Short-lived is not bad: _monochrome no aware_

It was beautiful yesterday morning, an Ansel Adams wonderland, punctuated with an occasional cardinal or purple finch (the evening grosbeaks were not monochrome, but they didn't have enough punch on the birdfeeder). An inch of very fine snow, very carefully sprinkled over every possible bud and twig.






Mono no aware.

Today is cloudy but there is color back in the world.

Mostly I have been knitting ducks.

Lemon Meringue Concord

Sunday my friend Pat came up from Boston and she and Doug and I went to see the Peking Acrobats, who were amazing. Pat wondered how they felt after they hit thirty, whether they had any cartilage left at all. They are very good. There were moments when the audience was biting its collective maternal tongue, trying not to tell the gymnast NOT to DO THAT. Particularly the part involving leaning on chairs on two legs. They also juggle. It was well worth the effort to get there (which other than a $4 per ticket (which were $26) service charge for using the Internet, was not excessive). And we had delicious Chinese food at Chen Yang Li beforehand.

Concord had freezing rain, which we in the highlands did not. It left an weird glaze over the snow, making an effect like meringue rather than the usual powered sugar. Click here for the album, but here's representative shot:



Which goes to show it is good to have a small cheap camera with you always. I am quite impressed how well it handled the contrasts.

Meanwhile I am knitting another duckie, because it is so much fun.

Springiness

Like truthiness. On Wednesday, it was 76 degrees F, and that felt really weird. The air caressed instead of rushing. It verged on too hot. Thursday, it was cooler, and despite the foot of snow that has gone in to the air and gutters lately, it was _dry_.



My mittlet had a bad hair day.

On Friday I wanted to take a picture of the deck -- there was no snow on it. But the temperature was 28 degrees F. Which is much colder than 76F.

Then last night it snowed about a foot.

Yesterday I had a pleasant moment at work, opening my box of Diak spindles, ordered for the spinning class I teach at the Smith science fiction convention. Jessica down the hall has been discussing wanting to learn to spin, so I invited her down to see some really Good Stuff. And Jeanne came in and we had a few minutes' spinning symposium. The spindles were beautiful, and so was the packing material.



Easter Basket(duck by Kat, )

When I left at three there was an inch of snow on the ground. I went to the bank and a couple other errands and then to the Elegant Ewe. There were two inches on the ground. I was trying to meet Jessica at four-thirty to help her choose roving, but she was not around. I helped Dee by giving her a whole bunch of amigurumi websites. Jessica turned up a little after five because she had been caught in traffic (four inches on the ground). We enabled one another and Dee found me duckie yarn (Reynolds Frisky). When I left there were five inches of snow.

It took me about twice as long as usual to get home; I didn't see any accidents, and I wasn't in any, and none of us were going more than 35 miles an hour. Very sensible.

When I got home there were at least 6 inches of snow.

Around eight pm. there came a knocking at the store and Sarah stumbled in, covered with snow (well, to the ankles); she had left the snowless Canterbury around one, got caught in traffic just south of Manchester, got diverted, bogged down, etc., till her cell phone ran out and she decided we lived closer than she or her gandfather or her mother did. Her car was at the bottom of the hill, pulled well off; she had walked about half a mile, some of it almost 45 degrees up and finishing with the deceptively gradual driveway. It was fine to have our own castaway. Doug made sure she had blankets and adequate cats. By this time there were at least eight inches of snow.

This morning there were some 13 inches of snow and a layer of fairly soft sleet on top. We all got up and lounged around, until Doug went to dig out the cars and the hot tub (man's burden on earth is to shovel snow, apparently), and Sarah did the same to the living room!! YES! The Tidying Fairy came! I helped by knitting the duck. We took frequent knitting breaks (and Doug took a nap, after only shovelling for an hour or so), and after Paul came and plowed us out we drove down to Sarah's car and dug it out in short order.



I added feet to the duck and I am ready to go to bed.

