I’m outta here.  I’ll try to try to take some good pictures so I have some evidence of the mayhem that’s sure to ensue while I’m gone.    Here’s the start:

Dear Diary,

Today I packed 14  metric f-tons into my seemingly shrunken truck.  I feel gross, I’ve broken several nails and am apparently quite delicious to mosquitos.  It was the best day ever.

We went to Tim’s on Sunday to eat Callinectes sapidus: beautiful swimmers.  That has to be one of the best summer rituals we Americans have come up with.  Water bugs taste gooooooood.  Old Bay tastes gooooood.  Drawn butter with lemon juice tastes goooooooood.  And then all of that together, with perhaps some beeeeer—mmmmmmmm.  Until it is all suddenly overwhelmingly disgusting, this whole process of cracking, dismembering, opening, scooping, dipping; and the vinegar and lemon burning in all of the little nicks on your fingers and along your lips is too much.  Check please.

We were joined by my younger brother Andrew, hair-farmer extraordinaire, who will be tending our furry charges, our green charges,  our fridge, and our adult beverages in our absence.  Kayo and Scath are quite excited:  Andrew is pretty damn generous with the treats, food, and catnip, and he is apparently really good at sitting still with a cat on his lap.  And he went and graduated from college.  How on earth is that possible?  He’s nine years younger than I am, and if he has a degree and can legally drink adult beverages, that means I’m clearly in my 30s.  Wacky.  So, does this mean I’ve officially crossed the line from “rebellious youth” to “crackpot?”  Cuz it’s fun over here, wherever I’ve landed.

Just a few days left until I wander off for a few weeks with way too much stuff and many many good friends.  In preparation for the annual trek to Celtic summer camp, I always go a teeny bit overboard.  This year is no exception.  Despite all of my assurances to whomever would listen that I was going to take it easy this year and didn’t plan to make much . . . well, let’s just say I came by the “crazy” moniker honestly.  If I didn’t make so much, the run-up to this vacation would sure be more relaxing  . . . . and if a frog had wings he wouldn’t bump his ass a’hopping.  Scott was never convinced.  Scott can predict the future.  Scott deserves a pony.  I have been told, however, he doesn’t actually want a pony because some silly police may come scold us for having livestock in the suburbs.  What-evah.  Maybe I can make a pony out of leather and rivets.  And felt.  And maybe I can do it right now.

Somebody shake me.

I’ve sewn like mad.  Mad I say!  The ruana I showed you the other day–I had no intention of making it.  It was an accident.  It required hours of hand-sewing.  I couldn’t help myself.  And then I went through the basket of clothes I planned to bring for the masses, and found that I had no medium pants left, so two pairs of pants, check.  And then I fell down and made a lot of tunics.  I think I made seven?  Wait, no.  Nine?  I don’t remember–it’s all a fog.   A few still need some hemming and are calling from the basket.  I don’t even know whose they are.

And then I fell down and made a couple of Mongolian vests–I only meant to make one but the fabrics I bought for it were fighting each other and I heard some whispering from the fabric stash.  And some number of hours (and lots of bitching about making luceted button loops, and some deliberation over buttons) later, bang, there were two lined vests.  Whoops.  And I made a new belt for Scott.  Because we wouldn’t want the new del encircled in a shabby belt.

And, of course, I had to finish the socks I was working on for my Mom, because she would never make it through my vacation without a new pair of socks.  In August.  Cuz the mid-Atlantic is so cold now.

And then I showed Andrew some of the felted hats I’ve been working on and offered to make him one.  Because, you know, I need to add something else to my “to-do” list.

In all of this, I neglected to make a single new anything for me.  Not right.  Not just.  So I now feel bound to make myself something new.  I have some linen that seems to be calling my name . . .

When I wasn’t sewing like mad, I was muttering things like “wouldn’t a pig roast be fun, except for the huge amount of work involved.”  I don’t think anyone else is convinced yet.  And I accidentally volunteered to teach a class, but I have yet to pick a topic.  Crap crap crap.  I know I have all sorts of interesting stuff crammed in my head, but I can’t think of anything anyone else wants a handle on.  The bring-everything-and-just-let-folks-ask-questions option is appealing for its lack of class prep, but unappealing because of the whole bring-everything aspect.

