KnittyOtters Getting to Know You Contest

I’ve a bit of a weakness for otters, so I couldn’t resist KnittyOtter’s Getting to Know You Contest in honor of her 200th post! Congrats!

(For pictures of recent knitting, skip below the questionnaire..)

1.)How long have you been knitting?

Hrm.. really, pr’bly around 8 or 9 years. I learned pr’bly 10-11 years ago but didn’t really start knitting regularly until I went to grad school.

2.) How long have you been knitting socks?

About as long as I’ve been knitting.. pr’bly a year or so less. I was a bit ambitious and decided that I wanted to do my first socks from cotton.. I know better now – both how better to do cotton socks and that wool is generally more forgiving for socks! I also learned *after* making a few pairs where the toes were twisted out of alignment from the heel that I was twisting each and every stitch, which caused the tube of the sock to spiral on itself. Yeah.. not so useful.

3.) What do you do with a problem like Maria?

Let her loose in those hills and lock the doors. She was terribly romantic, and didn’t really strike me as the survivalist type. At most she’d have made it to the first real Alpine snow fall.

4.) What is your all time favorite sock yarn?

I don’t think I have one, which might be sacrilegious. At the moment, I rather like the Trekking that I started working with.. hrm.. several months ago. Should pr’bly get back around to working on those..

5.) Toe Up or Cuff Down?

Either, both? I like the economy of toe up socks, but there are so many patterns that are cuff down that I can’t be bothered to convert, so I’ll just knit them as written.

6.) What’s your favorite color (this week or for all time)? Do you have a color family/season/palette you prefer? Any colors you just can’t stand?

Blue. (Which brings me back to that lovely Trekking.. really need to pick those up again..) For family or palette or whatnot.. jewel tones, fall colors.. deep, saturated colors. I’m not fond of visually striking combinations in most yarns – the pansy colorway I used for my Jaywalkers still sets my teeth on edge a bit – but I love it in nature. And I really love Ruth‘s hand-dyed nature-inspired yarns.. they’re all just so gorgeous!

7.) Do you have a pet(s)?

Yes. One (old) little black dog, Jalapeño, or just Jali for short.

8.) Babies: Oven Roasted or Barbecued?

Grilled, actually, with a little garlic and butter.

9.) Besides socks what is your favorite type of thing to knit?

Heh. Um, depends on my mood. At the moment, I’ve been stricken with the urge to start sweaters (see below for proof!), but I could just as easily pick up a lace project. *shrug*

10.) What’s your favorite scent?

Mm.. that’s a hard one. There are way too many. Rain. Ocean breezes. Coffee. Campfire smoke. Fajitas. Good wine. Warm skin. Clean sheets dried in the sun. Bacon. Fresh cut grass.

11.) What music are you really loving right now? Like a song or a band?

Went on an Ani kick this weekend while with several friends, but lately I’ve been rather taken with Matt Nathanson, Gaia Consort, and the Paperboys.

12.) How many pairs of socks have you hand knit?

Uh.. Well, I have 8 or 9 in my own sock drawer, and I’ve knit at least that many as gifts, so call it 20ish?

13.) What’s your favorite treat? Salty or Sweet?

Both. There’s a jar of trail mix on my desk that is my ideal snack – peanuts, cashews, almonds, raisins, and M&Ms. As a child, I was inordinately fond of ants on a log and one of my favorite oddities is melted caramel between saltine crackers (think s’mores, but.. different).

14.) What was the most interesting thing you smelled yesterday. Not good or bad necessarily, just the thing that stuck out most so that you actually took notice of it.

Hrm. Shampoo. I’m out of my usual brand so used whatever was handy and I noticed it all day because it wasn’t what I’m used to.

15.) Needles – DPN’s: Wooden, metal or plastic?

Wood or bamboo. Metal is too hard on my hands and plastic just feels wrong. I almost exclusively use Harmony needles these days.

16.) What is your favorite sock pattern that you’ve knit? What do you recommend?

I really liked the 9-to-5 socks, but was also taken enough with Baudelaire to knit it twice.

17.) The last Question: If you were stuck on a deserted island who would you want with you, what knitting would you want with you and would you ever want to leave?

