Tied Up In Knots

This rant has been a while in coming, so if it bursts out of your screen and crawls down your throat screetching, please try to be understanding. Fend it off with a mug of cocoa and a warm cinnamon roll. Thanks.

I practice yoga. Well, I practice practicing yoga, I'm not a deadly serious practitioner of the eightfold path. I do some hatha, but I don't take classes wiht the Big Names of Yoga, nor do I make pilgramages to India to study at backwater shalas because anything else is "inauthentic."

And because I can learn from the written word, and know enough to keep my ego off the mat, I subscribe to a couple of magazines. Or rather, used to subscribe, because frankly, I'm never going to be limber enough to be happy with people who can talk out of both sides of their mouth at once.

You see, there's a tremendous emphasis in the text of the articles (and the essays, and the related conversations) about our duty as the Enlightened to walk softly on the face of the earth--don't eat meat, for in order to produce one pound of steak it takes ten pounds of grain, which could feed ten people for ten days, instead of one fat hog (that's you, o USDA taxpayer, do you feel GUILTY YET??) for one meal. Don't wear leather, that's cruel. Don't wear "unnatural" textiles, for they are poisonous and wasteful. And so on, so on, so forth. ¹

And that's fine, as far as it goes. I can turn that off and get the good out of the pieces that I come here for. I am one of the Untouchables--I eat meat, I wear leather, and no, I don't feel bad about my choices. I own them, and I own whatever results comes from those choices. I own the possibility that I may choose (or be required to choose) differently in the future.

But what gets my goat (and I thought I'd finally rid myself of the Noxious Flock) is the sheer number of advertisements for stuff. Actually, for STUFF. (Where's the HTML code to make that burst out of the screen, laughing maniacally, spouting fireworks like a Catherine Wheel?)

STUFF like $50 tank tops. STUFF like $180 yoga pants. STUFF like mats, mat bags, and music, all endorsed by the Big Names of Yoga. Will buying this CD make achieving full Padma Shirhasana 3 easier? By golly, looking at this ad it will--but only if I also purchase the tank top, pants, and mat.

And here's the part that finally made my carefully suspended disbelief fall right out of Mool Bandha and into my lap. The Winter issue took up the flag for an anti-mindless consumption holiday season. (Editorial: Deep cleansing releasing breath; we KNOW you're going to celebrate Christmas/Hannukkah, regardless of what we say, so you might as well keep in mind that this is a season of giving, not of receiving, AND CERTAINLY NOT OF BUYING STUFF STUFF AND MORE STUFF for the sake of giving and receiving. Namaste, you unenlightened slugs.) And whaddaya know, instead of the ad on every third page, it was a half ad every OTHER PAGE, with a big section on how this one company was giving away ten percent of its profits on every sale to this one charity!! Woo-hoo!!! You can buy all your goodies through them and know that you are doing good in this world, doncha feel all warm and fuzzy NOW! Look, look!!! One of the REALLY BIG NAMES is a spokesmodel for this company!! Why, just reading this ad should kick your kharma up a notch or two!

And, okay, they had one thing that struck my fancy. A niceish necklace, wrapped around and around the spokesmodel's wrist, just as I enjoy doing with antique paste necklaces. No prices listed in the ad, so I went to the website.

Holy craparoonie. $350 for wood, turquoise, and coral?? For WOOD, with ACCENTS of turquoise and coral????

I do a lot of DIY, and I'm a careful shopper. I am the first to admit I know what materials cost, but not what THINGS cost. If I can get it secondhand (like classic jewelry--diamonds have no provenance) (or silk shirts--once to the drycleaner, and they're just as clean as they'll ever be again) then I do it. I'm not consuming any new resources by doing so--these have already been made. If it's leather or fur in good condition (you'd be amazed at what a pawn shop can have) then I'm not killing another being just to wear it on my back three-five times a year. I know all the secondhand places that specialize in designer jeans, and as long as somewhat worn is chic, I'm good. (When they HAVE to be hard new blue, well, I guess I'll just be out of touch for a while.)

But Spike, the company donates ten percent of their profits to charity? Why would you deprive the charity of their cut? How can you be so unfeeling?

Well, let's do a little math. The jeweler donates ten percent of their profits. Since their asking price includes their profits, the raw materials, the labor, the shipping (of material to the factory, of the finished items to the warehouse), storage space, advertising costs--spokemodel time (you don't think that the Big Name donated her time to go pose for the ads, do you?), photographer's time,printing and binding and mailing cataloges, and probably designers' fees and coffee, you know that the final donation will be substantially less than ten percent of their asking price. But let's go with that for argument's sake. $35 to charity.

The fact that I can make the same sort of lariat in pearls with accents of coral and turquoise plus give $35 to charity for less than a third of what they're asking for really honks me off. How stupid do they presume their customer to be??

If you want the article, buy the article. If you want to donate to charity, donate. But don't let yourself get fooled into thinking that ten percent of profits to whatever charitable organization represents serious goodwill on the part of the manufacturer. Suppliers will offer ten percent off their ASKING PRICE just to entice you to purchase.

Needless to say, I'm practicing letting go this season. One of the things to go will be my subscription to yoga magazines. If I feel the need to find new poses/receipies/information--I'll go to the used bookstore where I can pick them up for a buck apiece, already printed, already used once and being tossed aside.

Walking a little lighter now. Om shanti, ya'll.

1. I'm not going to get into the fuel it takes for the machinery to grow the grain, or the fuel and other chemicals needed for the fertilizer, or for the amazing costs of watering a cotton field or any of that. Someone else may take up the agricultural screed and relate the doleful facts of just how much it costs to farm in a green and sustainabler way--and how much MORE the consumer has to put out to acquire. That's not the point of this particular rant; that's why all my facts are not in order, cross-indexed and footnoted.

You Know It's Bad When . . .

. . . you walk by your boss's office and all his clothes are stacked on a chair--and your boss is nowhere to be seen.

How did you miss the fact that he ran naked out of the office and down the street?

Oh, They Often Call Me Speedo, But My Real Name Is . . .

. . . Spike. (Surely you saw that one coming?)

But you probably didn't see this:



At the Blanket Bee for Project Linus, the coordinator had come up with a nifty way for the crocheters and knitters to maximize their output. You see, quilting is a pretty quick fiber art--you start with whole cloth, you cut it up into pieces, sew the pieces together to make a new pattern, then tie the quilt or machine quilt it just enough to hold up to some wear, and you're done! Takes an afternoon to a couple of days, depending on how crazy you get with the scissors and electric needle.

But when you crochet, or even knit, you start with fiber and create the cloth as you shape the cloth. And knitting is slower than crochet because the stitches are so much smaller. So a blanket takes at least a week, and more like a month of steady work.

So the quilters are donating tons of blankies, and the knit and crochet folks are still plodding along . . .

But wait! What if we took fleece, used a special rotary cutter blade to make hemstitching holes in the fleece, and then had the String Pushers knit or crochet an edging onto the blanket? And voila! a new way to participate.

I think this looks pretty good for one day of work. I'm not changing my modus operandi any time soon, because I know where I fall on the line of "quantity v. quality"--to me this looks like the equivalent of a craft fair altered T-shirt compared to a tailored blouse--but for those who ached to "do more" somehow, this is a reasonable compromise.

Blogiversary

How could I let the month of October pass without a comment that it's my second blogiversary! I've actually stuck with this thing (more or less) for two years! [checks posting schedule] Nope--missed March 06 and December 05. That's what happens when you refuse to do quiz results just for the sake of another post.

And that brings me 'round to the subject of this post. I've been slooooowly realizing that you can do a thing, or you can do a thing online, but you can't do both. Not really.

And now for the context around that statement. I knit, I art (note the small "a" in that), I write. I belong to many many many Yahoo groups about knitting and mail art and journaling and stuff.

And I see that a lot of the people blogs I had links to have faded away. The folks who got me going on Blogger have folded up shop, other people whose prose I admired have stopped posting, and a few folks that I recently collected onto my roll have posted saying that they had realized it was ride their hobbyhorse, or blog about every moment mounted.

And I have a few folks whom I read every time I get a minute, though I don't blogroll them, people whose blogs have formed the basis for books and such, and I no longer feel connected with them the way I did three years ago when I started reading blogs.

And on the lists, list moms have commented that the LIST is eating up the time that they used to use to make the subject of the list, and while it's nice that the list was much beloved and enjoyed, it's time to close up shop and get back to their lives.

And I find that more and more, I'm starting to feel that I'm writing about what I do more than I'm actually doing. I feel that I post here when I have good news to share (although as mentioned before, if I don't share all the bad news because I don't want the outpouring of sympathy [or worse yet, the casual, "Sucks to be you! Hope things get better; loveyabye."]then I certainly can't expect to share good news and have others understand why it's good news.) but I don't share my whole life--or even a whole part of any of my life. (Shocking, isn't it? I don't even share all my knitting with my Tonstant Weaders.)

And it takes time to produce this stuff. It takes time to come up with the subject, land fingies on the keys, set up photos, crop and fix the photos, and then put it all together for consumption.

So I really dig where folks are coming from when they say, "I'm getting off this merry-go-round; I'm going to go and explore my ideas, meet my muse at the board and DO a bunch of these things that I've been thinking about and exposed to, so I'll have the object in my hand rather than another blogpost that will be read and discarded like any other article from the newspaper."

