Start 'em early.

In this big old world, there's a lot of systems. And a lot of ways to rebel against them. I've tried many of them, though not all.

Back in the day, I had an anthropology professor float the idea that the TRUE rebels were the Ted Kazynskis and the Jefferey Dahmers. THOSE were the ones truly living outside society's rules. He had a point.

I had no desire to rebel quite so extremely.

However.

Sometimes, be it school, or the legal system, or the government, sometimes, you've just got to let them know that you think something's bullshit. There's an art to it. To make the point, make it well, but do it in such a way that you don't completely fuck yourself over in the process.

Hence my letters to congresstwats and senatetwits.

And so, this brings me, inevitably, to raising the Goober.

I firmly believe that children need outlets. You can't expect them to behave ALL the time. So it's best to channel the misbehavior, than to let it spew forth randomly. She's allowed to go outside and throw things, and run around yelling, and we've even made up a nonsense name to call each other and everyone else (sillyhead). With public school easing up next fall, I'm working on teaching her how to deal with all THAT nonsense, as well.

Then, in her school work, a ridiculous project cropped up. A group of six year old kindergarteners were supposed to make up a "Presidential Action Plan" and write it down. It was meant as a writing assignment, so I figured, so long as she writes SOMETHING and turns it in, it's completed. So I wrote up a little thing, and had the Goobie copy it onto her paper.

Oh yeah. I'm totally ready to be That Mom.

Nothing owrks.

Was gonna fix that typo in the title, but I thought, no, that's really how it's gone around here.

I finished the yarn.

Can't decide whether I'm gifting it, or keeping it, or flinging it. It's spun really unevenly, and there are fuzzy bits where the plying went wrong or there was gunk in the single:

Not my best work. Not close.

But, screw it, it's done, at least. Now I think I'm going to get going on my annual winter socks that never got done last winter. I've got the raw material.

It's merino silk blend. And when spun right, the silk acts like nylon.

---

Not much else. We're slogging through school, and the annoyance of it. Had a major migraine hit, made doctor's appointment, am working toward seeing a neuro. (Plus there's that maybe-seizure maybe-migraine WTFery at the movies last week). Blah, blah, fuck, hell, poop.

Anyway. Some Goob funnies.

First, I had a pair of scissors out on the porch this morning. (Because there was a KNOT in the yarn I'm using to knit this color-gradient scarf, and cutting it out DESTROYED the color flow, so I am FURIOUS, because THE COLOR SHIFT WAS THE ONLY REASON I WAS WORKING WITH THIS CRAP YARN.) Ahem. Scissors. They're little-kid safety scissors, the blades maybe an inch and a half long. I keep them around to cut steeks and stuff like that. They were laying on the seat of the swing, next to where I was working. The Goob says "Can you please move those scissors so I don't sit on them and accidentally cut my butt off?"

You gotta love a request like that.

Then, I was making dinner, and she spotted a can of bread crumbs. She looked inside and said "Oh, chicken powder!"

Now I'm imagining instant chickens, just add water.

Bock bock, motherfucker.

...but is it ART?

(Still recovering from the movie. Is going to require a visit with doctors, and may turn into quite an annoyance. Or nothing at all. Still, the movie rocked. If I got fucked up, at least I got fucked up watching an excellent movie.)

And so, inevitably, I come to "Art Yarn". I've been pondering this post for, oh, at least a year now, and still don't really know what to say. If you like, you can go read what I've said about art before, HERE. I've never quite gotten "art for art's sake" as a philosophy, applied to ANYTHING. In fact, I greatly prefer art that's useful, so I'm a huge fan of the decorative arts. Related, I'm never going to say a yarn or a textile or something made of fiber can't be art. Anything can be art if enough thought and effort and skill are applied to a project, and everything lines up just right, and the magic happens.

But that doesn't mean you can just call something art and I'm gonna believe it. (Please look at the Dada art movement if you want the foundation of my side of this argument. I get that they were trying to get people to look at things differently, and in that they succeeded, but Duchamp's "Fountain" is still a freaking urinal.)

The point of this blog post isn't to point and laugh. I'm using pictures of yarn (credited, of course) that is up for sale. I believe that when you put something up for sale, you offer it for critical examination, so for us to look at these yarns in such a way is fair. It's not like digging through someone's Ravelry page, finding their first spun yarn and sneering at it. And I'm not posting pictures of the really ridiculous stuff. You can hit Regretsy for that, or just search Etsy yourself.

So. Art yarn. Here's one I ran across last night that I thought legitimately fit the term:

This is called "Koi Pond" and can be found HERE. The spinner herself calls it a "Themed" yarn and I really think that's a better term - She tried to capture a koi pond during feeding time, and did quite a good job of it.

Themed yarns. I like that term. It covers a lot of relevant ground without going all "I'M AN ARTISTE!"

For instance:

This is "Vitreous Humor" from Insubourdiknit.

Or another of my favorites, "Clouds":

From Moonrover, HERE.

Is it art? Or just really cool themed yarn? I sincerely can't decide. The same goes for textured handspun. Is it "Art Yarn" or just nice, textured yarn?

I do think a lot of sellers are doing themselves a disservice by using the term "Art Yarn" because many people have begun to roll their eyes at the term.