And maybe I’ll be done with a new translation.  And maybe monkeys will fly out of my butt.

I can’t wait I can’t wait!  The felt version of Ultuna is in the washer right now, hopefully binding itself tightly together into a stable, funny hat.  I was busting my hump last night to get this thing to come together.  I’m sure it’s harder to make in steel, but it hasn’t been easy in wool.  Fingers crossed . . .

In the meantime, I am playing amateur veterinarian.  I am bit ashamed to say it, but my dog, well, he doesn’t mean any harm.  I’m sure of it.  But Kayo is a lion maimer.  And he has a problem with (stuffed) dog aggression.  He can shake the dickens, and the stuffing, out of his less, um, mobile friends in a heartbeat.

Here is how it starts.  We come home from work, and Kayo wants to play fetch.  But it’s dangerously hot outside, and Kayo is great at fetching but not so much with the not fetching.  He can’t stop, and he’ll run himself sick in no time.  He has a very heavy coat.  I should spin him.  Anyway, we come home, he wants to play fetch, we play very briefly, and then he mopes, like this:

Surrounded by toys.  Notice the two green lions?  We’ll get to that.  He mopes, until one of us . . .

Cracks, falling for the classic “evil carnivore posing as sad innocent puppy” ploy.   Notice the huge belly wound in the lion.  He needs medical care, and soon.  Anyway, I throw the lion.  And then?  Then Kayo’s all

Like that, with the shaking and the maiming.  The lion is best for this, what with the floppy rope arms and legs.  Apparently, dogs find the sensation of being beaten about the head and neck with the limbs of a prey species very satisfying.   You’ll have to ask them–I, for one, don’t get it.

Here, I should point out that Kayo theoretically has what is called a “soft mouth.”  It’s a thing you breed into retrievers, so they don’t maim the ducks they are supposed to be obediently delivering unto their owners–you know, those nice people with the guns who will trade a delicious, juicy raw duck for a stupid liver treat and a pat on the head.  Oh, the injustices suffered by our underpaid working dogs!  Anyway, despite his breeding Kayo is not a duck dog, braving the icy waters of the Chesapeake–he shakes the heck out of whatever he fetches.  And I don’t think the lion finds Kayo’s mouth soft.  Because Kayo has big scary teeth.  Quite frequently, I find myself lining up the injured in my ad hoc animal clinic.

See the maniacal look on his Kayo’s face?  The predatory set of his ears?  He’s anxious for me to throw one of these.  He needs treatment–seriously, we need to have an intervention for him, and one for our nip-head of a cat, but that’s another story.   Until Kayo gets a lion, he’ll follow me around and mumble and grumble and whine until I just can’t stand it anymore.  I can only take both lions for about ten minutes before he, well, I don’t know what he’d do after ten minutes because I’ve never kept both of the lions away from him that long.  We rotate lions.  I’m an enabler.  I know it.  So I decide which lion needs more care and round up the other frightened, injured (stuffed) animals, and begin mending, leaving the other lion to take more abuse.  At times, I have to transplant one of the lion’s most vital organs: the squeaker.  Today, it’s just sutures.  Sans anesthesia, or even sterile conditions.

After the mending comes the trip to the washing machine.  Which can happen now because Felt-tuna is out of the washer.  And I think it’s pretty darn funny.  I think it’s too small for its intended recipient, but it fits perfectly inside the Ultuna repro Richard made me.
Steel funny helmet:

Wool funny helmet:

Oh, and if you know who’s getting the hat, shuuuush, mmmkay?

Another cranial creation complete.  But it is smaller than we intended.  Or smaller than we thought we intended.  It will serve some purpose well, though it will likely be replicated.  And not in a Blade Runner kind of way. 
Ultuna:  heah.
Feltuna:

We are almost off to the big P.  Prepare to have your skulls measured, folks.  We can’t do the felt-math without knowing the appropriate circumferences.  And if we can’t do the felt-math, all of the mad hatters, from the first through the penultimate, will be quite cranky.  The ultimate mad hatter is too distracted by the mercury  wobblies to care.

