I don’t think I’ve participated in this before but I have some great photos to share this morning.

First, I got a box in the mail yesterday from my knitflix partner!

The Fifth Element ultimate edition (Cody is equally excited about this dvd), green apple candy corn, lots of popcorn, cute little knitting notecards, burt’s bees lipbalm (how did she know?), an adorable little black sheep measuring tape, and some beautiful handdyed purple sock yarn! I believe that’s louet gems pearl? It’s lovely!

The orange monster was actually a gift from Cody but I got him at the same time as I got the box so he’s friends with the other stuff.

Scout’s gonna be all over this handdyed sock yarn these are her colors yo

And I love the little black sheep measuring tape. Especially the “retract” button that is an actual button.

Totally cute. Thank you Gwen!! I’m also really excited that she liked all the goodies in the box I sent her! I had a good time picking it all out.

I had an appointment with mr chiropractor guy early this morning and I knew it was the first day of the Balloon Fiesta and we’d be driving close to the park so I brought my camera with me so I could take photos while Cody drove. It’s really hard to capture the sheer number of balloons floating around at the same time, especially when going 55 mph and facing the sun, but I tried.

Lots of photos. Lots.

First we have my third installment of Yarn Stash Appreciation Sunday. This week? Amazing handspun yarn (usually) bought from the artists themselves.

There are closeup photos in the Flickr Set so I’ll just briefly tell you about each yarn. Clockwise starting from the top left: Two hanks Raspberry Tea by Maisy Day from Hello Yarn, Three different yarns (Pink thick and thin, blue thin, Santa Fe Rainbow thick and thin) from Sandstone Ranch.
Bottom Row from the right: Three big skeins of yarn (two green, one pink) from the Jitterbug shawl kit from Hello Yarn, in the bottom left corner are three skeins of lovely wool and silk from Greenwood Fiberworks, and above that is the unbelievable light sensitive yarn from Material Whirled.

Aren’t they beautiful? I highly recommend each and every one of those spinners. And yes, there seems to be an awful lot of pink there. This wasn’t exactly done on poipose but I certainly don’t think it hoits.

Next, I finished the little collar project for Winter. I ended up just sewing the fabric inside and not making it a collar cover - just a collar itself. We never use her collar for the leash anyway, we always use a halter for that.

It’s soft and it fits her nicely.

Oh, and here’s something else I finished last night..

Yep! Finished my Jaywalkers! I even sewed the ends in. Go me!

Even though I made them a good bit taller than the original pattern, I still only used one skein of that Cherry Tree Hill Birches. Less than a yard to spare but just one skein. Which means I can make another pair of socks in this fun color.

Now, there’s this backyard meme going around but to be honest. You really don’t want to see my backyard. It used to have trees (that had to be cut down due to a fungus or something), and it had a big yard of grass with built-in sprinklers. But we both believe that having a yard is both a pain in the ass and completely an irresponsible thing to do in the desert so now it’s mostly dirt with weeds and a lot of dog poop. So I’m going to show the parts of my backyard that I like.

This gargoyle that guards our back door.

Our only remaining full-sized tree

And this.

No, not the arroyo drainage construction that’s been going on behind our house since last May. Nor the gross red wooden fence. But my little desert savannah camoflage dog.

Of course she makes the den pretty fun too

If you’re curious about what the rest of the house looks like (with a few changes since this was made in early 2002) check out my eerily accurate Sims recreation of our house.

It is so cold. So so so so cold. Cold. So. Damn. Cold.

Bottle of water in the car frozen solid cold. Opening the door for the be-sweatered dog and she looks at me like I’m completely insane cold. As Cody and I sometimes say: it is butt-ass cold.

Cold.

Just thought you’d want to know.

ETA: See?

We went to the fair yesterday and Cody took lots of photos while I spent hours on end at Sheep to Shawl. On the way home I rented a spinning wheel from Village Wools.

These are my favorites from the batch

here in the us we fry whatever will stay still long enough to be dipped in batter

the incredibly patient sheep to shawl spinning demonstrators

The spinning wheel I’ve rented for the next two weeks (at a very reasonable ten dollars a week!) is the exact same one the lady in the middle is working on. It’s a Lendrum Double Treadle Foldup. This is pretty much the wheel we’ve decided to buy someday.