And it still works

Tomorrow, pictures, I think

"Pimp My Hitch-Hiker," continued: I sit here spinning (on the Joy, which so far has resisted my temptations to gold leaf the daylights out of IT, too...) with fluff sticking to my varnish smears.
I have learned so much: the silver and gold of silver and gold (and copper) pens is not the same color as the metallic perfection of leaf. It won't be evident when the wheel is spinning, but no one will be encouraged to look closely at the flames when it's stationary.
And the leaf sealer varnish warns me it contains xylene, which means it is eating my kidneys while I am enjoying the industrial fug. Xylene is the solvent in gold, silver (and black and copper)pens. So when you dab leaf sealer over the flames, they smear. So you go back to the water-soluble varnish (which may tarnish the leaf), it beads up on the leaf.

The wheel as a whole looks like it had a rough trip out of the sack of Lhasa. I could pour more petrochemicals over it and scrape down. Or I could try leafing over the flames with my new idea: if you cut the flames out with your good scissors and maybe try applying the thick size gently into the stencil...then I would not need to touch up the flames with pens and I could just seal the whole thing.

Or I could ask David Paul how much a new part would cost and start with a fresh disk when I ask him to post a picture of the parts, exploded, to make it easier to put your Hitch-Hiker back together without the embarrassment of ending up with a handful of extra parts (Doug exercised his engineer mojo on it and we are okay now.

On the whole, I think I will be okay with it looking like it got kicked around a bit before Pier One marked it down. I don't know if I am growing up, or just had reasonably low expectations, or am finally on enough fluoxetine, but it's nice not to have wanted to throw either the wheel or myself out the window.

And I have a cheap tray and a cheap wooden box from Michael's to put more leaf on. The whole process has awakened me to how very little work it is to sand something after the varnish, if it is small and not a floor (I have been where the Harlot is, and the woman deserves a week at a spa), and if I could think of anyone who needed small furnishings that look like Revenge of the Raj I would be ready to go. I hope I can keep my hands off the Joys in the house. They are fine without gilding.

Blogger sighted

I was preparing to work out some of the kinks in my lifestyle (one occurred when Asterix realized he was hungry at 3:30 Sunday morning; giving me umm, some great contemplative time when reasonable people were allowed to sleep; thus, I was considering a 10:30 nap) when Sarah called and suggested lunch in Concord and a visit to the Elegant Ewe. I washed a week's worth of Asterix's cat food cans (he only eats kibble when I am not around. He looks great, and the other cats only get a taste of nutritionally dubious canned food, and yes, I am whipped) and moved a little furniture. Then I went into Concord, where Marci was teaching wheel spinning to some hapless newbies (hapless only because they can't realize the life of roving and degradation into which they are willingly lowering themselves) including Teresa ! Who blames me for forcing her to pick up a spindle at Rhinebeck and pushing into the life of roving and d... I thought she must surely have already been as degraded as the rest of us. I am happy to say that she was spinning beautiful fineweight in her first essay onto a wheel. The class was picking up after its lunchbreak and I complimented them on their excellent progress and lack of angst. No wheels appeared to have been thrown through the window. They said I ought to have been there before lunch.

Sarah and I supported the economy by buying a skein apiece of Mountain Goat and had Indian food, and I bought a leaf-sizing pen (sizing being the adhesive) so I can do finer work on my flames. HlessSara comments (you can see for yourself) that she progressed from a few frames to 'everything not nailed down' and I am happy to hear my passage into a life of leaf and degradation is proceeding normally. I only bought a small tea tray from the wood blanks at Michael's.

Doug came back from Hawaii and gave me an _excellent_ shirt. Someday it will be warm enough not to need a turtleneck underneath.

stuff and things

Doug went to Hawaii for work on Tuesday morning, leaving me in charge. God help us. But all the cats and chickens are still alive.I also put the final coat of varnish over the stain on my HitchHiker. I have been converted to the use of steel wool. It really makes a good difference if the varnish is fully hardened.