Will there be a year three? Or will we close the Lunchbox and eat out instead?

Another Li'l Lunchbox

Sorry I haven't been around lately. I've blogged before about how transparency flies out the window when people you know in real life read your blog, so re-read thiose rants for a pithy explanation. What's been going on is stuff I wouldn't share with First Consort Gareth--except, well, he lives here, so he's privy to quite a lot that happens that I don't necessarily want to talk about.

And when it's stuff you don't want to share, you either pull up stuff on BlogThings just so you can get a post in edgewise, or you sit in the corner with your thumb in your mouth.

Or, in yours truly's case, you knit. Knit on, with confidence and courage, etc., etc.

Do enough of that and you get another li'l lunchbox off the needles and out into the world.



This one is based on a scrap quilt layout called Roman Coins. I'm happy with it; it's a nice little stash buster. I think I'll make it bigger next time, like 40" by 60", this is more like 40" by 40".

It's almost time to close this down for Hallowthankmas. (I know, I know, you couldn't tell that this WASN'T closed down from the frequency of the posts. Rant on that coming up soon.)

While Strolling on the Banks

Today tastes like the chocolate Coca-Cola cake my mother would make for birthdays if you begged specially. The old formula Coke, not the "classic formula" they came out with after the fiasco of new Coke. It's not the same, I've tried the recipie on my own, in nostalgic moments when I can conveniently forget that the recipe calls for three sticks of butter, and a cup of sugar on top of the half-sack of minature marshmallows, AND the Coke, AND the box of confectioner's sugar. Oh, did I forget the two cups of pecans?

Yup, it's a recipe out of Hell's Kitchen--nothing but sugar and fat. No redeeming virtues at all. But ever so yummy--carmelized sugar and chocolate in one gooey masterpiece, ready to go right out of the oven.

Did I mention it freezes well and microwaves beautifully? That would be why I'm out in the morning, walking for an hour before I go to the gym for my workout.

It may be spring when the swallows come back to Capistrano, but it's fall when the waterfowl come back to Phoenix. One hears that irrigation canals criss-cross the city, which made it possible to farm a water-hungry crop like citrus, and still nourish lawns and golf courses so people who move here from greener pastures to get away from winters and allergies can recreate what they left behind--moaning about the unbearable humidity and thier everlasting allergies.

But it's one thing to see photos, and another to live in a city that was laid out by Bradbury's golden-eyed Martians. Raised canals cut gouges through farmland turned suburbia, with parks and fields lying low beside them. In summer, when the monsoons have been niggardly with their moisture, the fields are irrigated--flooded--with water drawn from the canals, grass swaying under three inches of water soaking into the soil.

And having water available brings its own little ecosystem. In the winter, its common to see ducks going about their business on the canals, finding places under bridges where the current's surface flow eddies, dabbling after weeds that found cracks in the cement liner to grow, flapping out onto the banks to go to work on some grass humans planted in a backyard poking under the fence, or in a park.

So the school by my house had irrigated the soccer field over the weekend, and a little pond lay in the lowest spots. The ducks, bless their little webfooted hearts, had noticed water and grass--which meant that there must be worms and other good things. They were paddling about on the pond, oblivious to the skeletal goalposts and backstop sprouting from the surface like Excalibur.

Oh, Dear

I don't normally snark about the fugly designs foisted upon unwitting consumers/craftspeople; there are many better blogs about that. But sometimes you run across something that tastes like unsweetened coffee yoghurt--



Yup. A knit skirt, courtesy of the fall Knitty e-zine.

Now, I've no real beef with knit skirts, if they're actually functional. However, they seldom are. And this one is worse than usual.

We'll dispense of the usual caveats that the model in the picture is a size 00, and disappear when she turns sideways, so the skirt makes her look appealing and voluptuous. Never mind what it does for anyone over a size 4. Or, god forbind, someone with a belly to match her curvy bottom. This is standard operating procedure when dealing with fitted garments, anyway.

The big ooops with a knit skirt is that knitting stretches. (Please picture that text on fire, flashing and rotating like Linda Blair's head in The Exorcist. KNITTING STRETCHES. Thank you.)

Because knitting stretches, big baggy sweaters grow bigger and baggier, sleeves slowly take on the look of elbows, and tights loosen. The fiber makes a difference in just how fast the droop happens, but all knits will eventually succumb to gravity. Even Lycra tights with elastic threaded through the knitting bag in the seat and knees eventually.

And an inelastic fiber--with no stretch and snap back to it--will bag the second you bend. This skirt is knit in bamboo yarn--lovely heavy cool linen-like bamboo yarn. Bamboo yarn that is nigh-onto completely inelastic. I knitted a lace stole in the stuff, and didn't need to block it open at all.

So the second the model sits down in that skirt, she'll have a second ass at about mid-thigh when she stands up. Oh, and she'll crush her pretty ribbon corsetery, too. So she can't get in a car to go out clubbing to show off the skirt she hand-knit (and her sexy body) because she'll look bedraggled and dumpy as soon as she gets up off the seat. And once there, she'll have to keep on dancing because sitting in this skirt will be the kiss of death.

All those long hours knitting stockinette stitch round and round and round for a garment you can only put on to parade around the living room in.

The name of the garment? Glad you asked--"Intolerable Cruelty." At last--truth in advertising.

Sometimes . . .

Sometimes when you do work for work's sake, you also make art for art's sake. I love it when that happens.



While taking photos of the new building for the business blog, I happened to catch this one better than I could have planned. The only thing I had to do was crop it--I love getting a shot like that!

And Now Another Word

Today DOES INDEED taste like artichokes and used motor oil. For years I've been saying "Don't say it or I will see it," and now it appears the same goes for flavors of the day.

It's the ass end of summer, when you're finally warm enough (plenty warm, thankew, looking forward to winter even though it shivvers us something fierce, it does)and it's not only hot but muggy and thick. You're swimming in bisque without seasoning, gluey and dull.

So the weather has a lot to do with the ennui. (What is it like to be on whee? Not as much fun as you'd think; it's a draggy low rather than a high. Put down the whee pipe and get moving already!)

Working on the last couple of projects of the year. I had some dull neutral yarn that needed to become the centers of some blankets--
--and that became a project in and of itself.


The motif was too sugary-girly in white . . .
. . . so I decided to do counterpane centers instead.

Then I remembered why I hate counterpane centers--they're quite fiddly as written, especially this one, which has you increase via a yo at the beginning of each row. Additionally, there's a bunch of sewing, and when you stripe the plain knitting, you have a bajillion ends per quarter square to weave in. It's almost as much sewing as knitting, which is why this project is a tour-de-force.

I can't reduce the number of ends when I knit the striped parts, but I for sure can reduce the ends in the white and the fiddly sewing bit. I've been knitting the squares in the round, casting on for four of the quarter-squares and working a p1f&b in the increase stitches.

Start with 12 sts on DPNs, work the four leaf motifs, work the flanking leaves and move the square to a circular needle as soon as practicable. Keep it on the circ until the white part's done, then knit back and forth on the circ until the first striped part is done.

Cast off the last stripe, move one to the right, and do it again until the whole square is off the needles. Et voila! One painless counterpane square.

The monsoon's breaking once more. Off to go knit on the covered porch, in the rain. A moment of cool in a long summer of hot.

The News from the Salt River

The Dowager Empress herownself sent me a wonderful poem, one that’s a keeper, so I’m putting it up here for all the Tonstant Weaders to viddy--

Look

The moon thumbs through the night’s book.
Finds a lake where nothing is printed.
Draws a straight line. That’s all
it can. That’s enough.
Thick line. Straight toward you.
-- Look.

Rolf Jacobsen
(1907-1994)
Translated from the Norwegian
By Olav Grinde


That's lovely. The only problem is I hear it read in Garrison Keillor's voice, and then a monologue about Norwegian poetry ensues . . . and how Norwegian is such a frugal language that the poor guy didn't have enough vocabulary to title the poem without using one of the words in the body of the poem . . . and how Rolf stayed up night after night after night . . . and how he asked his friends Sven and Oley for help, and they contributed the only two words in Norwegian he hadn't used yet--"Pig," said Sven, and "Turnip," suggested Oley.

And you can probably hear the rest of the monologue contained in the air conditioner's hum, so I'll spare you that.

Some days it does not pay to be one of all the children who are above average.

Thursday's Post Has Far to Go

Good lord 'n' butter. (No, that's not what today tastes like, today tastes more like . . . honey. Pure raw clover honey, so sweet it's hot in your mouth, like the sunshine that made the flowers and nectar.) Is it really August already? That means it'll soon be September, and then the two year blogiversary.

Where does it all go? It was May just a moment ago, I swear. I was jumping rope on the patio, and then all of a sudden the monsoon rolled over the Valley and it was hot and wet, and in two shakes we'll go back to the dry heat of autumn. Two breaths after that and it will be the dry coolth of winter, when you pull out a sweatshirt in the morning and layer up in a coat over the thin turtleneck and finally pull your wool trousers out and really wear them.

The year of me me me has started four months early. During the chilly air-conditioned summertime, as I sat shivering in the office (I sit under a blower, so while my hands are numb and blue, my bunkie by the window is dying from the heat, and the office next door is positively tropical. I hate the building we're in; I've worked in it for four . . . no, FIVE years and have never never never been in an office where the temperature was moderate.)