I have a theory, or an analogy, or something, about yarns like this:

(From Pluckyfluff HERE.)

It's like freeform jazz. You can observe it, and you can appreciate the skill involved, but it's really more about the act of creation itself. It's a celebration of taking fluff and turning it into something else.

Maybe the celebration of Making Stuff is the basis of all art.

What's prompted all this thought is a set of books.

"Intertwined" by Lexi Boeger/Pluckyfluff:

And "Spin Art" by Jacey Boggs/Insubourdiknit:

Intertwined is an examination of the creative process, more than it's a spinning book. There is instruction in there, about technique, but it's mostly about inspired-by and upcyled-that.

Spin Art is one of the best technical spinning books I've ever seen. It's up there with Judith MacKenzie and Abby Franquemont. Really. There is physics and science in there, and a great deal of tech and detail, all presented in a way that's a thousand times more accessible than The Aldon Amos Book of Spinning. Seriously. Jacey explains the potential problems of twist in thick-and-thin yarns with two diagrams and a couple sentences that make way more sense than Amos' full page on the subject. I've already improved my regular spinning just reading the book.

Conclusion? I still don't know if it's art. But some of it's pretty cool, and the textured yarn techniques are interesting.

At least it's not a urinal.

Spinning fluff.

I'm spinning, and blogging, early today. Later I'm going to see the Avengers and expect to spend two days drooling into a pillow while my nervous system tries to recover. This is why I see maybe one movie a year in theaters. But for the Avengers, I'm willing to drool a bit. (Thanks to RDJ, I will probably drool DURING the movie, too, but for a different reason.)

Okay, fluff. When I say fluff, I mean the usually short-staple, very small micron count fibers that float all over and get stuck to everything when you try to spin them. It doesn't entirely have to do with staple or micron count, though. Wool, for instance, usually doesn't fluff and float, because of its molecular charge and the scales on the surface of the fibers that work much like microscopic velcro.

No, fluff is the stuff you accidentally trail through the house, stick to your husband's Navy uniforms (that was amusing - for me, not him), get in your eyes, your mouth and nose. In my experience, they include nylon, bamboo and carbon fiber, silk, some camelids and angoras. In the case of the protein fibers, it can depend on how they're processed, too. Alpaca top, for instance, has been smoothed, combed, and steamed or ironed flat. Flat on a single-fiber level. With no crimp to help the fibers hold on to each other, you're back to fluff, and finding it in the cat's eyes.

Currently I'm battling the nylon in the top I'm spinning. Here's how I'm mostly winning.

Weapon one:

A lint roller. Don't know how common these are outside the US, but here you can get them nearly everywhere, even the grocery store (in the pet aisle, usually). It's essentially a wide strip of sticky tape, wound up on itself with the sticky side out. Roll it over yourself, and it picks up lint, cat hair, and, woohoo, fluff. I keep one on my spinning table, and when I'm done spinning, before I move at all, I go over myself AND THE CHAIR to pick up the fluff before I track it all over the house. Make it automatic; before you get up for anything short of the house being on fire, de-fluff yourself. On bad days, I even roller my hands and hair.

For all the little knotty bits and snarls you pull off the fiber as you spin, there are two, no, three options. One, you can stick them on the lint roller. Two, you can stick them to your clothes and roller them up with the rest of the fluff. Or, you can have an auxiliary spot to stick the gunk. Wool works best. Currently, I'm using a Crazy Zauberball, because it was there.

You can see a little string of pink fluff sitting on top of it. No, that's not a marble, there. It's a quartz sphere. I can't be the only one with a crystal ball on my spinning table, can I? That's also paper medical tape in the green thing - handy for wrapping around sore fingers so you can spin anyway.

A related issue is fluff in the eyes. My greatest trick, that I'm passing on to you: NEVER SPIN WHITE OR BEIGE FLUFF. Ever. Once it's in your eye, you can't find the damn stuff. Colored fibers usually show against your eyeball and are much easier to pick out. It also pays to cultivate your eye doctor; many are willing to take you in between appointments and pick out fibers you can't get. Knit them a scarf for Christmas, they'll be your slave. (The one time I resorted to the optometrist, he didn't even charge me.)

Most of this stuff can be applied to knitting, as well. For instance, when I pick blobs of unspun lint out of the yarn I'm knitting, I stick it to the arm of the couch. Once I'm up and moving later, it's very easy to grab the lint roller and run it over the couch a couple times. It might even dislodge a few cat hairs, as a bonus.

And then, silence.

Or perhaps crankiness. And a shitload of rain.

There's a blog post in the works for sometime this week, an international knitting knews kind of thing. But there's more research to be done, and at the moment I'm whacked out on Benadryl from all the freaking allergens and general crap.

And so, I ramble.

Today the Goob's schoolwork vaguely discussed the moon landings and the concept of astronomy and the study of it. Which made me snort, because the kid and I have been reading her astronomy book for a week or so now, with details on the Hubble Space Telescope and the Large Megallanic Cloud and all sorts of DETAIL.

