Would someone please make this Lamb Madras Curry for me? It looks yummy but my attempts at Indian food have been abysmal failures.

I just bought some cute knitting ball ornaments made by Mama E!

Has anyone reading this ever used one of those Clover Embroidery tools before?

There was a profession in Anarchy Online called The Fixer. This is an article (sent to me by my sister) about another kind of fixer. I found it to be really interesting and illuminating about myself.

I’m considering buying this yarn for a second Red Scarf for The Project.

The tarot card quiz that’s been notoriously accurate keeps its reputation

You are The High Priestess

Science, Wisdom, Knowledge, Education.

The High Priestess is the card of knowledge, instinctual, supernatural, secret knowledge. She holds scrolls of arcane information that she might, or might not reveal to you. The moon crown on her head as well as the crescent by her foot indicates her willingness to illuminate what you otherwise might not see, reveal the secrets you need to know. The High Priestess is also associated with the moon however and can also indicate change or fluxuation, particularily when it comes to your moods.

What Tarot Card are You?
Take the Test to Find Out.

I like this shirt

I’m well on my way into the first half of the Pocket Cable Scarf

And finally,
The True Meaning of Etsy

Ashley tagged me for a meme where I list six things about me that are weird. I can’t sleep so let’s see if I can come up with a few surprises.

1. Sock monkeys scare me. So do ice cream truck songs. And clowns.

2. There once was a time when I could apply the lyrics to “Moon River” to every song I heard.

3. Sometime in my early twenties I came up with what I like to call the “phlegm” theory of creativity where the urge to create something is almost like a tiny virus inside you that you have to get out before you choke on it. The results aren’t always pretty though.

4. I can move my pinkie toes independently of my other toes.

5. The first time I tried to quit smoking I ate so many wint-o-green lifesavers I developed a kind of allergy to them. Now if I try to eat one my tongue will swell up and I’ll sound funny when I try to speak.

6. I have a fear of heights but only if I can see under my feet - like on a grate. I didn not know this until I was 19 and was standing on a walkway along the inside of the bottom of the dome at St. Peter’s Cathedral. This was very inconvenient.

Yesterday I ordered eight of the eleven gifts I need to have for Xmas. Several of them have already shipped. God I love the internet.

What was that about knitting xmas gifts? I didn’t hear you. La la la I don’t hear you.

I’m so behind on stuff! I have clothes from iGigi to review, memes to fill out, about ten thousand and one knitting projects, fluffy fiber to spin on my wheel. And my house.. fuggetaboutit, I’ve lost total control of the house since getting the stomache thing.

But I was tagged for something that’s been provoking my thoughts all week so that’s magically moved up to the number one spot.

The inimitable Vanessa, aka PluckyPunk, who was tagged by Zuzu at Feministe, tagged me for a seemingly simple meme called Five things feminism has done for me.

Plucky Punk is one of those secret friend crushes for me. You know those blogs you read and feel like that writer would be such a cool friend to have in real life? She’s made some big changes this year: quit her evil corporate job, had a baby, went back to school. And she still manages to be active in the online feminist blog world. And she bought my craaaaazy scarf during the Katrina fundraiser last year! And she wears doc martens! So she has great taste in shoes and accessories too!

I was surprised that she tagged me because I’ve mostly been blogging all about knitting and very little about anything else lately. I used to be quite the politico-blogger, once I was called a pundit, but this became more of a knitblog than much else as the hobby took over my life during the last year and a half. Don’t get me wrong, I still rant the political in person! But I made a conscious choice to cut down on the political and really personal posts for my blog a while ago. It keeps the mean commenters away and my mother from worrying that I’m going to get firebombed or something. She reads this ya know. Hi Mom!

This tag has given me something to think about, something interesting to discuss with Cody. I want whatever I write to be well thought-out and not just imitating other’s answers! And I want to focus on positive aspects, not complain about things that need to change, just enjoy the good parts for the moment. All this buildup for five things. I guess I should get on with them.

Five things Feminism has done for me

I can choose my family
Obviously I don’t mean parents and siblings, although I got lucky there anyway. I mean I can choose who I marry. Or to not marry. Or if I want to just live with someone. I happened to fall in love with someone of the opposite sex and I really wish people who fell in love with someone of the same sex could have as many choices, but I’m trying to focus on the positive here. I can choose to have children, or to not have children, or just have pets and treat them like children. Maybe to have children later on. It’s up to me. My father can’t sell me to a man for a goat (not that he would, obviously). I won’t be forced to marry some creepy old gross man so I can clean his house and birth his little farmhands. My choice. Mine.