Anyway, as I sat shivering under the freakin' blower, I started thinking about a shawl I'd knit for the Dowager Empress Odie-Bird. It was chenille. Great big worsted weight chenille in midnight blue, soft as a Muppet pelt, and warm as a mug of coffee. I should know, it was August as I finished the darn thing with the whole heavy pelt across my lap. And I knew I had a whole 'nother pound of the stuff in my stash.

So I pulled out the needles again, cast on my six for the neckband, and went right to it. Garter stitch, nice mindless garter stich in a Faroese shape so the thing will hang on my neck and shoulders and I won't have to clutch it to me every time I reach for the printer. A simple knit, a few weeks of work so I won't fret about leaving it in the office--if someone kipes it, they obviously really needed it badly.

And I still have two pounds of emerald green waiting to become. Heh.

Dutiful Meme

Today tastes like peanut butter and muffin tin liners. The weather is a wet flannel blanket just out of the dryer. When you can’t think of anything to say, but know you should say something, surf the web for inspiration.

So you’ll just have to imagine the posts I was gonna write about the walk this morning along the canal (insert shades of Ray Bradbury here, both the sci-fi and the Doug Spaulding) where I talk about the hordes of black bumblebees dangling on their wings and droning among the glories pastel fields of Russian Thistle blooming mellow pallid violet among the grey-green leaves, with the fireworks of yellow stamens in the early morning light. Too bad, I’m going to do a meme theme here.


1. YOUR ROCK STAR NAME: (first pet and current street name)
Taffy Verano (obviously I do Spanish cross-over like Shakira)

2. YOUR MOVIE STAR NAME: (grandfather/grandmother on mother's side first name, favorite sweet)
Bonnie Gelato

3. YOUR "FLY GIRL/GUY" NAME: (first initial of first name, first two or three letters of your last name)
Eree (hmm, rather goth to be called a name that rhymes with “Eerie.” I like it.)


4. YOUR DETECTIVE NAME: (favorite animal, name of high school mascot)
Alpaca Matador (that’s almost like a superhero name)

5. YOUR SOAP OPERA NAME: (middle name, city where you were born)
Llewellyn Albuquerque (goes well with the rock star name, no?)


6.YOUR STAR WARS NAME: (first 3 letters of your last name, last 3 letters of mother's maiden name, first 3 letters of your pet's name)
Ree’ettvis (ok, I just had to put a glottal stop in the middle of that screech. Wow.)


7.JEDI NAME: (middle name spelled backwards, your mom's maiden name spelled backwards)
Nyllewell T’terrag (looks more like Dragonriders of Pern, doesn’t it?)

8. PORN STAR NAME: (middle name, street you lived on)
Llewellyn Jen Tilly

9.SUPERHERO NAME: ("The", your favorite color, last product advertised that you remember on TV (or favorite)
The Chartreuse Attorney

All Bound Up

I’ve grumbled about this before, but here we go again—the life examined sometimes is difficult to live.

Right now, I blog here about knitting and whatever comes to mind, I blog there about the new company that I’m involved in building. I journal my shadows under cover of darkness to keep them from creeping into the daylight hours and tangling about my feet. I share a mail project with a virtual friend (as opposed to an imaginary friend—imaginary friends don’t send you stickers or write replies to you) in which we share a journal, adding art and whatever to the pages as we go.

It feels live I live with keyboard and camera in hand, a bandolier of Sharpies slung across my chest, writing life rather than living it. There’s a lot to pick and choose from; I’m drowning in material and writing it all in my head because, of course, the perfect spot to put all this in is always in another place.

I’d like to talk about my post-project depression a little—I just finished watching the last season of Six Feet Under. The benefit of waiting for TV shows to come out on DVD is that you can fill the six disc carousel and watch until your eyes fall out of your head, knitting madly all the while. No commercials! A pause button for snack and bathroom breaks, and you can see “that” episode again and again with only a little hunting (as opposed to on videotape. I used to note the numbers for the beginning of each movie/show on the spine of a videotape so I could find them reasonably quickly. Yes, Virginia, this was back in the Dark Ages.)

Of course, the drawback is that by the time you see the shows, the rest of the world has moved on. “That was soooooo 2005.” Tra la.

So I have no one to blame but me—I knew this was the last season as I plugged it in. I knew that with a show that is predicated on death and the world going on without you as you remain only a memory blah blah blah would kill off everyone eventually and close the show off so that there was no more. No “I wonder if they ever . . .” No “Maybe those two get their act together and marry . . .” Nope, no fuzzy endings, all of it fade to white in signature style.

I just hadn’t counted on finishing a project at the same time.

I’m a process person. Big time process person. That’s why I blog rather than writing novels (although Tonstant Weader will probably chime in here and claim that each and every post is at least a novella. Pooh on you, Tonstant Weader.)

I couldn’t live with the characters, know their backstory, know their frontstory, know what they like for breakfast, then live with them and tell the slice of their life in which you get to know them—then end it all. Type my three ###’s at the end like a press release and walk away from them. Blogging, well, blogging goes on and on and on and has little bitty endings (at the end of each post) but never really stops until the day you decide to go out and live life rather than writing about it.

You see, I was working on a blanket that I’ve been knitting on for a little more than a year now (off and on; off and on since February 2005. There’s a six-months photo in the archives—October 26, 2005.) I just happened to finish it the same night as we watched the last of the show. Now it’s all over except for weaving in the ends.



It doesn’t help that I just finished another blanket that I started shortly before that.
All my long-term projects are winding down and closing off, getting ready to go out and live their useful lives.

On the one hand, I’m glad to get them done. This closes out the last of the original projects from the “Stressed Monkey Project-O-Rama” (so what do you call your “git r done” list?) It’s a good thing to finish projects because that means you can start new stuff. I limit myself to only five projects on the needles at a time, because otherwise I spread myself too thin during manic bouts of startitis, and when I come down, I come down hard, and can only sit and stare at all the things surrounding me. Lovely ideas with copious notes, and no energy at all to pick it up and proceed.

But on the other, well, they’re over. Like when a childhood friend moves away—you need permission to call long distance, and in the days before the Internet, you had to come by stamps and envelopes and stationery. You both swore you’d write every single day, and maybe you did. For a week. Or two. Where are all your friends from high school, where you inscribed “4 EvR” in each other’s yearbooks on that last day of senior year?

I don’t miss the items, not a bit. I could always make another very much like it if I took a notion to have something like that for myself. It’s the process I miss. I miss watching an idea take form under the needles and solving the bugs that always crop up.

Just like I miss getting to know the characters for the first time, watching the story arc unravel and spool out to the final scene

Ten Little Fingers and Could Rule the World . . .

. . . if it weren’t for shiny objects.

It’s been a day of high distraction, tho’ really, you could repeat that phrase for just about any day of the year thus far. The push is on to finish finish finish all the projects I have started so I can spend next year knitting just for me. Of course, finishing one project will leave me with a stockpile of centers for Linus blankets, which I will probably begin longing to start on shortly thereafter.

I’ve managed to keep the startitis down to one pair of socks because I just had to try doing a star toe from the tip up rather than from the top down. I found an umbilical start worked best in the fine sock yarn—work an eight-stitch I-cord in waste yarn, then knit one in each stitch around, knit one round, double to sixteen, knit one round, then begin the four lines of increase, alternating with plain rounds. The plan is to continue the alternating increases with plain rows until the toe fits around the ball of my foot (about 60 sts or so in sock yarn, 40 in sport weight) then knit a plain tube until the sock reaches the front of my ankle. Then work an Afterthought Heel, finish the leg, finish the heel, weave in the ends.

This could well become the Blue Box Socks pattern I’ve lusted for, the Holy Grail of self-striping sock yarn. I lurve me that stuff, but heel flaps never look good because of the interruption; and I’m always afraid of not having enough yarn for the second sock . . . or having one-third of a sock left over after skimping to get done. If this works out, I can work the socks as long as I like, and then put the leftovers together with plain wool argyle-fashion—-self-striping diamonds and plain diamonds.

Progress on the new job continues apace--see the other blog for details. Meanwhile, I'm weaving in the ends at this one so I can change horses the moment the moment's right, like a trick rider in the circus. Here we go again; I was thinking this time last year how nice it would be to just have one job to do and be settled down. Ah well.

Finished one Linus blanket, need to weave in ends. Pictures to follow.

How's Business??

Today tastes like butter and bitter chocolate, with just a hint of sugar. Dense and creamy, salty and none too sweet.

Interesting times at work, in the Chinese sense of interesting. Arthurella, Gareth, I and a cast of thousands are setting up a business with the whole vision thing--no more small business association loans where you have to beg and plead for fifty bucks, we're seeking out venture capitalists and investors this time. We're reserving our begging and pleading for figures with seven digits to the left of the decimal.

We have a building in the process of renovation for our use, we're looking at renting a bitty space right now, just to have a place to work, and we're shooting to open the doors in August.

And then I probably won't know daylight from dark for five years.

I'm okay with that; I got to write my own compensation package and my own job description, so I'll be doing many things I love (like writing and writing and writing--see the Capital Collection Bureau blog¹ for details of where the biz is at. I promise not to do more than the occasional link to it here when something cool happens.

It's funny--in order to minimize the possibility of cross-posting, I set up another account for the CCB Blog. I could just see myself hammering out a post about the latest lunchbox project and throwing it up there, or starting a business-related post with "Today tastes like artichokes and used engine oil. Why do people assume that we can't follow our own moral code?" Eeeeeek!

