it's not every day we get gifts from those whose work we so greatly admire. i am unbelievably honored - baffled, really - to have received this gorgeous scarf today from chunghie lee.

interviewing her for korea quarterly was more of an experience than i ever thought i'd get. if you'd told me in the year i first found and admired her work that all this would happen you could have knocked me over with a feather.

i'm just so touched. also, you see that the wrapping paper here is also gorgeous - and in my two favorite colors no less.

an EXCELLENT mail day - not only this, but we also received our "invitation" to be fingerprinted for the department of homeland security (this, you do when bringing a new little citizen into the US), and even received our child abuse and criminal clearances for the adoption! it's quite a day in the dorko levin house!

as prior reporting suggests, i've wanted to do this for longer than i can even remember, and when my girlfriend brought me back five gorgeous yards from her incredible trip to tanzania, i bought a dvd gele-headwrapping tutorial and it works! this is just the style i have always wanted to wear.

and i have four more yards just like this! i need to get an iron and sort of fold them in the shape i need to have them when i put this on. it's an upper arm workout for sure, but this one is even better than the one i tried last night at about a quarter to midnight immediately after watching the dvd.

i'm glad i have an option of both showing off my fabric and never cutting up the yardage. it'll get some wear and tear but will ultimately remain intact, because i'm sure it will be interesting to pass on one of these days.

off to ikea to amaze the locals!

i have always believed in my heart that i could rock the african headwrapping deal. i can pull off a number of hats that the average woman can't, and it's got to do with having a big long nose; so i've always just had a feeling about the gele and have wanted to try it.

when my friend lyn decided to go on safari, i knew what i wanted her to bring back for me - fabric. specifically, the rather crunchy-stiff cotton used to wrap african womens' heads. (most instructions i've found online for wrapping a gele advocate repeated use of spray starch, so, while i would of course be interested in any and all handmade fabrics, for gele purposes, nothing too openly-woven or lofty would be useful. )

i love african textiles. i think my earliest memories of a generalized african aesthetic stem from one of the most beloved muppet show sketches of all time, with harry belefonte singing with the muppet african masks. this beguiled me at age nine; i have never forgotten it. when ben and i were in washington dc this past spring i saw some awesome hats from cameroon at the textile museum. so i waited with great excitement to see what lyn would bring me, and i hoped that she would not be mauled and eaten by a lion, because i wanted my fabric.

while she was apparently compelled to sleep with a machete next to her bedside in serengheti, she was not eaten by a lion and was able to visit me today, with a bag full of beautiful fabrics, from which i was able to choose. she is amazing! particularly because going into the city of arusha where she purchased these fabrics was not an entirely relaxing experience. "intimidating" is a word she used; it was not a tourist village. but she did some serious shopping.

as it turns out, tanzanian women do not wear ornate - only rather utilitarian - fabric wraps on their heads. that's okay, i can learn my particulars elsewhere: not surprisingly, there has been a beautiful black heritage program at the amazing victoria and albert museum in london. and, i am going to buy a dvd explaining many ways to wrap a gele.

i am a grown up and have come to the sad conclusion that i will not be one of the six hundred people on earth who get mudcloth chuck taylors, and it's hard to face the truth, but all this pretty new fabric makes it better. i am hoping that the lengths to which it is currently cut will work for headwrapping; i can't stomach the thought of applying scissors to any of it.

we have a new bedspread. it's worth noting. we have been waiting on it for about a year now... it is our housewarming gift from my dad. apparently he was watching martha stewart one morning last fall and saw a segment about swan's island blankets and thought they sounded fabulous. he asked us to choose one to be made, and now it has been made, and has arrived. (he said he was going to get one for himself too, but then said he was waiting until the cat died, but, after seeing ours, he didn't seem so sure he wanted to wait. i don't think he'll kill a cat for it, but i don't think he's going to wait to get his either.)

it is really lovely. we were ooohing and aaahing over the way it came packaged -- in this big linen envelope bag with cedar slats slid into fabric pockets on three sides. there is also a pocket on the front with a card inside with multiple "to/from/date" blanks, intimating that the blanket will outlive many humans. if you saw the price tag on the blanket, you'd be comforted by that possibility, too.
another tag attached to the blanket was letterpressed on handmade paper. no detail unfussed over!

we got a lighter weight blanket and even the lighter weight goes a long way towards keeping you warm. i would say this, over a comforter and sheet in the winter, and just this and the sheet in the summer, and it'll be perfect either way. we put it on the bed last night and were amazed at how "tucked in" we felt.

it is, undoubtedly, an heirloom item. no cheetos in bed in our house from now on. no more guacamole guns either.... and no nyquil wrestling.

not knitted and not made by me, but hats nonetheless. we purchased them a couple of weeks ago and they are on a wall in the den, pretty well protected from sunlight.





the hmong are a tribe located in the east in china, thailand and laos, with large immigrant pockets in the US in wisconsin and minnesota. i never even hear the word hmong without thinking of the book the spirit catches you and you fall down.



the written language of the hmong was once banned in china, and hmong women attempted to preserve it for younger generations by stitching the characters into their dresses. the original written symbology is all but lost, and although there are currently printed materials "written" in transliterated, romanized hmong, most hmong people have a hard time reading them.

look at this hat. it has a tiny little baby person riding on top of it!

my friend lisa currently owns a bakery, and last year was the recipient of the epi scarf. i don't know how much wear she gets out of it, in south carolina.

a few years ago, she made me a doll that i featured in the trinity doughnuts tarot!

what's great about lisa's gifts is that they never, ever seem to come from a store. they are always handmade, found, or full of history.






this year, a new doll. lisa calls him a "blind justice jingle elf with knock knees + long arms".

and (in addition to a few other non-textile items), this brooch. it's soldered glass covering a teeny, tiny, TINY piece of tatting!

very special forever items!