aretha’s magic hat
January 28, 2009
There’s something funny about that giant photo of last week’s presidential inauguration that I assume everybody in the world has seen by now.
Because it’s a composite image and not everyone sits still through long speeches, some heads in the audience are conflated, truncated or just plain screwy. It almost looks like some dude with a goatee is wearing Aretha’s hat, or like she’s got some kind of magical force that causes that fedora to float unsupported in front of her face (for some awesome kind of rock and roll reason, clearly, since it’s Aretha after all). I had hoped that such a remarkable and mystical image might finally reveal Dick Cheney’s hidden demonic nature for all to see, but sadly he’s still too crafty for that.
Sorry for the shabby photo quality; I haven’t figured out why I can’t get the “print screen” function to work properly on my new laptop, so I had to do it the old way: camera held up to the screen.
Posted by jodi on January 28, 2009 at 1.36pm
love, insufficient
January 20, 2009
Heads up, my chickens! The fabulous Ms. Jacey has organized a giant awesome swaperoo for those of us who find ourselves with lovingly handknit items we never wear but can’t part with on account of all the hard work we put into them. I happen to have a few of these underloved knits myself, and if y’all play your cards right you just might be able to have them.
Here’s how it works: scour your closets, being honest with yourself about which knits are not so beloved as you thought they’d be. Then dig up or shoot some photos of them, preferably modeled, and send them off to Jacey by the deadline, which is TOMORROW, y’all. She’ll post all items along with your notes about why your knits are no longer loved. Then we’ll all make up wish lists of which pieces we’d like to receive in exchange, Jacey will match up items with recipients in a fair and painstaking manner, and we’ll all mail off our items in time for them to find new loving homes by Valentine’s Day. It just sounds like a big old festival of yarny love you want to get in on, doesn’t it?
Here are the items I’m entering, along with the notes I gave Jacey about why I’m giving them away. This was harder than I thought it would be, because I really do love these pieces even though I seldom wear them, and I do sort of want to keep them for myself. It’s only my conviction that someone else out there will love them more, coupled with the prospect of receiving something that desperately needs a new home, that’s allowing me to let these go.
1. project name: I love you golden blue
pattern: Stefanie Japel’s “Cropped cardigan with leaf ties”, from Fitted Knits
yarn: border leicester/corriedale, worsted weight, from Rabbitworks Fibre Studio
ravel it
I adore this sweater, both the pattern and the amazing, obnoxious, glorious blue of it. But for some reason I don’t find myself reaching for it often; I’ve probably worn it six or seven times tops. I think it might be the slight bulk of the sleeve hem that bothers me, although looking at the photos of me wearing it I don’t really think it looks weird at all. The yarn is perhaps a little scratchy but not terribly so, and I think it would soften up with more washing as well (it’s just that it hasn’t been worn often enough to have been washed many times yet). Honestly I think if I just had broader shoulders I’d wear this constantly.
2. project name: rage
pattern: Circular Shrug by Julia Allen
yarn: recycled lambswool from a thrift store sweater
ravel it
I loved this piece when I first made it. I still love it, the way the collar folds so luxuriously. It even gives me the illusion of shoulders. It was great when I lived in Athens GA and needed a variety of layers for temperatures that changed quite drastically over the course of a day, but now that I’m back home in Canada I find there’s really not a good time of year to wear this, and so it languishes. The yarn is recycled, but it’s quite sturdy and I think it has a lot of years of wear in it. My gorgeous vintage filigree pin is in no way included, sorry!
Posted by jodi on January 20, 2009 at 6.07pm
casual sex, prostitution and incest are so darned unpleasant when I have that not-so-fresh feeling
January 17, 2009
I saw an ad on television the other day for Canesten vaginal yeast infection treatments (I scoured the internets hoping to embed it here but it was nowhere to be found, so y’all will just have to use your imaginations). The ad features three women whose lives are far too busy and fulfilling to let a little yeast infection get them down:
Woman #1, an executive: I use Canesten so that when a surprise meeting comes up, I CAN.
Woman #2, a doctor: I use Canesten so that if I’m asked to fit in one of my regulars, I CAN.
Woman #3, a mom: I use Canesten so that if my daughter wants to play, I CAN.