Kim & Tori. And maybe a chef or two. And if the island had good grape stock and clean water, we wouldn’t even need to leave to get more wine.

Right then.. since I’m on the topic, thought I’d post a picture to prove that I actually was knitting this weekend past:

(As usual, all photos are clickable thumbnails.)

That is, in fact, the start of a cabled sweater! Yes, it’s mid-July, but I have hopes of completing it in time to be worn this fall. Given my knitting track record of late, that’s being fairly optimistic, but here’s hoping this is just the little shove I need to get back into the swing of things.

And just because I was out in the garden again last evening, I’ll leave you with a few pictures from there:

These are, again, the Hollyhock from the roses back by the garage, but I don’t remember having all four colors in bloom at the same time in the past, so wanted to be sure to capture it.

This is a blue sea.. something. I never remember the right name.. I just call it the Blue Alien Plant because that’s what it looks like. It’s in the front yard, between a couple balloonflowers which should start blooming any day now.

Monday afternoon quarterbacking

This will be another post with lots of linkage and likely some half-thought through commentary.. *but*! coming soon will be actual knitting content!

In addition to scanning daily headlines and blogs, I also receive the weekly update from the Brookings Institute. Most of the time I scan it and delete as I rarely have time or inclination to get worked up about whatever latest foreign policy issue they’re dissecting this week, but this morning, a panel discussion on the role of the courts in making social policy caught my attention. When you first click through from the email, you get to a summary page with just the start of the panel discussion, and I was interested, so I clicked through further to get to the full transcript. And was immediately struck by the fact that of the dozen panelists (or rather 11 panelists plus one moderator), only two were women and all appear* to be Caucasian. Not terribly surprising, but still disappointing. There’s something more in there about the disconnect between those making/enforcing.debating policy and those living under it, but I’m not sure I can pull it apart right now.

Ugh. “I don’t usually duck an issue.” (via Bitch PhD) Um.. much.

I’ve seen the Pamper’s commercials promoting their apparently new program for contributing to childhood vaccinations “babies in need” – which are all coincidentally, predominantly babies of color with mothers in traditionally ethnic clothing – when you buy their products and had a very cynical reaction, but hadn’t been able to focus enough to write it out, so instead, you get the link to Sociological Images where they say what I was thinking quite well for the most part. I’d pr’bly add though that there are quite a number of babies in need right here in our own country, especially with the recent restrictions in SCHIP funding, but we seem to have some sort of puritanical mental block when it comes to helping our own.

And picking up a couple links that would have gone very well with this post, Sociological Images discusses the Illustrated BMI, which I believe originated with the folks at Shapely Prose (link found from this post, which is also interesting in how it tries to figure out why some states are more fat than others). Similarly, this one on worshiping your corporeal temple fits the theme I was trying to strike.

* Please note the “appear to be” – I don’t know any of the panelists racial or ethnic identity for certain and it’s possible that at least one of the panelists is a person of color.

Celebrating beauty.

This will be the last week I wear my skin as I was born in it. No, I’m not doing anything drastic; just a tattoo. At first, even just a smallish one – a celtic knotwork full moon (inspiration, though with a pentagram in the center) in the upper middle of my back – but with plans eventually for the phases of the moon (5 in total) across the top of my back and a celtic knotwork tree of life underneath. In this day and age, ink is nothing unusual, but it is still a permanent dyeing of the skin and as such, it’s taken me several years to commit to both whether I wanted that, what I wanted.. and where.

The where is sort of the start of this little spiral, mostly because I’m rather firmly in my mid-30s now and it’s not like I walk around regularly baring my full back, so the idea of a tattoo that not only would I never be able to see directly myself, but that would go unseen (mostly – I wear enough tank tops that the center full moon will be seen fairly regularly) by most everyone else, might seem a little bit of a waste. Except that.. it’s my body and how I choose to celebrate it is really my choice. There are reasons for each element in the design that are personal and meaningful and having them indelibly inked into my flesh has a depth and symbolism of meaning. Which, by all accounts, ought to be reason enough.

