22 April 11
Gasland
This evening Numenius and I went to see Gasland, highly recommended if you get the chance and have the stomach for the ticking time-bomb aspect of unregulated and very dangerous drilling practices. Natural gas as the answer to the US’s insatiable and unsustainable demand for energy? No thanks.
In other news: my silkworms all died, victims of an attack by ants and the unseasonably cold weather. A second “feral” cat was caught and is now happily a member of a household with two other cats and a baby. The first cat, Elspeth, is not doing so well in her new home — she just wants to play but is terrorizing the older male cat who will now not eat. She’s sweet and full of energy, healthy and needs a new home. Holler if you can give her one or know someone who can.
And I bought my first fleece yesterday: it’s a Jacob fleece from a ewe named Summer from Meridian Jacobs. I joined the Farm Club, which gives you a fleece and a logo item (I got a green apron, good for carding on) and the chance to go help out on days where vaccinations or shearing or lambing are happening. I delayed a while because I was intimidated by the perceived difficulty of processing a fleece. But having seen Margaret Stove’s video, Spinning for Lace, I see there are very easy ways to do this, in small chunks. This, I can do. I’m going to prepare this fleece for the Tour de Fleece in July which coincides with the Tour de France.
15 April 11
A Tree Falls In Portland
The soccer team the Portland Timbers just won their very first game at home since the team started playing in the US top division Major League Soccer earlier this spring, beating the Chicago Fire this evening 4-2. Congratulations to the team and their fans.
Their fans. I learned about the home opener from this piece today on the soccer blog The Run of Play, the piece being about constructing a local urban identity through the global sport of soccer. From what I can tell the Timbers’ fans have already become one of the most animated of fanbases in all of MLS. It’s exciting to see this happening in US soccer.
7 April 11
A Wooly Weekend
On Saturday I left Numenius at the Let’s Draw Davis event so I could go to the Meridian Jacobs Open House. Lots of lambs — over 60 — and spinning, felting, a festival atmosphere. One group from Elk Grove brought their picnic and their Chardonnay and had a rare old time.
I’ve been spinning some Wensleydale and took my wheel along so I could spin with a small group. It’s a lovely fiber to spin and I was able to get this one much finer than my first couple of attempts. The luster is astonishing and knitting with it is reminiscent of mohair (don’t make mistakes because ripping it out is a pain).
On Sunday, after a trip up to Cold Canyon, I attended the memorial service for a friend and fellow knitter, “Nancy Seyden.” She was an amazing person and a fantastic advocate for disability rights in our region. She was a kickass knitter. She was also a docent at the Yolo Wildlife Area and I have donated my Delta socks (framed by my sister and with a generous donation from 100 Acre Wood in Norway, Maine) to the Foundation in her honor.
Baseball’s back. It’s fabulous. Spinning and baseball on the radio, how can you go wrong?
28 March 11
The New Crocker
Yesterday we went on an outing to the Crocker Art Museum in Sacramento which six months ago opened a large new wing, tripling the museum’s size. We’ve been members of the museum for many years now, but it has taken us a while to see the new addition, despite Sacramento being only a hop, skip, and a jump over the Yolo Causeway from here (which is a lake right now, the Yolo Bypass being full with water diverted from the Sacramento River to prevent a flood after all the rain we’ve gotten this month).
The entrance to the Crocker is at ground level at the new wing now, rather than at the top of the flight of stairs leading to the Victorian mansion of the original Crocker. We stepped inside, stopped at the admissions desk, and then were confused. Score a minus for first-floor layout. To the left was a large open space with lots of table seating. At the far left corner was the obligatory museum cafe, and at the right was the museum store. Where to go to actually see the exhibits was not immediately apparent. A problem to be fixed with signage, but they could have made this clear with a grand stairwell.