If I worked in advertising I might need to keep extra pants at work for those days when I’d pee myself laughing while writing brilliant copy like this.
Posted by jodi on January 17, 2009 at 1.04pm
the dorkness
January 14, 2009
Vert, four palets argent, in sinister base a panther dormant in annulo proper.
I love that I have dear friends who can tell me how to properly blazon a photo of my cat without laughing at me for asking.
Now, if anybody can provide me with a good Latin translation of “it’s Daddy, you shithead! Where’s my bourbon?”, it’ll be greatly appreciated. Just the latest contender for the banner that tattooed red-winged blackbirds will some day carry across my chest. I’m sorry I’m such a freak (me tum extraordinarius esse paenitet) and with twenty-six soldiers of lead shall I take over the world are still in the running as well. Married but not dead, while tempting, had to be removed from the running, as marriage goes against my religion. Any other ideas happily considered.
Posted by jodi on January 14, 2009 at 2.50pm
there goes another rubbertree plant
January 2, 2009
Here is my 2009 überlist. It’s uncategorized, because I write my first draft directly into the space provided in my date book and my brain doesn’t really work in a categorized way. Some of these things are new, some are slightly less ambitious than last year’s (for that self-congratulatory easy-to-complete goodness), a few are repeats from last year that didn’t get realized. I’ll try to revisit the list here every quarter with progress on how I’m doing instead of leaving it until the end of December like I usually do. Darn, I should have put that on the list!
1: no refined sugar for at least one month (I’m looking at you, January!)
2: gym 2 x weekly
3: floss 2 x weekly
4: finish straight outta brompton sweater (January)
5: finish Alice/Bridie sweater (February)
6: finish lace nightie sweater (by summer)
7: 365 days flickr project
8: finish all socks currently on needles (that’s around six pairs, I think, or maybe eight)
9: use chopsticks once a week for practice
10: finish stockings for Merouda
11: try not to swear so much
12: eat more greens (2 x or more a week)
13: drink more whiskey
14: ride my bike more, min. 3 x per week, weather permitting
15: fix the broken beam in the basement
16: don’t stall on weekly chores so much
17: start the listening project and set a schedule for it
18: clean up my work table
19: keep my work table/area clean
20: take my vitamins every day
21: try a new recipe from every cookbook we own
22: post at least one photo to flickr every day
23: organize my fabrics and sewing stuff
24: design myself a new work uniform: skirt + shirt
25: sew up a week’s worth of uniform pieces
26: wear my uniform at all times while working (at printing or at job) (not that I have a job, but eventually)
27: apply for 2 shows per month (deadlines tend to cluster, so as long as I do 24 throughout the year, it counts)
28: apply to 4 residencies per cycle (spring, fall)
29: update sketchbooks section of website
30: update in progress section of website
31: blog studio work in progress at least once weekly
32: clean out basement built-in shelves (painting stuff)
33: get the rest of my student work onto flickr (spring 2008 lithography class)
34: water plants every week, no forgetting!
35: write up the pattern for Rosaleen’s scarf
36: make my first self-published pattern (the green lace cardigan I’ve stalled on, maybe?)
37: clean out filing cabinet
38: do the hundred pushups challenge
39: get a job! I can’t believe that didn’t show up here until number 39.
40: plant my purple tulips
41: consolidate boxes in the attic
42: clean and reorganize at least one side of the attic
43: wash the windows
44: new front sidewalk
45: new front porch!
46: finish 2 new drawings per week
47: start up sketchbook project again
48: scan old family photos
49: spend a day in Huron Park taking pictures
50: visit Point Pelee
51: visit Uncle Tom’s Cabin or one of the other local Underground Railroad historical sites
52: write at least six real letters
53: become the sort of person who sends thank you cards
54: design & print cards for thank yous (letterpress)
55: write on my weblog more often
56: rework and print all of my copper plates
57: read at least one book per month
58: make a flagstone path in the front garden
59: finish wallpaper in bathroom
60: strip the basement china cabinet & paint it black
61: replace dining room glasses shelves with (#60) cabinet
62: wash out entire inside of fridge really well at least once
63: make a new shower curtain
64: visit a zoo
65: have a picnic in a park with Peter
66: shoot a roll of film with the Iloca camera
67: shoot a roll with the Canon AE-1
68: shoot a roll with my old Pentax
69: shoot at least one roll of film with one of the other old cameras we have (the Brownies?)