But.. this wouldn’t be a spiral if it were. *smile* The promotional materials for the movie The Red Violin included a woman’s bare back with the markings of a violin; that picture is so sensual and beautiful and it really does exemplify the beauty I see in my own body. When I was younger – and lighter by at least 2 stone, though I’ve never been particularly lithe or slender – I had the good fortune of having fewer body image issues. I lived in a somewhat open dorm in college where bodies and nakedness were simply parts of life, not status symbols or objects of power (not always, but generally) and that got me a long ways toward not only accepting my body, but loving it. Yes, I was still self-conscious – I really don’t believe there’s a woman who makes it through junior high school that isn’t on some level for the rest of her life* – but I also knew my body was beautiful (and now have the benefit of hindsight.. I’m sure then I wouldn’t have agreed as easily).

And then I got older.. and got sedentary and stopped taking as good care of myself. And gained weight. And while I still see the beauty in my body, I see it masked. I no longer see without intentional focus the arch of my throat, the curve of my hip, the slope of my shoulder, or the fall of my hair down my back. While I will never see what others see – for better or for worse – I now seem to only be able to see what, by my own definition, mars the beauty of my body. That’s a psychological shift in my head from a dozen years ago and it’s one I’m working to combat – not by necessarily changing my body (though I am working to take better care of my health**), but changing how I see it, or maybe just what I see about it.

Will this tattoo be a miraculous event that will suddenly reset my brain? No, of course not. But it is a conscious recognition of the fact that my body is beautiful and healthy and strong and that I *should* be celebrating it. It will be a reminder to take care of my physical self, as well as my mental and emotional selves. Even though I won’t be able to see it unaided, it will always be there, a part of me, a visual manifestation of a part of me. It will be a purposeful reminder of those things that ground me, that form the basis of what I’ll call my soul for lack of a better word***.

And in the end.. that is definitely worth celebrating.

* Pre-teen and teen-aged girls are terribly, horribly cruel to each other (I’d imagine boys are, too, but I have no direct experience with that). If there were one thing I would choose to spare girls from that I think had the potential to move society forward as a whole, it would be the hell we put each other through during adolescence. Those are growing pains we would all be better for not having to endure.

** There’s a history of degenerative joints in my family, so making sure I get enough calcium and take care of my bones is important and something I’ve not been good about doing. By the same token, there are histories of both diabetes and heart disease, and I’ve gotten out of the habit of eating vegetables regularly and am far too good at coming up with excuses not to exercise. These aren’t things I need to do to meet some societally imposed ideal of beauty, but rather to keep myself healthy.

*** Atheist. I don’t have a soul (you might.. that’s up to you to decide). Do have a consciousness, though, that is independent of any subset of thoughts or actions or emotions, but there’s no good secular nomenclature for the totality of one’s self, so I’ll use the convenient, though technically incorrect for me, theological word.

“..the state has no place in the bedrooms of the nation”

Happy Pride..? Anyone else want to be Canadian this week?

And.. just.. gah. (via Sociological Images)

Yea! Random Wednesday!

Pandora has been shoving Dave Potts at me lately. I rather like his stuff. Might have to break down and buy a CD.. course that would have been good to decide *before* placing a CDBaby order this afternoon (for Molinos, from the Paperboys).

Stephanie gives me yet another connection between the moon and silver. One might think there really was something mystical or cosmic behind my affinity for both..

Dad’s in town again the next couple days to finish the upstairs closet. While he’s here I might also wrangle him into showing me how to best strip the wallpaper in the kitchen.. or possibly putting the closet we want in the other bedroom (there’s no demolition portion for that one – just need to frame and hang the doors), so we can rip out the fake, ugly, utterly useless excuse for a closet someone installed in that room in order to be able to sell the house as a 3-bedroom. Both need to be done, but I’ve been feeling the urge to paint lately (and have a three day weekend coming up), so I might be leaning toward the kitchen (though we could also finish stripping the woodwork in the dining room and paint in there..), except that all the woodwork still needs stripping in the kitchen, too.

I have proof I’ve been spinning lately, too, but I forgot the camera at home this morning, so you’ll have to wait for it.

Random art..

For reasons that will remain unknown, I found myself searching for images this morning and came across one of a painting by Pino that struck me in all kinds of “want that” ways.. Rather than hotlink the Kingsley Art Gallery‘s images, I figured I’d like to the ones that I really liked after poking around a bit more..

Mystic Dreams – I think it’s the blue in this one that really just does me in.

