And Then There Will Be A Vortex Of Craft And I Might Be Sucked Into Another Dimesion

I think the first crafty skill I learned was embroidery. (I'm assuming making bridles and blankets for my model horses doesn't count, of course.) But for years I didn't really have a craft hobby, because I was a musician and I felt guilty about having any hobby other than practicing. About four years ago I had a return to craftiness: I decided, out of nowhere, to embroider a pillowcase set for my roommate. He ended up with two sets and I thought, "Hm, craft hobbies...they have possibilities." Then I learned how to knit, and then I started sewing again, and now I'm on a veritable runaway train of craft.

On my craft train, I once again want to embroider something. But now, I'm not content with "His" and "His" pillowcases, oh no. Now I am COMBINING crafts. I thought, "Wouldn't a red apron top with piping on it be really cute...with embroidered pockets?"

I decided it would be and started a pocket last night.

But I'm a little concerned what all this craft-combining is going to do to the universe. The energy I spend on any ONE craft is enormous; what will the energy of TWO combined crafts in one finished item do?

It Was Like A Band Reunion, But With Drink Umbrellas

The Eurythmics, from their "reunion" album, Peace, in 1999:
Karen and her old roommate Todd, from the aloha party, 2007:
And check out the dress--oh yes, another project.

News Flash

So I was going to post about the weekend, and the party, and how after living alone for nearly three months I've turned into the talkiest girl in the world if I have a drink in a social situation, but that will have to wait until tomorrow. Because BoingBoing, source of all my internet news, just told me there is a new Ray Bradbury book out. And it's a SEQUEL to Dandelion Wine.

Because I worry about these things, I've been half afraid that Bradbury would be dying soon (he's 87!)but no, he goes and writes a sequel to my favorite book of his, originally published in 1957. And according to the BoingBoing review, it's as good as the first one.

Hot damn, get me to the library!

Friday Unrelated Information

1. Check out this children's book cover Photoshop contest.

2. Whales are mammals and therefore need to drink water. But they live in the ocean. So what do whales drink?

3. If you're ever feeling dubious about hosting a party and also maybe a little existentially lonely at the same time, don't read the last three chapters of Cannery Row.

Happy Birthday, Bob!

Bob Dylan is 66 today. In honor of his birthday, you can celebrate International Talk Like Bob Dylan Day, you can listen to my two favorite Dylan songs, or you can read some celebratory haiku I wrote for him. Because every iconic musician needs some celebratory haiku.

What makes you so cool?
The Ray-Ban Wayfarers?
The cigarette voice?

Your profundity
always impresses me, and
I'm not even stoned.

I saw you on tour
and wished I were a groupie.
Alas, you're too old.

Get Ready

Tomorrow, May 25th, is Bob Dylan's birthday. And apparently, it is International Talk Like Bob Dylan Day, as well! (Thanks, BoingBoing.) International Talk Like Bob Dylan Day is not to be confused with International Talk Like a Pirate Day (September 19), although both are fun.

It may be too late to enter a video of me talking like Bob, so I'll have to think of something else to celebrate ITLBDD. IT may involve serenading the houseplants and the cuckoo, but I will celebrate. The man is my hero.

Proof From Steinbeck

Remember how I've said that if I channeled the energy I spend on my wardrobe into, say, cancer research that we'd have a cure for cancer by now? Check out this quote from Sweet Thursday:

If only people would give the thought, the care, the judgment to international affairs, to politics, even to their jobs, that they lavish on what to wear to a costume party, the world would run on greased grooves.

I knew it!

Cuckoo! Cuckoo!

When I moved, I asked for the cuckoo clock my father bought during his Army tour in Germany in 1966. The clock needed some repair: the movement was dirty and the bellows had gone out, so the cuckoo could only say "coo". But I picked it up Saturday and now it's on the wall, working beautifully. (I tried for an action shot, but the cuckoo is too fast. He's blue, and his beak opens and closes, and then the door snaps shut.)