70: join the Printmakers Forum board
71: join the Artcite board
72: go to a Windsor Spitfires game
73: get my next tattoo
74: make homemade pasta
75: get rid of things I hang onto but don’t need
76: put music cds in a binder and give/throw away jewel cases
77: bake something I’ve never baked before
78: can something I’ve never canned before
79: go see In the Pocket at the Vic tavern
80: host 4 dinner parties
81: go to the dentist
82: go to the eye doctor: new glasses!
83: get hair cut at least 4 times (in order to grow it out awesome instead of growing it out gross like last time)
84: clean out bedroom closet
85: finish that blue blouse I cut out last year
86: wear my contacts at least one day a week
87: get my learner’s permit
88: go bowling
89: new curtains for our bedroom
90: paint our bedroom
91: shred old files
92: visit (and borrow from) the public library
93: renew my library card!
94: clean/dust everything on the plate rail in the dining room
95: organize craft materials
96: take photos of the sculptures down by the river
97: get into an international exhibition
98: show my thesis work in a gallery
99: print fabrics for the corset project with Kelly
100: design skirts to go with corset project
101: organize a show for #99 & #100
102: get my ears pierced
103: start submitting knit designs again
104: construct features for the front garden (metal bars, helms, hippo)
105: disassemble the back deck
106: do our (overdue!) taxes
107: knit up the leftover yarn from finished socks into blanket squares
108: buy those green boots I can’t stop thinking about
109: finish the dresses I started last summer and sell them on etsy
Posted by jodi on January 2, 2009 at 5.45pm
no promises. . .
January 1, 2009
but you might start seeing me around here more often.
Here’s that sock again:
I decided to copy Caro and knit stripes alternating from both ends of the yarn ball. Ugly or beautiful, either way this is absolutely the last time I reknit this sock. So, no ripping.
In other news, I tallied up the things I accomplished on last year’s überlist, and. Well. Not so hot, I’m afraid, even though I gave myself half-marks for some things because I sort of did them, or because I did them but maybe not consistently and the terms might have been fuzzy. Anyway. The following are the übelist items for which I earned full marks:
#2: knit only from stash: no yarn buying! (hello, that’s a HUGE one right there, surely I should get some bonus points)
#8: get website up to date. Done. Several times.
#9: once up to date, update website twice monthly. I gave myself full marks for this even though there are some pages in the portfolio section that, as of December 31 2008, need updating again. That is a heck of a lot of boring cutting and pasting of html coding, people, plus I totally overhauled the entire site and also (with Peter’s help) switched the blog over to wordpress, so I’d say I get a point for this one.
#12: re-evaluate (yarn) stash; give some away. Totally decimated the stash, gave some to friends, sent some off in the mail, gave some to Goodwill, and even (gasp!) threw some in the garbage, all in preparation to pack up my whopping pile of grad school crap and carry it all home. I got rid of a lot of good stuff but we just barely got everything into the rental trailer as it is.
#16: ride my bike more. I get marks for this partly because I didn’t really define “more”, and once I got home from grad school I pretty much got around town entirely on my bike, not forking out any cash for the bus until the snowy weather hit.
#18: draw during meetings instead of knitting. A resounding success with a side effect: fewer annoyed looks shot my way. Because for some reason people think it’s less rude to draw than it is to knit while people are talking. Fools.
19: eat less junk. Pretty much up until about December 6th, I was awesome with this one.
20: examine hungers. I have no idea what I even meant with this one, but I think maybe it had something to do with being alone all the time (at grad school, away from home) and not taking care of myself and looking at what unhappinesses were making me abuse my body by eating, for example, popcorn for supper and then again for lunch the next day. So if that’s what I meant when I wrote this one, I get the marks for it.
22: Goodwill or refashion 30% of my clothes.
23: put up shelves in basement. I think here I was referring to some wooden shelves we were planning to put up along one wall, but Peter beat me to it and did this before I got home from school in the spring. When our basement flooded later in the summer it kicked our arses into building the storage island we’d been talking about, in the middle of the space with metal shelving and lockers and drawer units and built-in places to stow the long bits of our SCA pavilion and other hard-to-store crap. So for that, I get the points.
