So I finished the shawl for my sister and it’s even prettier than I thought it would be. My first job with fringe was fairly painless. Not like I was worried about it really. Just wanted to be sure there was enough yarn to make plenty of it. I didn’t measure between the fringe - just eyeballed it.

I’m really trying to not get crazy with the precision and remember that the best part about handmade works are the flaws that show there was a person who was thinking about you while they made this for you.

Pardon me while I get mystic and hokey - but I keep thinking about knot magic and how what you’re thinking about when knitting affects the final work. Which kind of ties in with the whole idea of how I feel about the person who wrote the pattern too.

For those who haven’t been keeping up: this is the Biased Stole pattern from Fiesta Yarns knitted in their two-stranded La Boheme (one small strand of brushed mohair and one of the rayon boucle) in the Adirondack colorway.

I didn’t even think about the fact that I was photographing them on my silly resin adirondack chair until I was resizing the photos. I just wanted a clean place to display the goods and the lighting outside was just beautiful today so I went out there.

I can’t adequately praise the results of this La Boheme yarn - the two textures really compliment each other and really “make” this piece - even with (or maybe because of) such a simple garter stitch. The rayon is shiny and colorful while the mohair adds texture and depth to the color. As is probably the case with most knitted works, the photos really don’t do this justice.

It really does qualify more as a stole than a shawl - being roughtly 70 inches across (slightly longer than between the tips of my fingers with my arms outstretched) and about 18 inches in height. So it covers the shoulders nicely but I wouldn’t wear this alone on a very cold night. Still, it twists up beautifully and makes a great neck or head scarf.

The weather has been your typical crazy New Mexico in the spring kind of weather. A week ago today it was warm enough to be talking about getting the evaporative cooler working. Sunday morning there was snow on the ground. Last night was frigid, today it’s sunny and almost hot. My favorite Cody quote this week: “We get the same weather everyone else does we just get it all in the same week.”

This is the most precipitation this state has had in roughly five years so all kinds of crazy things that have been dormant are blooming. We have a lovely meadow of weeds and giant tumbleweeds in the backyard right now.

There are many more photos in the photo journal. Just wanted to add that none of these photos were enhanced. The light was particularly good today and my dog is just..gorgeous (thanks to a great breeder, good food, supplements, brushing, and a lot of love) so she’s easy to photograph.

I got my order from Yarn Market in (one day earlier than expected!) so I have some loverly Noro Silk Garden in the pinkie-poo 84 color so I can try my hand at the famous Clapotis. And I have a really confusing English pattern for a baby blanket to knit for baby Gavin in a nice gender-neutral oat-stone shade. And I’ve started a fringy scarf for my mom for mother’s day in some fiesta rayon boucle in the Carribbean shade. I plan to make a shoulder scarf in the rayon boucle with the Stargazer color for Cody’s mom. And I finally started working on the fulled lopi tote in red and beige.

I like having a variety to work on what can I say?

If only this were a joke but this is from an actual screen shot of a real website. Looks like the Beverly Hills Teddy Bear Company plans to make some money on the surge in popularity of Christianity by using biblical figures and selected passages and incorporating them into an incredibly tacky toy. If I actually believed in this religion I would probably be insulted by it.

A few comments I can’t *not* make.

Why David? And why does he have a mullet?

I love Mary’s ghetto mod frosty lipstick and Wilma Flintstonesque dilated pupils.

Speaking of dilated pupils, does anyone else think Moses looks kind of like he’s been living in Jamaica and smoking a lot of pot while everyone else thought he was in the desert? Cody thinks his voice sounds just like James Earl Jones. “Luuuuuke..pass the dutchie from the left hand side”

Does anyone else doubt the liklihood of Jesus sporting his beard with a soul patch?

And what the fuck is with the Raiders of the Lost Ark poster style? Are we supposed to think about all those wacky scrapes Jesus and his whip got into while searching for his Daddy’s grail and dodging those pesky nazis? Dun de dunDUN dun de DUUUN.