I can choose my career
Career is sort of an odd word for me since mine has been sort of not a career, as such. But what I’m doing now is not far off from what I wanted to do when I was young: Stay at home and create art. You know that character Whoopi Goldberg plays in Moonlight and Valentino? Her life (awkward marriage aside) pretty much nailed what I’d always wanted to do. It actually spooked me when I saw it. The art I’m creating is in a different medium than I expected, I thought it would still be pottery. It’s a little different because I thought I’d live in a more country setting and have kids. But never say never.

The important part is, I was able to choose my major in college and get a really good education. And if I want to, I can go get a post-graduate degree or go get a “real” job if I want to. Or both. With the full support of my friends, family, and mate.

There are so many smart women in my life that have worked and gotten advanced degrees. Both my and my husband’s moms worked. My mother put herself through college working, along with my dad. She has a master’s degree in mathematics. She taught and worked and even had her own business for a while. My sister has a master’s degree in English and works and travels for work and is always crazy busy. My best friend has a JD from law school and is back in school for her LLM to be a law librarian now while she works in the library for a law firm.

My father-in-law once asked me if I thought that a woman who got a college degree then chose to stay at home with the children was a waste of an education. (he does his best to have what he thinks are progressive conversations with me, so I try to give him the benefit of the doubt with questions like this) Right off the bat I pointed out that the important part was that she had the choice to do so. And that college-educated fathers had the same choice. And studies have shown that educated parents will raise smarter children. I wouldn’t say that an education exists simply for career advancement, for most people I’ve known, it’s been for the education itself.

I am not a possession
This was touched on with the first one but it goes deeper than that. When I go to the doctor they won’t let Cody go in with me. I actually don’t like this as I want him with me because doctors make me nervous and just his presence calms me down. But the reason behind him not being allowed into the exam room is important enough that I don’t fight it: they want me to answer the questions, not him. They want to be sure I’m healthy and if I need to say something about issues that I don’t want him to hear or to answer any questions about potential abuse, that I can freely without his coersion. Of course, I don’t need this, but I want other women to have that so I accept it.

I am secure in the fact that I am an equal in our marriage, that I have the same amount of input in all decisions and will be heard if I have an opinion about any subject. We joke about him being called Cody Pendent and to a certain extent we are codependent. And we like it. We desperately need each other, but equally. I am not just a little living extension of his success as a man, I am his partner. He goes to work to get money so we can live a happy life together. I stay at home so the pets are healthy and the house is mostly intact so when he comes home we can live a happy life together. But the tables have been turned in the past, there was a time when I worked and he stayed at home. We know what it’s like to be in the other’s spot.

I can choose to look however I like.
Sure there are still people who think that women should act, look, or behave a certain way to be a “proper woman” but in this society in general, I can choose to wear a dress or not without getting stoned by the populace. I don’t have to wear a corset, hell I don’t have to wear a bra. And the worst punishment for that might be someone takes a picture of my saggy boobs with their camera phone and makes snarky comments on their blog. Big freaking woo.

I can also choose to be the girliest girl that ever lived in girltown. And it’s ok because it’s my choice. I don’t exactly approve of Barbie and her clothes but I defend to death the right for her to wear them. As long as she doesn’t give me crap about mine it’s ok.

I can have an opinion
I can write this post without worrying that I’ll get arrested, threatened, shunned by my friends and family, or tarnish my (already oxidized) reputation forever. I’ve written on touchy subjects ranging from religion, the president, the war, dumb movies, evil media conglomerates, unbelievably weird sado-masochistic murder mysteries, to the defense of fun fur and freestyle handspun art yarns. I may joke about the threat of getting firebombed for my writing but only in the most minute little corner of my mind does it seem like a reality. I’ve had some ugly comments on my blog once or twice calling me a dumbass pinko liberal or something but not once did someone threaten to come here and shoot me or my dog. Someone did threaten to shoot out my tires once but she’s from Texas so that seemed to be a matter of course.

That’s the big one to me. You may not agree with me but I can have this blog. And I can choose who I’m voting for in a month. And on that ballot I’ll have to choose between two women for the US House of Representatives for my district: incumbent Heather Wilson or the current state Attorney General, Patricia Madrid. No men in that election. How about that?

So now I’m supposed to tag people. I hate the pressure of tagging people. So don’t freak out if you’re tagged and you don’t feel like it ok? I’m going to choose several smart women whose answers I’m genuinely interested in.