On Wednesday, there was a power failure in Greater Concord. First the lights and computers went at work, and then the phones. I left to go to the archaeology lab, where I was supposed to Photoshop. There were no lights there, either. I left and drove around Concord to see if any of the gas stations were open, which they were not. Nor could I shop. So I went home, where there was enough electricity to get fuel for my car, and read a bunch of Ursula K. LeGuin.
I put the first shots of metallic leafing on the wheel. It is messy, wasteful, frustrating, and way cool. I made a stencil out of quilting template plastic (an expensive purchase; the sheet of plastic wasn't bad, but quilting store was a dangerous place and the sashiko book rather ran up the bill). An Exacto knife is better than a razor blade for cutting curves (I got one yesterday, in case I do something like this again) and Mona Lisa Sizing is too runny to use with a stencil. Get the sizing pen.
Sensible people might have chosen paint or waxes, but it is a lot of fun playing with the leaf, even if by the time I finish decorating it I will have paid nearly as much in materials for Making Fabulous as I did for the wheel itself. (Can I include the sashiko kit, as a sort of collateral damage?). I must say the wheel was a more atractive idea to embellish than the nice flat wooden things in Michael's, but I might want to do a box or something because the gold leaf is so much fun.

It snowed more than somewhat on Friday. They said we would get 7", and I got about 10. It was prettier than any pictures of mine, but here's a record shot or two:





This was Saturday morning, after a very light dusting had fallen and clung to the trees, after Paul the contractor had plowed the drive. A tractor/frontloader is not the tool of choice, he tells me.

Yesterday I visited my parents in Boston and the Dick Blick store near Kenmore Square. they do not carry the same leaf supplies as Michael's, but it's a sufficiently evil place even without carrying wool. My parents gave me lunch at Legal Seafood (I highly recommend the garlic shrimp with rice, off the celiac menu) and polenta at home. They are still trying to pare down their possessions after moving from a good-sized house to a one and a half-bedroom apartment I guess 18 months ago now. I have been wondering in my own house if I should have an estate sale while I am still alive, since I have too much stuff. Not that that stops me getting more.

Today I need to clean the kitty litter boxes before Doug comes back, and shovel the steps to Doug's entry. And maybe wash a dish or so, people get so fussy when they have been living in a hotel and I am running out of space to wash brushes.

Some pictures and stuff

Finally, a picture of Toby/Tobermory/Toblerone/Orange Thing/Small Stuff. He is worshipping the spinning wheel, which he finds an ingenious source of dental floss.



Here he is in scale with Marten.



My spoils from Spa. I have been having all kinds of ideas for the Hitch-Hiker: glossy black with big pink painted lips -> Rolling Stones Tongue -> DeadHead with Rose.



Some (maybe most) of the Spinning Men of Spa'07 -- Doug, Scott, and their gifted student Bart. Men of few syllables.



It snowed.



Doug dug.


And because they don't see why the little orange job gets all the press:


Asterix



Mena

My left foot is tired, the expanded version

We had a very good time at Spa. We made landfall in Portland on Friday night, and I really liked the Hampton Inn, but the event was at the Doubletree, so we had somewhat less social than we might have. The hotel offered a serious breakfast, as well as clam chowder and peanut-butter-and-jelly sandwiches offered free the night we came in. They also had a hospitality room for the knitters, which was too small, so we moved into the breakfast room. But we didn't last too late.

I wish I had taken a picture of the eggs at breakfast; they were tasty but widely considered scary-looking.

I finished the vest I have been working on as we parked at the event Saturday morning, so I had something knitted to wear besides socks.
I intended not to buy much and to do a lot of spinning. I spent the first day talking to people in the dealer's room and making small, sensible purchases: some patterns, a pair of earrings I split with Doug. I showed a couple of people how to drop-spindle, and I hope I corrupted them well. MedStudentWhoKnits and I co-enabled a young woman whom I next saw spinning frog hair (one of those annoying beauiful young and gifted people, evidently), and Leslie the Shawl Pin (and hair-pin, as my hair is long enough to put back again)and I worked together for while; she has someone who will loan her a wheel. It was good seeing Linda Diak and meeting Kim Kaslow and re-meeting a bunch of people (some of whom I will need to meet several more times, but it's my problem, but theirs). I was spinning with my Spanish Peacock heart-whorled spindle and I have never had so many requests from people to let them have a spin. Perhaps because he is an SCA merchant, whose wares were new to this audience.

(There was an interruption as I was writing this last night, when the orange kitten came and fell asleep on my right hand).

Anyway, the vendors' room was quieter and cooler and had more air; the spinners' room (not that that there were not people spinning quietly everywhere else they could find that did not block fire lanes) was beyond labyrinthine and the press of chairs made it impossible to circulate. I was delighted to be with so many people who made perfectly civil, sensible conversation, even if it tended to be about wool.
It was being able to wander to and fro and meet people I knew a little or would enjoy knowing and chat and be able to breeze away with no sense of loss; I would see them again, at least that day.