I can’t help thinking about all the hate mail Kevin Smith got when he was making Dogma - a movie that, in the end, puts a lot of creedence in the concept of faith and divine love. Now seriously. Which is more insulting to Christianity? Buddy Christ or these action figures?

And I can’t pass up another opportunity to reference the Jesus Christ sports statues. Don’t forget kids: if you lose the game it’s because Jesus doesn’t love you.

You can visit but please don’t move here I saw someone write that in a post about Albuquerque being one of the top suburban sprawl cities in the Rocky Mountain Time Zone the other day and while I usually agree with the opinions of the man who wrote it that statement struck me as awfully hypocritical for someone I’m fairly sure wasn’t born here either. In fact I’m pretty sure none of the more popular Albuquerque bloggers are originally from here. So I guess they’re allowed to move here but not you.

I was just reading an article about April 2006 being the 300th anniversary of Albuquerque’s founding - only about twenty-five other cities in the US are older. What was amazing to me, aside from the long, rich and bloody history of my adopted town, were the numerous references to the western sprawl. Guess where the author of that article was born? Natchez, Mississippi. Seriously he admitted it right in the first paragraph.

I guess I’m a little defensive as one of the rare westside Albloggers, or at least, one who’s willing to admit it. No we don’t live in one of those zero-lot McMansions in Taylor or Ventana Ranch. In fact, we live in a house that was built the year before I was born. The beautiful yuccas in our yard are older than me. And don’t give me shit about where we live - I wanted a house in the NE heights but we couldn’t find one we could afford with the shitty jobs we could get.

One thing I can’t help thinking about when these folks get their feathers so ruffled about western sprawl is the fact that most of the people I’ve met who live in those cul-de-sac prefabs were born here. Most of them are young (usually Hispanic) families with small kids who can’t afford to live in those lovely old cement block with stucco homes with the mature landscaping in the northeast heights - whose values have skyrocketed. Maybe because people have moved here from more expensive places and have bought them for well over their actual value? Combine the cost of housing with the constant sad state of available jobs in this town and whammo you’ve got the dreaded sprawl.

If you want to see really bad suburban sprawl get on 280 in Birmingham and head south. That town is sliding south - leaving empty unused office buildings Downtown and abandoned Eastwood malls in its wake. One of the biggest attractions when I moved to Santa Fe (but it applies to Albuquerque as well) was the fact that the downtown was still being used. That was such an important thing to me coming from a town at just the beginning of its recent southerly trip.

I can’t help thinking about the downtown renewal project, the conversion of that old high school into lofts, and, hell, turning that old abandoned Wal Mart building into a Lowes on the west side.

So, yes, there are lots of new houses and people and the traffic is abysmal here. Let’s talk about five o’clock traffic in Atlanta and Los Angeles. It’s happening all over folks. There are more people living further out and driving themselves alone in a single car all over the place. Maybe we should start looking into decent public transport and better jobs as a viable solution rather than just declaring the whole town off-limits to outsiders like the xenophobic Moh-ron in the White House has done to anyone with brown skin and a vaguely Arabic-sounding name who wants to visit the US.

I think it’s great everyone is so possessive of Albuquerque because it’s a wonderful town in a lot of ways - mostly because of its propensity for absorbing whatever culture it comes in contact with. But I just can’t help smelling that musky scent of hypocrisy when I see people curl their lip and reference the “western sprawl” without really considering who, exactly, it is doing the sprawling and why they’re doing it.

You are pink aluminum.
Retro, straightforward and fun, you love classic
things. If they’re 99 cents at Goodwill all the
better! You are moved by striking colors and
tasty morsels, and you like a stitch-n-bitch
session in the sun. Just remember, while
you’re being kitschy cool, don’t get too cold.
Ice cubes are best kept in your cocktails,
baby!

