I got a bad cough last week–Typhoid John brought it back from the Pentagon. It laid me low. Coughing, sleeping, and–get this–not really knitting very much. Miserable, that. And then I ran out of yarn for the second teal bag’s straps, so I can’t finish it until a box comes from Knitpicks. I have no new socks on the needles, and I haven’t worked up the gumption to start either sweater I’m thinking on. And, bitching the whole time, I made an orange rabbit similar to Legs, which I need to stuff and felt. And I did some work on the ruana.

But, all the while, I’ve felt like a whiny little brat. It’s as if I blame knitting for my cough and for the rain and for all of the website work I’ve had to do here. But, really, I blame my knitting for . . . get this . . . me watching one episode of Carnivale after another, so that now there are only a few episodes left in the first season. I didn’t knit while I watched the episodes, so my snake brain expects that if I abstain from knitting there will magically be more episodes–not bloody likely. We don’t have HBO, of course, so yet again I’m running through an amazing serial too quickly, despite the fact that there is no second dose in sight. And I need to hide from people with HBO so I don’t know what is happening this season. Ugh. Of course my knitting isn’t pretty enough after watching this show–it’s one of the most visually stimulating shows anyone has ever aired on TV. And the music! Oh, the music.

It’s wrong of me to lash out at the knitting. The knitting didn’t make Carnivale and can’t live up to it’s myriad charms. The knitting is humble and lovely and blameless. Netflix, however, is not blameless. Netflix hasn’t sent the next episodes yet, despite the fact that I mailed back four (FOUR!) DVDs Monday morning. Frickin fracking netflix ruining my frickin frackin life. They’d better send those next two DVDs today or I’m gonna pop.

Beannachtaí na Féile Pádraig oraibh, etc, etc. Happy St. Patrick’s Day, all y’all. This day . . .well, my view of this day vacillates. My own connection to the festival and the greater Irish/Celtic community requires me to do a ton of work right around Paddy’s day for the festival, which wears some of the shine off the apple. I love that people spend the day embracing Irish culture, but I want to strangle people who serve dyed Budweiser and call it Irish. I love that, when I was playing out, I had the choice of places to play or dance and sessions to join. And I hate that dozens of people would demand that I sing Danny Boy as if my freckles were some sort of contractual obligation to Paddy-up on demand. Confound it, I hate that song. Same goes for When Irish Eyes are Smiling (when an Irish-American girl is puking, more like) and Tooraloorakillmenowpleeeze. I used to lie and say I’d never heard of any of them. Which got better responses than my standard refusal–I guess people prefer ignorance and/or lying to honest refusal. Anyway. Please, appease me for two more seconds and all my ire will be spent and I’ll be finished with my snobbery. Killian’s is not Irish beer, it’s Coors and thus crappy. Lager need never be dyed green. There is more to Irish culture than stinky green soap and leprechauns (which, I’ll have you know, barely make a blip on the country’s fantastic mythic and folkloric tapestry). And please, for the love of, well, whatever you love, don’t give money to any terrorist shills this year, no matter how much good they tell you it will do and no matter which side they’re shilling for. It only makes everything in the north worse. Right. That’s done.

Please, world, come in and borrow my culture now, have as much soda bread and Guinness and Murphys and corned beef and cabbage (always a puzzler, that product of New York Irish and New York Jews living close together . . . "Hey! You got your cabbage on my corned beef!" ""What? You got your corned beef in my cabbage!" It’s wacky diaspora fun!) as you like, sing along and rattle the floorboards. Hell, even ask me for some free lessons and I’ll teach you some songs or phrases or dance steps. Just clean up when you leave, and don’t blame us for your hangover.

Today will be a good Paddy’s Day, because I get to see my pal’s band Tinsmith play at Jammin Java, which is right close to where I work. Which means that it only makes sense for me to go fabric and/or needle shopping at the dear little places between work and the gig, because I’m teaching my pal Cindy to knit tonight while we hang out with our pal Dana at the Tinsmith merch table. At least two of my pals from the Potomac Celtic Festival to hang with, at least one friend on stage, and at least one delicious beer in my belly with my fine fine dinner. Lovely. Maybe even lovely squared.

