Shiny Bits of Foil

Important data, via BoingBoing:  This will only work if the radius of the larger gear is an exact multiple of the radius of the smaller gear. In this case, it’s 2:1.

Today, I decided to use up the beeswax I got out of a comb-in jar of honey and I made lip gloss. Orange vanilla, to be exact, with a beeswax and coconut oil base.

What? It’s a valid survival skill.When you’re out hunting zombies, the last thing you need are dry, cracked lips.

For a while now I’ve been really jonesing to start making art again. It’s something I did a lot as a kid and as a teen, but something I’ve pretty much stuck in the back of my life closet since then, figuring on dragging it out in the rosy “real life” of the future.  Heh.

Well, recently I’ve decided to quit putting that shit on hold and start bringing art back into my life. And about a month ago, an idea for an amazing, incredible, cool HOLYFUCKHAWESOMESPECTACULAR!!11!eleventy!! project popped into my mind. It went something like this:

I’d create an art-quality handmade blank journal, something really cool and awesome in and of itself.  Then I’d release it into the wild with a statement in the flyleaf instructing whoever found it to add something to it – an entry, a poem, a found object, a short story, a drawing…whatever – then pass it on or leave it somewhere for someone else to find.  I’d also encourage participants to branch out from the journal, maybe write a song inspired by someone else’s poem. Maybe use someone’s entry as the inspiration for a painting, and so on. The journal and everything in it would be licensed Creative Commons so anything and everything in it could be the seed of something else. In the end, if I was lucky, maybe it would get sent back to me and I could put it on exhibit somewhere. And if it didn’t come back, no big deal. That’s just part of the life history of the piece. It’s an organic process that can’t be constrained or directed. It either happens or it doesn’t…well, you get the picture.

The idea grew from there. I’d put up a website – nothing fancy, maybe a simple bulletin board or blog – where people could come and discuss the project, share they’re own additions or sightings, link to art inspired by the project. In short, it would be a multi-dimensional, participatory, interactive community art project. It would be amazing, and fun, and creative and original…

Oooo…did I say original? Yeah. About that. Look what I just learned about Saturday (and, to my knowledge, had never heard about prior to Saturday)…

The 1000 Journals Project

From their site:

The 1000 Journals Project is an ongoing collaborative experiment attempting to follow 1000 journals throughout their travels. The goal is to provide a method for interaction and shared creativity among friends and strangers.

How it Works:

Those who find the journals add something to them. A story, drawing, photograph, anything really. Then they pass the journal along, to a friend or stranger, and the adventure continues.

Yeah. 1000 Journals Project. Not one journal.  One fucking thousand journals. With a fancy-pants flashy-shiny web presence. And a book deal. And a LiveJournal community. And a fucking DVD docufuckingmentary on the project. It goes on and on and on.

Talk about getting cockblocked.

Yeah. Stumbling across that book was some fun, let me tell you. And you just gotta know in Asheville lots of people have heard of this project, even if only peripherally. So if I go ahead now, it’s just going to look like a lame-ass derivative copytard low-ball version of an already world-famous art project. And I can’t even use the angle of being inspired by the project, because I wasn’t and hadn’t even heard of it. Hell, even the artists statement in the beginning of the book is virtually identical to the one I was concocting.

The thing is, anything I do now will just be a pale, drippy Dollar Store candle compared to the raging inferno of artistic vision of one fucking thousand journals sent out world fucking wild and tracked on a high-end website by a goddamn LiveJournal community of fans. It’s a been there-done that project. Like making your own one-person Kon-Tiki boat and sailing it across Lake Lure.

God fucking dammit. After 20 years of hibernation, my inner artist finally got its nerve up to make a grand entrance on a local level, only to discover that the fucking Lollapolooza festival was already scheduled to play next door at the same fucking time.

Fuck.

Here’s a quick photo update of my adventures in knitting two socks at once. I’m using Cat Bordhi’s new Personal Footprints method, where you knit the foot from toe to heel, then open up a hole to knit in the cuff. These are intended to be a bit large, because I intend to felt them down a bit for warmth and cushiony goodness.

Working my way up the cuffs

A better shot of the shape of the socks

(Also, check out the hair. That’s the glorious new no ‘poo do, on an alternate wash day – didn’t rinse today, just wet-combed – and after having had a day’s worth of running my hands through it out of frustration because my brain wouldn’t work right. And it still looks good and even has a little bit of body left. In my ‘poo days, it would have looked like oiled seaweed by now.)

Check it out, crafty peeps. That’s two, count them…two! Socks being knit at once, magic loop style. Oh yeah, I rock.

I’m making a pair of thick fuzzy house socks out of some really rough-spun Shetland/angora mix (rough spun as in, I’m still picking out grass as I knit). I plan on making them too big and felting them down to size for extra toasty-toes excitement.