What kind of knitting needles are you?
brought to you by Quizilla

I last saw this on spellbound and snappyhour

» V I T A L S «

Name: Noelle
Gender: Female
Location: NM
Height: 5’2.5″
Hair color: brownish / reddish
Eye color: Hazel
Is your hair long or short: shortish
Tattoos you have: part of van gogh’s irises painting on my shoulder

» S C H O O L «

Are you still in school: No
Favorite subject: Art and History
Least favorite subject: Math and Sciences
Do/did you buy lunch or bring it: where?

» F A V O R I T E «

Number: 14
Clothing : tanks with built-in bras and black or grey yoga pants with weird slippers
TV show: Monk, Dead Like Me, Bill Maher, Daily Show, Biography, anything on History Channel or BBCA
Fruit: Peaches
Movie: At this very moment Paper Moon but wait five minutes.
Scent: Philosophy Pure Grace
Ice Cream Flavor: Coldstone Cake Batter
Color: Green
Season: Early Autumn
Holiday: um Xmas I guess
Thing in your room: the dog and hedgehog
Author: John Irving or Anita Shreve
TV channel: BBCAmerica
Shape: rhombus
Time: early morning before everyone else is awake
State: New Mexico
Disney character: Abraham Delacey Giuseppe Casey Thomas O’Malley the alley cat
Scary movie: The (original) Haunting or Hell House

» T H I S O R T H A T «

Hot or cold: Cold
Winter or summer: Winter
Spring or fall: Fall
Shakira or Britney: who’s shakira?
MTV or VH1: vh1 classic is fun sometimes
Rollerblading or skateboarding: I’ll just watch the skater boys
Black or white: black
Orange or red: orange
Yellow or green: green
purple or pink: pink
Cell phone or pager: cellphone
Powerpuff Girls or Charlie’s Angels: powerpuff girls
Scooby Doo or Dino: who’s dino?

» Y E S O R N O P E«

Are you a vegetarian: No
Do you like cows: Yes
Are you a bitch: Sometimes
Are you artistic: Yes
Do you write poetry: hahaha no
Can you ski: No
Are you British: Um not the last time I looked
Are you straight: but not narrow
Are you evil: sometimes
Is Britney a whore: I don’t really like calling women whores.

» P R I V A T E «

Have you ever been in love: more than once
do you smoke: not anymore
Do you smoke weed: not in a long time
Crack, heroin, anything else: uh no
Beer good or beer bad: depends on the beer
Are you the sissy who drinks wine coolers: I’m the sissy who doesn’t drink anymore

» T H E L A S T «

Thing you ate: yogurt
Thing you drank: vanilla diet coke
Place you went: Smith’s grocery store
Thing you got pierced/tattooed: my ears but those have been closed a long, long time
Song you heard: Java Jive by the Ink Spots
Person you instant messaged: Can’t remember I keep forgetting to turn on Trillian
Person you laughed with: Cody

» N O W «

What are you eating: Nothing
What are you drinking: Nothing
Any shoes on: Nope
Hair: None…just kidding it’s down and messy but the ponytail holder was giving me a headache
Listening to: itunes on party shuffle
Talking to anyone: no

» L A S T «

Last Cigarette: January 28th 2003 at 12 noon
Last Alcoholic Drink: I had a few sips of a chilled asian pear flavored sake the other night
Last Car Ride: Thursday evening
Last Good Cry: about a month and a half ago
Last Library Book: geez I don’t remember but it was from the Santa Fe Downtown library so that was a whiiile back
Last book bought: The Sunday Philosophy Club by Alexander McCall Smith
Last Book Read: Smoke and Mirrors
Last Movie Seen in Theatres: don’t remember
Last Movie Rented: Wimbledon from Netflix
Last Cuss Word Uttered: hehe I think it was Mutherfucker
Last Beverage Drank: vanilla diet coke
Last Phone Call: Cody from work
Last TV Show: Biography on David Berkowitz
LastTime Showered: Thursday afternoon
Last Shoes Worn: tennis shoes
Last CD Played: Bonnie and Clyde by Serge Gainsbourge
Last Item Bought: Cotton Yarn and a zipper
Last Download: iTunesBlogger
Last Annoyance: Comcast being crappy and dropping dns connections
Last Thing Written: by hand: winter’s measurements
Last Key Used: car key
Last Sleep: until about 4:30 pm today
Last Ice Cream Eaten: a really gross low carb skinny cow ice cream sandwich
Last Chair Sat In: the desk chair
Last Webpage Visited: ituners.com