Yesterday I stayed home with a cough, hoping that today I would have a voice and that I could avoid spreading this latest plague any further through the office. It seems to have worked. I knitted what should end up being a lovely little felted Manos business card holder, and I swatched a bunch of possible felt-food options. I finished Squarehead’s socks, which I know fit him well because I plain forced him to put one on the other night. And I worked on my ruana, which I had left languishing for some time because it tricked me into using a single strand of yarn that was totally and absolutely wrong intertwined with a lovely pleasing strand of yarn for two rows. I got the bad boy out of there on Saturday and added a couple of inches of width to the ruana yesterday. I love that it’s made entirely of scrap and it’s looking pretty good, but I’m afraid it’s another object that is destined for someone else’s closet. Meh. I’ll live.

I used to make things and then write about it. Last week, things changed. Now I do this: Potomac Celtic Festival. The rest of the PCF staff and I have fewer than 90 days to make sure a quarter of a million dollar festival goes as planned. My task list:
* Update webpage every 17 minutes, despite the fact that I am not in my house 24 hours a day
* Track down the rest of the staff and drag the appropriate info for the website out of their brains
* Finish the cat-herding that is building, arranging, and promoting the workshop schedule
* Round up hundreds of volunteers and treat them very very nicely so that I can eventually ensnare them and make them take some of my PCF jobs away
* Tend our crafters and vendors staff
* Wander local college campuses and beg students to apply for our scholarship
* Jury applicant crafters and vendors
* Attend local St. Paddy’s Day events and gleefully promote the festival that is eating my brain
* Deliver brochures and posters unto the masses
* Meetings, cubed
* Not commit homicide, suicide, celticide, or any other ‘icide
* Hide from people who think Celtic=(Enya+Riverdance+knotwork+RenFest)-(history+culture+literature+geography+language+music), so as to avoid said ‘icides
* Manage the Living History staff and make room for a new LH group
* Create an on-line ticketing system and sell at least 10,000 tickets
* Apply for an NEA grant (haaaahahahahha–that’s not going to happen)
* Answer approximately 19 million emails and phone messages without cussing anyone out, even if they deserve it
* And, most importantly, try to prevent some zzzhhhackassss from finding me in the middle of the night on Saturday, after I’ve been on site slaving away for many many hours, to pick a fight with me. I apparently have a zzzhhhackassss magnet buried deep inside me, and it is most attractive when I really want to relax with some pals and a beer. Is it so wrong to want to play a little bit of javelin bocce and sing a few songs without sharing that experience with some freak who really thinks he’s in the IRA circa 1920 and wants to pick a fight with me because I have an English last name or something?

Please, I beg you, if you care for your Crazy Lanea at all, either buy tickets to the festival or volunteer at the festival. Or maybe just check in a while and see if my hands have fused to my keyboard and my head to the phone, and if perhaps my husband and pets are starving to death. Above all, forgive me for being unable to even look sideways at other topics or events during the next few months. If possible, I will put a clone in my normal place so that my blooming insanity will make fewer of you uncomfortable.

And, uh, a felted bag of original design is almost done, a quilt made out of these linen blocks is planned, Squarehead almost has new socks, Anubh’s hat is waiting for her head for the final blocking and subsequent felt-art, Dark Mary is waiting (patiently?) for some Tuatha stuff, and the second hat mafia project is through the design phase and close to the needles. And I have been neglecting my Auntly duties and have made no bunnies. I would feel shame if I weren’t so tired. I think I may have forgotten how to read, too, but that’s too much to consider at this point.

The Irish for No by Ciaran Carson.

Let me begin by inviting you into the club:  there is no word in Irish, or in any of the Celtic languages, for "no."  Nor is there a word for "yes."  Rather, answering yes or no requires the speaker to conjugate the verb into its positive or negative form.  If you ask me "Are you going to the store today?" in Irish, I would have to answer either "I am going to the store" or "I am not going to the store."  This makes Irish 101 a challenging class, and it leaves a fine language student like me totally without words when I run into my former Irish teacher in town–I can understand her questions, but I’ve lost just enough Irish to be wholly incapable of answering. 

The importance of these linguistic oddments varies from one speaker or linguist to another.  In many classrooms, the difficulty has turned into a bit of a game–how can you translate campaign slogans (i.e. "No new taxes") and still have them sound snappy?  In Northern Ireland, particularly in nationalist communities, the lack of a native "No" has been relatively important over the years.  Imagine attempting to make a bit of a slogan in your native tongue to refuse actions by an English-speaking government you reject–tough, eh?