I was sort of hungry. Doug said he had just had a banana. Leslie the Shawl Pin ran away from her stall and we found the bar had a menu. This did not mean it actually had food, just the promise of food. After some delay they did feed us, and then they even fed Too Much Wool. She was vexed with me because I would not tell her I preferred her new hat to her last year's hat. But later she took me to her room and produced PG Tips( hey, Cassie, they have a knitted monkey mascot; I guess the real chimps became too political) so neither I nor Leslie would faint dead away from caffeine withdrawal.

I went to try to sit down in the spinning room again, but I was distracted by a fiber event going on in the swimming area. I didn't actually get to it:About two years ago, I taught someone to spin at the Canterbury Shaker Village Wool Day, and since then Pam pops up and says "Thank you!" and I say, "You're welcome! Who are you?" I saw her several times in 24 hours, recognized her DESPITE a change of clothes, and maybe now I will know her again. (Did I take a picture of her? No. Nor of the lovely Meg Swansen Turkish Maple Leaf sweater worn by the nice woman nor the illusion knitting... Am I like, emotionally disabled, or just dumb?) Anyway. PAM (use her name several times not to forget her)'s very nice and a great spinner, with a penchant for Babe's Fiber Garden products. I had not seen the Babe Charka before. Her mother(in law?) wants her to make enough khadi homespun to weave a sari for her and a dhoti for her husband; Pam is planning to use a tabletop Western loom. I don't think Gandhi's Authenticity Police will come after her. I hope not. Pam had found a place of peace, airy space, and reasonable noise: when your wheel is PVC you have no worries about spinning at the poolside.

I was becoming kind of spacey from the socialbility and ended up again in the vendors' room, now closing for the day. But not soon enough, for I was looking at the Hitch-Hikers from Merlin Tree. I tried one last spring but I could not work the single treadle; it went in both directions. The wheel that had caught my eye this time (not a particularly unusual one, just butternut and plywood) was a lefty. I knew I was mixed brain-dominant and arhythmic, so it was not altogether surprising to find I am a left-footed spinner. David Paul and I bonded over butternut blight. He said he has only sold about 7 left-footed Hitch-hikers and two of those were for people with injured right feet. I am special.

Then 15 of us went to the Portalnd Margarita's and it was dark and noisy and two margaritas and a decent conversation and I went home and went to sleep. Doug stayed up a bit later in the hospitality room at the hotel.

The next day I wanted to get better at this single-treadle thing, so I had to buy roving. Indigo Moon is ceasing operations for a while. Wish her luck. I bought some eye candy colors from her and from Friends'n'Fibers (no website) and actually sat and spun whie the last set of doo prizes were given out. Then Doug and I found Juno and Too Much Wool and Jackie and Stitchy and Kelly and Laurie and sat and waited for lunch. I had the Hitch-Hiker and was able to spin, discreetly, under the tablecloth. People became pale and listless from lack of food and Cassie euchred Juno into doing the finish work on her hat.

Eventually, we ate. The food was good. We were all reluctant to leave, but but It Was Time. It is indeed possible to use a Hitchhiker in the front passenger seat, and I spun two ounces on the way home. Which is why my left foot was tired. It is better today.

The cats were all alive and not even too angry at us.

one thought

"Pimp my Hitch-hiker."

Having a wonderful time at Spa. More will follow.

quick summary

Life= not bad.
Major snowstorm = enroute
Vest = nearly done.
Kitten= elusive, charming.
Self= at work.

Link of the day= http://www.amazon.com/gp/gift-central/gift-guides/rc/R1I2DZ5AIZKU9C/ref=amb_link_4389302_5/002-4774050-1523248 or take the Valentine's Day quiz and say you hate it.

quick summary

Life= not bad.
Major snowstorm = enroute
Vest = nearly done.
Kitten= elusive, charming.
Self= at work.