(Sorry I look like a bum in the pic. It’s late and I didn’t feel like prettying up. What can I say.)

One interesting thing I learned on my pre-Christmas vacation trip:  Knitting is the perfect fully-functional yet pocket-sized version of a forward deflector array when it comes to dealing with sudden bad reactions to too much holiday interaction.

Generally speaking, I’m a gregarious and (if I care to be) entertaining participant in most social settings.  However, there are times when my undiagnosed-but-I’d-swear-to-it Aspergers-like tendencies kick in, and when they do I suddenly go from Chatty Cathy to looking around in a cold sweat for the closest exit. One evening it kicked in with a vengeance, and I wound up having a quiet little DEFCON 1 fight-or-flight meltdown at dead-center ground zero in a living room full of immediate and visiting family.

I was basically flailing around trying to hold up my end of the conversation while frantically avoiding any eye contact – to the point that I actually started panicking about how much longer I could keep it up before it became offensively obvious that I was going out of my way not to actually look at anyone – and desperately wishing I could join my ultra-shy niece, who had wrapped herself up like a burrito in a large bathrobe on the floor and was conducting what little conversation she was willing to offer up through at least one, if not several, layers of comforting and protective fabric.

Just getting up and leaving the area wasn’t feasible. Our guests had traveled several hours to visit with us, and to no small degree to see me in particular, and would have been badly hurt if I’d ducked out.  And my usual out – disappearing into a book – was also a no-go, for the same reason. There’s forgivably shy and then there’s just plain rude. And sticking your nose into a book while people are actively trying to visit with you falls distinctly into the latter category.

Then I remembered my knitting. I got up and dragged my latest project out, tucked myself up into a corner of the couch (and, not-unintentionally, out of the bulls-eye center of attention) and started to knit.

OMG. It was like a big hit of Xanax, but without the pesky side effects. Suddenly I was calm and centered and, best of all, had a perfectly good reason to keep my eyes down and remove myself from the stream of conversation. Better yet, for some odd reason knitting just doesn’t seem convey that same barrier-like “leave me the fuck alone” antipathy that reading or walking out does. Instead of walling you off from everyone, it just creates a nice, earplugs-at-the-concert level of attentional filtering without removing you from the group dynamic entirely. You’re still part of the conversation, but you’re on the fringes of it rather than being an active participant.  People include you, but they don’t expect full participation. Because you’re obviously busy. And for some reason, not only is it okay, it’s actually kind of admired (because knitting is just one of those things that non-knitters and knitters alike seem to appreciate as A Worthy Pursuit).

It was like someone pulled a drain plug. All the stress just flowed out and I was able to participate at a level that I was comfortable with, without feeling pressured to do more, as I would be just sitting there empty-handed. I could join in whenever I liked (and still avoid eye contact while I did so, without being rude), or just sit back and let the conversation flow around me when that was easier. Basically, it was like a magical anti-social-anxiety drug that turns into a pair warm hand-knit socks when you’re done. And if that doesn’t sound like a fairy-tale ending, I don’t know what does.

Moral of the story: I am sooo taking my knitting with me every fucking where I go from now on. It’s an instantaneous rescue when the social freakouts hit. And when I’m feeling fine, it’s still something I can do and be social around at the same time. And then I get socks. Win!

Here is the Totoro hat I knit for mom for Xmas. It has an alpaca/wool body and merion/alpaca/silk trim.

I’ve been looking for a not-boring/not-soccer-mom/not-grannywear cardi pattern for a while now, something that would be timeless, yet elegant and even hip all at the same time.  Something with a little punch and pizazz that can carry a look by itself without being a screaming klaxon of “fancy knitting” or a morass of busy patterns.

A few weeks ago, I stumbled upon a YouTuber who had thoughtfully uploaded the entire series of Foyle’s War, a mystery series set during WW2 and one of my favorite BBC productions next to Poirot and Ms. Marple (I’m a total sucker for the aesthetic of the WW1-through-WW2 era). So I’ve been sucking down the videos like a starving man when…BAM! In the very last episode, one of the main characters is wearing my cardigan.

The actress is the oh-so-loverly, talented and adorably-named Honeysuckle Weeks, in her role as Samantha “Sam” Stewart, driver for the main character, DCS Christopher Foyle. Below are the best screenshots I was able to get off of YouTube, which isn’t saying much. The visuals are a lot sharper when the image is moving  (not sure if that’s an artifact of visual smoothing in the brain, or something to do with the technology, but there it is).