1. Edited--We've killed the "real" Capital Collection Bureau blog due to an order from the guys in black dresses. I'm half-tempted to find out if the Capital Collections Bureau at Blogspot dot Com is the same one as trimmed our ears, or if it's yet another one.

And yes, this is a lesson that if you have a nifty cool name, then someone else thought of it first. Even though you do your due diligence . . .

There Are Days . . .

There are days when you do what you do and you wonder why you do it. Days spent gluing bits and bobs to other bits and bobs, splashing paint about, listening to your gremlin ponder just so you can write his words down and destroy them in the name of making. . . well, stuff, because the little green bastard will be the first to inform you that you ain't no artist. (After all, an artist can draw a horse. From memory. And make it look just like a photograph. Yeah.)

There are days when you look at how much you spend a month on postage, how much time you spend on-line, essentially talking to yourself because of how much is missing from the e-mail experience, participating in wht you are aware is a grand illusion of relationship that feels very real on your end of the machine, and presumably feels truly real on the other side of the screen as well, but you'll never really know, now will you?

There are days that you spend searching out new (at least to you) techniques and methods of assemblage and texture and words to pull them all together with, hunting for that pattern you saw just last week (and can't rememeber anything about but the way the colors melded and this would be just perfect for this project now, but looking for "green" and "blue" and "yellow" and "doors" just leads you to porn sites) and darn it all, it was just here somewhere, and you remember you found the link on someone's blog that led you to someone else's blog and well, crap. Maybe something in the history cache will jog your mind . . . oh. Right, you just cleared that five minutes ago to get the latest version of that other site that you visit once a week on average.

But then there are days when your mailbox bursts with postcards from people you correspond with, and some of those cards were made by hand, and some of those cards have witty messages, and then there are the envelopes from countries you never heard about with ATC's in them from people who found you from a group somewhere and wanted to swap, and then there are envelopes packed with decos to admire, work in, and pass along on their flight path--or out into the wide world.

Yes. There are days.

Just for Today

Just for today . . .

I will eat my vegetables.
I will drink my water.
I will take every opportunity to exercise.

Just for today . . .

I will not whine.
I will not say, “But it’s not fair!”
I will not drag my feet.

Just for today . . .

I will do the right thing, even when it sucks.
I will keep my promises, especially those I made to myself.
I will put one foot in front of the other, and celebrate progress made.

Just for today.

Literate Gerunds

Today tastes like fake chocolate, “chocolate flavored” and waxy. There used to be a chocolate flavored gum that would always suck me in with glossy brown promises, but always disappointed once the stick was unwrapped. Thank goodness it’s a short day. Thank goodness we’re headed for the cabin in the mountains after lunch.

I have lots to do and no desire, which is bad. Hopefully getting up into the pines will clear out the don’t wanna cobwebs that I’m mired in.

Thinking about the permanent knitting projects and new ways to organize them. My stash achieved SABLE* status almost immediately after I began knitting, and then blew up after I discovered the internet. Ah, back in the days of the relatively strong dollar, when one could buy laceweight merino from Australia for $22 per kilo. Nope, no typo there. Buy three kilo cones, and get a discount almost high enough to cover the shipping. The shop would wait to charge my card until I verified receipt. And the best part?? I’d ask them to ship “slow boat via China” and get my goods almost three weeks later.

Do I need to go into how much merino laceweight I have stashed and waiting?? Plus, the Project Linus blanket bees with acrylic going begging (and I can’t let THAT happen, can I??) and the short-lived habit of going to the craft store and buying every color of acrylic worsted that caught my eye . . . well, you can imagine the state of the stash.

But I have a couple of projects that are too large to tote around with me so as to take advantage of the snippets of time that so much gets done in, and thus they have to wait patiently for me to get chunks to sink in, like on the weekends watching Netflix. And for the last two years I’ve confined myself to no more than five projects on the needles—one for me, one for Project Linus, one for friends/family, one with an eye to publication, and a wild card. It’s worked nicely; when I get antsy with a big project I can work a small one to completion, or choose something complex for “nexties” if I can’t stand the thought of more garter stitch.

But at the same time, I’ve been feeling like the shoemaker’s barefoot children. I wanna knit for me, ‘cause no one will appreciate the time and effort as much as I will. Sad but true, of just about anything handmade. Each person’s tastes are unique and individual, so it’s rare to find someone else who does it just like you would.

So I’m thinking about a push to finish off the projects currently on the needles, and then not replace them with anything from the Project-O-Rama, so that by New Year’s Day, all the needles are empty. (And then I will probably drop dead, having made the Faustian bargain that I would live until I completed all my projects.) (However, you will note that I did not specify FIBER projects. At the time, I wasn’t into paper. Gotta watch those clauses.)

And then, come New Year’s 2007, I wanna knit for me me me. I’m thinking shawls, shawls and socks. Little 40-day type projects, so I can do a bunch in the year to come. Lovely selfish dreams.

But first I gotta get through these last few.







*Stash Acquisition Beyond Life Expectancy

"Censer," Said the Censor

First I should thank my fan base, especially those who have my e-mail address and my snail mail address who very gently kick me in the head and remind me that there are really people who read my blog; who will come back and come back and see the same rant, and then get up and yell at me to keep writing, even when the words come slow and hard and I can’t think about anything except what isn’t getting done while I sit here and twiddle the keys.

Thank you.

Second, common wisdom in the blogosphere says you shouldn’t let your nearest and dearest know your blog address. It changes what you write, they say, makes you less authentic. It’s like Heisenberg’s uncertainty principal—people should either know what’s up in your life because they’re living it right next to you, but not know where you blog about it; or should know your spot on the web where you keep the diary that’s read by any passing stranger, but not know who you are.

Some of my skinterface friends who blog (and no, I don’t generally read theirs) comment that it’s weird when a stranger remarks on their choice of colors, or words, or asks what the next project is going to be—just as if they knew them, they say. (And how’s THAT for a typically convoluted sentence??) But in some ways, I find it odder to get an email from someone who knows me in real life—or a comment from a RL person that harks back to what they read on my blog—because I don’t talk about what I blog about. It’s all about separation of virtual and real, yolk and white, church and state.

But, not being one to listen to common wisdom, I let everyone know my blogaddress, even the folks who know the face behind the lunchbox. And now I find myself in the queer position of being afraid that no one reads this . . . and being equally afraid that someone I know WILL read this.

So I end up with the unbearable lightness of blogging. If I post what’s really on my mind, will I end up with my nearest and dearest fretting over what I said? Angered that they got it over the net, instead of directly from me? What, don’t I trust them??? (Yes, and no. When you put your heart near someone else’s hand, you trust them implicitly, but at the same time, this doesn’t mean you want them knowing all there is to know.)

And as you know if you’ve been reading this blog, when I write, I open my mouth and my heart falls out. Here’s the downside of authenticity and letting it all hang out—it ain’t pretty. It may clash with your public persona. And so I end up self-censoring, and if I don’t have a post about fluffy bunnies and the latest knitting project, I end up not saying anything out loud.

Which is great for filling journals, but gets no space filled here. And the weeks go by, and the weeks go by, and suddenly it’s been over a month and both mailboxes start to pile up with people saying “Just what the hell happened, Spike?”

And I come up with plans to do better; plans that only require a perfect world to come to fruition.

I had forgotten how good it is to have space to think again. Thanks for the kick in the pants, Bonnie Rae. I needed that.

The Nature of Envy

Was thinking this morning (a dangerous thing to do, sans coffee) about how we admire someone who can do a thing well if it is a thing we think we can do, and how we envy those who do things that we believe to be beyond our abilities.

Case in point: I have a dear friend who had an amazing figure (and yes, liked to make sure the whole world knew it). And I envied her her twenty-two inch waist, and her six pack abs, and her long shapely legs.

And I envied her because I thought it all came naturally--like a gift from some benevolent figure beyond for being a perfect person. I never thought about what would be required to maintain that body. Well, I knew she taught aerobics classes, but still, I worked out, too. It just wasn't fair, and I envied her.

And then time and childbearing have done what they do--right now, we're either neck and neck or I may actually be a couple of inches thinner here and there. And I found out that not only did she teach aerobics, she taught two classes five days a week, and maintained a workout schedule of her own, and monitored her weight every single day. If she went up a pound, she'd diet it right off that day.

Then, as I said, she had kids, and dropped the classes, and now she's working to get back to where she was. And guess what? It's just as hard for her as it has been for me. We run the stairs together at work--down seven flights, around the block, up eight flights and back down one--three times a day. And while I could make it to the top from day one, she'd have to stop at three, then five when we first started.

Now I admire her perseverence as she eats her two lettuce leaves at lunch, as she gets up and gets me moving by putting on her walking shoes, as she hauls it up the stairs and glories in the process--"Look! My pants! I can fasten them now!!!"

And I think about how I used to envy people who wrote long flowing prose so effeortlessly. I'd sweat blood over each sentence, wringing prose out of my fingertips.

Then I started journalling. Three pages longhand, morning and evening. Now I find it hard to stop sometimes, when the words begin to roll. I'm doing a mail art project where I share a journal with a virtual friend (as opposed to a virtual stranger?) (Am I sharing secrets with a bunch of virtual stragers when I blog? Why, indeed I am!) Each of us takes turns writing for a few pages, then sends it off to the other for filling. And I notice that her entries are separated by wide expanses of nothing to say, while I'm jotting away on one page each night. I forced myself to stick to that one page, because otherwise I'd end up filling the whole book in short order.