Based on the myriad feedback I’ve been getting for my previous post I guess I should re-iterate what this site is and isn’t for..

This site is for me to have a place to write semi-coherent opinions, thoughts, feelings, photos of my pets (and now knitting). Mostly because I’ve been quoted back to myself several times (no, in a good way) with no memory of having said it in the first place so I thought maybe I should be saving this stuff somewhere.

My mother, sister, best friend in San Francisco, and good friend in the Netherlands read this site on a daily basis to make sure I’m doing well and that I’m not being buried alive by cat hair, books, and crippling depressive episodes. My father and husband do not read it - in fact, as far as I know none of those women’s spouses read the site and other than thinking how weird it is that it might well be the only thing they all have in common I’m ok with it.. Dad says he “doesn’t want to know,” (I imagine what he doesn’t want to know is all the stuff I’m exhibiting to the world - my parents tend to support a very low profile) and Cody thinks I should be able to write without worrying what he’d think about it - bless him he trusts me to not use this as a forum where I complain about him. And he’s right because, with very few exceptions, I don’t. (Mostly because I honestly don’t have much to complain about. Seriously.)

Aside from what I wrote for Women in History month there’s really no rhyme, reason, or consistency whatsoever to what or how I post. I’ve been trying to limit quiz and meme posts to Saturdays (for some arbitrary reason) but that’s about it.

I’m going to talk about religion and politics. It will lean to the left. Period. No apologies. I don’t claim to be a political scientist or expert. Granted they’re well-written and fairly coherent for a person with a Bachelor’s degree in sculpture and a minor in art history but let’s just use that tired old expression that equates opinions with arseholes and leave it at that.

I’ll admit I have pretty extreme opinions about organized religion. And while I’m not a Christian I have a fairly high standard where Christianity is concerned. I went to a Catholic boarding school my freshman year in high school. My art degree is from a Christian Brothers school and I took a lot of required religious academic and non-required religious art classes. I have read manymanymany religious texts (about religions all around the world) and attended a great variety of religious services and ceremonies (also all over the world). While I may be critical of organized religion it’s not like I don’t know what I’m talking about here.

To be honest if you wanted to believe that the earth was created by a giant pink boobah that lives in a shack made of licorice sitting in the middle of the Sea of Tranquility, communicating with you through magic rainbow dixie cups to tell you that that cinnamon graham crackers and apple juice are sacred and should only be eaten while standing on your head on Tuesdays at 4:43 eastern time I’d giggle a bit but be just fine with it. It’s when you start telling me or anyone else to believe in, or vote for the chubby pink guy (or eat graham crackers that way) I start getting my hackles up and will begin growling - or get my quills up and start huffing…whichever animal metaphor you want to use.

I do not pay the bandwidth bills and post on this site to gain your approval. If you find what I have to say interesting (even if you don’t agree with it) that’s great I’m delighted. But if you think I pay dreamhost, registered three domains, licensed a copy of movable type, paid two great designers, taught myself html, css, and php by the seat of my pants, and maintain and write in this thing in order to assuage whatever guilty feelings you might have or reinforce whatever bullshit you want to believe, you are quite mistaken.

I do not consider myself the perfect example of a woman, southern expatriate, New Mexico transplant, artist, wife, pet mom, tea drinker, weblog writer, homeowner, liberal, American, pagan, chubby chick, knitter, or shopper. I do not claim to be better than you, more religious than you, consistent or fair.. odds are good I’m smarter than you but that’s just sheer numbers talking.

