By God, it works.

Thank you, Boombella.

Edited to add video!

Wait one cotton, pickin' minute...

Have I misspelled Sweetener this ENTIRE time?? Did I accidentally change it? I know I spelled it right when I first made the blog as I LOOKED IT UP. Am I going crazy?

Submishe

Thanks to being browbeaten into compliance, I've submitted my shawl (despite the fact that it's still not flat and thin enough and needs to be blocked again) to the Puyallup Fair to be judged in the Home Arts category. I love that quilting, cross-stitching, sewing, pickling, canning, knitting, crocheting, etc are still called the home arts. I've been trying to think up other, more suitable names for them, like:

1. You've Become your Mother Arts
2. Go Home and Fix your Husband a Drink Arts
3. Would You Like Some Cool Whip on that Jello Arts
4. Jesus is my Accessory Arts
5. Feminism Never Happened Arts
6. I am a Feminist and I'm Doing this Because It's Fun, I Swear Arts
7. I have Fourteen Cats Arts

I also have to say that I was pretty amused by the guidelines for submission. One area the judges will pay special attention to is cleanliness of the submitted piece of knitted, crocheted, quilted or cross-stitched work. I'm picturing a nicotine-stained afghan knitted in Red Heart Pound of Love acrylic with bits of Spam still stuck to it. The image is very clear.

Heartachy

It's a cosmic punishment for being so smug when he first came home with us. I know that. That's what happens when you have pride. You get part of your cuticle torn away from your thumb. Poor Christian.

We're having some aggression issues with Sasha. We were foolish (so foolish!) when we first brought him home, and we have unleashed upon ourselves Nature, red in tooth and claw. Literally. I doubt that Sasha had any structure in his previous homes, if his behavior is any indication. He gets frustrated very, very quickly and his moods can change faster than a teenage girl's. All of the bird books espouse structure and consistency in the same way that books about human children do. They need rules, the books say, they need to rely upon their humans for the guidance as well as for food and shelter as, in their captive situations, they cannot provide any of these things for themselves. Don't begin patterning your bird with negative behavior when you first bring them home as it will lead to problems down the road. Carefully monitor your bird's posture and vocalizations as they will tell you what your bird is feeling and how to respond to it. Yep, yep, all true.

The charming and hilarious video below? Oh, if we could only go back and undo what has been done. He's nesting now, trying to build a home for a mate that will never come. He's mercurial and irritable and wants everything his way because we've set no boundaries. Christian can no longer pick him up from the ground or play with him in the same manner as he could even a week ago.

Birds bite because that's the only way they know how to communicate certain messages. This morning, Christian tried to step Sasha up onto a t-perch. Sasha didn't want to go, but Christian persisted, as he had always been able to do in the past. Sasha latched onto his thumb and wouldn't let go. I had to intervene with another hand-held perch and put Sasha back in his cage to allow Christian to tend to his very badly battered hand. It was torn in two places and bitten in several others. It's gotten very hard to tell which bites are new and which are old as Sasha will preen the scabs off the old bites if given half a chance.

It's a hard thing, wanting an animal to love you because you love it. We know Sasha is very attached to Christian, but fear of being bitten has changed a relationship that they both had grown to enjoy and rely upon. We now have to totally restructure how we interact with Sasha, try to establish a wholly different relationship, and that will be hard. We had gotten so complacent about being able to pick him up off of his cage and play with him that it will be a wrench to have to be more disciplined about using hand-held perches. I'm actually quite heartbroken that this poor bird that has had such an inconsistent life up until now has to endure more change because we were too lazy to pattern our interactions with him properly from the first day we brought him home.

Kakapo

Thanks to Rich (and, via him, Douglas Adams) and my obvious and compensatory (yes, I know about 50 people lately have said I need a kid) love for and obsession with parrots, I've become a little fixated on the Kakapo (fluffy bunny), the extremely endangered, flightless and utterly weird New Zealand parrot (pooper head).  Now, my favorite living artist, Eleanor Grosch, has a print of the Kakapo (chicken butt), and all proceeds from purchases of the print go to Kakapo (squidgy doo) rescue.  

She's my hero.