Stitching stitching stitching.  I have to clothe the masses, and I have to do it right now.  My yearly sewing freak-out has been much delayed by the release of Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince.  I read it last Saturday and Sunday, and immediately felt compelled to read the rest of the series.  I’m finished the second and third and started the fourth, and I think I’ve convinced myself that I don’t need to read four hours a day, since I’ve read these all before.
Put the book down, crazy girl, and go make some decent food for dinner.   Hear that spooky air in the background?  It’s the song of the corn dogs.

I’ve been quiet because of the reading, but I’ve also been spending a fair amount of time in the sweatshop.  A-see?

It may not look like much on the hanger, but it looks fiiiiiine on my fellah.  It’s a handmade linen del, which is what Mongols wear. Skutai, the sudden Mongol, will wear it in living history land.  I can’t wait to see it as part of the full kit.  Many many hours of hand-sewing went into it, and I made the cord for the button loops and the closures inside with my lucet.  Which involved lots of whining.  Using a lucet hurts my knuckles.  And there’s a little bit of detail on the back, see

Fancy schmancy, no?   This whole obsession with Mongolia is allowing me to make much more interesting clothing for Scott.  I’ve never been able to convince him that plaid is a neutral, but after watching House of Flying Daggers, I may be able to convince him that silk brocade isn’t just for girls.  Manly brocade, of course.   Really, as long as I can continue using sewing projects to make him wander around shirtless between fittings, I’m happy.

I also made this ruana:

the plaid is linen and the green is a silky wool blend, and it’s lov-er-lee, and covered in leeetle tiiiny stitches which I made while watching episodes of Homicide while reclining on the couch.  The cat is very angry that he wasn’t able to sit on me or the ruana while I was working on it.  Scath hates hand-sewing.   Anyway, I’m not sure whose it is.

And, better yet, I’m almost done with this ruana:

Which is a stash-busting project.  That jarringly bright stripe?  That’s the center-line, and once I finish the body I’ll shape the neck.  This was meant to use up all of my leftover yarns in blue, green, and purple colorways.  I’ll still have a ton left when it’s done–I sense an afghan in my future.   I don’t know who gets this one either.

In addition to the sewing and knitting, there’s been some successful hunting and gathering.
I tasti bei:

ed il plaid garish:

e la tela blu sottile ed il cotone striato rosso

e la combinazione dispari

Enough with the crazy moon language: half of the buttons and the last pairing of fabrics are preparing to prepare to turn into something cool for our pal the bootmaker.  I think.  The fabrics aren’t set in stone yet.  I think.

The weather has been abysmal.  No, wait, an abyss would actually be much cooler.  It’s really hot and nasty.  And between the bad weather, the reading, the sewing, the knitting, and that dumb full time job, I’ve been distracted enough from the garden to allow the alien poke weed to firmly establish the toe-hold it wanted so badly last year.  This is maddening.  And embarrassing.

The previous owners of our house allowed their adult son and his wife to live here for a while.  I’m sure they were nice people, but they weren’t gardeners like the owners were.  And if you allow a flower bed to lay fallow, the invading species will really appreciate it.  I’ve spent much of my time outside evicting several species since we bought the place.  I’ve made some serious inroads against the English ivy, that pestilential harborer of rats, that poisoner of songbirds, that dismantler of houses, that tree murderer.  Two rainy years in a row have increased the challenge, as has the increased sunlight afforded by the removal of a dead silver maple and a threatening white pine.  I just can’t keep up.  I don’t like the poke.  I don’t like the ground-ivy.  I hate the poison ivy.  I think I have no choice but to call in chemical reinforcements–something I’ve never done before.  But now that I am officially allergic to poison ivy, I don’t feel like I have any options.  I have to kill the stuff.  It will eat my skin if I don’t.