So with a great deal of respect and no small amount of humility I’d like to say to anyone who thinks that I’m supposed to consistently represent any stereotype you might derive from the above paragraph: Suck my dick.

For more information you can read this, this, or this.

That said, here’s this week’s friday random ten eleven.

I’m not your stepping stone - The Sex Pistols
Somersault (Danger Mouse remix) - Danger Mouse & Zero 7 feat. Doom
Bored Teenagers - The Adverts
Barefootin’ - Robert Parker
Another World - Poe
When I look to the Sky - Train
The Look of Love - Dusty Springfield
The Reflex (only child mix) - Duran Duran vs FakeID (Cropstar)
The Monkey Time - Major Lance
Do Me, Baby - Prince
I Loves You Porgy - Billie Holiday

Oh, and don’t freak out if things aren’t showing up on the right menu for a while my annual blogrolling bill came due today and I’ve decided that rather than pay for another year I’m going to switch to the MT Blogroll plugin now that there is one. The good news is I backed up all my rolls and there’s a handy import feature so they’re all loaded. Now I just have to figure out how to reference them in the includes. Since the blogrolling account is now effectively closed it shouldn’t affect the load time - in fact, now that it’s not trying to reference a server that seems to go down seemingly every other day it should improve the load time. Not like I can tell since Comcast is still being wonky as all get-out.

Since Comcast’s dns server went down this afternoon (until about five minutes ago) and Cody was up at 4 pm anyway for a phone meeting we decided this was a good day to visit the dog park. We went to the Rio Rancho one which is nice but Winter hates the tiny rocks they use all over the ground there. Teeny tiny shale pieces get between her big princessy foot pads and she doesn’t like that one damn bit. But it does file her nails down which she really needs because we are terribly slack when it comes to nail care in this house. Her nails and the cat’s litter are the only two things I get self-conscious about in the pet care department. Otherwise they live better lives and eat better food than a lot of humans.

The good part about this dog park is it’s spankin new and has great picnic tables so I sat and worked on my sister’s shawl while talking with other owners and the puppies all played together. There was a teenincy long-haired teacup chihuahua that kept jumping up on the table and curling up on my knitting. It was very cute and I didn’t mind - hell with the number of cats in this house how could I - but the owner was worried she would hurt the knitting and kept picking her up. Sad to say but the little perfumed dog was smelling better than I was after a warm afternoon working with mohair so I really wasn’t all that worried.

Speaking of cleanliness we went to Joann fabrics and bought a bunch of cheap cotton yarn so I can start making washcloths. I’ve decided washcloths are going to become my standard present thing. Knit a few up, fold and stack em, tie a ribbon around them and add a nice bar of soap..that’s a nice present! For anyone really. And if I want to get really fancy I’ll hit the nambe outlet and get a small bowl to put them in. Don’t hate me because I have access to outlet stores for such fabulous artisan crafted stuff…I also can’t get anything delivered to my house other than pizza and haven’t been able to find a decent skill-appropriate job that doesn’t involve a goddamned call center.

I’m going to try the chenille flower-shaped washcloths from last minute knitted gifts as well but I don’t have any chenille yarn yet. Right now I’m going with knitting two washcloths from one two dollar skein of cotton ombre yarn. Finally something I want to knit up that’s cheap!

Like everyone else I’m very excited about the new knitty but with Comcast’s crippling cable connection (a little alliteration) I haven’t really been able to enjoy it. But I know that I’m going to be knitting this before the summer’s over! That’s the first pattern for a sweater I’ve seen that I think I’d look good in. And I’m really happy that the pattern is by the woman behind femiknitz.

I remember my brother-in-law asking me what exactly feminist knitting was over Christmas and I wasn’t able to define it at the time. I honestly can never tell if he actually cares when he asks questions like that or is just trying to quiz me so I didn’t try that hard to answer. My definition of things like that change fairly often and I really like knowing that the folks at femiknitz have different interpretations of the term as well.