American Arrogance

There is a fine line between observing a problem and creating one. This is a perfect example of the latter. Considering that the folks unwillingly sucked into this controversy are actually involved with animal welfare and conservation at home (and here, as one of the ambassadors went to EVERGREEN and lives here half the year) and chose to come to our beloved zoo as an opportunity to share their work, the argument that they are "part of the exhibit" is offensive and ludicrous, especially as it implies that the very people who are working the hardest to protect their own environment and who have traveled around the world to help us greedy bastard consumers understand that our wastefulness has far-reaching consequences are naive enough to be hoodwinked into a being part of a Victorian sideshow.

Mad as Pants

In the British sense of the word, I mean:

Knitting my Shroud

You all know about my fixation with alpacas. During the first visit to the farm of long-lashed will-destroyers, I purchased from the farm store a beautiful hank of dark turquoise fingering weight alpaca yarn spun from the animals at the farm with a shimmery metallic thread plied in. I debated long about what to knit with it, as it was very expensive, $36 a hank, and I wanted to make something particularly lovely and worthy of the cost and effort. I couldn't decide and couldn't decide and kept buying more and more of the yarn every time we'd drive to Bellingham to visit the IL's and would stop at the farm (well, I'd take the exit without any say from Christian as I usually drive and he is at my mercy). No one else was buying it, and it was all one dye lot, so I kept accumulating it at $36 a pop until I had four of the five hanks available, which equalled 1,460 yards of yarn. That's a lot. I just couldn't bear to knit anything boring with it, so I kept swatching and frogging and setting it aside to think on it.

Late last year, while reading one of the many knitting magazines that litter our bedroom floor and make me twitch either with disgust from the hideous waste of perfectly good wool or with lust over yarn I could NEVER afford, I came across an article on knitted lace. There were pictures of the most incredible shawls I'd ever seen, straight out of Queen Victoria's dress wardrobe. Catherine the Great would have gone to war over some of these pieces (she apparently was given a gift of a spectacular wedding-ring shawl from the Hebrides and had the eyes of the knitter put out, ugh, so she couldn't knit any more, but the knitter's daughter had learned the craft and passed down her skills to following generations, bless her). Anyway, I really wanted a good project to be portable and beautiful, so I found a pattern I liked from KnitPicks.com (as they had really jumped on the lace train (snork)), the candle-flame shawl pattern, and brought it on the plane with me to England last January. I only finished about a few inches on that trip as we were so busy, but I had lots of time this last Spring in which to knit and finished the body in about three months. It wouldn't normally have taken nearly so long, but I had to periodically set it aside to work on other projects, like hedgehogs and sweater sets.

Once it was done, though, it seemed a little drab. I had purchased second hand a book on traditional knitted shawl patterns and the author had charted out some beautiful edges. She also included instructions on how to actually knit the edging onto the body of the completed work by picking up edge stitches every other row. As I really wanted to make this damn thing spectacular (I had visions of walking into a performance and hearing everyone gasp with awe and admiration of the sheer gorgeousity of the thing), I picked a wide border that I thought would compliment the overall pattern of the body. I had also, unfortunately, read an article about beading your knitting, and HAD to buy Czech glass beads in the same color as the yarn to add to the yarn overs in the edging. Yeah. Just a little mad.

So, I threaded on all the beads and started to knit, and it took a really, really long time. I fortunately realized fairly early in the trim knitting that I'd run out of yarn and had to ask the farm to send me the final hank of yarn that had, fortunately, not been purchased. I was getting so close to the end by the last week of July that I spent six hours knitting last Monday while Shelly and I watched the Thin Man movies I had received from Christian for our anniversary (thanks, honey!). Well, after seven and a half months, 5,470 feet of yarn and 1,500 pre-strung beads, I finished the damn thing. And boy, did it look terrible. However, it's supposed to. Lace knitting looks like a pile of twisted ass when finished, as it has to be aggressively blocked to lie flat and look proper. I read all the lace blocking instructions on reputable sites and decided to make my own blocking frame out of PVC and eye hooks. It took about five hours last Friday night to cut the pipe, drill the holes and screw in the hooks. This is what it looked like (and it's modular so I can take it apart to store and make any size to allow for varied garment blocking):

I had to soak the shawl in warm water and mild detergent, and then gently press out the excess water with a towel. Bask in the lumpy shrivellness:

To get all the little edge points to stick out and get the body to lay flat, I strung each point with twine and ran the twine through the hooks:

Christian helped me, and once all the twine was in place, I pulled it tight and began to see the incredible definition of the lace pattern in the body and on the edge:

I cannot tell you how this sight made me feel. It was so lovely and graceful-looking that I could barely believe that gallumphing me had knitted it.