Next year I want to try "real school" for the Goobie. I figure, before I can REALLY say whether it's working or not, we need to try it. Sort of a comparison study. We've done guided home schooling, now we're going to try school schooling. If that doesn't work, I may try completely-off-the-grid schooling, meaning I make up the curricula myself. But, the kid soaks up information like a sponge, and is already ahead of the game in science and reading and social studies. The real issue is where she'll thrive. We'll figure it out, yet.

---

It looks like maybe I'm going to the Great Lakes Fiber Show at the end of May. Traditionally, every time I try to go to some kind of fiber frolic, something horrible happens like having to replace the hot water heater or the engine in the husbeast's truck, or I've had a month long migraine, or something. Very tentative. But I mentioned it to my mother-in-law, and she wants to go.

The discussion was rather amusing. I sent her the link and gave her the date and asked if she was game. She was sort of like "well, I don't know... it's like a county fair? animals and stuff?" I said (paraphrasing this roughly) "There's a market place." My MIL paused. "There's YARN?" she asked. "Yes. And spinning fiber, and many other good things." That was all it took. MIL was in.

With luck, we will both make it, and will be there Saturday morning and early afternoon. We hope.

Unless the heat pump/AC unit in the house goes out.

Knock on some wood, people.

Continued adventures!

Such as they are.

Lately I've had a major case of Blog Choke. People tell me my blog is fun and they like it, and the more I hear it, the more I feel like I should be doing Important Writing. So I try to come up with earth-shattering topics, and stall at the six-hours-of-research phase. Glub.

A couple weeks ago, I went through and read random blog posts I've done, and, as YOU know, I blog about all kinds of stuff, from Important to nothing to WTF?? It seemed to work. My brain is random enough, I guess.

Right.

The bloody damned rocks. Remember the goddamn rocks?

The goat fucking, shitball rocks?

They're mostly still there. Fuckers.

I thought I'd be able to pick up the rocks around the edges (kinda did that), then use the landscaping fabric underneath to haul it all out in a clump. BUT NO. THE DAMNED FABRIC IS ROTTEN. I get up enough of an edge to get hold of, lift, and THE FUCKER TEARS OFF.

AAAARGH.

So we're down to raking them into shovels and lifting them out that way. Which will only take THE REST OF THE FUCKING SUMMER.

Fuck it, we're gonna rip out another of the beds that DOESN'T contain rocks, so we can actually plant some damned broccoli before September.

At any rate, in the midst of my mutterings and rantings, I was thinking about wheelbarrows and other assorted bits of equipment I could use to haul the damned rocks, after I got them out of the flower bed. It all came down to memories of my mother gardening. Instead of a wheelbarrow, she used my wagon. It was one of those nice, sturdy sixties-built wagons, of heavy steel. She hauled peat moss, plants, weeds, you name it, all over the yard with that thing. As often as not, when I'd climb in it to play, there'd be dirt in there from Mom hauling stuff around.

I mentioned this to the husbeast, and we wound up at the farm supply store soon after.

Yes, we're so far out in the boonies we have a farm supply.

It reminds me of where I grew up; I can speak this language. Other than some mild culture shock, it's quite fun.

After some poking around, the husbeast and I found a little wagon-type dealie in the back of the store. Bearings on the wheels, squishy air-filled tires, a plastic waterproof bin with a really slick dump feature. You can even take the handle off and hitch it to a tractor - which we already have.

Mom would approve.

To christen it, I need to haul the Goober around in it.

Aluminum

Because the hub turned on a show about it tonight, and metal is an ongoing interest of mine. And because you probably have aluminum knitting needles and/or crochet hooks. So it's nearly kinda-sorta relevant.

Aluminum is the third most common element on our planet. Unfortunately, it is VERY reactive, likes to combine with other things, and is almost impossible to find in pure form. For that reason, even though it is EVERYWHERE, aluminum was, for many years, more expensive than gold or platinum. No, seriously.

Because of the reactivity, and the rarity of pure aluminum, the history is really weird.

Alum - aluminum mixed with potassium and sulfur - goes way back in our history. It was used medicinally, and as a mordant for dyeing fibers and fabrics. Still is. It's used in pickling, in preserving, all kinds of stuff. But because of all the crazy molecules it likes to form, it wasn't until the 1820s that aluminum was identified as its own little atom.

Not long after, they realized there was aluminum in bauxite:

But it wasn't until the 1880s that someone figured out a way for it to be extracted from bauxite in any useful way. So for that sixty-ish year period, aluminum was a big fucking deal.

The Washington Monument is capped with it:

Because, really, when you're building giant phallic symbols to celebrate how awesome your nation is, what else do you put on the top, but the most expensive thing you can think of? At the time, it was the largest piece of aluminum ever cast. (Given the hub's background in industry, looking at that now, I find it completely hilarious. I'd love to see their reaction to a giant hunk of milled aircraft aluminum.)

In 1886, the Hall–Héroult process was invented. It pretty much revolutionized industry methods and products. For all people like to go on about steam engines and electricity, without cheap aluminum, the world as we know it today would not exist.

In 1888, the world's first aluminum plant was opened, right here in Pittsburgh. They couldn't refine it fast enough - no matter how much they made, the world wanted more to use. And luckily for us, since it's so common, we've been able to continue refining it with no end in sight.