The Devil’s Playground is a documentary about Amish kids in the midst of rumspringa, the period that begins at their 16th birthday and lasts until they decide whether or not to be baptised and officially join the Amish church.  During rumspringa, or "running around," the kids are permitted to soak up and participate in whatever they find outside of their Amish communities.  Girls are generally steered towards a more conservative path, but many Amish boys adopt the dress, cars, drugs, music, and habits of American pop culture.  Over the last 100 years, the gulf between Amish traditions and American culture has widened, perhaps increasing the danger and the draw the kids on rumspringa find.

I first heard about this documentary from a friend who saw it when it was released, and then was reminded of it by an episode of This American Life called Devil on my Shoulder.  A lot of Americans think of Amish people only as members of idyllic scenes–if we think of them at all.  Having spent a lot of time in near an Amish community in Pennsylvania as a kid, I was always enamored of the trappings of Amish society visible to me: barn raisings, horses and buggies, gorgeous quilts and masterful carpentry.  The concept of simplicity seems appealing from a distance.  Like most Americans, I have little knowledge of life in an Amish community, I don’t actually know any Amish people, and I think Witness was the only mass-media representation of Amish life I’ve run across.  Over the last several years, allegations of sexual and physical abuse have plagued a few Amish communities in the Eastern US, forcing communities who would prefer to keep themselves apart from the masses to submit to examination by local law enforcement and national media.  The truth, as usual, probably lies between the idyll and the dungeon.  This film allows us to peer into a small part of a real community to see both its strengths and weaknesses.

It is jarring, to say the least, to see Amish girls in their traditional modest dress and bonnets swigging beer and dancing at a huge farm-party, and hear Amish kids discussing crystal-meth deals, narcs, death threats, and "bed courting."  It was hard to watch a few of the kids go so wild.  Faron, the center of many of the scenes, seems stuck in clearly self-destructive patterns.  All the while, he seems to hunger to return to the fold.  But at the same time, we see Joann, an woman in her early 20s who is preparing for Baptism.  She ran wild–wilder than most Amish girls ever do–and decided to join the church.  Her smile is beatific.  Her faith does not seem to be a prison but a great solace.

For me, the most disturbing aspect of the film was the fact that these kids are pulled out of school at 13.  I appreciate the concept of allowing people to choose or refuse church membership when they reach maturity.  But knowing that they are considered ready to make that decision with only an 8th grade education, it seems like the house is monkeying with the cards.  Throughout, I was wishing that the Amish kids who were hungry to leave their community would find a way to finish school and approach their adult lives better prepared, whether they decide to choose their parents’ path or not.

I haven’t disappeared, but I am having a nutso week.  And I left my camera in Scott’s glove-box for way too long, and I feel like a slacker blogging sans images.  But my fine brother has cheerfully agreed to house-sit for us, so our pending vacation to Celtic summer camp is feeling closer and easier.  Three weeks till, well, yippeeeee!   and Woot and such-like with all our far-flung kin.

In short: I’m making lists and sewing like mad in my crazy sweat-shop, and toying with a possible new poetic translation of either this or this.  Or, if I give up sleeping, a-this.  I have already done the actual translations of Scela Mucce MacDatho and Tain Bo Fraech, so, you know, those are arguably easier to complete in time.  Decisions, decisions. 

I am almost finished with Skutai’s new del: it needs to have the buttons sewn on and the little button loops added.  It is quite fetching, and the edge detail I talked him into is the perfect compliment to his eyes.  I’ve also been working on some tunics and a ruana.  Well, two ruanai: the knitted one I’ve been working on for ages and a sewn one.   I think both are bound for someone else’s back. 

And a funny hat is in the works.   I’ve got one word: Ultuna.  If it doesn’t crack up the recipient over and over again for the length of our vacation, I will eat the hat.   If I end up having to eat the hat, um, please take me to the doctor, k?

Middleburg was lovely yesterday, which I should be able to prove with pictures but I failed the whole "put camera in purse" roll, so nada.  I was entirely overwhelmed in Hunt Country Yarns as usual, and thus managed to buy just one pattern and six buttons.  On the way there, my Mom commented on the socks I’m currently working on, which I’ve been lamenting over because, like everything I’m working on lately, they are clearly not meant for me.  So socks for darling mom.  I hope she hearts them.  Except that if she does, it may mean I get to keep fewer of the socks I make.  Which would be tragic, because I am apparently  capable of keeping only socks these days.