There are lots of interesting sites out there that combine activism or other interests with their knitting.

The first website with such acticraftism (yeah I totally just made that up) I was aware of (thanks to Mac) long before I started this knitting thing was Knitters Against Bush (since the site it no longer active I’m linking to an article about it). Hell, that site made me want to learn to knit.

Since learning to knit I’ve discovered there are a lot out there. Like the Revolutionary Knitting Circle, or the infamous Wombs on Washington group that has people knitting the womb pattern from knitty with plans to cover the steps of the capitol with them on April 25th. If you’re interested there’s a great livejournal group for this too. Livejournal has TONS of politically-related knitting groups… knitters for change and Ethical Crafters to name just two.

Women knitting items for charities goes at least as far back as the American Revolution so of course there are countless projects out there with plenty of things I could knit for them if I felt the urge to knit and didn’t have a project in mind (which seems unlikely even this early in my knitting experience but I’d like to make stuff for these charities anyway). Like blankets and beds for the Critter Knitters’ Coalition (which is for animals in New York but I’m sure any local shelter would be happy with a donation.. or Hugs for Homeless Animals can help you with an idea), a blanket for a child or teen for Binky Patrol or a blanket for terminally ill children for Project Linus, a red scarf for the Red Scarf Project, or any kind of wearable item for a homeless war veteran. Or just pick one from the crafting for a cause livejournal group or the list at crafty bitch’s site.

As far as interests in seemingly unrelated subjects and finding a way to relate them to knitting there are sites like punk knitters, and the knitting tarot.

Don’t even get me started on the delight I get in the various knitblogs out there. So fun to get these glimpses of people and their knitting and lives. A few of them I could even meet in person if I could get my agoraphobic ass to leave the house and drive myself on the nights Cody’s working.

Imagine my surprise when after all this delightful knitsurfing I’ve been doing I stumbled onto my first right-wing knitblog. Going from such great patterns to diatribes about the evils of tax-paid welfare systems and the UN. Yikes. I don’t think I want to knit that great purse now, all I’d think about is how this person referenced an article about “the culture of life vs the culture of death” on the notoriously republican townhall website.

So it seems that the pattern means more to me than the just the resulting project. How I feel about the person who came up with it seems to affect how I feel about making it. Interesting.

Yeah, apparently I suck like that. The other day I started watching some random-ass movie with Goldie Hawn and Mel Gibson but was unable to watch it for long - and while the plot sucked I’ve definitely watched and enjoyed worse more than once. I never fell into the pool of women who found him attractive in the first place but now I just hear his icky Americanized Australian accent and think about how he made the world’s most popular snuff film. Sorry but, come on. All the pain and torture and suffering in that film shows the Christian concept of Christ’s love about as much as a mother showing graphic videos and talking endlessly about months of nausea and hours of excruciating labor and bloody birth shows the love for her child. Give me a friggin break.

It’s all knitting all the time these days. Sorry for those who don’t really care about it but I tend to jump into things like this with both feet running.

It’ll balance out but I got a bit burned out on the site after all the women in history writing. I’m so glad everyone enjoyed it and I got some great feedback - thankfully none that criticized my crazy writing style, lack of depth, choice of profiles, or outright factual errors - all of which could’ve been justified at one point or another. But boy that was a lot of work to do every day. I’d like to post a few more - maybe one a week or something. But I really don’t want to regard writing in this thing like a it’s a job. Or think much about who’s reading it (Hi Mom). Because I think the posts really suffer when that happens. Unfortunately my best writing lately has been in the comments on other peoples’ sites - despite my dislike of hijacking people’s comment sections. So go read Mikey, Mac, and Luka’s sites. I’ve made some fun comments there this week.