Not just industry. Limeys? You know this statue?

The Anteros statue in Picadilly Circus was cast from, yes, aluminum. One of the first known statues of its kind, made in 1893. Since we can just refine more, we won't have to melt it down for beer cans, like the Romans did to their statuary.

So, next time you're knitting with aluminum needles? Show them a little respect. And wish it was 1850, so you could sell them and go on a round-the-world tour with the proceeds.

Books!

Or rather, kid books.

About, oh, six weeks ago, I bought this:

It's a book about the periodic table of the elements. It's from the Basher Scicence Series of books, and aimed for, oh, eight year olds? Thereabouts.

It was intended for me. I'm still working at teaching myself chemistry, and thought maybe a children's book would lay out the periodic table in a way that, finally, made sense to me.

No luck.

I think I'm going to start treating the periodic table as a sort of map - a picture of stuff, so to speak, rather than an actual chart put into sensible grids. It's the damned electron shells. I keep trying to UNDERSTAND them, and really, I've learned from algebra, I need to give up on understanding and just memorize the damn stuff.

Right.

But then a fun thing happened. The Goober got hold of the book. And since it had illustrations and cartoons in it, she decided it was HER book, and insisted I read it to her. For a couple weeks, every night we would take a group/column from the periodic table and read about them. I have no idea how much of it she really understood, but I feel we're probably one step closer to a particle accelerator in the basement.

With all this in mind, I got a couple other Basher science books and let the kid pick which one she wanted to read, first.

We've run through the planets, the space probes and rovers, the Oort Cloud and the Kupier Belt. Now we're on to stars - types and formations and constellations. She's loving every minute of it. With all the books in the series, we're probably set on bedtime reading material until Christmas.

I feel like I'm dealing with a miniature version of my own brain. Which is both very cool, and kind of intimidating.

Seed stitch VS. Moss stitch VS. other stuff.

Over on Twitter this morning, we were discussing, well, seed stitch and related stuff. And, I don't know if it's a US to UK to Australia terminology thing, or if it's a two week migraine melting my brain, but I thought I'd clarify in more than 140 characters. With illustrations!

For the purposes of this discussion, I is a knit stitch, * is a purl stitch. AS YOU LOOK AT THE FABRIC. Not necessarily according to direction knit, but what type of stitch is facing you when you look at it.

This is the scarf I'm knitting. It's, gods help me, seed stitch:

It's K1, P1 across with some slipped stitches on the ends. BUT. The stitches look like this:

I*I*I*I*I*I*I*I*
*I*I*I*I*I*I*I*I
I*I*I*I*I*I*I*I*
*I*I*I*I*I*I*I*I

It's like a grid, every other stitch in all directions.

For comparison, K1 P1 rib, which we all know, would look like this:

I*I*I*I*I*I*I*I*
I*I*I*I*I*I*I*I*
I*I*I*I*I*I*I*I*
I*I*I*I*I*I*I*I*

See?

Moss stitch, on the other hand - this is where it gets weird - is also K1P1, but it's offset a bit:

I*I*I*I*I*I*I*I*
I*I*I*I*I*I*I*I*
*I*I*I*I*I*I*I*I
*I*I*I*I*I*I*I*I

Three different patterns, all K1P1. Knitting is a trip.

THEN! We can get into K2P2 fun!

K2P2 rib:

II**II**II**II**
II**II**II**II**
II**II**II**II**
II**II**II**II**

Broken rib (there are twenty billion variations, but this is a common one), ALSO known in some worlds as Irish Moss stitch, which is not ALWAYS the same as the Moss stitch above, but sometimes is:

II**II**II**II**
II**II**II**II**
**II**II**II**II
**II**II**II**II

Maybe we should start specifying American Seed, or Australian Seed, or WTF, but I'm not sure it would clarify things a damn bit.

Gardening!

The way lunatics do!

Yes. I drove the Jeep into the back yard, the hub wrapped a tow strap around the pine tree with mange, and we ripped it out. Also the testicle topiary, and a couple things at the other side of the porch that looked like ass. We dragged them all back to the compost pile, and now I've got this to work with:

It's still going to take days to get all the damn landscaping rocks out of there. And I'll probably be raking up little bits until the end of time. But my very gradual plan is very gradually going. Next step is to get a wagon or wheelbarrow to hall this crap around in.

With luck, our insane rollercoaster weather has finally leveled off, and this two week migraine is gone. (Because if it's not, I'm resorting to a neck tourniquet. Or trephination. I've had it with this shit.) Then things will get moving again. I've also cut way back on the drug that makes me zone out and stare at walls. Woo.

So. Here goes something. I think.

Gratuitous spinning photo!

This is Frabjuous Fibers' merino sparkle blend, in "Purple People Eater". It's almost Purple Trainwreck - just needs a dash of aqua. I love this fiber blend so much (65% merino, 35% firestar nylon) that I went and got two more hunks of it, this time in "Iris" and "Deep Space".

Now if only someone would have the jumbo flyer/bobbin set in stock for my Kiwi, I could really do some damage.

Single ply yarns.

Actually, the name is misleading. Because plying is, by definition, strands of fiber wrapped around each other, single ply yarns should really be called "not plied yarns".