Restful – this one reminds me of a friend.

Solace

I think one of the reasons his work struck me was that it’s in some ways reminiscent of Jack Vettriano, whose style I love. A friend gave us The Singing Butler for our wedding because it reminded her of the story of the night Jack and I met, and it’s still one of my favorite pieces. I keep meaning to track down a framed print of Mad Dogs, too, but I think that might have to wait until I redecorate the house so I could display them both. The Road to Nowhere screams Casablanca to me.. something about the anonymity of the subjects ..

Passings..

A landmark comedian and a landmark theatre company.

Confessions of a baby geek*

Sometimes all it takes is bringing two real coders** into your office to check your logic to notice the mistake yourself. *sigh*

And I s’pose while I’m at it, I should admit that the idea of “having” to learn Visio makes the little organization freak in my head go *squee!*. It might even be enough to actually move me from dreading that particularly little project into actually doing it.. just likely not this week.

* I have had the discussion on more than one occasion about whether I’m a geek or a nerd. I don’t actually often admit to being either, but there are moments where I really can’t in good conscience get away with denying there’s not at least a little baby geek in there somewhere – especially weeks when the biggest single task I’ve been working on is a series of more or less complex query strings with nested if/else statements. I keep trying to get people to elucidate the difference between a geek and a nerd, and the closest anyone’s gotten is to say that a geek just has some better social skills.  Based on that, I think I definitely qualify as a geek, not a nerd.

** I’m not a real coder. I fake it well most of the time, but I’m really really not. I know enough SQL (which I still firmly believe isn’t a real “language” the way C++ and others are) to be able to get data out if I had to write my own Select statements, even with some pr’bly more complicated joins and/or limits, but that’s mostly knowing how the data works than it is understanding the code. Nested if/else statements are pretty much second-hand by now, but only because I know the tools I use. If you gave me a text editor and told me to code in any language, I’d laugh and then start typing pig-latin.

Random trivia and linkage..

I was born on a Friday the 13th. I grew up on an Elm Street. Draw your own conclusions.

This is damn neat!

And while this is also damn neat, it’s also a little depressing. (via FlowingData.) I find it especially revealing to look at the % of median income spent on gas chart and noting that while CA may have the highest prices, they are near the bottom of the scale in terms of % of median income and while MO may have the largest block of lower prices, they are near the top of the scale in terms of % of median income.. data without context – such as just looking at the average prices – only tells part of the story.

One definition of grace (I especially liked the bit starting around 3:25).

There’s no way I can conceive of having the money to afford anyone to renovate my living space who would do this to it, but wow, would that be fun!

Good weekend to all!

“..I’ve forgotten if they’re green or they’re blue..”

And no, I’m not talking about eyes.. *smile* The farm and flat lands in the Hokah Bottoms (which would be, as far as I know, also known as the flood plain for the Root River) are quite a lovely, if somewhat shallow, lake this week. It was really quite beautiful on the drive in this morning, but also a little disconcerting to know that a week ago, all that land was a lush and vibrant green.

Generally, though, things are proceeding as they will.. the water has mostly drained from the back yard as of this morning, though the aforementioned Root River (as well as the Kickapoo and I believe the Upper Iowa) are still rising as the surrounding lands drain into them. Last I heard, sometime yesterday, the Root was expected to peak early this afternoon.. The city emergency planner guy from Houston was on MPR last night, but I’ve not heard much about Rushford (though other cities in Fillmore County have been hit), which makes me want to hope they’ve been spared this time.

In an odd bit of reversal, it appears that Lake Delton in the Dells is.. gone. Hard not to think about that whole balance idea..

I’m mostly hoping it will dry out enough for me to take advantage of some of Norma‘s Garden Tips this weekend.. or maybe even some evening this week. Although the idea of pulling out all the weeds and such (like the garlic that never got harvested last year because it was eaten by the jungle of tomatoes, but isn’t really okay anymore but is still growing) that have been quite happy in the garden boxes up to now is somewhat less than.. exciting. *sigh* Maybe I’ll investigate renting one of those little motorized tiller things.. mm.. gardening with power tools.. might be fun!

(Hrm.. might have to seriously think about that.. would help with getting rid of the remnants of the raspberry patch, too..)