And I find myself admiring people who write professionally, who are willing to step up and face that endless blank page every morning. To trust that there will be enough to fill this page, and the next page, and one hundred pages down the road because just as fast as you write, another page scrolls up, waiting to have little black marks put on it.

And I used to be furiously envious of those who create art. Who draw, or sculpt, who produce objects with interesting form and occasional function. That's part of why I write--language is more natural to me than visual. About ten-twelve, I decided that since I couldn't reproduce objects on paper with photographic realism, I obviously couldn't draw. So I focused my efforts on what I saw as a strength and a pleasure (and what was rewarded as an aptitude) and naturally I got better at it.

And then I discovered ATC's and decos and such, and I feel pretty good about my abilities in collage (if it floats, it needs wings or some means by which to float)and I've drawn a few bits and bobs here and there (and even had the courage to SWAP them,)and I think if I really settled down and focused my efforts on learning to draw, I could do that, too. (All the Flybabies say it in chorus, "You can do ANYTHING for fifteen minutes!!")

So--what do you envy? And is it possible, just possible, that the desire is indeed within your grasp?

But then I discovered ATC's

Wake Up Call

I just received a thump on the head from one of my fans, wondering what was up since I hadn't been blogging for some time--two months now.

Frankly, I'd fallen victim to the Information Age.

It's easier to read about than it is to do, and I'd been reading about journalling, reading about art, reading about and reading about and reading about. Joining Yahoo Groups devoted to this and that, joining in swaps and round robins and other group endeavors, and making copious lists of stuff to do Real Soon Now.

As soon as I had a chance.

As soon as I had time.

And the decos stacked up, and the ATC's were threatening to spill onto the floor, and the journals were getting dusty.

But there was all this e-mail, you see. And books I'd ordered, and books I'd been given, and books I'd won in various contests. And audiobooks to read, and movies to watch, and stuff and thing and stuff to consume.

And then it hit me that consumption is not production. And I needed to get with it and do what I was gonna do--or it wouldn't get done.

So I dropped about half my groups--the ones I only lurked in, the ones I wanted to be inspired by (but wasn't), the ones that ate up time and time scrolling through the chatter panning for gold.

I cleaned both studios so I could think--and more importantly, so I could run in and do in the corners of time that work so well for me. If you're only going to spend fifteen minutes a night and an hour on the weekend days, that's not a large investment at a whack--but you don't want to spend the whole allotment hunting for your embossing powder.

And the logjams are breaking up, a little. I've found that writing plans and leaving little notes for what I want to do works well. That way I can just duck into the paper studio, pull a project and my notes about what happens next, set my timer and go like thunder till the beeper beeps and it's time to go take care of something else.

Writing About Writing About Writing

Today tastes like oregano, dark baking chocolate, and coffee.

Received a birthday giftie from my folks (yes, my birthday IS in April) and it looks like we're going to Vegas for the weekend next month. So now I'm celebrating the 90 days of birthday, it appears. (Was 12 days, then 30, now apparently it takes a whole quarter to get it done. I just thought you got more candles on your cake . . . who knew?)

And while the gift is particularly nifty keen and wonderful(whips out mat, bows in general direction of Albuquerque, mumbling "thank you thank you thank you o merciful and benevolent parents, ink of my Sharpies, lines in my paper, flecks in my deckle; I can never repay you though I live a thousand years)the thing that really caught my attention was the birthday card. Or rather, my father's handwriting in the birthday card.

I've envied his cursive since I began to write. I do okay if the actual technology of the writing implement causes me to go very sssllooowwwlllyyy and with great care to form the letters. I've a nice uncil hand with a toothpick and paint, f'r instance, and I do well with a fountain pen at a twisted angle, but give me a felt tip or pencil and I produce a scrawl that would make a doctor proud when I'm writing at speed. There's a reason I have a billion fonts on my computer and use computer-generated text when there's words on my ATC's--or I use a toothpick and paint.

Now, though, his hand is starting to slip; to take on those qualities that make you say, "It was an old person's handwriting." And I know it only seems sudden to me because I don't live at home any more and almost never see his penmanship. He doesn't have to sign my permission slips any more, or write notes to my boss about the dentist's appointment.

But at the same time it feels like it's happening overnight, like I woke up one morning in a strange body and my parents don't look like themselves any more--and who is that lady in the mirror!

And it's only unique because I'm the only me I have. Everyone wrassles with this sea change where you go to bed young and wake up in a middle-aged body with aches and pains that take longer to fade out than they did ten-fifteen years ago, and the grey in your hair isn't part of a Halloween disguise that you forgot to wash out from the party last night.

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I'm doing more journaling than I ever did before. I remember being surprised that I'd kept this blog going for a year last fall. I tried to keep diaries at various times in school, but I never kept them for very long. I had the idea that a diray was about Big Important Matters, and well, my life wasn't Big; I wasn't a teen pop idol. And there's only so many times you can write, "Dear Diary: Got up. Went to school. Ate dinner. Went to bed." before a factual recounting of the day stops making sense.

Then I read Glen Campbell's Black Company series. One of the main characters in the first couple-three books is the physician, Croaker, who serves as the Annelist for the Company. The have always had an Annelist, from the days they were first commissioned, because if you don't keep track of what you've done, you can't keep track of who you are, especially if you're a wandering band of nomads. How do you keep a sense of identity and group cohesion when you pick up a person here, lose a man there, and don't even share a common language?

In some ways I wanted to be Croaker, I wanted to have a stack of journals I could point to and say, "I was here, I did these things, I said those things. I have lived a life." I began attempting to keep travel journals--first in a notebook I transferred to a computer file (lost in a crash that took over 300 pages of fiction with it. I had word salad, except, ironically, from a little writing exercise. They could retrive that bit of doggerel.) Then I found some nicely bound ones--but of course, spined bindings lack the flexibility to allow you to open them all the way up and write to the gutters. They work. They'll do for now.

But that's travelling. That's like trips to Mexico, and Italy, and the like. I'm glad to have them--they're my versions of stickers on the suitcase. I wanted something more like a day to day book.

Then it became clear that I needed to repack my head. I found Endsville, the place where all service terminates. And I'm not a good candidate for the talking cure.

I'd found a tool to bust through the crap and re-sort what was worth keeping and what had to go--but it involved a lot of writing. I mean a lot of writing--something like eight journals, two of which you'd hit daily and do three pages apiece in (SIX PAGES???!!!) and five of which you'd work sequentially, putting in an hour a week (or about six MORE pages) for a total of forty-eight pages a week, working to reframe your habitual mindscript and to dig out insights about behavior and attitude.

Forty-eight pages a week is a LOT--in two weeks, you'd have a slim novel. In a month, that's 200 pages. TWO NaNoWriMos, in other words. In the past, when I'd write, each and every word came in blood. The work was good, and needed little editing and polishing--but DAMN. I'd spend almost as long looking at the page, re-reading and chopping at what I'd done as I did putting words there to pick at.

But well, there I was. In Endsville, where you can take the easy way out--but that's awfully final.

So I grabbed eight journals, and got going. The morning ritual is pretty well set in stone, and the evening ritual is getting there. Next month, I'm going to make an equal point of devoting time to the weekly journal, and get that habit down.

I wonder what it will be like to travel now--I'll be carrying nearly as many journals as I will pairs of clean panties.
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So now I'm reading Robin Hobb's Soldier's Son trilogy--or rather, the first book in the trilogy, Shaman's Crossing. Lo and behold, the eponymous soldier's son is gifted with a fine journal in which to record his exploits at his coming of age ceremony.

It's a big deal in that world--the first son inherits, the second son serves as a soldier, the third is for the priesthood, the fourth is an artist. The soldier sends home filled journals to record the military doings of the family, and the old and noble houses have stacks and stacks of volumes in the libraries.

So now it looks as if I'll get my wish--one travel journal completed, an ongoing diary on line, and a stack of closely-written journals about day and night and the past.

So this is February . . .

Today tastes like vanilla-flavored sand, mists on a busy city street, and bacon. Not very good bacon at that--half-done and chewy rather than crunchy. Send it back.

Li'l Brudder was in town to visit last week, so part of it's missing him and his particular take on the world. We were raised by the same parents in the same house, but in two very different families.

He left a book I had meant to purchase one of these days, but never got 'round to. Sometime the universe is like that. You address the sky, explaining that you need fruit. And what lands in your outstretched palm looks like a cross between a football and a pine cone, and smells like garlic, melon, and last week's gym socks.

"So what the hell is this? And what do I do with it??"

Comes the answer: "Durian fruit. Eat it."

And so you do, although you had apples in mind. Other times, you send your request out, and what you get back is a rusty skeleton key. So, grumbling about how this always happens to YOU, you pocket the key and keep on putting one foot in front of the other . . . until you happen upon a rusty gate with a huge old padlock . . . that the key fits into.

And when you unlock the gate, and swing it open, you come into an orchard of apples, where the windfalls clutter the ground and wasps buzz drowsily around, drunk on the fermented juices. The trees are old and untended, bowed under the sheer weight of their goods. So you pick a handful, and stuff a couple into your pockets for later.