I love this clock inordinately. Every time it struck the hour Sunday I had to go see it and I just stood there and grinned, watching the cuckoo. Crazy? Maybe! But there's a similar passage in Out of Africa:

"The central symbol of [the house] was an old German cuckoo-clock that hung in the dining room...at every full hour, a cuckoo flung open its little door and threw itself forward to announce the hour in a clear insolent voice. Its apparition was every time a fresh delight to the young people of the farm. From the position of the sun they judged accurately when the moment for the midday call was due, and by a quarter to twelve I could see them approaching the house.

It also sometimes happened that a very small herdboy...would come back in the early morning all by himself, stand for a long time in front of the clock, now shut up and silent, and address it in Kikuyu in a slow sing-song declaration of love, then gravely walk out again."

So at least I'm not talking to the clock.

I've Come Undone

Or, "Obvious Visual Pun of the Week."


I noticed that I had gotten off on my increases about 9 inches ago, thought about being okay with it, remembered "The Cowboy Way," and decided to rip it(rip it good!).

This visual pun brought to you by OCD. And Devo.

Movies I've Watched This Week, With One-Sentence Synopses

1. Almost Famous: The Wonder Years goes on tour with Led Zeppelin

2. The Science of Sleep: Like Amelie, if Amelie had been a mildly autistic boy and her relationship didn't work out.

3. The Endless Summer: Dudes surfing, in a time when girls didn't and it was okay to make jokes about apartheid.

4. Grey Gardens: Ladies in mink coats feeding raccons in the attic.

There's always something excitig playing at Chez Yarn!

Food Recess

I found this, um, reading a blog I like (Tomato Nation, advice and stuff like this) (and stories about her cats and the Roomba vacuum). This is about food at work, a very apropos subject at my job:

Here, lunch is recess. Food gets fetishized at work, possibly because communal breaking of bread is one of human society's strongest signifiers of acceptance and unity, but probably because everyone is kind of bored...

We spend a lot of time thinking about food here—where to get lunch, what to get, what time to get it, whether to order it in or go out for it, do we want Mexican, does anyone else want Mexican, no thanks I got a sandwich already, what kind of sandwich, ham and cheddar on rye toast with champagne mustard, ooh where'd ya get that, deli on the corner, hmm maybe I'll get that instead except I'm not hungry yet, what are you getting, nothing I just had a scone, on and on it goes all day.Either someone is eating, someone is fantasizing out loud about eating, or someone is admiring something someone else is eating. Or we're filling the time we don't spend eating by going out for coffee, rationing ourselves a snack, buying gum, refilling our water bottles, biting our nails, and otherwise just trying to get to the part of the day where we go home and start dinner.

Somewhere, An Old Lady Is Missing The Bottom Of Her Housecoat

Because doesn't this look like I took a housecoat and made it into a shirt? I knew I picked a nostalgic print; I didn't realize the finished item would look like it could have been worn by someone named Mavis Greenwald, in Waukegan, some hot summer around 1968. She probably liked the pockets, so she could keep her handerchief and maybe even her cigarettes handy.

Clarification

Just to make it clear about the craft blog I was mocking yesterday: This blogger already had a studio. It's not as if she was overcome with emotion about finally having a place to work. She just rearranged it. And wrote that post about rearranging her studio.

See? I'm not not mean-spirited--just a hater.

Blogs I Read

(Not that I, um, read a lot of blogs during the workday or anything. Not me.)

1. One that rounds up "modern and fresh" Hawaiian products called hapa|hale
2. One that has cute animals.
3. One that focuses only on cat pictures, with captions in gamer-speak.
4. One that makes fun of celebrities' outfits.
5. One that I really relate to: Crazy Aunt Purl.

And, while my blog-reading choices probably don't give me the cultural advantage to argue this, I think this next blog typifies everything that's wrong with the so-called "craft blog." It's fine to post pictures of your craft projects, or of your kids, or house, or all three (it's one big craft project!), but PLEASE stop taking yourself so seriously. Post some cat pictures or something. (This one is one of them who likes to use "thrift" as a verb, if you couldn't tell. Yet I can't look away! Craft blog train wreck!)

Friday Unrelated Information

1. My brother and dad are fantastic. My car isn't leaking antifreeze and scaring me anymore.

2. My knitting isn't going well: I tried three times to get the increases to look right on the Enormous Green Robin Hood Tunic Thing. So no pictures of crafts yet.