Right, so, I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again.  Carson is a fine writer.  In poetry, his dense, velvetty language is even further compressed.  His memory of bygone Belfast geographies is entrancing.  And, he gets me with this every time, the man discusses the needle arts practiced by his mother and aunts lovingly.  It is not a tome of poems about knitting or quilting, but it is a book of poems in which his mother, a needle-woman, appears as a shining example of thrift and talent and creative expressions of love.  That alone makes the book worth reading, in my eyes.  I loved it, savored it, reread it a few times, and will likely reread it several more times in my life.

This wiseguy gets it.  The Maus gets it.  What, you don’t get it?

Wanna speed on the appearance of strange hats in your neighborhood?
Mad hatter the first has one hell of a hat in her living room and another in the sneaky sneaky works, and a head full of amazing shapes blooming like flowers after cavorting with other fullers at the ACC show. Mad Hatter the second may soon create a crimson crest for . . . someone who already has a crimson crest? That second hatter is mad, indeed. She needs to stay away from the mercury.

The madness has spread all the way to Knit Picks, yarn purveyors who have decided to stop making a profit, best I can tell. Wanna see more hats sooner?
A. Measure your friends’ heads well and often. If everyone gets measured, no one will be expecting the unexpected.
2. Go through your closets looking for cast off 100% wool sweaters marked dry clean only. Wash them in the hottest water you can make. Dry them in a hot dryer. Laugh at how much they shrink.  Give ’em to me.
III. Buy the food that felt eats, and deliver it unto a hatter:

a han
a do
a tri

A brownie’s hat needs 7 skeins to grow up stout and sure.
A witch’s hat eats two times that, as does a warlock’s tur.
A stately fez eats modestly, but 4 or 5 skeins full.
A dread-locked dome, the madman’s home, sups but snips of wool.
A tangle of the ewe’s coat falls and twirls betwixt the pins,
And hatters full a rainbow mound to sidhe-helms for their kin.

Happy Women’s Day, everyone. Every year, I wish the US paid enough attention to this holiday. I wish, frankly, anyone paid enough attention to both the plight of women in poor countries and to the accomplishments of women throughout world history. I wish I could vote for more women, and that somewhere, anywhere in the management chain here in sovreignty policy land I could see a woman above me. And I am thankful that we women are openly appreciating our own and our sisters’ accomplishments and talents. Yay us.

Ah, that’s better. Post work, four of we women who run the Potomac Celtic Festival had a conference call with a guy who makes festivals better. He had some great ideas, some of which we have time to implement before this year’s festival and others which should be in place before the 2006 fest. And he encouraged us to bring more dancers and eventually add a true dance floor. That is music to my ears.

So I got little knitting done today. I’m working on what I hope will be my first truly original, publishable, charmingly useful pattern. I get to knit with the Wednesday night knitters tomorrow night. I should have a new ball winder relatively soon. And I should have at least one rabbit underway very soon. I like the future, yes I do. I just want to get rid of that one damn bird.

Sure, I’m knitting. But look at what the green things are doing.

Virginia has been approaching spring for some time. Today she got serious. Today, it almost reached 70 degrees Fahrenheit. That’s warm. That’s gardening season. Flowers are doing their best to break out all over. I have mini iris, daffodils, croci, and snowdrops popping up all over. My frenzied bulb-planting is paying off in spades.

I love that these daffodils look as if they’re submerged and reacting to tides.

But tomorrow snow is forecast. I’ll try to focus on the needles then. And soon, I will only knit when it’s dark outside..

I’ve gotten a few requests in the comments to show folks how to make beaded stitch markers like those I showed a while back. So here’s a brief how-to. I don’t have any photos with which to illustrate–sorry. I’ll try to add some later. Oh, and my Mom the nurse educator wants me to say "If you have little kids, don’t use stitch markers like these–use loops of yarn until the kids are older and better able to fully swallow the things you value, rather than choking on them."

This project will require a trip to the bead store if you don’t already have a well-stocked beading kit. Decide how many markers you want to make and buy your supplies accordingly. I made tons. If you get confused in the bead shop, ask questions. If your questions confuse the employees, tell them you’re making things much like drop earrings. If you don’t have a bead shop near by, go here. While you’re there, um, would you mind picking some stuff up for me ? . . .