But anyway.

Here is our culprit:

It is simply a column of fiber, loosely twisted together. Unlike a plied yarn, which is several of those columns, twisted around each other:

That's a two ply yarn, one ply of blue and one ply of green.

What holds yarns together, ultimately, is friction. The twist of the yarn holds the fibers together, and the friction of them rubbing together keeps the yarn from pulling apart. The more twist, the more friction, the stronger the hold, the stronger the yarn. (Unless you overtwist to the point the fibers break, but that's not today's problem.) A single ply of yarn simply doesn't have enough friction to hold itself together under stress.

That flaw explains all the problems that single ply yarns have: The pilling, general weakness, and other abrasion issues are all because there's not enough twist/friction to hold the fiber in place. That's the reason single ply yarns are 'splitty' to knit with, too.

Yes, the structure of knitted fabric CAN help hold the fibers in place. But that means knitting so tightly that any softness in the 'hand' of the yarn (how it feels) is lost. See this?

Size two/2.75mm needles. It's still flexible, of course, but it's not the soft fuzz-fest that most people imagine when they first handle a single ply yarn. (Madeline Tosh, I'm lookin' at you.) This is going to be a scarf; single ply yarns are only good for low-abrasion projects like this. Socks, to be worn inside shoes, will be destroyed simply by rubbing on the shoes.

If single ply yarns suck so much, you ask, why am I knitting with one? Well, hell! Look at that color shift! I couldn't resist. But it IS splitty, and quite annoying to work with.

Why do manufacturers keep making them, then? Well, think about it. Plying adds another entire manufacturing step to the yarn making process. It uses a lot of power. Power costs money. Basically, twist is expensive. That explains not only single ply yarns, but all these under-twisted commercial yarns on the market.

If you're still interested in this topic, try "The Knitter's Book of Yarn" by Clara Parkes. She explains all this and more, in fascinating detail. :)

Now, I'm gonna go spin. I've got this glorious merino/nylon sparkle blend from Frabjuous Fibers and I can't wait to see it finished. Which means plying.

Goobisms

(For those new readers I've picked up, hi. I use this blog as a kind of journal, so there's ONE PLACE I know I can always find information. Today you're stuck with my kid.)

This is the Goob's current state:

Jeep tee shirt, purple tie-dyed skirt, and the cat. There you have it.

Lately she's having what I call a "brain spurt". Like a growth spurt, but it's cognitive stuff that she's making huge growth in. Her reading is just AMAZING. She's doing sight reading, the important, useful stuff. She'll see signs go past as we're driving, read them, and start telling me how we need to stop for whatever reason. She sees shows she likes go past on the digital TV guide and yell for me to stop, go back, and turn one on. She's officially beyond the sound-it-out phase, at least for common words. This pleases me immensely, because I think reading is THE skill you need for education. Everything else comes from it. (This was brought home to me when I went back to school at age 35 and was surrounded by kids; some had VERY shaky reading skills and it hampered them at every turn.)

I babble.

Anyway.

Along with the reading is other communication. She's been drawing signs.

This was outside her room, to keep me from looking in:

And this was drawn to warn people the kitchen floor was wet:

I especially like, on the left, she's put a little sign-in-a-sign, that looks like the ones put out in public buildings to warn of water. The action of the stick figure is worthy of XKCD, too. Love it.

The other day, we were watching Top Gear. (Top Gear UK, thank you, no American prissiness needed.) If y'all are curious about what I watch when knitting lately? Top Gear. During one show, one of the hosts gets an automatic weapon and fires enough bullets that he knocks down a tree. The Goober makes an "I am impressed" noise and told me "He's a gun lumberjack!"

There's also been epic yard work across the street. Retaining walls built, poured cement steps jackhammered out, all sorts of craziness. The Goob has watched it all with her nose pressed to the window. When they ripped out the shrubs in the front yard, put them in a dump truck, and drove them off, the Goob started calling them "plant burglars".

Sekhmet, too, is watching the action across the street.

And also the finches in that shrub poking up behind the curtain, to the right.

Now if you'll excuse me, my OT guy has decided spinning and knitting are exercise, and as such must be done every day. I have to do at least fifteen minutes of each.

For the first time, OT seems kind of cool.

Twenty years.

Yup. It's my anniversary today. The husbeast and I have been married for twenty years. I feel like the occasion should be marked by some huge, big deal. But even if it were, I'd still be left feeling like... what? How did this happen? It didn't FEEL like twenty years. (Which, according to the husbeast's grandfather, means you're doing it right. When twenty years feels like an eternity, it's time for divorce.) We had a conversation that went something like this, the other night:

HIM: What's the gift for twenty years?
ME: Electronics.
HIM: Huh. What about twenty five?
ME: Electronics.
HIM: Fifty?
ME: Electronics. And maybe some fiber.
HIM: Uh huh. Right, then.

We're going out for dinner, tomorrow, kid-less, which is something of an event. We'll be sure to enjoy it. And that's another thing. A kid? A cat? A HOUSE? When did this get to be a settled family? Shouldn't we have 2.5 children and a dog? Wait. WHAT?