When I took it off the frame after it had completely dried, it only sprang back the tiniest bit. All of the edging peaks stayed peaky and the pattern definition stayed defined. The pretty beads make a wonderful clacking sound when they hit together and give the piece a lovely drape, so my efforts were rewarded.

The final measurements of the thing top 9 feet long by 3.5 feet wide. Should provide me with plenty of coverage, if I can only think of something worthy with which to wear it. Maybe I'll have to make a dress. Hmmmm...

On the radio, sounding REALLY annoying...

The topic for the second hour of KUOW's Weekday was birds in the home, so I HAD to call in and put in a plug for parrot adoption. You can listen to it here. I'm about 35 minutes in. Do I always sound that over-eager and knowitallish? Ugh. Still, good topic.

And what a lovely day it is, too.

Today is a momentous day for two notable reasons:

#1, my mother in law, the lovely and charming Lynn, who not only gave me her son but many knitting tips and tools, was born. May she remember this day for all the glorious things sure to come to her, deserving woman that she is. Lynn, may you ride all day in perfect weather and only come home because there's an excellent bottle of wine and a cake waiting for you with a new puzzle to complete afterwards. Sal, do you hear me?

#2, the muffin head was born, fluffy pooper bunny that he is.

There is much to celebrate.

Six years ago, on this very day (tomorrow)...

Hi honey. Tomorrow is our anniversary, but since we'll be in Bellingham celebrating your mom's birthday, I thought I'd write this today.

Six years of marriage. Apparently, the sixth anniversary gift should be candy, at least traditionally. The modern gift is iron, but you already have several shot puts and I bought you a hammer (against my will) a couple of Christmases ago. Oddly enough, recommended sixth anniversary vacations are Hershey, PA and Walt Disney World, so I guess our upcoming vacation in WDW was meant to be, although I think the best evidence for that is the $60 hotel room price we all got.

I was thinking about our marriage the other day, and I got kind of giggly. That's seems to be my usual response when thinking of us. I giggle like I'm twelve and the boy I like just looked at me, except I'm 34 and the boy I like lives with me and I get to wake up with him every day. The comment I always hear about the two of us as a couple is that we seem made for each other, and I think that's because we're always laughing. It's kind of a miracle that, considering how easy it is for me to lose perspective on, well, everything and become so anxious and clamped down, laughter is such the predominant theme in our marriage that I can't think of us without chuckling, but in a happy, non-Mr. Burns, non-demoniacal kind of way. I don't know how you've managed to turn me into this person who not only laughs all the time but who can laugh about things I used to cry over. That's practically a miracle.

We've both grown a lot in the last year. We each took new jobs, causing our income to plummet. However, you never let the money be a factor in your insistence that I work only half time so I can sing and not want to fling myself off the roof of our house in sheer dramatic exhaustion. You've become so handy, even more so than you were before, and good Lord, am I grateful. I love that you're so competent around the house that all I have to do is ask you to auger the bathtub and it's done. You seem to take great pleasure in being "the man of the house," and I'm shocked that I don't mind. Well, not really. I like the fact that, despite what I say to the contrary at 1 am when we've been hanging shelves all day, you simply MUST screw everything into a stud. When that inevitable earthquake comes, that picture of our house on the bird room wall won't budge. Of course, I also like that I can put together furniture and such and you let me do it without standing to one side with a beer in your hand criticizing how I used your drill.

