Never met a Greek girl who didn’t love her jewelry! Seriously, I think it’s in our DNA. There’s something about being adorned with pretty little trinkets that generally makes us tingle. And, it’s not necessarily precious metals and gems that are needed to do the trick.

Personally, no matter how much I have, I can always find something else I need or want, as the case may be. Yes, sometimes you need a piece of jewelry. I always seem to have a hole in my collection that needs to be filled. Jewelry is not like most collections. It doesn’t just sit around and collect dust. It has a purpose!

I don’t like football. I never really have. I went to Penn State. Go figure.

I don’t have anything… really, against it. I just don’t see the big draw. I went to a Penn State branch (Brandywine) my first two years and then transferred to Main Campus for my jr. and sr. years. I originally intended to transfer to St. Joe’s. In a million years, I never thought my parents would allow me to go away to school. But in my Freshman year I met my now Koumbara Valerie and over the course of those first two years she convinced me; main campus was the way to go, and that of course, we should room together. If it weren’t for the fact that my parents liked Val, I doubt I would have gone. But, off I went.

The blog topic on which I was originally going to write for this week has been postponed. Next week we’ll talk about disciplining kids, Greek Style. You see, The Cosmos Bloggers received an email last week reminding us to get our blogs posted. It went something like this, “Well it appears some of my bloggers are on vacation. Tanning on the beach? Rock climbing?….”

I scoffed at the notion that I could possibly be tanning on the beach! There was no sun where I had spent the last two days, except for the runs I made to the Goodwill. I was spending my days cleaning out my basement. For some people this is a once every couple of years kind of chore. For me it’s once every couple of months.

Ever hear of “Yarn Bombing”? Me neither. Until I spotted this special exhibit going on at the Philadelphia Museum of Art. In honor of the museum’s first exhibition of contemporary crafts, the front entrance of the Pearlman Building has been bombed. Yarn bombed!

The exhibit called “Craft Spoken Here” is an installation piece. “Found in urban, suburban and rural environments, knit bombing is a public form of contemporary craft concerning reclamation and personalization of public places. Knit bombing is a fairly new form of street art that entails knitting and crocheting cozies for trees, signs, lampposts and bike racks and varied forms of adornment on public sculpture. Also called yarn storming, guerrilla knitting, urban knitting, and graffiti knitting…” (Phila Museum Web Site) Giant, colorful columns of granny squares blanket the façade. I have to tell you that in person, this towering display of handwork is stunning. As beautiful as the front of the Pearlman Building is, this splash of color is so much fun to behold. The oh-so common granny square design is soft and warm and oddly comforting in this setting. It has certainly kept me warm on many nights in my life. To see it here is somehow nostalgic and new. This familiar handmade craft is larger than life up against the cold stone of the Pearlman. I think it’s fascinating how personal this very public space feels decorated in this way.

Eco, green, reduce, reuse, recycle. My yiayia’s and many from their generation had no idea what these words meant but they lived their very old fashioned lives by these very modern buzz words. They reused and reincarnated everything and anything they could.

Their possessions lasted them a lifetime. I should know, I still have many of them. Old tables were painted and then resurrected years later with another coat. Multiple coffee cans lined the cement path in Yiayia Kaliope’s garden filled with basil.