Twenty years. Where in HELL does the time go?

Spring, then, is it?

I took classes in landscaping and greenskeeping and horticulture and all that. My first, knee-jerk reaction to my house and yard is to bring in a tractor, rip out EVERYTHING (except the lilac and the hibiscus) and start over. Two problems with that: The first and biggest? Money. An overhaul like that ain't cheap. Especially with the plants I want to put in. Second? I really, physically, just can't do it.

Plus there's that bloody damned moderation thing my OT keeps going on about.

My solution: I've picked one spot to try and do this summer. I can gradually work outward from there. Maybe I'll plant a random plant or two in the front beds while I'm at it, and in five years or so, I'll have kinda-sorta overhauled the yard.

So. My mess. Here it is:

That little L shaped mess? Starting on the left hand side of the picture, at the pinus mystery species that looks like it has mange, back along the wall of the porch, and then along the back of the house.

Here's another view, standing on the stairs that you can see on the right, there, looking back toward the porch:

Even allowing that it was very late winter when I took these photos, you can tell it's a fucking mess. None of the shrubs are a bit useful, there's landscaping gravel to scrape up and drag away, and I really will dance on the carcass of that idiotic topiary that's stuck in there.

See? I fucking hate topiary. They're worthless and you have to trim the damn things. And they don't even flower.

If it was a dragon, I could probably be talked into keeping it. But this? Oh, fuck no.

I'm waiting for the ground to dry out enough, so I can rip out those two... monstrosities there. Then I'll pull up the gravel, and I'd like to put in a poison garden. Medicinal herbs, and dye plants that don't taste good and/or are toxic. Because, then, I'd like to plant food plants up next to the house, between the walk and the house:

The idea of the poison garden (other than the obvious fun of it) is to work as a barricade between the food plants and the deer trail out in the back of the yard. The picture directly above, I was standing right next to the house when I took it. Meaning I can run a soaker hose down through there with no trouble at all, in time of drought. (I am willing to water food plants, MAYBE medicinal and/or dye plants, but that's it.) It's a western/southwestern exposure, and the shed you can see at the upper right of the picture acts as a very good wind break.

I've been watching the weather, the micro climates, and sun exposure for a couple years now, and I think I might have it down. (Other side of the garage, where the wind hits? Alpine conditions. It's crazy.) This should work, if I can hold off the deer and I don't fuck up my hand.

Thoughts? Ideas? Suggestions? Anyone?

I sense a theme, here.

I staggered into OT this morning and asked my guy to do something involving tranquilizer darts and knocking me out for a week. Unfortunately, he doesn't have that as a treatment option .

Over the hand massage, we were discussing why I was smashed flat, and it came out that I sorta kinda on Friday drove for five hours almost straight. Which is bad on the face of it, then add in that I don't take any painkillers when driving for obvious reasons, and, well, by the time I got home I was a mess that still hasn't unmessed.

My OT started discussing moderation. How I can still do pretty much anything I want, but the days of four-hour knitting sessions - or five hour drives - are over. It hit me, because, see, FIFTEEN YEARS AGO I got these same talks from Colonel H, the head of OT where I had my hand put back together.

Apparently, I have learned nothing in a decade and a half.

I'd been doing pretty good - I only spin for an hour at a time, only knit for about half an hour without a break. But then I start feeling better and do something stupid, like that drive on Friday.

I think it's time to turn over a new rock, and start acting like a grownup.

I hate that.

To make myself feel better after this realization, I stopped off at Natural Stit

IF THIS GNAT DOES NOT DIE I WILL BURN THE MOTHERFUCKING HOUSE DOWN.

Ahem.

To make myself feel better, I stopped at Natural Stitches and bought two more Crazy Zauberballs. Woohoo! So, that's something. Not much, but, fuck, it was... moderate.

Hell, I hate adulthood.

ETA: I got the motherfucking gnat and so do not have to burn down the motherfucking house.

Fiberhead!

I am slooooowly getting back in the groove of blogging. It's really hard to get back in that head space where you think in blog posts as the world goes by. But! Here are my distractions! I finally got the loom warped.

That's silicone baking paper there on the back beam. My new excuse is, I can't bake cookies because of it. Ha.

I'm now down to the more boring but much less difficult chore of winding up the stick-shuttle-thingie:

Everyone who dropped by and left messages with information on weaving? Thank you. My shoulders are already a mess, so I won't be doing any crazy weaving marathons like I do spinning or knitting.

I'm still knitting on the third shawl:

Crazy Zauberballs are fun!

And spinning. I've got a Pagewood Farm roving, called "Peaceful":

It's all the colors I'm gradually decorating my living room with. I've got some half-assed idea of doing a wall hanging or pillow with it. Maybe some stripes in a blanket? Something.

The reason for all this relative activity is because I missed OT last week. Instead of laying on the couch wishing for morphine, I've been able to do something. In small, short bursts, anyway. For every hour of spinning, there's two hours drooling on the couch. But, it's something.

---

Today, the Goober composed her first poem. I am posting it here, for posterity:

Roses are red
Violets are blue
I interrupt,
but Mum does too.

She also correctly used the word "appalling".