This is what I spent my monthly 30 dollar allowance on. I’ve created an imix for it. I was in an ambient torch lovesong jazzy Gershwin/ Cole Porter mood. And I discovered the Verve remixed albums…damn.

Lido Shuffle - Boz Scaggs (Cody wanted this one)

Our Love Is Here to Stay - Etta James

I Like ‘Em Fat Like That - Louis Jordan

Is You Is or Is You Ain’t My Baby? (Rae and Christian Remix) - Dinah Washington

Summertime (UFO Remix) - Sarah Vaughan

Feelin’ Good (Joe Claussell Remix) - Nina Simone

Manteca (Funky Lowlives Remix) - Dizzy Gillespie & Funky Lowlives

Spinning Wheel (DJ Spinna Remix) - Shirley Bassey

(Where Do I Begin) Love Story (Away Team Mix) - Shirley Bassey

Big Spender (Wild Oscar Mix) - Shirley Bassey

Black Is the Color of My True Love’s Hair (Jaffa Remix) - Nina Simone & Jaffa (this is a beautiful BEAUTIFUL song)

La Vie en Rose - Grace Jones

Samba 1000 - Ursula 1000

Butterfly Caught (RJD2 Remix) - Massive Attack

Summertime - The Twilight Singers

I Put a Spell On You - Natacha Atlas

Is You Is or Is You Ain’t My Baby? - Louis Jordan

The Very Thought of You - Nat King Cole

It’s Only a Paper Moon - Benny Goodman and His Orchestra

(I Love You) For Sentimental Reasons - Nat King Cole

Lover Man (Oh, Where Can You Be) - Billie Holiday

Why Don’t You Do Right? - Shirley Horn

Misty - Johnny Mathis

I’ve Got You Under My Skin - Diana Krall

Night and Day - Karrin Allyson

Gut Feeling - Devo

Funk #49 - James Gang

Israelites - Desmond Dekker

Here are some deaths that you might’ve missed hearing about in the endless 24-hour media (cough*insipid*) newsreel / bullshit pundit commentary over actual substantial reporting / entertainment between commercial filler that’s become news in the US.

Fred Korematsu

from suicide girls news (which is actually a great source for diverse news topics..no, really)

In 1942, when the United States military forced all Japanese-Americans on the West Coast to live in internment camps, one man fought it all the way to the Supreme Court. And lost. That man, Fred Korematsu died this week at the age of 86..

Considering all Japanese-Americans on the West Coast to be a national security threat in the wake of the Pearl Harbor bombing, the United States government ordered all of them (including U.S. citizens) to move out of their homes and into internment camps. One man, Fred Koremasu, a 23-year-old American citizen and son of Japanese immigrants, refused to move out the home he shared with his girlfriend. As a result, he was arrested and convicted of defying military orders. In one of the darkest moments in American legal history, the U.S. Supreme Court upheld his conviction in 1944. Showing extreme deference to the military judgment, the Court stated:

Basically, the threat that any Japanese-American could be a spy justified forcing them to be removed from their homes and placed in what were essentially prison camps. There was no individual evaluation of loyalty or investigation of sabotage. Simply because of heritage, 110,000 men, women, and children were interned for 2 years during World War II.

Mr. Korematsu’s conviction was finally overturned in the early 1980s (he had not been imprisoned for that time, but his conviction had officially stayed on the record). In 1998, President Clinton honored him with the Presidential Medal of Freedom, hailing him as a civil rights hero.

Mr. Korematsu admitted that he wasn’t interested in fighting for civil rights when he challenged his arrest, but just wanted to live his life.

For 40 years, Mr. Korematsu didn’t talk about his fight and place in America’s embarrassing history. His own daughter learned about his case in a history text book. In recent years, though, he had begun to speak out for civil rights, denouncing the Patriot Act and the treatment of Arab-Americans as parallel to the way the Japanese-Americans had been treated during World War II.

He was a rather unlikely hero, but Mr. Korematsu’s name will forever be associated with a fight against a gross violation of human rights.