Link of the day= http://www.amazon.com/gp/gift-central/gift-guides/rc/R1I2DZ5AIZKU9C/ref=amb_link_4389302_5/002-4774050-1523248

kitten sighted

Actually, I even got to hold him today, although at the time of writing he has apparently evaporated. One assumes he is still in the Daughter's room. Although Hobbes is a good name, he is tending toward Toby (short for Tobermory, but we hope he will be nicer than the cat in that story). Hobbes is for an older person; Toby is small.

Today he made no sounds like a short-wave radio, and seemed cautiously cheerful. I waited till noon to give him breakfast and included some chicken liver;he liked it. He ate kibble out of Doug's hand (and a chunk of Doug's thumb, but Doug says no malice was intended). Marten and he sort of played; both of them seemed eager to get to know the other, as when Marten grabbed Toby from under the bedskirt. Toby looked surprised but not upset; he rolled away. Marten definitely seemed the younger of the two ("Come on! Wanna play? Come on!") Toby looked like "So, this is a cat _not_ from my family, wow, he's BIG." No hissing. No yowling.

This may just work out.

Later Cindy B and her friend Susan came and we all did handwork, except for the cats. Susan edged a woven blanket in crochet; Doug worked on his hat. Cindy is making shooter's mitts, except they are for horse-drivers; they have breed-specific horses in intarsia on the back, and the tip of the thumb flips off like the mitten-top. I made three wristlets today, completing two pairs. They are 30 stitches around and about 6 inches long, so this is not cyclopean labor. I also wasted about two hours having every possible setback trying to make a tag for the sweater using t-shirt transfer paper. After doing everything very carefully, Cindy, who has recent transfer practice, decided my paper was old or something; we could not get the transfer-print to separate from the backing-paper after it was ironed on.

Perhaps pictures tomorrow.

I may need an intervention

SO Asterix, whose health is restored - he's still old and deaf but he's gaining weight and being annoying, which is always a healthy sign in a cat - is 17, and Mena is a sprightly nine and plays Secret Agent Kitty and is plainly SO BORED SHE COULD SCREAM. SO we decide to get he r a playmate, ideally a nerdy male kitten named Hockey Puck (Daughter suggested Robin Goodfellow had more style). Daughter is a Better Person than I am and pointed out that older shelter cats need homes too, and were harder to place. We adopt Marten, a delightful goofy maybe a year and bit old. He likes to play Ninja Kill Kitty, and he and Asterix have reached a good place, where they rarely come to grips and although Marten would dearly love to play with Asty's tail, he usually doesn't.

Mena still hisses at Marten when she sees him, and the cold snap has her playing Secret Agent Kitty in my bedroom.

Marten is SO BORED HE COULD SCREAM. He's living with codgers! Codgers! Cats to whom a hanging fringe of blanket is nothing, instead of a place to hide and leap on unsuspecting motes of dust.

And I still wanted a kitten to burn off some of my neoteny needs.

So I brought a runty little orange guy of 12 weeks home and gave him the Daughter's room as a sanctuary and he went under the bed and became invisible. He and his 3 month old litter mates and their pregnant mom ended up in the Penacook SPCA night before last, by way of one of their admin's apartment and baths with her extra silky conditioner shampoo. I think the whole family were in shock and exhaustion; although warranted healthy, they were agreeable but boneless. This morning, I have heard and seen New Guy stealthing around the room, but he is lying catto under the bed, hoping I will tell him where I keep the booze and kibble and go away. I think he needs some time to get calmer before he meets Marten.

There are not quite cats in every room in the house. I don't know what to name him ( "Hobbes" has been suggested, after a fine cartoon tiger); if he is to be Marten's sidekick then PintSize would fit, but what an awful name for a serious person, as I imagine New Guy will be in a few years. Or flat, rubber, and cylindrical.


The sweater is done. I washed it so the place I had to pick up a dropped stitch could morph into relaxation, and laid it on the floor of the fiercely cold/hot glassed-in porch to dry. Yesterday morning it was frozen absolutely stiff, which was funny. I hope to mail it off this weekend. Meanwhile, the easiest lace I have ever done - so easy I didn't need to start more than once - I have finished a Road to China wrist-mitt for my mom and started the next one. Very satisfying. Picture of same will follw, probably sooner than a picture of Orange Zorro.

Sleeves!