I'm gonna just sit here and gloat over the kid's vocabulary. Y'all just go on.

Josephine Baker

If a movie was made of Josephine Baker's life, everyone would say it was too improbable. But it really happened. (I think it was Tom Clancy who said the difference between fiction and reality is, fiction has to make sense. But I digress.)

Right. Josephine Baker.

She started her career as a scandal.

Josephine was born in 1906 in St Louis, Missouri. Which is an unlikely start for her later life, but it just goes to show. She got recruited for Vaudeville at age fifteen, and was part of the Harlem Renaissance She performed as a dancer in clubs and shows in New York, in the Roaring Twenties, working her way up to becoming a headliner. In 1925 she became the toast of Paris, notorious for dancing nearly nude - one description I've read has her wearing a single feather.

She starred in movies. She recorded music. She was the muse of famous artists like Hemmingway, Picasso, and Dior. After a quick tour in the US, she came back to Paris and in 1937, married a Jewish French guy, no doubt causing more scandal. She became a French citizen and by all accounts was extremely happy.

Then World War Two broke out.

Obviously not one to sit back and let life happen to her, Josephine first became an "honorable correspondent". She'd attend parties, listen to gossip, and report anything interesting back to the French Resistance. She put up refugees in her summer home in the south of France. She sent gifts to the soldiers. She did performances for the troops, and for the injured.

She smuggled messages around Europe, in with her sheet music, when she performed.

She was the first American woman to receive the Croix de gurre, France's highest honor.

With the war over, Josephine went back to entertaining. Her way. She racially integrated many concert halls in the US during the fifties and sixties; she's simply refuse to perform in segregated houses.

After running with the French Resistance in World War Two, the Civil Rights Movement in the US probably looked like just her cup of tea. And she stepped in with both feet, offering assistance of all kinds. One woman spoke during the March On Washington.

It was Josephine Baker, in her Free French uniform and all her medals.

After Martin Luther King was murdered, Coretta Scott King offered the informal leadership of the civil rights movement to Josephine Baker.

Baker said no, because she wanted to stay alive long enough to raise her twelve adopted children.

She continued to perform, demonstrate, and be awesome. She was found in her bed in 1975, surrounded by loving reviews of her latest show. She'd had a brain hemorrhage and died a few days later. Her funeral brought Paris to a standstill one last time.

And the planet was short one incredibly badass woman.

Ada Lovelace

Ada Lovelace was born in 1815 and named Agusta Ada Byron. As in Lord Byron. You know, the poet and crazy dude. She was his only legitimate child. Byron, being something of a jerk, was disappointed she wasn't a boy.

Ada's mum, fed up with high romance, poetry, and the other stuff Byron spouted, countered with a very unusual education for young Ada; it was long on science and math, and short on the subjects usually taught to girls in that era, namely literature and painting. She (Ada, not her mum) had migraines and other health problems, and so spent a lot of her childhood doing math and other tutored subjects.

In 1833, she met Charles Babbage. He was busy working on his 'difference engine', essentially a mechanical calculator. This, a photo from the innards of one built, gives you an idea:

(Image from Wiki commons.)

Metallurgy and machining being what they were in the 1830s, Babbage's machine was never built in his lifetime. The design was solid, though; eventually it was built, and it does work.

In the early 1840s, Ada became acquainted with the concept of the engine, and corresponded with Babbage on the subject, and related topics. In her notes, there is a program she wrote, that calculated Bernoulli Numbers, a sequence important in number theory. Basically, while everyone else, including Babbage himself, saw the Difference Engine as a way to do arithmetic quickly and easily, Ada saw the big picture and the possibilities beyond. In other words - she got the idea of the computer. The program she wrote, when finally put into the working Difference Engine built years after her death, worked just fine.

Ada Lovelace is considered by many to be the world's first programmer, code monkey, or computer geek. Depending on who you ask. Her notes, translations, and mathematical work were vital to the early history of computing. She was writing programs for Babbages Analytical Engine that would have worked. Meaning she was writing useful code for a computer whose hardware never ran.

Not too many people can do that.

What I'm doing when I'm not here.

But first. This last week of Women's History Month, or whatever the fuck we're calling it in the US, I was going to do a post a day, with a bio of an amazing woman. Today was going to be Marie Curie, but really, Badass of the Week already did her, in a style I appreciate. Rather than reinventing the wheel, here you go:

MARIE CURIE, from Badass of the Week.

Tomorrow I'll actually write up someone.

---

There is actual good news from the OT department.

I'm wearing splints to bed every night. I started last Wednesday, and as of today, it doesn't hurt to knit any more! At least for reasonable amounts of time... haven't tried a four hour marathon yet. But it's definitely a move in the right direction.

Maybe I'll get back to spinning, too. Wouldn't that be nice.

And this is in progress as I type:

I have a feeling I'm going to be weaving in my dining room. Might want to clear the nail polish and manicure station off the other end of the table. Hmmm.

---

Also, I've been reading and gaming. What else is there to do when you're zoned out from painkillers after a killer therapy session?

The Disappearing Spoon is what I've been reading. I have to read about five, ten pages, then sit and absorb for a while. It's chemistry, organized around the periodic table. But it's actually HUMANIZED chemistry, with practical application and amusing stories and actual, useful stuff, rather than random letters and numbers and little dots.

