Song of the Week: My Head is My Only House Unless It Rains

Hard to pick one Captain Beefheart song but who says I can't pick ten more down the line? This is a nice love song for ya...

My Head is My Only House Unless it Rains

Grizzly Man blew my mind!

Yes, it was like watching a train wreck, but Timothy Treadwell is so entertaining that you almost forget about the train wreck. What a bizarre story! This is a documentary put together by Werner Herzog using footage shot by Treadwell of his time spent with grizzly bears in Alaska. After spending 13 summers "protecting" the bears, Timothy and his girlfriend Amie were killed and eaten by one in late 2003. Thankfully, we're spared the gruesome audio and photo details (Treadwell's video camera was on but covered during the attack) in the movie. We do get to know Treadwell fairly well from his footage and interviews with friends and family, and Herzog takes care to try to help us know Amie, too, though there is not much footage of her on the tapes. It's hard to describe why I liked this movie so much. Herzog is a giant, in my opinion, and it would never have been this great without his attention and not so subtle opinions about Treadwell's well-meaning but naive "relationship" with the bears being interspersed throughout the film. Herzog narrated the movie and his belief that "the common character of the universe is not harmony, but hostility, chaos and murder" droning over Treadwell's constant, excited "I LOVE you!!!" shouted to the bears is just a bizarre contrast to behold. He manages to do this without being judgemental or unkind to Treadwell. You really get the feeling that Herzog likes Treadwell and appreciates the footage on a level that no nature channel ever could.

Okay, it certainly isn't for everybody, but I loved this movie. It was NUTS!

Link to website

What I'm gnitting on presently...

I used to feel guilty if I had several knitting projects going at once, like I was betraying one with the other. Somewhere along the line I decided that variety truly is the spice of life, and they do all eventually get done.
1) Ultra soft baby hoodie (no hood yet, though) made out of Blue Sky Alpaca organic cotton yarn (pattern by Reynolds)
2) Seed stitch scarf made from leftover Noro Silk Garden
3) The blue boyfriend cardigan knit in the round, made from New England Harrisville Shetland wool
and
4) "Branching Out" mohair scarf, a free pattern from knitty.com

These mutton-heads felt a need to come out and get in on the action while I was taking pics of the knitting:

Song of the Week: The Thoughtless Kind

A nice, honest song about friendship. John Cale: Whatta cute little Welshman! And such a smarty, too. Here's a beautiful song for you and your friends, never ever turn your back on them...







The Thoughtless Kind
If you grow tired of the friends you make
In case you mean to say something else
Say they were the best of times you ever had
The best of times were the thoughtless kind

We dress conservatively at the best of times
Prefer the shadows to the bright lights in the eyes
Of the ones we love, the bright lights in the eyes of the ones we love
What we see, what we imagine, the eyes tell us nothing
The bright lights in the eyes of the one we love will tell us nothing
Like the scars of imagination, the scars of imagination
The bright lights in the eyes of the ones we love will tell us nothing
Except that you're the thoughtless kind

So if you grow tired of the friends you make
Never ever turn your back on them
Say they were the best of times you ever had
The best of times were the thoughtless kind

link to his site

Squirrel Bait (call me nuts)

I have seen what seems like an inordinate number of little grey fuzzy dead bodies on the road here in Minneapolis in the last few years. Yesterday I actually witnessed one being crushed by a truck that could have easily avoided it. I'm starting to think that some creepy people actually enjoy killing critters on the road.
I happen to know from my experience that it's not that hard to avoid running over small animals. I know sometimes horrible accidents happen where it's you or the critter and of course you choose you---you could even call it self defense. I'm grateful to have never been in such a situation, I sure hope I never am. I watch for them, slow down a little, and usually we both come out just fine. Sorry to be a bummer, I've seen two animals killed this way, and the image kind of gets scorched into your brain (if you care the least little bit about another being's pain, that is). Give 'em a brake.

Addendum: My husband read this and said I should start a new category in the blog called "It seemed like a good idea at 3 a.m."

mmmmm...NORO...

I broke down and bought these books tonight, I needed a treat...


Perhaps I'll make this cute little number...

...after I order some Noro yarn at a reasonable price from Jannette

Here's a link to a page with more pics of the patterns from these books. I like Jane Ellison's patterns. A few years ago it seemed like all you could find for Noro patterns was kinda frumpy stuff, and it's such gorgeous yarn!

HEY! You got your Intelligent Design Peanut Butter on my Evolution Chocolate!