I have finished both of the sleeves for the OBD sweater. Now to put them onto the body and make a neck. I don't think I have ever made anything this fast (except back in the Dark Ages when I made three vests for me and both very small kids out of rainbow-colored bulky acrylic on size 10 needles in a couple of weeks. Unfortunately they were ugly). The Daughter wants a kind of loose mock turtle neck so she can wear something underneath with no colors in common with the sweater. I don't think she worries as much about itching or about spontaneous combustion as I do. I hope the yarn holds out.

I also wanted to say that I went to the pre-Superbowl sale at the Elegant Ewe and only bought a book I did not need, a pattern for fancy wristlets, and a skein of Silk Road to make them. I like the idea of pre-Superbowl sales; I suppose one could be knitting during the game, but I prefer to think of it as a counterattack.

Otherwise

Except for swingeing PMS and a collision with some ofthe spirits of bleak that I have been avoiding lately, NOT HELPED by the death of Molly Ivins, I have been doing okay. Not knitting as much as I ought to, because I have been having a little Patrick O'Brien festival. But I was underfed and low yesterday when I happened upon this utterly-without-redeeming-social-value clip of an HBO show called Extras. I have a great devotion to Diana Rigg and my respect for Daniel Radcliffe (he was polite to Regis and Kathie Lee, ewww) has only increased. He cannot possibly be too hung up on himself if he can play this. I wonder how much he had Monty Python running through his mind? Anyway, it made me laugh.

It might snow. That would be good. If it's going to be February it would be pleasant for it to be pretty.

Missing Molly Ivins

One of the consolations of the blogoshere is the company when we, separate people, lose someone we knew only from a distance (like one another, barring a fortunate fiber festival), we have company.





The New York Times
February 2, 2007
Op-Ed Columnist
Missing Molly Ivins
By PAUL KRUGMAN

Molly Ivins, the Texas columnist, died of breast cancer on Wednesday. I first met her more than three years ago, when our book tours crossed. She was, as she wrote, “a card-carrying member of The Great Liberal Backlash of 2003, one of the half-dozen or so writers now schlepping around the country promoting books that do not speak kindly of Our Leader’s record.”

I can’t claim to have known her well. But I spent enough time with her, and paid enough attention to her work, to know that obituaries that mostly stressed her satirical gifts missed the main point. Yes, she liked to poke fun at the powerful, and was very good at it. But her satire was only the means to an end: holding the powerful accountable.

She explained her philosophy in a stinging 1995 article in Mother Jones magazine about Rush Limbaugh. “Satire ... has historically been the weapon of powerless people aimed at the powerful,” she wrote. “When you use satire against powerless people ... it is like kicking a cripple.”

Molly never lost sight of two eternal truths: rulers lie, and the times when people are most afraid to challenge authority are also the times when it’s most important to do just that. And the fact that she remembered these truths explains something I haven’t seen pointed out in any of the tributes: her extraordinary prescience on the central political issue of our time.

I’ve been going through Molly’s columns from 2002 and 2003, the period when most of the wise men of the press cheered as Our Leader took us to war on false pretenses, then dismissed as “Bush haters” anyone who complained about the absence of W.M.D. or warned that the victory celebrations were premature. Here are a few selections:

Nov. 19, 2002: “The greatest risk for us in invading Iraq is probably not war itself, so much as: What happens after we win? ... There is a batty degree of triumphalism loose in this country right now.”

Jan. 16, 2003: “I assume we can defeat Hussein without great cost to our side (God forgive me if that is hubris). The problem is what happens after we win. The country is 20 percent Kurd, 20 percent Sunni and 60 percent Shiite. Can you say, ‘Horrible three-way civil war?’ ”

July 14, 2003: “I opposed the war in Iraq because I thought it would lead to the peace from hell, but I’d rather not see my prediction come true and I don’t think we have much time left to avert it. That the occupation is not going well is apparent to everyone but Donald Rumsfeld. ... We don’t need people with credentials as right-wing ideologues and corporate privatizers — we need people who know how to fix water and power plants.”

Oct. 7, 2003: “Good thing we won the war, because the peace sure looks like a quagmire. ...

“I’ve got an even-money bet out that says more Americans will be killed in the peace than in the war, and more Iraqis will be killed by Americans in the peace than in the war. Not the first time I’ve had a bet out that I hoped I’d lose.”

