breaking fast
December 20, 2008
It has been a year since I bought any yarn. I alluded to an upcoming knit-from-stash period a couple of times last January but never followed through with the dedicated post I promised. This is, in case you still haven’t figured it out, because I am a lazy slackass of the first order. At least I’m good at something, right?
My last yarn purchase, some time in the first two weeks of December 2007, was two skeins of then-brand-new Noro Kureyon Sock (preordered from the wonderful and much-missed Main Street Yarns in Watkinsville, Georgia). When the yarn made its way to me at the end of January I was still thinking that knitting exclusively from my stash for a whole year was going to kill me. I don’t really have that big a stash, y’all. But, guess what? After the first month it didn’t hurt at all. AND I gave away whole piles of stash, some to my friend Brian for his piece Constancy, some to Nikol Lohr for her building scarf project, and some to the Athens Goodwill in the last days of packing to get the hell outta grad school and go home (sweet home). And I don’t know about you guys but once I stop doing something for a while I get into a groove where the not-doing of the thing is the easiest thing in the world, and the thing I had to force myself not to do suddenly becomes a big super-hassle to even think of doing. This is how I once fasted for almost six days, too: after the first day it was easier to just keep not eating. I don’t recommend that, or intend to ever be that foolish again, but. Just, you know, for comparison.
So that Noro sock yarn bounced around in my bag for a while, accompanying me to visit friends in Chicago for the fourth of July, keeping my hands busy in the car while I deluded myself multiple times about the size of my calves.
I now have a single knee sock stalled just before the heel flap and haven’t touched it since summer, and after reknitting that one knee sock leg three times before getting it the right size, I think I’m going to rip the whole thing again and make the Ziggy socks instead. Because I am a champ at the starting part of projects. Egad, but that yarn is effing gorgeous though, eh?
So. For the first time in over a year I walked into a yarn store today, not to break my fast in a hideous display of deprivation-fueled wooly gluttonly, but to pick up a few very specific yarns with which to make some small gifts. Here’s what I walked out with:
Two skeins of Noro Silk Garden, one of Noro Shinano. I plan to expand my yarn buying beyond the world of Noro soon, I swear. But I have to tell y’all, while I was torn for a moment whether to get the Shinano or just go with a solid colour of Manos for one person’s gift, I wasn’t really tempted by anything in the store for myself. It was like yarn had lost its hold on me, or something. Scary, eh?
Posted by jodi on December 20, 2008 at 8.30pm
shored up clean against a stiffened sky
December 17, 2008
Just as I was getting ready to go to bed last night I heard scraping on the sidewalk outside, and looking out I saw the drug-dealer neighbours across the street out there shovelling their walk. In the -10°C weather, snow still falling, one of them had on a white tank top. The other wasn’t wearing a shirt at all.
Not being under the influence of anything chemical that might offer me protection against the cold, I bundled up a bit more than that this morning to shovel my own walk:
I don’t know who left those kitty tracks on the steps but it certainly wasn’t Miss Cleo, who refused to come outside into the cold with me. It was probably one of the alley cats. I’m pretty sure it wasn’t Old Kitty either, though: this past Monday marked a full year since the last time I spotted him, and I’ve finally admitted to myself that he’s dead. I wish I could have found him and buried him in a safe spot in the backyard with my own cats, but his body must have gone back to the alley long ago, feeding the rats who in turn feed the wild kitties. And on it goes.
Posted by jodi on December 17, 2008 at 11.42am
rocking the big three-seven
December 16, 2008
Here’s a little sweater I started in September. It’s the sort of quick and easy knit that should be finished in a couple of days but I’m a much better starter than a finisher. And projects are much more satisfying if they languish in a corner mere inches of being complete for a month or two, aren’t they? Oh, maybe that’s just me, then. Never mind!
Specs: top down raglan worked in various laceweight-ish scraps on a 6mm circular needle. The red and dark gray are handspun (Brown Sheep mill ends from Sheep Shed Studio), light gray is recycled wool/mohair, black is a mystery fibre (I think also a wool/mohair blend), a tiny bit of a Value Village score from aeons ago. I still have a skein as big as my head. I wanted it to be messy and hole-y, so I added a yarn-over whenever I felt like it and also dropped a few stitches (I wish I’d dropped more). It fits pretty well without blocking but I’m not certain it will be all that durable or that it won’t stretch all out of shape with wear. We’ll see.
I’ve decided to jump on the 365 days bandwagon, because I miss the routine of taking photos of myself every day. Today is day one. So far I haven’t missed a day!
Posted by jodi on December 16, 2008 at 1.15pm
today
December 15, 2008
-pasting paper dots, drinking tea, listening (finally) to Kim Werker’s phone interview with Joss Whedon.
-yes, that’s a box with a picture of the Walter Ostanek band on it. Shut up, I love that box. I made it myself.
-wishing there was a way I could get my entire body to always smell like Nori paste. These are the things modern science should be working to make happen.
-knitting, knitting, knitting. Got a sweater to finish up and photograph, pattern to finish writing. Like, yesterday. I thought a temporal rift was going to open today and I might be able to snatch some extra time out of a parallel dimension but instead all that happened is that it got really cold, really fast. Bugger that.
-did finish up an awesome sweater this morning though, a top-down raglan that’s been languishing in my gym bag, nearly-done, for a couple of months. I’ll show you tomorrow.
Posted by jodi on December 15, 2008 at 4.51pm
just like starting over
December 9, 2008
Well, kids, it’s been a nail-biting couple of weeks around here as Peter worked his arse off building new templates for me while I hovered impatiently just behind his shoulder, but I’m finally ready to pack my bags and move on over to the new digs. Movable Type is dead, my friends. Dead as Dillinger.
I’ll be leaving the archives to rest where they are (in case anyone ever wants to go back and read stuff from way back before I went to grad school and got boring) but have copied my last month’s worth of entries (for once I’m glad there have been so few!) over to my shiny new WordPress weblog. This morning I spent what seemed like an eternity pretending to be you guys in order to painstakingly copy all of your comments over onto those entries as well; a fabulously executed fraud. Now I’m planning to get all new-leafy, write more often, reply to more comments, maybe jump on the 365 bandwagon (the flickr photos bandwagon, not the post-every-day one; I’m not totally off my rocker, y’all!).
So, ladies and gentlemen, point your browsers! All it takes is two little letters, to change your subscription from www.jodigreen.ca/blog to www.jodigreen.ca/weblog. So easy, so gratifying.
See you there!
Posted by jodi on December 9, 2008 at 9.21am
betty goodwin, 1923 – 2008
December 8, 2008
Betty Goodwin, one of my biggest influences, has died. In my thesis report on The Wardrobe Project I wrote of the influence her Tarpaulin series (1974-1978) had on my working methods. Countless times I have shown her work to friends, colleagues, classmates and students. I have stood in awe before her works in galleries, marveling at the sensitivity and subtlety of her smudgey marks. Every time I have taken an eraser out of a student’s hand or urged a student to pay closer attention to richness of surface in a drawing, I invoke Betty and her work.
swimmer no. 3, mixed media drawing, 1983
The above image was originally nicked from this web gallery in 2006 for a flickr set of drawings I put together to show my drawing students.
Posted by jodi on December 8, 2008 at 2.26pm