We found the stairs, and passed up to the second floor, where there was a display of their new collection of art from Oceania and Africa, along with a handful of antiquities. Up to the third floor then, where there was the main exhibition, the highlight of the visit. This was an exhibition of the paintings of Gottfried Helnwein entitled “Inferno of the Innocents”. Helnwein grew up in post-war Austria where as a child talk of the violence of the years before his birth was repressed, children being too young to understand. Owing something to the art of his adopted town Los Angeles, Helnwein works on large movie screen-sized canvases, his style photorealist, often resembling black-and-white film noir. The loss of innocence of children is a frequent theme of his. I was glad the Crocker now finally has a space that could display exhibits on as large a scale as Helnwein’s.
It used to be that the Crocker could be comfortably toured in an hour or so., That is no longer the case now that it has the new wing, and we didn’t try to see what they’ve done with the paintings in the old building. That will be for another day. We are members after all, and it’s only a hop, skip, and a jump over there.
This post marks the eighth anniversary of Feathers of Hope.
26 March 11
Spinning for Socks
I’ve been working on my spinning skills for making sock yarn. Socks need to fit well for comfort and also wear — the trick is to minimize abrasion so the wool scales don’t break and expose what’s left to further abrasion. Holes in heels and toes are common. After all this work, they break your heart.
My class with Janel Laidman at Stitches West in February was excellent. Some tricks to making a durable yarn are a) the strength of the material itself (nylon, silk, and mohair are much stronger fibers than wool); b) wool preparation (combed top is better than carded roving for socks because the fibers align neatly, reducing abrasion again); c) spinning method, making the most of these aligned fibers, i.e. worsted spinning vs. woolen spinning; d) hiding as much of the surfaces of each strand within the plied structure, such as with cable plying or multiple-strand plying; e) even spinning (cutting down on abrasion again, and accomplished easily by slowing down the treadling once you’ve learned how to spin); f) a tight ply; g) a tight knit. (The most important one of all of these, as far as I can tell, is the last; recommendations by the contemporary wool industry about what gauge to knit at are woefully inadequate for wear and would have been laughed at by our ancestors—see Aaron Lewis for exhaustively more on this).
All of the above is great except you can end up with chain mail for your feet if you’re not careful, so spinning sock yarn is an exercise in balancing strength with softness. Instead of spinning hard and plying hard, you can spin soft and ply hard, which results in smooth curved ridges along the yarn rather than straight-as-a-ruler stuff. So Janel had us combining merino (soft) with blue-faced leicester (strong AND soft, a longwool which is sort of ideal for socks all on its own); plying different fibers together (one strand of mohair to two of BFL plus one of merino, for instance. A compromise that can be made at the level of spinning is long-draw (a woolen spinning technique) from a combed top (worsted preparation) to make a semi-worsted strand.
In a grand finale to this class Janel made an ideal blend for socks on the drumcarder: BFL, cashmere, nylon, merino. It made me lust after a drumcarder but they’re expensive and bulky and scary sharp, not necessarily a wise addition to a 600-sf space with two cats.
My experiments have led to a wider-than-hoped for yarn that I’ve cable-plied: two strands of plied yarns plied together the opposite direction, locking the “bumps” in together. I’ve combined separate strands of mohair with BFL and merino in different proportions and will knit the stronger strands along the foot rather than up the leg…. These will make good socks for my new Wellingtons, bought on Friday because we seem to be drifting off into the Delta, here.
I’m calling this colorway San Lorenzo, and may design a sock that reflects the martyrdom of this particular saint, who is reputed to have told the folks cooking him on a gridiron that he was done on that side and could be turned over now, thanks.
22 March 11
Can I Have One of Those Too?
Yesterday we were down in Berkeley for a family celebration which we preceded by having drinks with my sister and her partner at the venerable seafood restaurant Spenger’s. Seated next to us at the bar were about ten people quite intently engaged in something. We looked at what they were doing. They all had printouts of the Giants’ regular schedule, some in color, some in black and white. They were divvying up season tickets!