That cold throttled me for about two days. Monday night my fever got up to 102.6 and I had to take a cold bath to bring it down. Boy that was fun! But I stayed around 101 for about 24 hours. Then it broke. Now I sound like Janis Joplin but I feel perfectly fine. My parents are visiting until Sunday but they usually get a hotel room or vacation rental up in Santa Fe and drive down to see me. They like Santa Fe. And staying in hotel rooms or vacation rentals. They really don’t like all the pets and their accompanying hair. Cody likes his privacy and houseguests tend to make him nervous. So it all works out.

Hell, I’d live up there again if we could get jobs and be able to afford getting a decent house. I wonder if Cody would. It’s got a lot of great things like art, food (my GOD the FOOD), a fairly relaxed, liberal population for the most part, and it’s about two thousand feet higher and usually about ten degrees cooler than Albuquerque. Oh and it gets more snow which I consider a bonus in this particular case. But it has some extremely annoying aspects like the real estate property values being just obscene, to the point where people who have had families living there for centuries can’t afford to pay the taxes on their house anymore, are forced to move and can usually only get tourist-dependant jobs so they resent like hell anyone who isn’t from there, and, in some cases, with good reason. One case that comes to mind is the person I like to call the “Hippiecrite” who drives their SUV like a complete asshole, running over people in the local natural foods grocery store parking lot to get to their cruelty-free veal, honestly believing that they are morally superior just because of their groceries.

I used to think folks like that were funny but my tolerance has deteriorated over the years. Don’t get me wrong, I respect one’s right to buy local cruelty / phosphate / preservative / animal-testing / msg / rainforest-destruction-causing / non-recycled, non-recyclable / non-renewable source / bleach / wheat / sodium lauryl sulfate / non-fair trade global conglomerate - free products..but it doesn’t mean you’re excused from behaving like you’re still a member of polite society and stopping at the crosswalk, waiting in line, honoring the general personal space rules just like everyone else is doing. Is it too much fo ask for people to have an equal amount of respect for other humans in the way you do for the poor fuzzy animals you have every right to refuse to eat, wear, or have as a household pet?

Ok this was supposed to be about my day in Santa Fe today. Back on track.

So yesterday my parents and I went to see Fever Pitch at the dollar theater down the mesa from my house. I haven’t been to a movie in a long time and it was something that wouldn’t involve too much moving around since I was still feeling punky yesterday. There weren’t a lot of options since I’m a fully admitted snotty bitch when it comes to movies. But Fever Pitch was a perfect choice considering that my mom and I both like Nick Hornby novels, my dad loves baseball, and I’m a big sucker for romantic comedies. It was cute. In some ways I liked the original with Colin Firth better. It was a little more grown up and introspective, not going for the laughs or quite as much cutesy-poo-romantic moments as the American remake. But we each had a few laughs and, hell, for seventy-five cents a ticket who can complain?

This morning my Dad drove down to pick me up, we stopped at Starbucks, then went back up to Santa Fe to spend the day. On the way up I knitted and we discussed politics and religion. Fun! No, really! I could drink a coffee beverage, talk politics and religion with Dad, and knit a La Boheme scarf on giant addi turbos all day long and be a happy woman. He always has something interesting and thought-provoking to say and, well, it’s a relief to know that he’s just as cynical (moreso!) than I am about organized religion. So I was already a happy woman.

Then we picked my Mom up at the hotel and went to the yarn store! Bliss! I have to say that, while my last few experiences with Albuquerque’s lys were not nearly as unpleasant as my first few..the one in Santa Fe is much, much nicer. And a LOT more organized, the lady there was extremely plesant and helpful, and the stock was CHOCK full of Koigu. I spent a good hour squeezing and petting yarn in the morning then we went back around four where I did more squeezing and petting and picking out my birthday present from my parents. I loved what Karen made with Giotto and finally got to see and feel some in person so I picked out four skeins and a colinette giotto pattern book, a gigantic size 19 / 43 inch pair of addi turbos for the next la boheme shawl, some fiber trends patterns I’ve been eyeing, and, yes, some koigu. I’ve joined the Koigu cult.

After the first trip to the yarn store we ate at a small restaurant called Mucho Gusto that was in the same building. It was small and quaint. And, yeah, I’d say it was mucho gusto. Interesting menu with a combination of Nouvelle Mexican cuisine and authentic Mexican food. I got a Turkey Mole Enchilada. The mole was from scratch and totally amazing.