Beverly
Ramona
In fact, everyone in the stitch and bitch group? Consider yourself tagged!
Jocelyn
Susan Colagirl
My sister

Or if I didn’t tag you and you want to write about it, please link in the comments I want to know!

I’m not going to do the one word meme that’s been going around. Because to be honest I’m afraid of the one word people would use to describe me.

But I found this other meme and it looks fun, if a little similar to one I’ve done before. But I can’t think of anything else to write about today.

Closest Blue Book Meme
1. Grab the nearest book with a blue cover.
2. Open the book to page 86.
3. Find the first full paragraph.
4. Post the text in your journal along with these instructions.
5. Don’t search around and look for the coolest book you can find, just the closest blue book.

This book was sitting flat on my desk within about four inches of my right hand so it was easy to find.

“She really knows how to write from instinct & innocence. Few women can do this. Joan Kerouac… a new writer on this old horizon. I see me & her cutting around the world in tweeds, yass…Mierschom {sic} pipes with youknowwhat in them, he he.” —Jack Kerouac

from page 87 (page 86 just has a photo) of Women of the Beat Generation

Also, this is a huge list of book titles mixed with band names.
My favorites:
Charlie Daniels and the Chocolate Factory
Horton Hears a Hoobastank
Of Mice and Men at Work
Bare Naked Lunch Ladies
The Agony and the XTC
The Scarlet Pimpernelly Furtado
Life, The Universe and Everything But the Girl
A Tale of Two Bay City Rollers
Green Day and Ham
One Fish, Two Fish, Hootie and the Blowfish
Tesla of the d’Ubervilles
Motley Crüsoe
Doctor ZhivaGoGo’s
A Kraftwerk Orange
Midnight Oil in the Garden of Good and Evil
Oliver Twisted Sister

I ran across this post on this livejournal site. Not really sure where she found it.

So this is almost completely unlike the famous “film buff” quiz proving not your movie coolness but your complete uncoolness for having seen so many movies. An attitude to which I say a hearty and simcere FU. Whatever the hell I feel like doing is cool and if you disagree you can just go suck it. I’m finding this increasing attitude to be a great gift from the gods since I turned 30. It seems to only get better.

Anyway you’re supposed to enter a number as you come across each movie you’ve seen that’s listed in some arbitrary order which makes no sense to me. Apparently if you get over the number 70 you have no life. Mmmmkay. It’s entirely possible that I *own* more than 70 of these so what does that make me? Oh right. An agoraphobe with no job and a satellite dish with all the movie channels. Asterisks are by the ones we own. If I haven’t seen it but we own it that means it belongs to Cody.

Quiz and results in the extended entry…
(more…)

Even though I don’t have a yarn buddy, I thought I should answer these since I’m asking everyone else to.

Related to the Swap

Your favorite colors?
midtone blues/greens, autumnal pallettes, rich jewel tones, pinks/yellows/oranges if they’re not too bright. I’m not a fan of dayglow colors.

Preferred yarn weight (Fingering, Sport, DK, maybe even Worsted)?
Sport and up. Fingering weight is just too small for my chubby fingers.

Do you prefer solid or multicolored yarn?
Multicolored or multitoned solid colors

If your buddy is able to do so, would you like a variegated, self-striping, or self-patterning yarn?
I like em all.

Would you be interested in a wool blend sock yarn (nylon, tencel, silk, acrylic, alpaca, etc.)?
I’d love a wool/tencel or a wool/silk blend. I’ve never used a wool/nylon blend so that would be interesting too. I really shouldn’t have even listed acrylic no one’s going to want that.

Imagine the perfect colorway. What would you name it?
Vincent Van Gogh had a tattoo WHERE?

What was the biggest appeal to you for joining this dye-along?
Spreading the joy of handdyeying yarn, encouraging the creative process and joy in the unexpected while dyeing. Creating new addicts to the craft.

General yarn/fiber questions:

Have you dyed yarn/fiber before?
yep

If so, what’s your favorite dye and method?
I like the random hot pour oven method but I’m going to try the handpainting dishwasher method sometime soon.

Do you spin?
yep

Have you knit socks before?
yes! Yaaay!

Do you use sock yarn for just socks or in other patterns too?
I’m using sock yarn in two non-sock projects atm: some self-patterning fair isle sock yarn for a scarf and some koigu in the shadow shawl

What are some of your favorite yarns?
Noro, Colinette, thick and thin handspun by some amazing handspinners, I’m a recent koigu kult inductee, Mmmanos and Mmmmalabrigo. I love yarn with rich interesting colors and interesting textures.