You’ll need these supplies and tools:
* Needle-nosed pliers
* Wire cutters
* Head-pins–I’d recommend pins at least 1 and 1/2 inches long with ball tips
* Split rings–in a size that is a bit bigger than the needles you’ll be using the markers on (remember that rings are sized by their outer diameter–not inner, so buy carefully) I almost always use 8 mm. You can use jump rings, which come in larger sizes, but they are more bratty once completed because they can snag yarn or the drop can fall off the marker.
* Purty beads: I used both small silver beads for flash and spacing (and to keep larger beads from falling off the head pins) and larger glass and metal beads (aka stations in bead-speak)
* Finally, a beading tray or surface is nice to have. You don’t have to buy a special tray, you can just lay out a hand towel on which to work. Beads like to roll about, see, and if you make it hard for them to roll about, your project will be easier to complete.

You’ll need one head-pin per marker plus a few extra in case you break some, a split ring per marker, a station (major bead) per marker, and some little beads for embellishments if you’re into that (or if your stations’ holes are too big to stay on the head pin). I find markers most useful if the set has at least one marker that is in some way distinguishable from the others. You’ll notice in my new sets that I have four small raku beads and two large ones, or two frogs and two glass baubles. Since markers are a useful tool, you should make markers that will please your mind as well as your eyes.

Now comes the making o’ the markers
1. Sit down at a table.
2. Lay out a towel or put your beading tray in front of you.
3. Arrange your beads. Do you love them? If you don’t love them, why are you doing this?
4. Now (I can’t believe I’m acting like this is a skill) pick up a head pin.
5. Thread a bead onto it. Do you like it? If you want to, add some small beads on either side of the big bead. How’s it lookin?
6. Ok, with the beads all the way down on the pin, pick a little less than a centimeter above the beads and, using your needle-nosed pliers, bend the pin.
7. Slide the split ring up into the crook of the bend you just made, and then fold the end of the head pin all the way over. You should have a little drop with the ring at the top, from which hangs the pin, on which are threaded the bead(s).
8. Now wrap the free end of the head-pin around in a spiral as many times as you can, using either your fingers or your pliers.
9. Once it’s wrapped up tight, adjust as necessary. If you have any little scary bits of wire poking out, threatening you or your yarn, squish ’em with your pliers and/or cut them off with your wire cutters.
10. Notice how much what you just made looks like an earring, but with a ring instead of a hook at the top. Open jewelry booth at local craft fair.
11. Repeat until all of your supplies are used up, or until you decide you hate beading, or that you love beading and will forsake all other hobbies for it.

I’m a liar. I claimed I would limit my snobbishness. I thoroughly enjoyed the Dervish show–they were tighter than I’ve ever heard them, they played one rocking set after another, and Cathy was in great voice. And then Lunasa started tuning up . . . and Donogh Hennessey wasn’t on the stage. There was a guy tuning a guitar (clearly not Donogh’s guitar), and the guy wasn’t Ritchie the roadie, because Ritchie was at the board and and and Donogh Hennessey has left Lunasa. My favorite guitarist has left my favorite band. Kevin made some excuses about Donogh taking up acting as George Clooney’s stunt double, and the Lunasa site claims that Donogh has decided to go into ballooning, and word on the street is that he has decided to spend more time at home with Pauline Scanlon (think Inion ni Scannlain), . . .but crimeny . . . All excuses aside, I blame free will. Free will is a nasty thing in other people sometimes. If I don’t get at least a few good Scanlon/Hennessey albums out of this debacle, I’m going to be hard pressed to not throw lots and lots of tantrums.

I tried to get over the shock, and noticed that Paul Meehan, who was strumming away in Donogh’s place, did quite a good job. But I think he really needs a different guitar and maybe some other strings, because his tone was so bright. Honky-tonk bright at times. Right. I will now stop whining like a little brat. The Lunasa set was tight and hot and full of my favorite tunes, and the guys were goofing off of each other for most of the show. Then both bands got together for one huge kitchen party of a Michael Coleman tune as an encore. Great craic all round.

In other news . . . look what I made. Sorry for the bad photo. I am not terribly tall, and this piece of patchwork is 19" square and is sitting on my kitchen table, so there was lots of holding the camera up in the air and hoping for good shots. Anyway, it’s a Brigid’s Cross, crazy pieced with a bit of applique. It’s made entirely from scraps left over after making clothes for people I love, so it’s extra keen. It will likely receive a fair bit of embellishment. I had originally thought to make it into a tote, but it’s too big for that. The fabrics are cotton, silk noile and crepe, and linen. I sense a trend here–I’m going to have to make a bunch of these.

So, Crazy Lanea is not my legal name.

I know, I know, you feel deceived, gentle reader. And for that I apologize.