So Molly Ivins — who didn’t mingle with the great and famous, didn’t have sources high in the administration, and never claimed special expertise on national security or the Middle East — got almost everything right. Meanwhile, how did those who did have all those credentials do?

With very few exceptions, they got everything wrong. They bought the obviously cooked case for war — or found their own reasons to endorse the invasion. They didn’t see the folly of the venture, which was almost as obvious in prospect as it is with the benefit of hindsight. And they took years to realize that everything we were being told about progress in Iraq was a lie.

Was Molly smarter than all the experts? No, she was just braver. The administration’s exploitation of 9/11 created an environment in which it took a lot of courage to see and say the obvious.

Molly had that courage; not enough others can say the same.

And it’s not over. Many of those who failed the big test in 2002 and 2003 are now making excuses for the “surge.” Meanwhile, the same techniques of allegation and innuendo that were used to promote war with Iraq are being used to ratchet up tensions with Iran.

Now, more than ever, we need people who will stand up against the follies and lies of the powerful. And Molly Ivins, who devoted her life to questioning authority, will be sorely missed.

Knittings and purchases

As the last light of the weekend faded, I rushed out to take pictures.

Here is the rather large bootie and the shelf-fungus colored false entrelac scarf:


And here is the sweater, which is going more slowly now that the Only Beloved Daughter is not driving me around:




The wool/ angora/ nylon yarn is making a warm slubby soft fabric.

I behaved very, very badly at the SCA Birka Market.



Replica Terra Sigillata cup like what I used to dig up in England and jug (lined with a slip of beeswax, smells wonderful), small black Belgic-style cup, one wooden spindle (severly underpriced, how could I leave it?, one spindle with detachable ceramic whorl like what I used to dig up in England, tiny (18" skein) niddy noddy, tiny cards for a tiny inkle loom (not shown)(I need to make heddles), a 1st c bc ceramic British spindle whorl somebody dug up, a holly-wood lucet, and a bodice dagger. My friend looked at my cleavage and remarked that I needed a bodice dagger as they always make her laugh. I was delighted to find this one, clean out of SCA period (at least in Europe), but perfect for me.



then we went to the SCRAP party, where I took atrocious pictures and had a delightful time.

Pirated from the NYT

January 27, 2007

Art Review | 'Radical Lace & Subversive Knitting'

Flair and Flash, Not Frumpiness

By MARTHA SCHWENDENER

Long viewed as the domain of grandmothers, needlework has undergone an image makeover in the last decade. Snowboarders, the old torchbearers of alt.culture, have embraced crocheting, making beanies to wear on the slopes; coffeehouses and subways are filled with fashion-conscious types busily knitting or doing needlepoint. And contemporary artists like Andrea Zittel, Lisa Anne Auerbach, Orly Genger and Jim Drain and the Forcefield collective have given crafts a coolly conceptual edge.

Time then for an exhibition celebrating the unfrumpiness of craft, and, sigh, what better institution than one that recently went through its own makeover, changing its name from the American Craft Museum to the sexier Museum of Arts & Design?

The sorry news is that, despite its title, “Radical Lace & Subversive Knitting,” with around 40 works by 27 artists, is not a benchmark for introducing such crafts’ coolness or radicalism to a vast art audience. Rather than exploring transgressive takes on knitting, the exhibition, organized by David Revere McFadden, the museum’s chief curator, devotes most of its space to art that mimics the look or logic of knitting and lace and translates it into different materials.

In an essay in the show’s catalog, Mr. McFadden does invoke interactive performances held in abandoned warehouses and the London Underground and people who knit sweaters for “oil-spill-damaged penguins to wear in Antarctica” — the kind of activities you might associate with radical or subversive practice.

But in choosing the work for the show, he cites somewhat dated textile and crafts-based artists like Sophie Taeuber, Sonia Delaunay, Judy Chicago and Magdalena Abakanowicz as his models.

Much of the art on view is in the large-scale, virtuosic craft vein. Henk Wolvers’s flat sculptures created with porcelain slip, a form of liquid clay, borrow the tracery if not the actual patterns of lace. Piper Shepard’s “Lace Meander” is a series of hanging muslin scrolls into which the artist cut lace patterns with an X-Acto knife. Bennett Battaile’s delicate sculpture of thin glass rods and Barbara Zucker’s rubber sculptures both invoke lace-tracery in heavier materials.