Behold, The Perfect Cardigan:

To see the cardi in action (and get a better look at it than these screenshots give), here’s a link to the beginning of the scene. (For context, it’s the end of the war and Sam is volunteering with a group helping returning vets restart their lives. The guy is Andrew Foyle, DCS Foyle’s son, who was engaged to Sam at one point but then “threw her over” for another woman while he was stationed elsewhere. He has since come to his senses, and is trying to win Sam back. And failing, for the most part. Sam’s no pushover. )

For starters, I love the color, although I’m not entirely sure I can get away with wearing it. Maybe something in a soft lilac shade, or variegated moss tones that go a bit deeper and browner.  And something soft, too, like maybe a fine weight alpaca/merino blend. Secondly, OMG that stitch pattern is teh hawesome!!! Lots of visual interest and flair, yet still clean-looking and unfussy at the same time. Very zen.

Of course, they don’t give clothing credits, so I’m having to piece the pattern together through research and reaching out on Ravelry. So far, the closest stitch my generous helpers have come up with is something called Fireworks, found in the “Treasury Of Knitting Patterns.” Said book is now on hold in my local library system and should be in my grubby little hands soonish. Of course there will be much tweaking to do – I’ll have to eliminate the lacey-holey YO bits, and then restack the pattern so that it’s not staggered. Then I have to find a basic cardi structural pattern that fits the look (something with a ribbed bottom and a nice drape). Much, much work to be done. But it’s a start.

Eventually, I will prevail. And then my pretties, oh yes, there will be a magnificence of knitting indeed.

Btw, if you know anything about this sweater or anything resembling it, please do comment. The less reinvention of the wheel I have to do, the better.

[Photo depicts optimal results.  Your mileage may vary.]

If there is one thing I love more than almost more than life itself, it’s pie. And if there’s one thing I hate almost more than anything in life itself, it’s making pie crust.

Everyone has a variety of unique gifts. And I have more than my fair share of really awesome talents and skills.  Making pie dough, sadly, is not one of them. In fact, if there is anyone who is essentially cursed in the arena of pie pastry, I am that person.

Some people can just sift together flour and a little salt, crumb a pile of butter or shortening into the mix, sprinkle on a mere misting of water and with a little boardwork – hey presto! They’ve got a smooth, satiny and almost sensually compliant dough that almost seems to leap into the pan with a eager flourish, like those anthropomorphic animals in meat commercials that are ecstatic at the the thought of being slaughtered and eaten.

Then there’s me.

Watching me attempt to make a pie crust is very much like watching one of those funny videos of a horny animal who really wants to get it on with another who isn’t have any of it.

I shape, I roll, I pinch, I pray. But every time I push my pin across the dough it scoots out of the way, folding up over here and squeezing out over there, or cracking apart like the Antarctic ice sheet, sending an entire quarter of the dough off  in some random direction at an angle so oblique to the central mass that it should be part of the geometry SAT section. As I shape one area, another disintegrates by either falling apart or sticking to the pin on the backswing. Or, more likely, both. I’m the only person I know who can, when rolling out dough, create more destruction with every stroke than order.

I chill, I hydrate, I flour, I use parchment paper, I wield a French style rolling pin. But the dough comes out either too crumbly or too sticky to hold together. Or both, amazingly.  It alternately sticks to the pin and refuses to stick to itself in such random and unpredictable ways that I swear some bored demon with a “Food Physics” remote is amusing himself by randomly pushing buttons.

I’ve use all the “sure-fire tips” like substituting booze for water and adding more fat. I’ve tried every recipe (including my mother’s oh-so-ironically titled “No Fail Pie Crust”, which indeed never fails to make me tear out my hair). I’ve even begged.  But no matter what I do, the dough just keeps scooting away from me like a disinterested mate, cracking, sticking, breaking apart, crumbling, mashing up, curling, twisting and/or comically clinging to the pin just long enough to get dragged off the edge of table, where it spectacularly releases en mass and drops to the floor.

And that’s just the prep. Once I manage to shape it into something resembling a post-Deep-Impact Eurasia that’s big enough to (hopefully) do the job, I still have to get it from the table to the pan. Let’s just say the process more closely resembles botched back-alley skin grafting than anything culinary in nature, and leave it at that. Trust me, the less said about it, the better. By the time I get my Frankencrust into the pan and pasted back together into a semblance of a crust, I’m usually on the verge of tears and the kitchen looks like a pastry chef went postal in a bakery with a chainsaw. Which, all things considered, is a not-entirely-inaccurate depiction of what actually happened.

And don’t even get  me started on blind baking. I have to handle the damn crust twice, giving it twice the opportunity to find new ways to fail spectaculary, from burning on the edges while refusing to cook in the middle to sticking to the weight materials to crumbling apart on contact with a potholder. Seriously, just don’t go there. It makes me twitch.

This year’s pumpkin pie recipe called for 2 Tbs of spiced rum. Hubby borrowed far more than was necessary from the upstairs neighbors, and yet the entire quantity of donated rum has completely disappeared. Read into that what you will.

Yay! Finally finished my gloves. I was temporarily stymied by a week of cold, wet weather that, ironically, made my fingers too cold to knit. But the warm and sunny days are back and voila! Gloves!  (Click on photo to see more images.)