I promised myself I wouldn't rant about this stuff, so I won't other than to say if you haven't ever seen "Inherit The Wind", or if it's been a long time, you should watch it and consider the fact that it was made 45 years ago about a true story that happened 35 years before that. What kind of sick Wayback Machine has this country stepped into?

Here's a website that, er, addresses this issue that makes me very happy, thanks to my friend Tony for sending this link:

http://www.venganza.org/

And here is a beautiful painting by a feller named Niklas Jansson, Touched by His Noodly Appendage. You'll appreciate it if you bother to read about the church of The Flying Spaghetti Monster.

Steek Mystique

Here's a good illustration:

and here's a pic that I took of my test run (click to see it bigger):


Here are a couple of links to info about the steek technique (some vary from those above), because steeky can be spooky to gnitters...

Knitty Steeks

tradewinds

Schoolhouse Press

One Step Beyond: The blue cardigan knit in the round

I owe my old man a sweater, cuz I kinda blew it on one I was making for him a while ago that didn't work out well. He picked out a pattern:

These are the pretty yarns we chose to make it with (Harrisville New England Shetland Wool):

With my ongoing desire to knit in the round, I did a little research on how to do that with a cardigan. I'm gonna try to use a technique called "steeking". The first step is to knit 5 extra stitches beyond what the pattern calls for, and these fall where the front split will be. These 5 stitches have to be knit through the back loop.

Someday, when I get to the end of the body of the sweater, I will either sew or crochet along the outer steeked stitches to secure them, and then CUT right up the middle! Stay tuned, more to come, albeit slowly...

Song o' the Week: Broken Hearted Melody

Broken Hearted Melody, performed by Sarah Vaughan. It's a pretty little pop song from the late fifties. I just have a scratchy little 45 of it and I like it, no big deal. I told ya there weren't no rhyme or reason to this song of the week thing...

It reminds me of Hymie, in fact I'm pretty sure I got it from him.





NOTE: The link to listen to my song of the week will only be posted for a week. after that you gotta find it yourself.

Saints be praised! Lush is done!

Well, I accomplished one thing this week (I've been sick, and whiney, and basically useless since last weekend). I finished my pet knitting project! I was really sweating this, as I converted the pattern pretty drastically, and Rowan denim yarn is a little tricky to work with because you knit it 20% longer than you want it to be and then wash and shrink it. I knit it in the round, the body and the sleeves onto the body (see previous Lush posts by using the google search on this page), and I was nervous that the sleeves wouldn't shrink right with the body. No worries! It worked!
Before washing pic:
After the shrink:

It's like Miss America is right in my frikkin' face!

Here's a link to make your own 3-D pictures!
Stereo View Tutorial

Song of the Week: Águas de Março

Link to listen to Águas de Março, by Antonio Carlos Jobim

What a beautiful song, written by this suave mofo pictured here, and performed by he and Brazillian chanteuse Elis Regina. A lot of people have lovingly covered this number, but this is the real deal. This version is in Portugese. If you haven't heard much Antonio Carlos Jobim, I highly recommend the "Man From Ipanema" Box Set.

Luscious Lush Update

I'm still plugging away at this Rowan Denim pattern for the Lush tunic-y thing (to see previous pics just use that google window up there to the left and search for "Lush"). I am so excited, as only a knitter would be about something like this, that it seems to be working to knit this thang completely seamlessly. I have finished the front and back, used a 3 needle bind off for the shoulders, and learned this VERY COOL trick from the nice person who posts PURLWISE knitting blog: Ladies and Gentleman, you CAN knit a sleeve right onto the body of a sweater from the top down. Here is a link to Purlwise's great instructions: top down cap sleeves using wrapped short rows It sounds scary, but I promise that it is not and these instructions are great. If you loathe sewing seams after all the knitting is done, this is a must!

Here's some evidence:
mmm...and lovely blue toenails to match...



There is one very scary prospect that I am facing, but I'm hoping that I've made the proper allowances for it. Rowan Denim shrinks lengthwise by about 20% after you've knit it up. The sleeve stitches in my case here were picked up very loosely in order to compensate for the shrinkage. I hope.

Song of the Week: Crepuscule with Nellie

Crepuscule with Nellie

No squawking and words/lyrics this week.

Thelonious Monk will probably pop up here now and again. For me, his music is very spiritual, and like all things spiritual I feel like talking on and on at length about it tends to sully the subject and miss the point. It's beautiful, and it's a little funny a lot of the time. Crepuscule means twilight, and Nellie was Monk's wife.