Then we walked down towards the plaza, stopping in a few stores on the way. And the new Wyeth Hurd Gallery where the gallery worker took one look at us and immediately assumed he would need to explain the Wyeth family to us. Hehe. I informed him that we’re quite familiar with the Wyeth family, that Henriette is my favorite but my Dad’s is Andrew. And pointed out a print from Andrew’s Helga series for Dad. Then I found a lovely signed print (14/350!!!) of a black iris painting by Henriette and joked with my mom about how that’s what I wanted for my birthday.

I showed my dad the public library since he’d never seen it. Then walked across the plaza to a clothing store I really like. When my family comes out here for Christmas we usually buy an outfit or two for my sister. But we didn’t get anything this time. First off, they confused me for a tourist and sent me to the way ugly and overpriced racks in the back (and after they used to call me when they were having a private sale! bastards!). Then the clothes just weren’t as appealing this time. I saw several knit items I thought I could make for myself (including a dropped stitch cardigan that could be made in Giotto). Thirdly, their prices for the summer opera / tourist season are a friggin joke. Or I’ve gotten cheaper. Both are probably the case.

As someone who lived in Santa Fe for six years and graduated from college there it’s quite strange to go back as a tourist. But believe me, I share the fact that I used to live there and now live down in Albuquerque as soon as possible in any store clerk conversation. I may have even sold them sandwiches, made them a latte, poured or glazed their tiles, or booked a relative’s hotel room. I don’t go that far, I just try to slip in the fact that I am a bonafide tax-paying resident of the state as casually as I can. My casualness usually fails. Probably no one really cares they just want me to buy shit for their commission or go away. Although most would start by asking where I got the cool red purse!

After the second trip to the yarn store we drove north on part of the “High Road” to Taos to one of my favorite places in the world where I hadn’t been in a few years: Shidoni. It’s a metal foundry with a huge sculpture garden. There are always interesting sculptures in a variety of styles and materials. I’ve spent a lot of time walking around there and watching castings in the foundry. For a while I thought about interning there after getting my degree in sculpture but changed my mind. This was the first time I’d gone into the glassworks gallery next door as well.

We drove back down to Santa Fe and followed my old sandwich delivery route up Canyon Road.

Then went to dinner at a restaurant my roommate and I used to visit a lot called the Zia Diner and had meatloaf with green chiles and pinons. Yum.

from the Clovis News Journal

According to kobtv, one observer joked that with the right combination of ingredients, the burrito could have been a deadly weapon.

You know those sites that make the voices in your head screech every time you go but you just can’t keep yourself from visiting every once in a while? You know what I’m talking about here. It’s like watching the trashiest of talk shows, the goriest of “caught on film” episodes, or the most intellectually insulting sitcoms. Or that new “Showdogs Moms and Dads” show on Bravo. But online.

Maybe your self-torture runs toward the cringeworthy Rotten.com, or the strangely entrancing Whowouldbuythat.com. Or you get your rocks off on politically-charged head rush endorphins by looking at propaganda sites like The Heartland Institute, Town Hall, or The Family Research Council.

This week mine has been visiting the Duke City Fix every day. I said I was hopeful about the project but that doesn’t mean I’m an idealist. And if I didn’t genuinely care about it I would’ve visited once, scoffed, and never gone back. On the surface I’ve never been much of a proponent for tough love but I guess I have been known to give the people I trust and care more about more shit than those I wouldn’t poke with a long stick - because I respect them and trust that they respect me enough to take my opinion seriously. My criticisms about the site aren’t meant to be dismissive of the project - in fact, I really hope that, since I seem to be heard by a few of those involved, what I say here might actually make a difference.

With a few exceptions, it’s been pretty clear to me that while there was a whole lot of technical planning for the site infrastructure and design (both are great, btw, but I do get a bit annoyed having to do a captcha word with every comment - Maybe if there’s the ability to create a membership and avoid it - although I have no experience with the Nucleus publishing software they’re using so maybe not) there’s still a lot of work to be done on who the site’s audience is and focusing on what exactly they want to tell that audience.

This is a basic facet of writing and is required in publishing. When I worked for Woman Santa Fe magazine in 1997 a good part of our meetings were about defining this exact subject and how well our features, sidebars, and even our advertising fit in to that target readership.

From what Chantal, the editor, told me in her email, it’s aimed towards people who go “out and about” in Albuquerque. Well, I have to say that the last two posts from this admitted agoraphobic have had more to do with going out and about in Albuquerque than the articles that have been on there the last few days. There has been a post about how personal hygiene affects one’s success (if you’d want it) with a surface-oriented person on a date (and I’ve been told that there was an article about this exact subject in the Albuquerque Journal last month!), a great and gigantic article about free press, editorialism, and funding, and an editorial about an executive level weed pulling day for the City of Albuquerque with fudged statistics. That one about the weeds got a whole lot of comments. Which were then closed.