Other times, you get exactly what you needed in exactly the form you anticipated.

The book? Getting Things Done, by David Allen. Li'l Bruddah insists that it's changed his life for the better. So I guess we'll see.

Sunny Day Blogger

Today (well, actually this last week) tastes like pistachios. Fiddly, hyperkinetic, and salty. Like tears, if tears were crunchy. Pale green and sad.

When you have people IRL who read your blog, it makes you censor your posts. Not necessarily dropping the various midnight athletics between you and your lover, but to cut down on the email and phone calls where folks ask if you want to talk about it, or offer advice and sympathy (as opposed to tea. I could get behind tea. Unsolicited advice, even with cream and sugar, does not go down well.)

So what happens when you're one of those who has to write their thoughts to see them fully expressed? Well, you write them in your blog . . . uhm, but that won't work when things suck (because sometimes things just SUCK. That's the way it is; all is dhukka.) So you write them somewhere else; strain your writing muscles, and go to bed with a metaphorical icepack to lie down for a bit until the spasms ease and you can get back up.

That's why you see me in my housecoat and fuzzy slippers.

Meanwhile, back in pollyannaworld, life proceeds apace. I have discovered decos (heaven help us, ANOTHER paper art) and am joining swaps like there's no tomorrow. Having lots of fun making lists of themes that turn me on, as one group does group themes only and the other is all artist's choice. So when life gets in the way and I can't commit to one more thing, or when I hear about something really cool that I missed out on, I make a note to myself and plan it as an artist's choice.

I'm currently in the midst of a cardstock pogram. I'm tired of flipping past the same sheets that I started with a year or so ago when I began ATC's. They're taking up space, dammit. And I don't care for maroon, gold, or orange--so I'm unlikely to turn them into pages for a deco, or endpapers for a book, or . . . well, just about anything, frankly. So I've been slapping down backgrounds ('cause I have more artpaper backgrounds than God, that's why) on the *feh* colors and sending them into the world as round robin ATC jams. I do a background, you put some art down and send it to Susie over yonder, who finishes it. Susie keeps one, sends two back to me, and I send you one. All players get an original card. Interested? Drop me a line.

I plan to spend some of this weekend doing abstract ATC's for the perpetual exchanges, and hopefully I can actually make a small dent in the stash of colorful scraps and bits. Then there's all the pages waiting to be bound into blank books at last. I'm trying to decide if I want to make more blank books with artpaper pages, which really can only be written on with big fat Sharpies. They go fast, 'cause you can't write small. (Ok, I can't write small regardless of the instrument. My hand is solidly grounded in uncil, not copperplate. Both my parents write a fine hand--but they had teachers for parents. Or maybe it skips a generation. Yeah, that's it. Blame it on genetics.)

And then with the rest of my copious and plentiful spare time, amybe I can get a couple of decos worked in and on the road. I haven't had them for a week yet, so I won't feel bad if they don't fly Monday, but if I let the idea congeal, well . . . congealed ideas are like cold scrambled eggs. Ick. And they will both sit on the kitchen table until I make myself go in there and get them cleared away. Best to strike while it's hot and fun.

Back Up on the Horse

Trying to get back in the saddle after the holidays, but right now I’m feeling like the dude. One boot caught in the stirrup, hopping along on the other foot as the horse meanders around to corral, and all the experienced bloggers sit on the fence, pearl snaps gleaming in the sun, spitting tobacco spit in the dust and laughing.

Back to the gym, off to the spa, doing it right this time because this year I’m done fooling around. I have plans to put together a deco with that theme. My own artsy New Year’s resolution—to learn how to play a new game. Maybe I’ll even pick up Photoshop skills—I have Elements 3.0—and a husband with an extensive gallery of virtual photos. Ripping up his Playboy collection for art’s sake is passive-aggressive, so what’s raiding his pixel stash? He can have the original photo in all its pristine glory; I’ll use the one where I’ve morphed the model with a snake’s skin and overlaid a transparent apple to make Eve one with the serpent. Or whatever.

Working with a self-help book I’ve been meaning to and meaning to and meaning to . . . as I said, this is the year I’m done fooling around. No, as I explained to Gareth last night, the journal I’m using for that is not for public consumption. You won’t be seeing excerpts from that anytime soon here.

To make up for the lack of news from Lake Woebegone, I have photos of a finished object. You may remember the Spirit of the Southwest Shawl I was working on in October—it’s done now. It wants dyeing into a soft yellow ochre, I think, but as I don’t have that order placed with Dharma Trading yet, you’ll just have to raise a glass of Riesling to peer through at these next photos.







I like it—I was scared it would be too small, but after blocking it out, it fits just right. Current focused project on the needles is one for Southwest Trading, a knitted zig-zag scarf, fraternal twin of the Sybaris Scarf.

After the Epiphany

Adverb 2006 is now officially over. The folks have left. The table is empty. Gifties have been integrated with all the other stuff. The cats are yowling about their nip hangovers, clutching ice bags to their heads and voluntarily wearing sunglasses to protect their enormous bloodshot eyes.

Me, I’m shuttling back and forth between the computer and the paper studio, trying to get with the program and make some art.

I’m feeling stuck because I really haven’t done any “art for art’s sake” projects since Thanksgiving. I’ve been rushing to get Christmas exchange packages done, and send our December birthday goodie packs (and I need to get on the stick and do January’s pack, too.) I’ve been putting together decos (a new form for me–itty bitty books. I don’t think I’ve ever bound single signatures before. I don’t think I’ve ever built a book of fewer than 100 pages before.) Y’all know I haven’t been blogging since about Thanksgiving. (And no, see? I haven’t died.)

But ATC’s? Nothing, nothing, ninguna agua. I have cardstock. I have new toys. I have potential out the wahzoo.

And that’s part of the problem. When I began doing ATC’s (was it really just a year ago???) I was struck with all the cool things one could do to make art–and I just froze up like a rabbit in the headlights. I clipped a few pictures and slapped them on cards, and I shudder when I remember those first three. I’m surprised I traded them out, and if I checked the second swaps lists, they’d probably all be right there.

And now I’m feeling the same way–there’s stuff I now have the tools to do (heat gun, anyone? Embossing powder? Dryer sheets and Lumiere paint??) I want to change my numbering system to reflect the first, and the second, and the umpty-leventh card for the year. (Why? ‘Cos I think it would be a neat challenge to average a card a day. At least, in September that sounded like a neat challenge, a way to stretch myself. I remember one card I just called “Ten” because it was the tenth card I made that night, and it felt like my mind was a muscle being worked to failure. Now–now it sounds like going up the Matterhorn in a barrel, or over Niagra Falls on a pair of rollerblades.)

Fortunately, I signed up for an alphabet swap (I lurve me a good alphabet swap) and several deco projects, one of which is waiting in the studio for me to get off the pity pot, get my rear in gear, and go pop that art cherry for 2006.

Heck, after three cards, I’ll be loving it again.

Woof.

Hokay--New Year's Resolution: In 2006 I will not blog between Thanksgiving and New Year's. Period. I'll post a reminder around Halloween. And I will not feel guilty about this.

There's just too much going on. I haven't had a free minute for a month, it seems. There's still stuff to do before Adverb--last minute finishy things, and I'm still getting over a wicked cold. And rather than post goofy test results each couple of days in order to have a post, I think it wiser just to close down for the holidays.

Not that this will be a long post, mind.

I was able to continue a New Year's tradition (three times, it's a tradition now) of finishing an item on New Year's Eve/Day. The Ostrich Plumes blanket is done!

You remember it from here. And now it's all growed up.



Awwww. It's 6 feet by 6.5 all stretched out for blocking. I like to do the big blankets since everyone else likes to knit for the toddlers. The next one I start will be a scrap blanket in garter stitch based on Fibonnaci triangles/golden spiral. As Mythic Grandmaw would say, faced with an engineering problem where you're constructing a 90 degree turn in a tube, "You're turning the heel on a bloody sock!"

Finishing Weekend and Cyber Monday

On the one hand, I've been doing the rugged individualist thing, and finishing gifts and goodies that are truly one-of a kind. Pix next post; see below for this week's excuse.*

On the other, I've been doing my bit for the economy, and shopping for mass merchandise on line.

I've noticed that gift certificates have become accepted as gifts in and of themselves. There are snazzy envelopes, little stuffed toys that are made to hold a gift card, multiple layers of presentation--because, after all, it's about having stuff on and under the tree to gloat over during Advent, and to open on the Big Day. I'm not sure whether to celebrate the beginnings of common sense here, or to mourn the death of innovation.

Finding out what people want without asking is an art form in and of itself. Figuring out who's close enough to know their interests and hobbies (and the stash they already have; determining where to get a book on Egyptian fly-tying; and then keeping your cards close until all is torn asunder are all skills that take years to master.

Unfortunately, who has time for that anymore? And who has space for all the stuff you want, never mind all the stuff you receive? "Dear Aunt Ermintrude: Thank you for the SpongeBob underpants. I will think of you every time I wear them under my Armani suit to opening arguments. Perhaps they will bring me luck." At least with a gift card, if I wind up with SpongeBob on my lingerie, it was my whimsical choice, not a dotty aunt's memories of her beloved little niece from thirty years ago.

*No pix this time because I can't get on the floor. Threw my back out badly; the chiropractor may make it so I don't walk like Groucho.

