_is  when I got back around my lunchtime/her bedtime, Germany being 9 hours ahead.

Sat through a grueling (is there any other kind?) Holocaust pic called Triumph of the Spirit with Willem Dafoe in it. Tried about an hour of Public Enemies, which was on HBO this evening, but just wasn't into it. I did, however, find a channel way down the cable list that had NHK news from Japan in English. If I can remember to catch it on Saturdays at 7, it's certainly worth a look.

In other pocket fluff, I discovered through an old friend on FB that the barn I used to ride and teach at has joined the 21st century and has a website! Kinda nice to know Scott's still doing his thing and Val's still teaching and all that.