While I'm at it, there's a web site called The Periodic Table of Videos. It's just what it sounds like: Short videos on each element. Very cool.

Yes, I'm trying to teach myself chemistry. Again. You're all just stuck with it.

Then, when my brain has totally melted, there are games on the Kindle Fire. (It's an Android platform, so I assume these games are also available for any Android phone. Probably iThings, too.)

Where's my Water is from Disney, believe it or not. You try to get water through pipes to an alligator in a bathtub. You dig dirt, you squirt water and poisons, you deal with algae. Very silly, very fun. You can actually play it on line, HERE. Oh, and you really wanna capture the little duckies.

Angry Birds has a new one - Angry Birds in Space. Apparently they've hit ten MILLION downloads in the three days it's been out. !! It's really wild, compared to the other Angry Birds games. There are gravity wells, and black holes, and inertia. Physics is kind of a bitch. But it's very, very cool.

I'm trying to think of anything else I'm doing, but there isn't anything. I'm waiting for the weather to clear up so I can attempt to garden; it's been raining, and cold. I need to rip out some shrubs in the back yard, and I can't get my Jeep back there to do it while the ground is wet. (Or rather, I can, but it would make a huge mess and the husbeast would go bonkers.)

Right now? Well, for excitement, I think I need to go do some OT exercises.

And finish warping this loom.

Plagiarized by heikeknits.

This morning, I saw a link to a history of knitting article go by on my Twitter feed, so of course I clicked on it. Because, hey, ongoing interest over here. Y'all may have noticed.

I got THIS. My jaw kind of dropped. There was a second half of the article, so I clicked and...

Got THIS.

In case anyone would like to compare, here is THE ORIGINAL KNITTY ARTICLE. Written by ME. She stole the pictures too. For amusement's sake, here's her, defending HER COPYRIGHTS. Yeah. Apparently she missed the two-way-street aspect of those laws.

I did not give this person permission. I didn't know it was going on.

So I went over and left a couple comments on the relevant blog posts. "YOU STOLE MY ARTICLE." With a link to the Knitty article. Seemed little else to say, really. So I didn't.

Woosh. The offending blog posts disappaeard. Poof! The wonders of the internet.

Or NOT, you know, because of Google Archive. (Known to geeks as "The Wayback Machine".)

Right then. I left a comment on the main page of the blog. "YOU STOLE MY ARTICLE." With a link. Because, again, not a whole lot to dither about.

That's when I got an e-mail. (I'd left my full contact info on the messages, because, hey, not stupid.)

I'll just post the e-mails in full. That way no one can cry about 'out of context' later. Or me making shit up, or being a meanie. Or whatever the hell.

HER:
Hi Julie,

I did use your article as the base for mine and asked the V&A museum if I could use images from them.
I am sorry if I offended you and as I do not want to infringe on any copyright issues I have taken these posts of my blog.

I hope that this is settles any misgivings there might be and you will accept my apologies.

Best wishes

ME:
You didn't use it as the base. YOU USED IT WORD FOR WORD. Those images are from MY ARTICLE. All you had to do was ask permission from me and credit me for the info and I'd have given it. AND SINCE YOU DIDN'T ASK MY PERMISSION, I DOUBT YOU ASKED THE V&A. And not all the images are from them, if you'd actually read the credits on my article where I WAS HONEST.

You plagiarized and would have left it there forever if I hadn't called you on it.

Admit it publicly. You do not deserve any credit for that article. It took three months' research with a university librarian helping me, and right now your readers still think YOU DID THE WORK. That is completely unacceptable.

No, this does NOT 'settle it'.

HER:
Julie,
I am really really sorry about this and can only profusely apologise. I have a miniscule readership as this blog hasn't been here for long. I am glad you have made me aware of my huge mistake and it has taught me an invaluable lesson on copyright issues. I need to get much more clued up on all of this.

I will give you a public apology on my blog next time I post and really hope you will now accept my apology.

Best, Heike

ME:
Incidentally, the internet at large has got the bit between their teeth and are now going through other blog posts of yours, looking for other plagiarism. And I think some are looking at your designs.

I did not tell them to do it. They just saw the plagiarism and wondered if you had stolen anything else.

ME AGAIN:
Today would be good. "Sometime" not so much.

HER:
I have taken my blog off the net as the last thing on my mind was to do a wrong thing or to offend anyone.

ME:
I don't care. I WANT YOU TO STATE PUBLICLY THAT YOU STOLE THE INFORMATION. Right now there's folks out there thinking you did all the work on that article. CORRECT IT.

Don't make me escalate this. I'm not in the mood and I've got better crap to deal with. But I will, if you don't do the right thing. All the deletion in the world is not going to fix this. Not until you state, on your unlocked blog, to everyone who reads it, that THAT WAS NOT YOUR WORK.

And the deletion? Doesn't matter. It's in Google Archive for anyone who wants to look.
[Link to Google Archive's relevant bits here.]

HER:
I am doing it now, it will be there in the next 10 min


THIS is the 'apology' I got.

Anyone see any remorse or regret there? 'Cause I don't.