Took a slow walk around the block for mobility's sake--if you don't move it, you will lose it--and was thinking "This is what it's like to be old." There was water on the sidewalk from the sprinklers watering a winter lawn. While the bike path was dry, that would mean stepping off the curb, and then back up onto it. Walking over the wet sidewalk meant staying on the flat, but risking slipping and not being able to get back up. Walking over the wet lawn meant a softer place to fall, but still slippery.

And pondering these options, I realized that this was why you'd see a senior standing at a decision tree like this, mulling over the best of the bad lot. Perhaps I'll remember this the next time I see a little old lady standing and shaking her head at a puddle in her path.

Dude, Where's My Weekend?

Today tastes like limes and aspirin.

You'd think I had more to show (or at least tell) for forty-eight hours. I had only one time bound task--to take the cat to the groomers Friday afternoon. From this--



to this--




She insists she looks like a heraldic lion. I say she looks like one of Dr. Suess's marginalia.

I made some progress in a few arenas--I mailed off an Xmas swap and cards that were due at the end of the month, and I've put together and mailed a mystery surprise giftie--more on that after the presentation. The recipient may be one of my Tonstant Weaders, and I'd hate to be the spoiler.

I bound a book. One of the groups of seriously creative types I hang with decided that december would be a good month to just kick out the jams and collage together. This time, it's altered books.

Being a book snob, I wasn't going to to pick up one of the glued together jobbies at a secondhand store. I wanted something nicely bound to support the weight of altered goodies. It needed to tie shut so it could be packed with artwork and ephemera. And finally, I wanted pockets. Just because.

So I made a paper bag book, with a diamond stitched back, and an exposed spine so it would lie completely flat. (Yes, a hollow backed book or springback binding will do the same, but would be more . . . serious. Less playful.) The ends of the paper bags flap out, so an inspired artist could make a triptych, or if not, then one could glue two sides of the bag to make a pocket for a little bit of art--a tag, or an ATC with fibers. I think it'll be fun to play in and with.

I started playing with paper beads, rolling them on plastic core Q-tips. I have boatloads of textweight white paper that's good on one side, working in an office, and I have collected tons of colorful magazines and catalogs. I can roll a batch at a time, and that's how I plan to keep the workshop going--roll a batch, color that batch, coat that batch, make another. Like a waltz--roll two three, color two three, coat two three, use two three. Found a book that's on my Xmas list--
Creating Extraordinary Beads From Ordinary Materials. Wow. Skull beads with colorful top hats, corset beads, bowtie beads--I can so see these strung through fiber and spouting off the spines of books, and decos, and . . . hoo. Need a cigarette after that--was it good for you, too?

I'm within a few rows of finishing the body of the grey shawl, and will start the edging soon. I need to sew a little on the yoga mat bag, and then it's done. The zipper is in place, for pity grief, all I need to do is sew the strap on and do a little neatening. I've been meaning to get to that for two weeks now. It ain't happening.

And here it is Monday, and I meant to post an update Sunday, and well, good intentions and all that. At least I remembered to look at the calendar and get it going--rather than remember tonight, and decide that it was just too late, and I'd try again next time. Ironically, I decided to get a year's worth of post dates going, and random.com gave me a schedule that gets more involved through the holiday season.

Ah, well. With any luck, there'll be more to talk about.

Happy Sunday

Today tastes like chicken. Tastes just like yesterday, and just like tomorrow. I could put sauce on it to alter the flavor, but I'd still be left with chicken.

And here it is a week later. The yoga mat bag has a zipper installed in it--one of Southwest Trading's rhinestone zippers so it really looks like Barbie takes up yoga. Hee. I just need to sew the strap on, and it's done. No pictures--it really looks exactly like the photo from before. Honest. Only with a strap.

Spent the weekend finishing up odds and ends. Cleaned the paper studio--can't believe how hard I was resisting doing that. Fifteen minutes later, and I could actually find everything--like put my hands on it. Spent a while out there putting together a squishie bag for a birthday gal, finishing up some ATC's for a challenge swap, and getting an Xmas exchange bag together.

It's really been the weekend to finish. Not that I'm complaining. I finished a small art project for a collaborative piece--a knitted swatch of lace with a little pin-size doll and some embellishments.

Ran a batch of numbers through random.org--realized that I'd spaced out pulling up a number for next time two-three times, and then had remembered to do it the next day. Which is good, I haven't misplaced the habit of writing this, even when I wasn't being sally-on-top-of-it, but at the same time, I've found that if it's on the calendar, I'm more likely to see and do whatever it is.

Nothing exciting to the world at large. The metaphor for this weekend is sitting on the couch, puzzling over lace, wondering why, if I have the right number of stitches, nothing lines up. Then realizing that the markers need to move on this row. Nothing earthshattering, nothing that will affect anything outside the living room. But that understanding makes all the difference in proceeding with the project.

Life in the Sybarites

Still coming down from a blissful weekend. Made no art, barely got the house licked and promised before bed Sunday, and the cats are not on speaking terms with me (at least, not until the food bowl requires refilling); but a great weekend nonetheless.

It all began with Spa Day on Friday. We started the Spa Day tradition last year, when Lynchpin was feeling blue because Hub was at an SCA event, and she wasn't. (He was feeling the need for some time with the boys. She had homework, the bane of any Master's program.)

So we decided to get a group together at her place, avail ourselves of the hot tub, make some delightful snackies, and paint our nails colors not found in nature. And then we realized that one of our mutual guy friends was a licensed massage therapist . . .

Enter Spa Day year two, the way we've always done it. (Once is the thing itself, twice is the way we've always done it, three times is tradition.) This time, Goldfingers brought a roaster oven and his Rocks of Bliss.

I never understood about hot rock massages. Rocks are HARD, after all. And hard and hot doesn't necessarily make for an improvement.

But now I get it. Oh, boy. I swiped one of Goldfingers' business cards, and asked what the going "friends" rate is. And considering he'll come to my own little home, on my schedule . . . well. It pays to know the right people.

Catch you Sunday. Hopefully I'll have something worth showing. This blissful smile doesn't count.

Four Letter Words

Today tastes like carrot bread, with butter that's a bit too salty and wispy with garlic. So close. So far.

Hold Fast. Love Hate. Give Take. Hell Bent.

Knitting progress proceeds apace, but I didn't realize before that a half-hour knitting on the commute in does not equal a half-hour knitting in the lobby before heading to the office. Maybe it's the stoplight knitting on the way home--no, because I get forty-five minutes on the ride back. But you couldn't prove it by the current carry-me, the Ostrich Plumes blanket.

Knit Geek. Lost Soul. Evil Twin.

I'd get a full ball knit up in a week before. Now it looks like it will take three. Maybe I can get some done in and among the trick-or-treating this evening. We've decided that since First Consort Gareth will be barbequeing in the backyard, I'll be the lucky one answering the door. It's nice out, so I'll sit on the front porch with my easy knitting. Maybe I'll bring along a basket of yarn to hide the candy in, and first offer balls and hanks as treats.

Fabulist. Aesthete. Eloquent.

Maybe next year I'll get my act together and get an old-fashioned rocking chair, one that really rocks and terrifies the cats. (I want one anyway.) I'd wear my Doc Martens, prop a fake shotgun behind me, put on a bonnet, drop a shawl over my shoulders, and sit and knit and pass out treats. Maybe.

Autocrat. Demented. Seraphic.

I've determined that the next project for me will be a pair of lacy wool fingerless mitts. I have an acrylic pair, but the wind goes right through acrylic. My hands are really sensitive to the cold, and stiffen right up when I drive in to work with the top down. The wind just hits right on the steering wheel at ten and two.

Elvenite. Eligiast. Matadore.

And that will help. However, that's just a short-term fix. The project I have in mind after that will take substantially longer--but the results will be more satisfactory.

Modalist. Optimist. Pedantic.

I want a pair of fingerless Sanquahar gloves. And I want to work in knuckle tattoos across the backs of the fingers. Why? Because I can, that's why. And the juxtaposition of biker icon and handknit glove appeals to me somehow.

Depraved. Diabolic. Sylvatic.

Hence the collection of four and eight letter words. Because I have a feeling I'm going to be knitting and wearing fingerless gloves for some time to come, and I want my list right here where I can find it later.

Euphoria. Serenity. Ecstatic.

The Month of Blogiversary Continues

Looking back over my first posts, I’m struck by how far I’ve wandered from the whole knitting theme. I thought it would be fun to have a place to track projects, but I note that several of the “first five” don’t even have a “finally finished” photo.

Part of it is working on five at once—your impact gets diluted. Knitting for an hour apiece on several projects is not the same as working five hours on one. And when you do three foot square (and larger) blankets, it can take a long time to show anything blogworthy. Five hours on one sweater can get you a sleeve (or significant portion thereof, depending on your gauge. Bulky wool on broomstick needles could conceivably get you an adult five-hour sweater!)

But what the hey—it’s well past time for an update.



This is a gift for a friend’s daughter who has been admiring the Linus blankets for years, and mournfully semi-requesting one in only the way a teenager can manage (“Y’know. . . it’d be okay if you knit ME a blanket one day . . .”) (Can’t actually ask for one, that’d mean you cared, and caring just isn’t cool.) When I graduated from high school, my grandmother presented me with a crocheted, cross stitched tour de force majeure that I had admired and lusted after since I was a tadlet. I still have that afghan, and pull it out and lay it across the bed sometimes. Since I am unlikely to have a granddaughter (gotta have kids first, I think) I’d like to do this for Mischief’s kid.