One thing that happened this last year, though, really defines for me what our marriage is, and what makes it my lifeline. I had slowly been becoming resistant to my anxiety medication, and I was putting off going to the doctor. We were getting ready for bed one night and I was particularly ornery and unwilling to put away laundry, and, while most other people would get upset or argue in the same situation, you looked at me and said, very calmly, that you could tell that I was much more anxious and upset than when my medication was working, and that you were going to harass me until I went to the doctor because you hated to see me so unhappy. You were right, and I knew you were right, and I finally went to the doctor because you wanted me to. It's funny how sometimes that's what it takes for me to do things I know I have to do. I won't do them for myself, but I'll do them for you. I'd do anything for you.

I love you, sweetie. Happy anniversary.

So many kinds of pretty.

Shelly and I went raspberry picking (my favorite, favorite thing) on Tuesday, and, while the recent rainy weather caused about half of the berries on the bush to mold (is this summer? IS IT, I ASK YOU??), we did get about 10 pounds, which is a third of what I usually pick.  I did manage to put up 15 containers of freezer jam, but I only had enough to bake one pie, with a lone bowl of fruit left over which, even after having been refrigerated, molded completely in one day.  Still, we had lovely weather and talked about musical theater and sex.  No bad can come from that.

Pretty, pretty jam.  Too bad peanut butter never, ever enters our house.  And that hazelnut/chocolate spread in the closet, Christian?  That's where it stays.

I also finished the tunic dress for my friend Laura's birthday.  She does burlesque and I wanted something that could be saucy and easily removable, if necessary:

Note the ribbon and pearly buttons. Those were my addition. I'm so creative.

The whole dress is quite lovely and I want to knit one for myself.  It would be much easier this time, as the unconscionable number of mistakes in the bottom trim pattern I found after knitting and frogging it three times got corrected when I charted out the pattern MYSELF (which took as long as knitting the dress in the first place:

But so, so pretty.  I hope she gets to rip it right off.

Domestic Goddess

Teenage girls usually rail against becoming like their mothers.  The idea of being the kind of person who wears pantyhose every day is terrifying to the "likelikelike" mentality of the 15-year-old.  Then you move out on your own and get a job that requires you to look nice every day and thusly need to iron your clothes at 7 am and then you realize that nylon and lycra are the only things keeping you from being lumpy and you understand why your mother owned 25 pairs of Hanes, the kind that you get in an egg from the drugstore.  Why were they always suntan?

Anyway, when I was 20, I didn't want a house, I didn't want to cook, I hated the idea of a yard and I never hemmed a thing.  Now, I have a house that I love a little too much to be healthy, I still don't like weeding, but I do it because I don't want to look like a hillbilly, I could cook all day long and I made a skirt on Friday night because I wanted one to wear shopping with Tina on Saturday (and I now have commissions by two fellow choristers to make the same skirt for them).  My motivation in making the skirt was that I didn't want to go shopping downtown and look slobby.  Mom always dressed up to go shopping.  She said she wanted to look nice so she could wouldn't feel embarrassed, aaaaaand that's why I did it, too.  That and I didn't want to be sneered at by the salesclerks.  I even went shopping for the shopping.  I had to buy a pair of pink and white shoes and a lightweight cardigan that would match my new skirt.  I even wore makeup and fixed my hair.  When I met Tina for breakfast before the shopping, she was also wearing a skirt and a necklace and said she didn't want to look slovenly for shopping, either.  Well done, Mom, the subliminal messaging worked.  I refuse to wear hosiery from the drugstore, however.  

In Print

Oh yeah, I forgot to mention this in the last post.

Odds

For someone who doesn't enjoy gambling, I am a glutton for chance. Singing at my level is all about odds. You do as many auditions as possible and hope that, if you're singing well enough, the odds will be in your favor. If you're of a common voice type, you have lower odds. If you're a tenor, the odds are much higher. I'm somewhere in the middle. However, the odds have been oddly (hee) with me this summer and I've gotten roles from my last two auditions. Both auditions were pretty good and I feel lately that I can keep it together long enough to sing well, at least for the ten minutes in front of the panel. The performing part is great, it's just the auditioning that sucks my ass.