What yarn do you totally covet?
Colinette Point Five. I know exactly how to spin that kind of thing myself but their colors are just unbelievable. I’d love to get enough of the really nice Rowan cashmerino to be able to make a big sweater for myself

Favorite patterns?
Anything that’s simple to do but looks really impressive. Teva Durham’s Ballet T, Kate Gilbert’s Clapotis, This Shadow Shawl I’m working on.

Any pattern you would love to make if money and time were no object?
I dream of making my own Absolutely Fabulous throw but with all the crazy yarn I have.

Favorite kind of needles (brand, materials, straights or circs, etc)?
I love my denises, I love my needlemaster, I love my smaller addis (I don’t like addi turbos bigger than a 6), I have some great crystal palace bamboos. Wood, plastic, metal all have a use to me depending on the project. My absolute favorite to use though is a pair of handmade Ash 16s with the size burned into the ball at the end with a soldering knife that I got for free with some yarn I got on ebay. They feel soo good in my hands..

If you were a specific kind of yarn, which brand and kind of yarn would you be?
I think I’d probably be some crazy handspun by Reenie & Angela, Natasha, or Pluckyfluff - thick and thin with little fancy lacey bits and some glitter sometimes but other times all twisted up tight.

Nothing to do with knitting/yarn/fiber in any way but seemed kinda fun:

Do you have a favorite candy or mail-able snack?
I don’t really like sweets much. Unless it’s a coffee beverage. I loove salty snacks though.

What’s your favorite animal?
huff huff huff

Do you have pets? What are their species/names/ages?
I have four pets right now.
cat- Kurry / ~18 years old
cat- Phunq / ~14 years old
cat- Melon / ~12 years old
dog- rhodesian ridgeback - Winter / almost 5 years old

If you were a color what color would you be?
a very dark iridescent blue/green with lots of colors and shades deep inside

Describe your favorite shirt (yours or someone else’s)..
Cody and I used to have a shirt that we shared. It was already well-worn when we met and he used to wear it when we talked on the phone a lot. It was a very old Earth Day shirt from his entymology days and had been worn so much that the fibers were really loose and the fabric was really thin but it was perfect to wear, especially when one of us was sick, because it wasn’t too hot but we didn’t freeze to death in it. We used to call it “THE” shirt, and the act of leaving a freshly washed THE shirt for the other one to wear was one of those small daily acts of love that couples do. It started to tear though and neither of us have worn it in years. It’s still in a drawer in the bedroom though. That shirt will not be thrown away.

What is your most inspiring image, flower, or object in nature?
I love the contrast in the colors of New Mexico - reddish earth, scrubby green growth, and bright blue skies. I like unexpected beauty in things that might not look good at first. I love looking into animals’ eyes. Chubby young puppy tummies and kittens with their streetcar antennaed tails.

Tell me the best quote you’ve ever heard or read.
My usual answer is “Life is Serious but Art is Fun”

but one of the more recent lines I really enjoyed was this from the No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency:

It was time to take the pumpkin out of the pot and eat it. In the final analysis, that was what solved these big problems of life. You could think and think and get nowhere, but you still had to eat your pumpkin. That brought you down to earth. That gave you a reason for going on. Pumpkin.

To me it means that you can keep yourself focused and happy in life by concentrating on the little simple pleasures.

Do you have a wishlist?
amazon
crafty
torrid

Anything else you’d like to share with the group today?

Never buy brown paint. You can always make that yourself by mixing two primary colors together.

Here are some additional, less traditional, art images that I have hanging around in my harddrive. So this is part two, the less snooty sibling of the one I posted the other day. As usual if you click on the image there’ll be a full-sized popup.

Zygmunt Frankel

Sas Christian

Erin Susanne Banks

Glen E Friedman

Loretta Lux
(thank you Miss Erin I just couldn’t remember)

from a catalog or something but I liked it.

Beverly was visiting Chicago last weekend and got to spend some time at the Art Institute Museum (I am SO JEALOUS that’s one of my favorite museums in the entire world). She discovered a wonderful lesser-known Van Gogh painting and has created a new really cool meme about our favorite paintings.

This is the bad part about being an art major: I know a lot about art but I don’t know what I like. Because, to me, I can’t always just view things as “good” or “bad” I have to analyze the shit out of something then end up having ambiguous feelings about it. This seems to be the dilemma for most Democrats these days - complete overanalysis of a situation instead of towing the knee jerk reactionary party line. May the gods help those who think too much it seems.

