First 17 things

18. I was recruited into the Hoorah Cloggers largely because I have high arches. That makes for good percussive dancers.
19. My brother has flat feet. I took my own arches and his from our genetic pool, best we can tell. He got to be a foot taller and much better at math.
20. I also took some percentage of his tendons and ligaments, because mine are all too long. I am flopsy (aka hypermobile). This has led to a number of injuries. Prior to the injuries, I could do some good circus-inspired dislocation and contortion tricks.
21. Gross things are funny whether you want to admit it or not, nerdo.
22. I had a pet skeleton as a kid. My Mom got it when she was in college and used it for a number of classes she taught over the years. His name was Oscar, and he was seven or so when he died. I didn’t realize this was strange at first.
23. Once, when I was about four and we still lived in New York, I accidentally outed us as a skeleton-in-the-car kind of family to a local elderly woman. Up to that point, she had assumed my Mom was a nice person with nice children. Upon seeing Oscar in the car as we strolled out of the Baskins Robbins, she decided my Mom was an axe murderer and my brother and I (and neighbor Sam, by extension) were evil trolls. Her initial opinion was the more accurate one.
24. Some jerk stole Oscar before we moved from New York to Virginia.
25. You can’t replace friends who disappear, even if they are inanimate (post-animate?).
26. I am still fascinated by skeletons and bones, human or otherwise.
27. Some good friends gave my husband and me a bobcat skull as a wedding gift. My mother was not surprised.
28. Nor was my mother surprised by my toddler-ly obsession with the Ramones, nor my blue haired 15 year-old punk rocker 9:30 club attending self, nor by my tattooed and pierced friends. Her refusal to be phased made her the mother my friends turned to for aid, comfort, and birth control advice. I’m pretty sure several friends would donate organs to my Mom if the need arose.
29. Nevertheless, my seemingly unshakeable Mom really really doesn’t want me to ever have any tattoos ever. She says it is because she is afraid that shops re-use needles, but really she associates tattoos with unsavory people.
30. The fact that many people viewed me as unsavory in my youth, what with the whole blue-haired, punk rock thing, has never occurred to my mother. She is better than most people in many ways.
31. I am a kindergarten drop out, and I was thrown out of the Brownies.
32. As a four-year-old kid, I was forceably removed kicking and crying from my first Easter Mass for asking loudly about the connections between Communion wafers and wine, Jesus’s weight at death, and cannibalism.
33. At 15, I was artfully coerced into taking my first communion unshriven and unconfirmed so that I didn’t make the crazy(er) side of my family look bad. So was my step-mother, the ex-Nun.
34. I am not good at being Catholic. I may be an accidental heresiarch, but am blissfully unlikely to be subjected to the heresiarch’s fork.
35. Despite my uncomfortable relationship with the Church of my forebears, anti-Catholic bias makes me foaming-at-the-mouth angry.

Just for kicks, here is a leather book I made once upon a time. It’s well loved and used, so less perfect than it once was. I use it as a songbook–it’s big enough to hold standard sheets of paper. This was my second or third tooling project, and still one of my favorite.

Jon Katz’s A Dog Year: Twelve Months, Four Dogs, and Me covers the decline of his Labrador Retreivers and Katz’s initiation to life with Border Collies.  As a kid who grew up mezmerized by the sheep trials at Scottish festivals, I’ve always loved Border Collies, and I’ve needed someone to remind me why I shouldn’t have Border Collies here in suburbia.  Katz’s first Border Collie turns his life upside down, but also teaches Katz a lot about himself.

In The Dogs of Bedlam Farm, we find Katz much changed by his time with Border Collies.  Katz has sold his small mountain cabin to buy a farm in Upstate New York, on which to keep sheep–pets for his pet Border Collies to play with.  And–this is important to we dog lovers–Katz promises in the introduction that no dogs die during the course of the book.  Just as A Dog Year taught me not to give in and adopt Border Collies, Bedlam Farm reminds me that I really don’t have the time, energy, or money to have the sheep farm I think I want.  Katz is a good writer who is willing to admit when he’s an ass, and when he’s weak, and who helps him the most.  That is as important in a neophyte sheep farmer as it is in an autobiographer.  The dogs and donkeys and some of the sheep are great in this book (Katz, like many people who love sheep dogs, tends to disdain sheep just as his dogs do.  He admits his biases honestly.) 