Some of the artists address “issues of politics, gender and ethics,” as a wall text puts it, in a general way. Janet Echelman’s giant, hand-knotted nylon net hanging from the ceiling in the museum’s entryway recreates the look of a nuclear mushroom cloud. Freddie Robins’s sinister-looking gray-knit bodysuit, with the words “Craft Kills” emblazoned across the chest, alludes to the airline ban on knitting needles in the post-9/11 era.

The works most in keeping with the show’s politically charged title are more interactive and collective, or more related to performance. For example, Cat Mazza’s collectively crocheted “Nike Blanket Petition,” a campaign against sweatshop practices represented here in a series of photographs, will be sent to Nike’s corporate headquarters.

A video of Dave Cole’s “Knitting Machine” project shows two John Deere excavators wielding telephone poles tapered to look like knitting needles — and missiles — to knit a giant American flag in the courtyard of the Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art in North Adams, Mass.

Sabrina Gschwandtner, an artist and founder of KnitKnit magazine, has set up a “Wartime Knitting Circle” surrounded by panels made of industrially knitted photos of Vietnam War protesters knitting, British women knitting woolen covers for World War II hand grenades, soldiers knitting during World War I.

She invites people to join her in knitting “blankets for recovery” for people in Afghanistan and troops convalescing in military hospitals, among other projects. (On the exhibition’s opening day, Ms. Gschwandtner was chatting and knitting with Phyllis Rodriguez, whose son died in the north tower of the World Trade Center on 9/11 and who has since befriended Aïcha el-Wafi, mother of Zacarias Moussaoui, a French citizen of Moroccan descent serving a life sentence after his conspiracy conviction in the 9/11 attacks.

Needlework indeed has a radical past. William Morris, a mainstay of the Royal School of Needlework and the Arts and Crafts movement in England, protested late-19th-century industrial production. Feminist art in the 1970s drew heavily on so-called women’s work, and Rosemarie Trockel’s “knitting pictures” of the 1980s cleverly drew on political themes.

So many more artists might have been included whose work explores the social aspects of knitting and lace or who more radically recast these forms: Simon Perotin, of the punk-doily creations; the artisans in the Church of Craft; Ms. Zittel; Ms. Auerbach;, Mr. Drain; and so on.

Given the show’s title, some visitors will arrive wanting to know how needlework, which runs counter to our technology- and information-saturated age, has become such a cultural juggernaut, and how it might serve to break down the barriers between artist and amateur, art and craft. A few works here may well satisfy that desire. Most will not.

“Radical Lace & Subversive Knitting” runs through June 17 at the Museum of Arts & Design, 40 West 53rd Street, Manhattan. Hours: Daily, 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. (until 8 p.m. on Thursdays); closed on holidays. Admission: $9; $7 for students and 65+; and pay-what-you-wish on Thursdays after 6 p.m. Information: (212) 956-3535; madmuseum.org.

A series of public programs related to the exhibition is planned, including lectures, panel discussions, performance pieces and workshops in knitting, lace-making, crocheting, fabric-making, fabric-printing and digital design. Some events are free with museum admission; others require an additional fee that includes admission.

Beginning tomorrow and running every Sunday from 2 to 4 p.m. through June 3 will be “Well Crafted Weekends: Inter-Generational Workshops,” for those 6 and older; $7 per person or per family (up to four people). A detailed schedule is on the Web site.

Now, the magic of photography

Thank you for your kindness and your hectoring (Norma). You instill new ambition within my pectoral regions.

First, Marten:





Only a picture in rapid motion would do him justice. He is brown where Asterix is blackish.


Asterix when he weighed more

No knitting yet, though I have two charming cuffs. I need to get Doug's scarf by daylight and he is never at home when the sun is up except on weekends (and between the vernal and autumal equinoces).

Two shots of glazing after last week's ice storm, though, of which I am unreasonably proud:



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If you need a vicarious semester abroud, the Only Beloved Daughter's blog may be found at http://teaclouds.blogspot.com/.