And it looks like a little something I wrote is now officially bound for publication in a real book, and that it will appear in a way that the editor and I both find pleasing.  I want to rattle the thing off to you, but my guess is that the editor would ask me not to.  So if you want to hear it, call me up and I’ll recite it for you.  I am feeling quite proud at the moment.  Entirely too puffed up.  Dangerous, really.  Must avoid deflation.

The Serpent’s Kiss is an odd little movie, which I found because I’m a Ewan McGregor fan.  In it, McGregor plays a young garden designer in Enlightenment-era England, charged with designing a  fancy-schmancy garden for a monied family. 

The film has some pacing problems, and I would love to have seen a few of the themes–the woad industry, the daughter’s attachment to the wilds, the seemingly Pagan peasants–explored more fully. The cast is top notch, including Pete Postlethwaite and Richard Grant, and the garden design is pretty intriguing.  The idea of "being past flowers" made me twitter like an angry jaybird.  I liked it, but how could I not, what with the woad, the wilds, and the Pagan peasants.  This is one of those stories I couldn’t help but like.  Had there been a banjo or some traditional Irish music, I would probably buy it.   My guess is, I am one of four members of their target audience.

Bury Me Standing: The Gypsies and their Journey by Isabel Fonseca. 

This was another slow read for me because I needed to take the misery in smaller doses.  Roma and Sinti continue to face blindingly terrible discrimination throughout Europe.  I don’t think discrimination is even the word for it: discrimination alone doesn’t seem quite strong enough to burn entire Rom communities out of their villages. 

Fonseca traveled amidst and around Rom and Sinti communities in Europe in the early 1990s, a time when the constraints of Eastern-European dictatorships were falling away, leaving old ethnic hatreds to bubble forth and explode all over the region.  We all know about the great injustices perpetrated by one ethnic group against another in Serbia, Croatia, Kosovo, Albania.  We have heard far lass about the centuries-long use of Rom as the scapegoats of Europe.  Fonseca peers into a culture most in the West know little about, examines the truth and exaggerations behind romipen or "Gypsyness", and documents myriad abuses of Rom communities by their governments, their neighbors, and their cousin-tribes. 

The author also explores the Nazi attacks against Rom and Sinti and current reactions by historians to the plight of Gypsies during the holocaust.  The ongoing unwillingness to recognize that Rom and Sinti were truly victims of genocide seems to stem from many ancient hatreds.  Whatever its cause, the refusal to weigh the Gypsy holocaust experience is wrong-headed and dangerous. 

Fonseca closes with a look at attempts to organize and unite Rom and Sinti within the UN, the EU, and as an inter-state body in Europe.  Unfortunately, little additional progress seems to have been made since the book was originally published, though the European Roma Rights Center continues to press European governments to prosecute those who attack Roma. 

In hindsight, I am a bit disappointed that the author paid relatively little attention to Traveller and Gypsy communities in the UK and Ireland.   But there are only so many pages in the book.  Overall, the writing is quite good, the tone is engaging enough for the book to be enjoyable for non-academics, and the photographs are gorgeous.

Just, hmmmph, damn I’m mad.  I need to cast on, join in a ring, and make a simple little strange hat for a strange head.  But I can’t seem to stop twisting the stitches.   A girl only has so much patience, hat.  Only so much patience.

I will burn you, yarn.  I’ll do it–don’t tempt me.  Look up–it says “Crazy Lanea.”  It doesn’t say “Forgiving woman with lots of patience and a fire extinguisher.”  I come from a fire-loving people.  Your future owner would never even know the difference, so there is no one to help you.  If you embarrass me tonight in front of the gals, you’re going in a wicker man:

Just like that uncooperative Scottish guy in the movie.  And Britt Eckland won’t even do a shaky-booty dance for you.  You want that?  Huh?  Give it some thought.  You have until 5:00 to decide.