So to get this narrowed down a bit I decided to limit myself to my favorite black and white line drawings or etchings. And, not-surprisingly considering my whole obsession with women in art, they’re primarily line drawings and etchings of the female form. Not exactly idealized forms, but reflections on how women are seen, by the artist, by society, by themselves. Because that’s an issue I’ve been studying for a very long time.

And I’ll try not to write a dissertation on the images, just say what I like about them. So here goes.

from the 1946-47 Femme Maison series, Louise Bourgeois
Women and houses. Female form and domesticity. Caregiver, birthgiver, home. Inexorably linked no matter what kind of advances are made in feminism and the roles of women in society. I knew a woman in college that had this tattooed on the lower right side of her back. She modelled for one of my painting classes. If she hadn’t already had this tattoed I might have come up with it myself. Unfortunately I’d just be a big copycat now.

Le Violon D’ingres, Man Ray
Technically not a line drawing but it’s in black and white anyway. A woman as an object, an instrument. An instument with lines that many regard as beautiful. But an object. I know a woman who wanted to have the f-holes of a violin tattooed just like this photograph. Also brilliant and something I wish I’d thought of first. Yes, all of my art history training is filtered through nudes and the memory of tattoos. No not really.

Femme - Picasso.
The best example that shows the simplicity derived from years of visual training. Four lines. And you know what it is. The stance and everything. I totally want this tattoed on my…ok just kidding.

Sorrow sketch, Van Gogh
One of the saddest drawings I’ve ever seen. That’s what gets me about Vincent - he was the most melancholy frustrated little guy but could see and reflect beauty in nature like no one else. His portraits and self-portraits are always at least a bit sad. But his reflections of nature are always beautiful.

The Mulberry Tree, Van Gogh
This is from one of my other favorite museums in the world, the Norton Simon in Pasadena. Doesn’t it look like its on fire?

Study of female form for scupltures, Henry Moore
I’ve been a fan of Henry Moore for a long time. Luckily I saw a wonderful exhibition of Moore’s work at the Art Gallery of New South Wales in 1992 and got to enjoy a lot of his 2-d work in person. Among them was this great etching. A few years later I managed to find and save up for a licensed lithograph of the same piece at a consignment gallery in Santa Fe.

These are two more of my favorite etchings by Moore.

The sculptor’s hands

Sheep
As someone who lived most of his life in the English countryside, this guy drew and sculpted a lot of sheep. I’d never had any contact with them before. After seeing this exhibit and spending some time on sheep farms in Australia I learned more about them. Now that I actually spin and knit with wool it makes me think of his sheep drawings again.

So those are a few of my favorite images anyway.

I think this is the fourth “four-themed” meme I’ve done. But it was fun and quick to do. I’ve seen this one all over the place.

Four jobs I’ve had:
1. Asst Editor, Electronic Media Editor, Woman Santa Fe Magazine
2. Coffee Cart Barrista, Canyon Road, Santa Fe
3. CS for whole, term, variable, and single premium life insurance policies, John Hancock
4. Disc Jockey, On Air Personality, News Asst Producer for 91.1 FM - a jazz station and saturday morning (pre-grunge) alternative programming in Birmingham

Four movies I can watch over and over:
1. Topsy Turvy
2. Gosford Park
3. Cold Comfort Farm
4. The Philadelphia Story

Four places I’ve lived:
1. Birmingham, Alabama
2. Manly Beach & downtown Sydney, NSW, Australia
3. Yon Sei University International Student Dorms, Seoul, Korea
4. Santa Fe, New Mexico

Four TV shows I love:
1. Monk
2. Huff
3. Will and Grace
4. My Name is Earl (with irony dammit)

Four places I’ve vacationed:
1. Uluru (Ayer’s Rock), Northern Territory, Australia
2. Kyong-ju, Korea
3. Kyoto, Japan
4. Florence, Italy

Four of my favorite dishes:
1. Cody’s Green Chile Cheeseburger Egg Rolls
2. Fessenjoon - Pomegranate Walnut Chicken Stew
3. Spider Rolls - tempura soft shell crab in a sushi roll
4. Muffaletta sandwiches - various spicy deli meats on slices of Italian bread spread with an olive tapenade. Beautiful.

Four sites I visit daily:
1. Bloglines
2. Flickr
3. Craftster
4. Salon.com

Four places I would rather be right now:
Honestly I can’t think of any. I mean, I’d like to visit a quiet beach sometime and stick my feet in the sand. Or visit Italy again. But I’m pretty happy where I am. I would like where I am to be cleaner, more organized, and have a nicer yard but that’s a different deal.

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.