NOTE: The link to listen to my song of the week will only be posted for a week. after that you gotta find it yourself.

Recommended reading...from a load!

A Voice Through A Cloud, by Denton Welch

One of my co-workers saw me reading this and judging the title erroneously spat out, "sounds like a chick book". I was too engrossed (and maybe a little too annoyed) to bother defending it, but it is a very hard to define, highly entertaining book that so far is about a guy who gets creamed on his bicycle at around the age of twenty and winds up in hospitals and in chronic pain from then on. Sounds uplifting, right? Not only that, but it's autobiographical---poor old Denton died at the age of 33 after suffering for years from his fractured spine! The thing is, he rose from the ashes, and at such a tender age no less, to rival Proust in his ability to make a definite SOMETHING out of almost NOTHING. Here's a quote from William S. Burroughs (yes, that old yunky wheezebag!): "Such a marvelous writer, the way he can make anything into something. Writers who complain that they don't have anything to write about should read Denton Welch and see what he can do with practically nothing."

And here's a wee moment from the book:

I thought of the Mongol who had first worn my ring. I saw him dirty, in a broad hat with tassels, and enormous cloth boots. He was on horseback, waving a sword, breathing out garlic. I thought of ten thousand miles of ink-blue ocean, huge waves the three-cornered shape of wedges of cheese. I thought of friendship as an egg which never really hatches. Each moment of quarrelling or magic harmony is a pecking away of the shell; but the baby bird's head never emerges.

I love this book. It is a luxurious read.

A link to info on Denton Welch
A link to buy every single one of Denton's available books---do it now!

Song of the Week: Crossing Newbury Street

This song has been going through my head all week, it keeps coming up on shuffle in my ipod, and I love it, so I thought it had better be the song of the week. It's by Roddy Frame, whom some of you will remember from his band Aztec Camera a loooooong time ago. My gurlfriends and I all thought he was so cute in his little fringe jacket, especially how he couldn't say his "R" words very well. We called him "Woddy Fwame". Well, I loved him back then, and then I forgot about him. A few years ago Chris (my better half) sought him out---because he never gave up on Roddy---and he found this newer CD called "Surf". It is beautiful, from start to finish. Perfect little songs and it's just Roddy singing and accompanying himself on guitar. You may remember, Roddy is no slouch when it comes to guitar. It's an especially good record to listen to in the Fall. BUT I DIGRESS...this song is simply about looking back over your life with a sad but sweet nostalgia. Oh, but it tugs my heart strings! I know some will disagree, but I think it rivals the Beatles "In My Life" as a song about wistfully looking back. I hope you like it, too!

Link to Crossing Newbury Street

PS-It seems Roddy can say his R words now.

More knitting patterns for the few, the proud, the knitters who look at this site

PLEASE NOTE: These patterns are around 60 or 70 years old, so I'm betting you may have a tough time finding the yarn they're referencing! The sizing may be a bit different than today, too, considering the corsets they were wearing and all (or were they calling them "girdles" by then?)! I'm thinking the best thing to do is just do the math: find a yarn/needle combo that works to give you the suggested guage and make sure that the suggested gauge with the number of stitches cast on will give you the size you desire (stitches per inch X inches around you). Adjust from there. Not for the fainthearted, but really not that hard, either.

Click here for link to this pattern---I'd make it just for that collar!

Click here for link to this pattern---and how about that hat?!

Click here for link to this pattern, if you're feeling very ambitious!

I'm with David Lynch...

On his Daily Weather Report today (look to your right for a link), David Lynch broke from his "sunny, blue skies and 70 degrees" tradition to inject: "Where is the next Joseph N. Welch?!"

Don't know who that is? That's okay, he was an attorney, most well known for standing up at the Army v McCarthy Hearings and saying: "Until this moment, Senator, I think I had never gauged your cruelty or your recklessness...Have you no sense of decency, sir, at long last? Have you left no sense of decency?"
This moment was apparently the beginning of the end of the McCarthy witch hunts.

Don't know why that's significant? Then you can keep kissing your civil liberties goodbye, one by one...

Where the hell is the next Joseph N. Welch?

Link to the audio, thanks to Mark: McCarthy and Welch

E-Z Felted Slippers part III

My Dad got his felted slippers and sent me this X-Ray vision shot of them. I can't believe he put them on even for a second in this sweaty heat, but I'm glad to see that they fit!