Duke City Fix is a cityblog by the people, for the people??

I’m starting to wonder if the people behind this (whom I don’t already know do so) have ever published anything on the web. If you’re going to accept comments you’re not always going to have control over them, that’s just how it goes. And that’s the beauty of accepting comments from the general public - issues will come up the writers had never thought of. But the general rule of thumb is to let the comments go until there’s serious threatening or trolling going on. And then it’s preferable to target and zap the troll not the comments. So if the comments are going to get shut down like that I’m wondering what the point of accepting comments is.

I’ll admit I’ve thought a lot of things about this site - and a lot of them haven’t been pleasant and probably overly critical. But the editor lost a lot of my respect by bringing up such a potentially heated subject (money, politics, and government is guaranteed to bring out strong opinions) then shut the comments down even when they hadn’t gotten that uncivilized. So the editor wanted to post an editorial to get our hackles up about using city funds for a thinly-veiled re-election campaign without facts other than what she directly observed yesterday morning and vague guessing without providing the public a chance to respond openly and without fear of reprisals.

The ability to publish opinions and make them freely available to the public is the point of publishing an independent web-based media, right?

I really wonder now who this site is for. Is it for the authors (who apparently were random website picks and personal friends of the creator) to have a place to talk about the kind of stuff they could be talking about on their own personal sites? Just, like, whatever they feel like writing (from dirty fingernails to armageddon themed mailers) with no accountability or consistency?

There’s been this whole weblog vs. the mainstream media argument going on ever since before the presidential election. Talk about making weblogs more accountable for what they publish. Which, for the most part, isn’t necessary because the weblog world tends to self-regulate and do the fact-checking. Publishing provocative articles without any established facts then not allowing the public to respond freely is a great way to present argumentative fodder for those who support cracking down on weblog regulation and accountability.

On a personal site all executive decisions are up to the main person. Their blog their rules. But group weblogs (particularly those who are claiming to represent an independent cross-section of a whole damn town) should follow a different set of rules. The argument has been made that since there are so many writers the subject can’t be controlled. Not buying it. There are very easy ways to make it so an article by a certain member isn’t immediately published and has to be approved by the editor. A bit controlling, yes, but probably a necessity to protect the integrity of the site - and no less so than the seemingly random number and recruitment of the writers.

So is the Duke City Fix (a name my native husband seems to resent highly in that he thinks that the name itself implies that a bunch of outsiders are offering their graced opinions on how to fix a broken city - but a name I defended to him as more of a jokey heroin slang thing) for people who’ve never been to Albuquerque? I wonder this because if you read the site odds are you know about the Frontier already. If you don’t know about the Frontier and you live in Albuquerque then you probably won’t be reading the site. I tried to be kind in my comment about The Frontier being the Cafe du Monde for Albuquerque because I’m genuinely trying to encourage this lofty ideal of keeping things positive about Albuquerque. Even if the woman who told me about the ideal wasn’t doing it either when she wrote a critical presumptive article then shut down the comments.

I like to think of myself as a constructive criticizer though. And I can’t stress enough my high hopes for the site. (Again, if I didn’t care I wouldn’t waste my precious relaxing knitting time writing about it)

These are my suggestions to make it appear as a more representative independent group weblog:

Wow. Lots of feedback on that last post. And a letter from the editor herself wanting to make it very clear that babyboomers are not their target audience, rather, people who like to “go out and about” in Albuquerque. Unless you like to go do things around the westside. Ok, that was a cheap shot I’m just kidding.

I’m still a chain coffee drinking non-La Montanita shopping westside suburban blogger but there’s an additional non-qualification in that I’m a semi-agoraphobe who doesn’t drive therefore I don’t get “out and about” very often. And when I do it’s usually to some evil corporate chain store or restaurant on the westside (or, God forbid, the Rio Rancho dog park because there aren’t any City of Albuquerque dog parks nearby) and somehow I get this intangible feeling of being judged for that from these folks.

However! One thing that I find very attractive in this new venture (aside from the fact that I was quoted in an article and didn’t notice that before. Thanks Kelly!) is the attempt to focus on positive aspects of Albuquerque. Which could be a great help towards a better general attitude here as long as its a guideline that’s followed. Unfortunately I think there are already some articles that don’t exactly provide a positive unifying attitude.