It’s not much longer before the season begins. Go Giants!
19 March 11
The Week of Cats
I’ve started meditating. I bought a cushion and stool because I can’t sit comfortably cross-legged with my wonky left hip. Charlie and Diego have purloined the cushion, however.
The feral cat… I can’t remember when we first noticed her. But it seems like at least last summer. I thought the two kittens we saw on New Year’s Day were hers. But no, there’s a spay incision in her belly, and the kittens haven’t been seen for weeks.
She came up to me one night, obviously looking for affection. From the woman who hurled blue frisbees at her. I petted her, then, feeling two hair mats on her neck, fetched a brush. She purred louder than any cat I’ve heard. Yeah. Right. Feral.
Elspeth was not only spayed, but microchipped. I need to marshall all my new buddhist resources not to feel murderous toward anyone who dumped her out here. Students: In June, when you leave, please don’t dump your animals. You’ll be consigning them to a life of a) ear mites b) infection, list too lengthy to detail c) death by coyote d) death by rodenticide e) death by shotgun.
Elspeth got lucky. She found a new home, through us, a life indoors that will spare her these risks. She’s a sweetie and I hope she does well. Now back to that buddhist thing…
8 March 11
State of Siege
Last week I finished reading Fernand Braudel’s masterful tome The Mediterranean and the Mediterranean World in the Age of Philip II, a book which I’ve been wanting to get through for about twenty-five years now. Looking around for other retellings of the same theme I came across the author Roger Crowley, who has recently written the books 1453: The Holy War for Constantinople and the Clash of Islam and the West and Empires of the Sea: The Siege of Malta, The Battle of Lepanto, and the Contest for the Center of the World. Crowley is an able storyteller, and I finished both these books in rapid succession. Sieges are at the center of both books: the siege and the fall of Constantinople being the subject of the first, and the Great Siege of Malta in 1565 being the centerpiece of the second book.
After reading Crowley’s narrative I decide the siege of Malta would make a great movie, hitting a number of good storytelling tropes: an epic defense against overwhelming odds; the sacrifice of one contingent of the defenders to buy time for the rest; and finally rescue by the arrival of reinforcements just in time (delayed by the ditherings of Philip II off in Spain). Sieges don’t seem to make it into war movies very often though. What comes to my mind is Helms’ Deep in The Two Towers, and switching from fantasy to history, the 1964 movie Zulu. This list of top ten siege movies doesn’t really add any other examples of siege warfare, most of the movies on the list being thrillers or horror flicks. I don’t think the siege of Constantinople has quite the potential for being a movie as does the siege of Malta. Not that 15th-16th century Mediterranean history has the slightest chance of making it into the movies: how can you film a historical drama without there being any English royalty around?
25 February 11
Paris, 1986
The metro.
The dogshit.
The smoke.
The traffic.
The noise.
The stairs.
The walls.
The silence.
Dwindle-cash.
Dwindle-truths.
Dwindle-joy.
Dwindle-god.
Dwindle-voice.
Fake smile.
Fake joy.
Fake French.
Fake marriage.
Fake self.
Book-delve.
Deep-delve.
Story-delve:
Sheherezade
on a perch
weaving tales
(in flawless French)
to save her life
This is a contribution to the Language, Place Blog Carnival hosted this time by Jean at Tasting Rhubarb with a theme of “another place, another language, another self.”
20 February 11
February Sketchcrawl
Following the passage of a cold front, I woke up yesterday to the sight of snow sprinkled on the Vaca Mountains, and with wet-looking clouds still blowing on through this month’s Davis Sketchcrawl called for dressing warmly. Several of us sketchers met on campus at the Death Star AKA the Social Sciences and Humanities Building. The sketch at left are two views of this odd maze of a building. Fingers frozen, we headed to a nearby cafe for lunch and finished up the day only a couple hundred yards from where we began at the bus circle near the student union.