Both of these books are great reads for dog lovers, but I also think they speak to the importance animals have in our lives.  The animals we keep comfort us and accept us willingly.  Katz admits his childhood suffering under an abusive father and the pain of his estrangement from his sister.  He loves his dogs in part because they help him love people better.  Some dog nuts may long for more dog time and less people time in these books.  I’ll take the books–and my dog–as is.

Tony Kushner wins.  His writing is witty, fiery, inspired, and true.  His play Angels in America was so so slow in coming to film, but it came so well dressed and full of great conversation, so we will forgive its tardiness.  Watch the film whether it will make you uncomfortable or not.  Yes, some of the vision scenes are over the top.  Yes, Kushner has a clear agenda.  But no one has done better work with Al Pacino, and never before has Pacino come so far from the roles he is too too comfortable in.  I love that Emma Thompson, the Messenger Angel, who comes asserting her perfection, is perfect as is–another team would have cast someone younger with straighter teeth, and they would have been fools to do so.  I love that Meryl Streep can play anything under the sun.  I love that Mary-Louise Parker is so good at playing crazy without making Harper seem dumb or unlovelable.  I love that Jeffrey Wright can play that beautiful and realistic mixture of macho queeny-ness so well, and that he knew he had so many of the best lines of the script and played each with such gorgeous precision and correctness, all the while refusing a soap-box.  I love that a great actor like Michael Gambon was willing to take a bit part, and that Meryl Streep was willing to be an old man.  It is rare that six hours is so watchable, or that a play about the affects of a disease on its victims and their community is so funny.  So get a-renting.

This weekend, rather than nalbinding as I had planned, I ended up designing a couple of new objects. I made a felted box out of Noro Kureyon. Ok, nothing terribly difficult about knitting up or felting a small box, but the colors are lovely, and it holds a half dozen CDs, and comes up about half their height. Not that it will hold CDs, ultimately. It may get a bit more torture time so it’s smaller and more rigid. I may also get up the nerve to make a top for it, which, as any potter knows, is a feat born of luck and math. I also felted the pocket for the teal bag.

Which doesn’t have as much contrast as I’d like. Let’s call it a large coaster or an inner pocket, and do it again for teal bag number two with black, rather than grey.

Teal bag one:

While still larger than I intended, seems like a good design concept. I’d like things to be a bit less clearly geometric. But take two will smooth all of that out. The yarn I used, which is something I have tons of and doesn’t appeal much to me in its natural state, developed the most gorgeous halo. The felt is lovely and strong but still relatively thin. I’ve officially gone from wishing this yarn would just go away already to wishing this yarn would reproduce. Do hanks of yarn feel, um, inspired by Barry White, or are they more into Billie Holiday? Will the spinning wheel scare the yarn out of acting on its romantic impulses, sort of like having one’s Mom around puts a damper on amorous behavior with one’s beau?

I am so terribly jealous that this is Sue Monk Kidd’s first novel and not mine. 
The Secret Life of Bees is one of those rare books that mixes together several things that have played a huge part in my life and hands them back a beautiful, whole thing.  The story touches on Catholocism as reworked by Mary worshippers, civil rights, broken families, awkward girl-hood, beekeeping, magical realism, spiritualism, feminism in the south, surrogate mothers–it’s full of themes.  Beautifully realized themes.  I want some beehives, please, and I want to know how the adult Lili is doing.

Dr. Gonzo killed himself today.  I wish I could say I am surprised, but I’m not.  He was a manic genius who loved booze and drugs and guns, and all of the above was bound to knock some years off of his life.  If you haven’t read Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas and Hell’s Angels do yourself and modern journalism a favor and get on that stick.

Friday night + Fourth Season of Oz on DVD + bag o’beads = Stitch markers. (I’m afraid the fellah will never quite feel comfortable with my fascination for prison movies. These new markers needs must comfort my strange mind.)

I got some great lampwork beads from a friend of a friend this summer in exchange for some clothing I made. I’ve been waiting to put them, and some other beads I had sitting around, to good use.

These are mine:

Dangling off a size eight Brittany walnut needle.

These are some fantastic eye beads:

Which I may be convinced to part with. (Edit: no, they’re mine too, because they work well with the needles I knit felting projects on.)

For the raku lover:

And for the fan of blues and greens:

Those are frogs, see, amidst the glass and enamel.