It’s the elitist (and I don’t mean to encourage anti-intellectualism here I mean the textbook definition of the term) attitudes that people who live in a certain place, eat at certain restaurants or drink fair trade coffee are somehow superior to people who live in another place, eat at chain restaurants or drink chain store coffee that kind of pisses me off - and actually gives me a better perspective on the crazy christian backlash that took place everywhere last christmas.

That whole “Goddammit I’m Christian and there’s nothing wrong with it you big fat pagan slut! Let me celebrate the birth of Christ with the tacky commercial glee for which The Man died on the cross (in a really long violent gross way now available on DVD!) without crazy guilt trips or having to use the more religiously tolerant ‘Happy Holidays’. What I believe in is the only true thing on this whole damn planet and anyone who thinks or believes otherwise is a terrist” kind of commentary that was on shows like crossfire and republican pundit weblogs last December. And while I certainly don’t agree with it I almost understand that level of defiance right now. It’s very similar to the kind of attitude I would take when I was a smoker in a non-smoking restaurant: “I’m a smoker, motherfucker, you got a PROBLEM with that?”

Is there somehow a way to focus on the small, interesting, and/or local without intimating that to support or be otherwise is a bad thing? A way to prove your point without cutting the other side down? Surely there is…

The whole “Alternative Albuquerque” thing is fun. But in some cases it reminds me of my art student days in Alabama where I enjoyed wearing Liberty overalls, but in an ironic way. Or going on road trips and stopping in strange little out of the way barbeque restaurants to eat then would make fun of the redneck patrons when I got back in the car. I had even thought about writing a book called “The Surrealist’s Guide to the South” showing all the crazy roadside attractions, truck stops, and restaurants available to people willing to take the chance and brave the southern highways.

But this was when I was twenty and hadn’t quite caught on to the concepts of nuance and relativism. There’s a very fine line between enjoying the culture-encapsulating weirdness of poppy kitsch and being a derisive satirical snot. Not a line I’m be able to balance very well either, I know.

I’m just as guilty about thinking I’m somehow morally superior to people who drive gigantic SUVs, who don’t spay or neuter their pets, or those crazy superskinny fashionistas. And there’s that whole reading for fun thing. I’ve said it before, we all have our prejudices. And I clearly expressed a few of mine in my last post.

That said, there’s good potential here. An opportunity to make changes in how things are communicated in Albuquerque, to change attitudes and assumptions about people who have pitched their tents in other camps, even if it is the next one over, and possibly to affect actual change to how the city works. I sincerely hope that happens.

And no I’m not saying that because I was quoted there, you damn cynics.

So there’s this new group weblog / online magazine kind of thing for Albuquerque called the Duke City Fix. It looks interesting and already has some good posts. But it definitely is presenting a very specific we’re soooo alternative view of the town. Call me the nitpicking Affirmative Action Head Counter but, as far as I can tell, only one actually grew up here, I don’t think any are Hispanics and, of course, there’s nary a westsider. So, like I said, this is a very specific perspective on Albuquerque.

But, hey, if you live on the east side of the river, particularly in Nob Hill, eat organic food, visit martini bars and art openings, dig 50s Route 66 type kitsch, especially if you are a baby boomer you are their target market. Go read and enjoy.

No, I’m not bitter for not being invited as the singular westside blogger. Am not! Like they’d have my national chain coffee drinking, non-La Montanita Co-op shopping ass. I don’t exactly fit their profile. But I don’t fit any profile. And that’s not by accident baby.

I’ll admit, I actually got a slight thrill when I first moved to New Mexico from that Birmingham Methodist greek fraternity hell liberal arts college where I had been considered a freak for wearing black and being an art major. I actually felt conservative compared to most of the students at The College of Santa Fe. It was such a novelty to be comparatively conservative with the people in the room after being surrounded by Bush Sr voters - especially that night in Kyoto during the interim trip to South Korea and Japan when Clinton was inaugurated and I was the only one in the group, including the professors, who had voted for him. Lemme tell you, THAT was fun. In the end I drank a lot and sang Frank Sinatra songs in the style of Johnny Rotten in the hotel’s karaoke bar.

But when I moved to Santa Fe I never quite felt that I fit in there either.

On a more positive note I have been invited to take part of this really cool woman-goddess-centered group weblog called Every Woman is a Goddess. It’s a fun bunch and the type of posts vary from personal essays to poetry to links. I was totally flattered to be asked to join.

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.