28: get fall 2007 student work up on Flickr. Done. Don’t ask me about the spring 2008 work though; that I’m still working on.
34: can tomatoes.
38: eat locally and in season. Well, I didn’t say exclusively, so I’d say I get the marks. And I did some preserving of local stuff when it was in season: strawberries, tomatoes, applesauce.
46: go to bed earlier. Yup.
54: cut down bead stash; give away 50%. I can probably give away most of the rest now too. I have no idea why I collected so many beads in the first place.
56: make a new satchel.
57: make satchels for the etsy shop.
58: start some new house plants. Well, we bought a couple. Same diff.
59: water them. So far, so good.
65: reorganize record collection. Hell, yeah. I even made a list of everything we have, looked up all of the release dates (the ones I could find), and entered them into a database that Peter prepared. Phase one of our evil plan.
68: socialize more with the other grad students. Again, a failure to define “more”, but since I socialized more in my last semester of grad school than I ever had before, I win.
69: clean up my studio and keep the table clear. Two tasks in one, really, and requiring totally different parts of the brain too. I mostly kept it clear. Then in May I cleaned it all up and shipped it all away. Score!
70: cut up all the paper littering the studio for binding into books. Done, but most of that is now sitting in my new work space, not made into books. Some of it is half made into books.
78: cook with Peter more often. We have a crazy schedule this year and everyone has days on which it’s their job to make supper. We don’t prepare meals together as often as we used to before I went away to school, but when I was away we didn’t at all, so I’d say in this case some = more.
81: volunteer at Artcite. I’m on the programming committee now, for starters.
84: go to art galleries more often.Again, what’s “more”? I go to art galleries.
85: don’t bitch about people. Whoa. Buried in amongst all these easy peasy little tasks, a biggie. I was specifically thinking here about not getting sucked into petty workplace bitchiness, and for the most part I managed that. I could use a lot more improvement in the general bitchiness area but I tried. Points for me. Maybe it should only be half points but if anybody suggests that I’ll only bitch about you so don’t bother.
94: get my next tattoo. Yup.
98: take pictures of all the place I lived in Athens before I leave.
99: take pictures of all the places I lived in London.
105: take my vitamins every day. I was better about this in Athens than I have been since coming home, but I’m getting better.
Things for which I’m giving myself half-marks:
66: listen to all of our records in alphabetical order. No, I didn’t do it. I did it once before, about ten years ago, and was going to do it again but Peter said it was a stupid idea and that organizing them some other way would be better. So we’ve done the whole database thing and as soon as we can track down some more release dates (and add in some new purchases to the list) we’re going to listen to all of our records in chrononogical order. And blog it. I get half-marks because I made this one way more awesomer and did a lot of work towards making it happen.
67: eat at least one meal at home per week with chopsticks, for practice. Some weeks in Athens I ate with chopsticks every day. Not so much since I came home, maybe only once a month.
#89: try a new recipe from every cookbook we own. I use some books more than others, and while I tried a lot of new things and cracked a few books for the first time, I’d say I probably only made something out of a third of the cookbooks we own. We’ve also acquired a lot of new cookbooks in the last year though.
#96: get rid of all the dead ballpoint pens in the house. I did this in my apartment in Athens, but not in our house back home. Yet.
No, I’m not going to list all of the things I didn’t accomplish, because this is supposed to be a self-congratulatory exercise, not a wallowing in disapproval one. Plus you can see the entire list here if you really give a rat’s arse. Anyway, my paltry 34 out of 108 doesn’t look so craptastically bad when you consider that I EARNED A MASTER’S DEGREE which wasn’t even on the list! So there.
Maybe tomorrow I’ll post 2009′s überlist, if I can get arsed to finish it. Yes, I know it’s 2009 already and the list should be done. Making 2009′s überlist before 2009 begins was #108 on 2008′s list. And I didn’t get it done. Bite me!
I am totally putting “tell people to bite me more often” on my 2009 list, by the way. The easier the tasks are the more I’ll accomplish, right?
Posted by jodi on January 1, 2009 at 7.51pm