Saul Bellow

The Pulitzer and Nobel prize winning author died at the age of 89. According to the Nobel Foundation, Bellow won the National Book award for his novel The Adventures of Augie March. He won the Pulitzer Prize for Humboldt’s Gift.

His fifth wife gave birth to their daughter December of 1999. He will have a private funeral.

Just thought I’d fill in since the blog of death is on hiatus. I have that old Jim Carroll song stuck in my head now.

I took a short break from the rather large stole to try my hand at knitting the ipod cozy from Sskeins. While it was a fairly small project (started it on Sunday and finished it yesterday) it contained a lot of firsts for me.

First time knitting in the round on double pointed needles - which wasn’t nearly as scary as I thought it would be. First time creating a buttonhole (two in fact!) which also was fairly painless - and included my first attempt at a cable cast-on which was a bit confusing at first but hooray for those videos at knittinghelp.com. First time to do a partial bind-off when I got to the top and continued making the flap. I liked the little pocket that this lady added to her ipod cozy so it was also my first time to create a pocket and sew it on.

And since I just have an ipod mini and I knitted it a little large I decided to make this my first felting experience. It was also my first blocking experience since all I’ve made up to this point have been scarfy things where the size didn’t matter. Yes a lot of firsts. Including Zola’s first photographs with my knitting.

I’ve actually had requests for photos with the hedgehog and knitting. But I worry about the yarn snagging on her quills or getting wrapped around her tiny legs and cutting off circulation (this is a serious issue with hedgehogs). But since I had felted (and shaved) it this was the perfect thing for her to model with.

Then I noticed how gross her little feet were, promptly put her in half an inch of warm water in the tub to soak, then scrubbed them with an old toothbrush and a dab of baby shampoo. Hedgehogs love running on their wheels at night. But they love to poop and pee while they run. Getting it all over their feet. So I have to scrub those little hedgehog feet pretty often. The fact that I have to do this once a week at the very least does not diminish the usual hedgehog post bath sleepy grumpy cuddle time. So she was generally grumpy and sleepy in my direction until she finally curled up and fell asleep. Giving me time to finish my photos.

Here are details on the cozy:

Knit using Brown Sheep Company’s Lamb’s Pride in Fuchsia, Pine Tree Green, and Sun Yellow. The original ipod cozy pattern is from SskeinS, the idea for the pocket is from City Knitter, and the striping pattern (4 yellow- 2 green - 4 yellow) is based on Stitch N Bitch’s Cricket Cellphone cozy pattern.

I created the pocket by separately casting-on 15 stitches in the yellow, re-creating a 4-2-4 stripe, binding it off, and just sewing it to the front underneath the end of the flap. The little front pocket is the perfect size for the remote control I use for my ipod. I don’t use the apple in-ear headphones (I despise in-ear headphones my ears just pop those suckers right out) and the foldup headphones I use are about the size of the ipod itself. You can see them propping up the cozy in the first photo up there.

I made the flap a bit longer than the sskeins pattern and added a buttonhole to it rather than use velcro…because I didn’t have any. The button is a spare from the cute pink raincoat I got for christmas. I usually just lose the extra buttons so at least I know where this one is.

Like I said before, since this was for a mini and since I’d made it a bit larger than the pattern called for anyway I decided to try my hand at this felting thing by putting the finished cozy in a pillowcase with a pair of jeans and washing it in hot water about three times. The yellow stitches didn’t felt completely so stitches can still be seen but I was worried that it was going to get too small if I washed it again. From what I’ve read the lighter yarns are a lot harder to felt. I blocked it using an old cellphone that’s about the same size as my ipod mini. After it was dry (hooray for dry desert air it was just overnight) I thought it was a bit fuzzy I found a disposable razor and shaved it. I know that sounds totally insane but it really helped it look a lot nicer.

And it has a nifty buttonhole in the top for the remote/headphone cord. I’m very proud.

There are many many more photos in the photo journal.