3. The yearly "I want to be tan but I'm crazy so I take skin cancer warnings too seriously, thus sometimes spoiling my enjoyment while getting a tan" marathon begins this weekend. (Damn you, Coco Chanel, for making the tan fashionable!)

I Dream Of Kittens

No, really: in one of those right-before-you-wake-up dreams this morning, I dreamed I found a stray kitten and decided to adopt it. (Go ahead and interpret that.)

Dream kitten looked a little like this. But it was older.

Oh Lord, Won't You Buy Me A Mercedes Benz?

My friends all drive Porsches, I must make amends.
Worked hard all my lifetime, no help from my friends,
So Lord, won’t you buy me a Mercedes Benz ?

Or maybe just a newer Focus? One that isn't spewing anti-freeze? How about it, Lord?

(That song has been in my head ever since I ordered a pair of Janis Joplin-style platform sandals last week. I was going to post a picture of them today, but puddles of anti-freeze were on my mind more this morning. Too bad I can't drive my shoes.)

Narratives

I was thinking about yesterday's post, and how crazy it makes me to assign a story to my clothes, when I remembered a post from the Dress a Day blog:

...stories are why I sew. Personal sewing gives a garment an inescapable story, with an inherent narrative that pulls you along to the next bit: where I found the fabric and the pattern, and how long they waited to be made; how difficult or easy it was to put together...how it turned out, and so on.

And we all know how I like narrative. If you think about it, our lives are stories ("I was born, I grew up, I made some clothes..."). We dream in narrative, it's so ingrained. So no wonder the J. Peterman catalog resonated when I was 14, and no wonder I like making my clothes.

Better Living Through Craft Literature?

Acutally, I'm fairly certain there is no literature about crafts. But--and we can thank the J. Peterman catalog for this--I've been thinking of literatry scenes to go along with my latest projects:

I finished a blue linen pullover Sunday and remembered that one of Catherine's outfits in The Garden of Eden (about a young couple being fabulous in the south of France in the 1920's) was "a blue linen shirt with an open collar and a heavy white linen skirt." (Of course, the book ends in madness and adultery, but there are good outfits. And we all know good outfits help us deal with madness, adultery, bad traffic, and everything in between.)

Another project is a little blouse in a dandelion print,
which will allow for all sorts of quotes from Dandelion Wine when it's finished, one of my top ten books ever and something I have to re-read every summer. (And Dad, I have my own copy now! Aren't you proud?)

I'm also knitting something, which in my mind I'm calling the Robin Hood tunic. We'll see if it works out, or if I look like I'm being swallowed by too much chunky-weight Lincoln Green yarn.

But between the Jedi Jacket, the Dandelion Wine Blouse, and the Garden of Eden Pullover, I'm giving Peterman some competition.

I Am My Own Sweatshop

But I had to stay up and finish my alpaca sweater last night because today is the only day that will be cool enough to wear it!

First, the alpaca. The grey fellow is Merlin:
As you can guess, the yarn I used was spun from him. I earned it by volunteering at the Blue Moon Ranch "open barn day" back in September. Here's what Merlin knits up into:
Merlin makes a very warm cardigan, let me tell you. I'm glad I made the sleeves short.

Here's a gratuitous close-up--the trim is silk/alpaca, from anonymous Peruvian alpacas (and silkworms, I guess)
Ignore the little hiccup by the bottom buttonhole. I have a knitting book with a real-life chapter titled, "Buttonholes Are Bitches" and it's right. (I may go back and fix it, but it was too late to care much last night.)

Another Thursday night Chez Sweatshop!

Like Jedi Robe It Is

Okay, I guess you don't immediately think "Jedi," but the sleeves reminds me of it a little.




Anyway, here's the latest project:


And how does it tie in with the tablecloth from yesterday's post?
That's how!

I decided the brown was too thin to be an unlined jacket and needed to be faced with another fabric. I had the right amount leftover from the tablecloth, and it all worked out. (The Force was with us!) The lining tied with the topstitching as my favorite part.

A Quiz

What do Obi-Wan Kenobi

and the tablelcoth for my filing cabinet I made last weekend

have in common?

The answer, young Skywalker, will be found in tomorrow's post about the most recent sewing project. May the Force be with you.