Lanea is a name I picked when I started to get really involved in Living History (Crazy was appended when I started clothing everyone in my living history group), because there simply were no people named "Amy" 2000 years ago in Wales or Ireland. Nor were there Amys 1400 years ago in Wales or Ireland. I love the name Lanea because it works for both Iron-Age Celtic and Viking living history. I love its connection to Botany. I love its softness, the roundness of its vowels; it’s relation to the name Lana, which means peaceful or lovely. I love that, in Swedish, it means lime-tree. I mean, why not name your girls after lime trees, right? And, I even appreciate the fact that, when necessary, the fellahs can say "lah-NAAAAY-ah" in such a way that it both embarrasses and compliments me. And I love that, when I needed her most in my youth, the Muse spoke through my mouth, saying "My name is Lanea, and if you say it sideways, it’s No-Lay-a, old man. I’m 15. Go away."

But this, this is too good to be true. Scroll down . . . way down . . . see it there . . .
[LANEUS, LANEA, LANEUM] : ADJ woolen;

I know there was something good that Rome did, and the good thing it did was make my name an adjective meaning "woolen." Not that it makes up for the attack on Ynys Mon or the slaughter of the Iceni. But it is a step towards detente. When you add this to the fact that placenta literally translated means "pudding", you see why Latin has staying power. Sure sure, it’s no Old Irish. There is no Latin epic that matches the grandeur and hilarity of Scela Mucce Mac Datho, in which our hero wins the right to the Warrior’s portion (i.e. best steak + badass bragging rights) by pointing out how many of his rivals’ dads’ testicles he has removed with his pointy stick. But this is a start. This might temper my desire to smash busts of long dead ceasars.

Ok, probably not. But I applaud the bookish sweetie who posted this bit of loveliness on the web. And, I am so happy to say that if you google "Lanea" today, this blog is the third thing on the list. And if you google "Crazy Lanea", it’s the first.

Perhaps I am so happy because tonight is a Lunasa and Dervish show at the Birchmere. Several of us will be there, and we’ll try not to complain about the overpriced burgers and beer, because, crap, Lunasa and Dervish are playing at the Birchmere tonight and we have tickets. I will not cringe if Cathy gets down with her bad self on stage, because her voice is lovely. I will not kick people who lean in front of me, blocking my view. I will not cry much if Lunasa decides not to play The Merry Sisters of Fate and Morning Nightcap and Meitheamh and Floating Crowbar and and and. I will try to try to not be an Irish music snob. Ok, I won’t try very hard.

My life is pretty darn good. I hope yours is too.

I’ve been getting comfortable with my scary scary felting needles. I added a spiral to what will soon be the front pocket on my Constant Companion, and my name in ogham on its inner pocket. The spiral mimics the button on the bag, so I hope it looks good once I sew it on. I think the teal bag will grow some black spirals once I wind some yarn off. . . where is that winder I ordered, anyway?

And I’ve finished a lovely silja sock that is, well, not mine. It’s way too big for me. It fits Scott, but it’s “girly colored” so he won’t be getting these. One of my pals will surely want them, no? So lovely in their purply-bluey-greeny-fuscia-ee-ness. I would like to get its mate to heel-turning stage in time for the meet-up tomorrow so I can help a pal with that concept.

I’m also searching for the perfect material out of which to make reinforcing inserts for the felted bags I’m making. I cut a piece of cardboard and dropped it into the teal bag, and it makes everything prettier and more sensible. And I’m hoping a knitting machine will fall form the sky so I can make said bags more quickly, and thus make them less expensive.

And yesterday, here is the snowy wonderland that is Virginia, I accidentally started piecing a crazy Brigid’s Cross in green and gold. It may become a hanging, or maybe a tote bag. It’s made of silks and linens and cotton, and I think it will end up being pretty darn cool. I’ve always wanted to make a quilt this way, and this piece is certainly encouraging me in that direction. If I make one for our bed, I will be sorely tempted to wrap Scath’s paws in duct-tape so he can’t destroy it with his evil sharp talons. El gato negro has the utmost disdain for all fabrics. And people. And dogs. Ok, he’s selfish and haughty and destructive and complains incessantly, but he’s pretty so I forgive his failings. Which is good, because his vet just informed me that the cat is going to get increasingly weirder now that he is 12 and thus “geriatric.” Maybe if I get him to pick up a hobby other than huffing nip he’ll maintain his faculties longer.