And for the more naturally minded:

Silver fish beads, owls, a turtle, and bone swirly lovelies.

All of them are made with sterling silver findings. Most fit comfortably on a size nine needle, and the eye beads and blue and green glass markers fit on a ten and a half needle. I wish I could find split rings in a larger diameter, but no dice. Now I feel the need to find great little boxes to hold these. A trip to the container store is in the offing.

The Tinsmith show at Blackrock last night rocked. In a folky way, of course. For those of you who haven’t found the band yet, they’re a DC-metro area band who plays traditional Irish and English folk with some great jazzy and rock influences. Brooke Parkhurst, my friend and banjo teacher, sings and plays a variety of instruments in the band. This show was another step forward for the band, which is ramping up to play the North Texas Irish Festival in March. Which means the band is going national. Which means other people are getting smarter. I sold CDs for the gang during the breaks and it was wonderful to see so many people embrace their music (and release their cash). I’m listening to their new EP The Flash Lad now, which sold dozens of copies last night. Life is good.

Yesterday, my new nalbinding needles were waiting for me when I got home. But I had to leave them there and rush out so we could beat the worst of rush hour on the way across the bridge. I got relatively little knitting done last night with all the excitement. I did knit away on hat four, which is remarkably like hat one, on the way up to Maryland. And then Scott and I had a decent Italian meal and a good bottle of Cabernet, which is a fine fine thing. Really, it’s the reason to be an early person–when you get to a venue two hours early, you are left with few choices other than eating and drinking well. I was also able to show the spirally pocket to Brooke and Elspeth, both knitters, before the show. They were both impressed with the roundness of the design–something that’s hard to get when knitting spiral patterns, since knitting is ultimately made of rectangular stitches. This will be a nalbinding weekend, with a side of stitch-marker-making thrown in for a break. And a side of felting too.

Last night I made the pocket for the Tuatha bag. Teal and grey spirals, to be felted. It was much less annoying than any other counted work I’ve done in the past. Now I must learn to chart so I can make more spirally goodness. The bag itself is progressing quickly. Several knitters met up at a bookstore last night, so when the chat became too interesting for counting, I switched to the bag itself. It’s at least a foot tall now, and is likely to grow considerably over the next couple of days. I haven’t decided on the design for the handles yet, and if it will button . . . Tonight is a Tinsmith show at Blackrock in Gaithersburg, so I’ll bring the pocket to Dark Mary and see if she has any strong opinions on where to go form here.

So, felted brownie hats rock. They rock so hard I might make another one right now. Ok, not right now, but maybe tonight. And witch hats are in the works. I’ll go from the short little nubbin of a brownie hat to a very tall witch hat, oh yes I will. Don’t try to stop me–a nutbag at knit cannot be stopped. And my felting needles are on the way, so the brownie hat will grow a bit of a egg-mit-spirals symbol on it.

I went to Dancing Pig in Damascabama on Saturday night to hang out by the Imbolc fire in the wind-break with some of the painted people. The lovely Amber was the recipient of hat one, the alpaca loveliness I made a few weeks back. It suits her so well. I read my essay for Cheaper than Therapy to the folks and they liked it a lot, which matters a hella huge amount to me.

Dark Mary from Tuatha saw my Constant Companion. She wants me to make bags for MD Sheep and Wool. Hahahahahaha–like I needed an excuse to make more felt! Anyway, I’m now designing a felted bag pattern of my own, and it will have a spirally pocket, and, in theory at least, I will part with it. Ok, that’s a crappy theory, but Mary is persistent, and I am purposely making the first bag out of yarn I’m not in love with. The base is done and I’m a good four inches up the sides. I experimented with the pocket last night, and it wasn’t bad. Maybe I can get one of the drawing people to give me some designs to chart . . . .hmmmmm . . .

Since I had a long weekend (no driving on V day, no no) to spend with the old washing machine, I felted all of the wool sweaters Scott and I have cast off in the last year or so. So fun! A men’s large sweater is now about a child’s size two. I envision some felt art coming about . . . the likes of standing stones in a green field, maybe with some moundy bits in the back . . . much like Bryn Celli Ddu. Hubba hubba. I want some felt art, and I want it now. But of course I now have a new washing machine, and I must not kill it. So, in conjunction with thrift store raiding, I have to buy some zippy pillow cases.