I have a couple of years yet. If not for high school graduation, then for Christmas during her eighteenth year. She’s nearly certain to have an eighteenth year. Good kid, but reminds me of me at the same age. Hopefully she’ll have an epiphany soon and realize all she’s doing is eliminating options.

This is one of the blankets for the Linus Project. Multiple strands held as one, and a dead simple lace pattern. I like the variegated effect without the color pooling—most of these are solids; I think there’s one pastel green and yellow variegated in the section on the needles.

I was at a Linus Project Blanket Bee when someone came in with easily three hundred pounds of yarn. Holy crap. Even my stash isn’t that big.

Everyone was digging for the big and bulky stuff--I grabbed as much laceweight as I could put hands to, and then a bunch of glum neutrals. I was planning on combining strands even then. The beige and gray and cream I picked up will go nicely with some chenille that’s been sitting and waiting to become for years now. Moral of the chenille—sometimes stuff’s on eBay for a reason.


This was another Linus find—nobody wanted sportweight. Their loss. This is a little more than half-done, and I’m hoping to have it finished by Christmas. Earlier this year I had FIVE blankets on the needles. Three are now cast off and living their lives elsewhere.


I’ve learned my lesson at last, I think. One for friends and family, one for charity, one for me and me alone, one for eventual publication, and one just because.



This one is for eventual publication once I finish the Boring Eternal Strap and sew a zipper in. I do the old yoga and the new yoga, so why not combine the two? The yarn’s cool—it’s dyed in long long lengths so it does that ombre thing as it rolls off the needles, and the colorways are soft and fade in and out nicely—no jarring stripes. Will keep you posted.



And this one is for me. It’s garter eyelet lace in laceweight, so it doesn’t look like much right now. It’s too big to spread on the needles, so you don’t see the designs. I think I’ve ripped this back more than I’ve ever ripped anything in my knitting life. I pulled out every trick in my lace arsenal to get it going—a lifeline at the point where the patterns change so I’ll have a place to pick up and start from, markers at every repeat, working from a chart so I don’t get lost in the verbiage, knitting only in a padded room with plenty of light . . . ok, haven’t tried the padded room yet. That would be next, however.



I’ve always said if you want it badly enough, you can knit it. I want this very badly. More than I thought I did when I cast on. Things are funny that way.

The yarn is a cashmere/nylon blend I found on eBay (curse you eBay! Curse you and your easily searched goodies!) I’m betting the spinner was disappointed in the color or the hand of the yarn—it’s a bit on the harsh side as a yarn. Knitted up, it’s not buttery soft, but it’s skin friendly. I’m betting it will bloom a little with washing and wearing, and plan to hasten that by overdying the rather blah grey with screaming bright primaries and secondaries once the garments I plan are completed. I don’t mind a heathery tone; it’s softly mottled as it is. The bright colors will be muted by the grey and should fall in the deep complex tertiaries I prefer. This one goes in the yellow dyepot, pictures to follow during blocking and post dyebath.

And the number for today—6. See you Monday.

I Circle-Slash Heart Blogger

Put a post together, but it needs visuals. And guess who's not in the mood to upload? (Hint--not me. I wanted to have this all done before I went to bed tonight.)

Will have a real post with photos tomorrow.

Happy New Year!!!!

Hanging around Pagan Place, you found out about all sorts of calendars. It seemed like the group couldn't even agre on what DAY it was, never mind anything of import. Come to think of it, that was the way the whole family disfunctioned. We got there eventually.

There were a few die hards who led their lives according to the Gregorian calendar, falling further and further behind. At least one fella followed the Aztec calendar--I wonder how he's coping now that the end of days has passed? I always liked the celtic tradition, where the year ends at the first full moon in Scorpio. Samhain.

So the new year is coming, and it's time to clear away and finish that which is hanging on from the old year. Time to lie fallow through the winter, wrapping up and getting ready for the spring and the bursting of life to follow.

So I'm trying to get some new habits going in preparation for a blossoming sroing and a fruitful summer to follow. For some time I've limited the number of projects going so as to avoid overload, and now I've started listing them on a database (with a note as to the size of the thing, having stuck myself with five huge AND complex projects at the same time this summer!!! A FO, a FO, my kingdom for a FO!)

And of course the muse has come out of summer's too hot estivation and is babbling in my ear about all the fun ideas she has . . . during a time whan all I want is to wind down. The holidays are manic enough without trying to begin a bazillion lace projects (and that's all that would satisfy her, too. I have a sportweight lacy blanket for Linus that I started around Christmas last year, a laceweight lace shawl for me me me {another lesson learned--I have to have something going for me, even if I don't work on it obsessively}and a moose lace blanket for Linus using multiple strands held as one.) Dicomultivocuus wants me to start working on the Arizona shawl I have promised Terpsichore (a laceweight soysilk confection) and to start working on a Russian lace shawl (also laceweight, preferably cashmere, oh, and while you're at it, it would be nice to whip up some knitted ATC's using the froghair cotton in stash.

Yes. Yes it would. No, it isn't going to happen.

Not yet, at any rate. Not until I get some of this off my plate.

Because I had promised myself a spanking new story for the winterfest this year, and I had meant to be a better blogger. I'm no Joe Ito, by any means, blogging what I had for lunch as I'm eating it (can you imagine dating someone like that? Wondering if he's really typing a message back to the office, or bragging about your imaginative skills with peanut butter? Ewwwww.) The paradox of creating is that the more you create, the more you create. The more you learn that everyone has 100 bad paintings inside them, and the sooner you crank the bad ones out, you can start getting to the good stuff. If you quit in the middle, well, there you'll be, in the middle of crappy work (or at least, work that dissatisfies you), whatever you had learned draining away so that slowly you trickle right back to your first bad work. ("Nice cat, honey. That really looks like Poofy." "It's a GIRAFFE, Daddy!")

So in order to keep the words moving and the ideas flowing, I started musing out loud. (At least this way I don't get stopped for walking down the street, mumbling and gesticulating to the voices in my head.) And then life crept up and got in the way of updating three times a week (and then once a week, and then once every two weeks . . .)

So I stole an idea from the gamer I used to be, and figured that if I rolled a six-sided die (a d6, in other words) and added 1 to the result, I'd be posting at least once a week, without feeling like I ought to wait for someting momentous to happen. (As Danny Gregory says, everydaymatters. Place the spaces where you will.)

So, new habit for the new year. Roll dem bones and keep on rolling. See you next Tuesday.

Spike Needs to Post More Often . . .

. . . but right now, Spike is undergoing meltdown. (Today tastes like heavy water and chocolate.)

Too much life, not enough time.

Just realized my blogiversary was October 6. Ten days ago. If I send my blog roses, will it forgive me? Will it call my name in the midddle of the night? Will it put an arm around me during the long hazy grey lead days of winter to come?

Or will it sniff and tell me to find comfort among the postcards and knitted froghair lace?

Found a meme that looked like fun; results below. You go to Google, punch in "{your name here) needs" and then post the ten results to your blog/journal/external brain. I deleted the really gackin' Buffy references, cause, well, I can. If you've gotta see 'em, you have fingers, too.

1. Spike needs a scrub.
2. Spike needs volunteers.
3. Spike needs to go and resketch the entrance for Yancy #2, this can be done during the week.

4. Spike needs to move them to a earlier time,people are not gonna watch this at 11pm.

5. Spike needs to have something to aim for, to win the girl, lose the girl, something like that.

6. Spike needs to figure out who he is.
7. Spike needs to freely make that decision.
8. Spike needs a hit original show.
9. Spike needs a home where someone is home a lot during the day.
10. Spike needs to be able to mark events as "consumed."

Ok, memes are one short step up the evolutionary ladder from Quizilla posts, but every babystep counts. See ya in 1d6 + 1.

Back Down From the Mountain

Woof. Why does sitting still for hours and hours make you tired??

We went up to Greer, First Consort Gareth, Lynchpin, Hub, Mischief, RagDoll, and I; for to prepare the cabin for the annual storyfest that serves as an antidote to the saccharine goo of Xcessmass.

We chopped a metric boatload of wood, spandified the place, prepared and served a four-course dinner Saturday with paired wines, and then got snowed on while we re-packed the cars and headed downhill.

I finally found a subject worthy of spending the last gasp of my cellphone's batteries on--



--an elk skull FC Gareth's Uncle D found in the woods. Clearly the elk had dropped of natural causes, so Uncle D cleaned the skull, and arranged it here, on the back porch under the upper deck by the door of the Tunnel to Everything.

Prayers and good wished for Uncle D please--he's having some serious health issues. In my family, we'd cite the punchline to an old joke, and say, "He's on the roof."* Thanks.



*Guy comes back from vacation, asks his brother/roommate what happened while he was away. B/R replies, "Oh, the cat died." Guy is crestfallen. Tells B/R that when there's bad news to share, you break it gently. "Se, you should have told me that the cat was on the roof. Then a couple days later, mention you hadn't seen her for a while and you were getting worried, a little. Then tell me, oh, you found the cat, and she had died. Get it?"

B/R is nodding his head all through this diatribe. "I got it." he says.

"So how's Mom?"

"Uhhhhhhmmmmmm . . . she's on the roof?"

(rim shot--ba-dum-bum-CHING!)