Christian has to keep forcing me to go to auditions. I schedule them, and then, the day of, I whinge and complain and whine that no one will ever cast me and I'm too fat and why do I bother (as I've stated in NUMEROUS earlier posts) and then Christian withers me with a glance (all while squeezing his Hard Woody (sorry, IRON Woody is the proper name according to Christian, which is MUCH better) grip strengthener so he can throw further as he never backs out of anything) and I go and then, afterwards, painfully and minutely dissect everything I've done and drive myself into the ground with my convincing description of my own ineptitude. Usually what follows is a letter or email saying that there wasn't a part for me and I swear it all off all over again. But , recently, I decided that I wanted to be a sidekick. I don't want to be the lead. Too much pressure. I want to quip from the background and be in it with the butler. My auditions got much better after that. Fewer unrealistic expectations. Seems to be working. Sweet.

Loquacious Lolly

We're trying to capture all of the words and expressions that were obviously taught to Sasha by an owner that could only have been an old man with lots of dogs and cats.

Insufficiently Saucy

I can tell you that, when I first saw a photo of a knitted bikini, I was aghast. Not only would any yarn one could use to knit such a tawdry waste of fiber lose, when wet, whatever stitch structure kitting gave it, but my God, would a knit bikini be ITCHY. While I still think knitted swimwear is utterly retarded and obviously the product of some silly little skinny dilettante knitter who wanted to give the needles a go because Vogue said it was in but didn't want to invest the time to knit anything larger than your average pocket square, I now find myself adoring the idea of knitted lingerie. Same shapes, more understandable function and less water-induced droop.

There are a couple of recently published books on lingerie and related scandalous underthings, but when I looked at them, I noticed a real lack of any delicacy and, well, cleverness in the stitches used and in the weights and textures. Everything seemed to be in stockinette stitch, which is the average stitch used in a sweater, and were made with mid-weight yarn and large needles. Now, pardon me, but, while I adore my concealing yet fashionable warm outerwear, I don't wear it to feel particularly slutty or exhibitionistic. When thinking about knitted lingerie, I imagined mysterious and complicated lace patterns that allow one to catch forbidden glimpses of skin underneath before the fabric shifts, making one wonder if one saw anything at all, all knit on tiny needles using thin, seemingly fragile yarn that is deceptively strong engough to withstand some good use. It would have to drape and have enough structure to stay put without having too much heft. In one particular book, the items depicted all looked as though they were made for Soviet brides before the Cold War ended and all the yarn anyone could get was wool from the Steppes and so the bra sets and peignoirs look as though they could be used as body armor in case the wearer got got in a stray gun fight with NATO forces. I know the authors were going for garments in the STYLE of lingerie, but the camisoles that "could be worn under a suit or nothing at all!" look as though they'd keep you warm through the cold, New England winter, with their ribbed edges and obvious lack of any kind of lingerie-like elements. Where's the lace? Where's the sense that the garment could be ripped off at any second? Sheesh, folks, I understand that we all like to think that we own pieces of clothing we can wear with everything, but a nightie that looks like the sweater I'm knitting for Christian isn't lingerie, no matter how low you make the back.

I only found one piece in a magazine aimed at the young, hip knitting audience that will work for the intended purpose. It's a knitted lace sheath that looks like a flapper dress and will be given to my friend who recently completed her Burlesque course. I did have this glorious notion of knitting delicious and inspiring underthings for all my friends' birthdays and such, but to do so, I'll now have to turn my hand to designing, as well. The stuff I've seen wouldn't inspire anything but a cross-country snowshoeing jaunt.

Vocab.

Things Sasha says:

Sasha
Pretty bird
Come here
Go away (mainly said to me)
Goodnight
Here, kitty, kitty, kitty
Step up
Arrrrrr
A variety of other, unintelligible words we can't quite discern

Things he does:

Barks like a dog
Shakes his head and growls, as though playing with a rawhide toy
Meows
Clucks

All shall hopefully be taped soon.

Wrong again.

Sasha is a boy. Break out the Stogies.

Repercussions

We got one of those calls last night that I live in terror of, the bad news phone call informing me of some problem that will cost an assload of money and my peaceful slumber. Our insurance company, with whom I've had my car insurance for 18 years, has been bought out by another company and that company will not cover me because of my driving history. I now have to go with a "high-risk" insurance company that will cost double per month and makes me feel like a serial drunken driver. Last year was a very bad year, indeed.