15 May 11
Sketching Through The Weekend
Several sketches from a long weekend. The first at right is of a barn about a mile-and-a-half southeast of here on Eggert Road; I cycled out past there on Friday. 
The second at left is a scene from the Davis Farmers Market; Pete Scully who organizes the Davis Sketchcrawl chose the Farmers Market as the monthly venue for it on Saturday.
The final sketch is a little watercolor I did this afternoon showing today’s unstable skies. Mount Diablo to the south is the peak in the sketch. There were several thundershowers throughout the day. We went for a walk in the morning and got hailed upon. 
29 April 11
Hats
The dress was lovely and all, but really today’s been all about the hats, about Victoria Beckham’s superglued-to-the-forehead hat to mimic her pregnant bump (she looks so sour ALL of the time and who can blame her with that double whammy) and the astonishing blue vulva hat and the revival of the Fascinator. But the prize goes to Princess Beatrice’s concoction which I’ve read of today as a reincarnation of Cthulhu, Mickey Mouse on acid and the Eye of Sauron, to mention just the tip of the iceberg.
My poor father would be rolling in his grave if he knew I was paying attention to any of this. From the north of England and of staunch anti-monarchical stock, he was of the opinion that all queens did was sit around and look beautiful, that they were sucking the coffers dry and a disgrace to democracy.
And yet… I had to wear a hat once. To Buckingham Palace. A dark green faux Russian faux fur hat, it was, something we picked up at Selfridges on the way, because you needed to wear a hat when your father was getting an OBE. (You didn’t, it turned out.) We arrived at the palace in a borrowed jag with Bob the borrowed chauffeur and emerged to lines of waiting and lines of recipients of the royal pleasure. I have no idea what went through my father’s head as he waited in morning dress in the antechamber before heading out to meet HM who referred to him in the document received as “our most beloved and loyal subject” but I did get an overwhelming sense of the number of people it must take to get this kind of thing to run smoothly on a daily basis, quite a bit more involved than just sitting around and looking beautiful, in the end.
These kinds of people were apparently absent when Beatrice was getting dressed this morning because her Cthulhu hat facebook page now has more than 50,000 fans. People are saying it’s Fergie’s way of flicking the vees/flipping the bird at the palace. Who knows. I wish I owned more hats than just baseball hats and straw gardening hats and chullos for birding in cold places, though, even if I never had anywhere to wear them. Maybe I need a Cthulhu hat after all.
23 April 11
SketchCrawl 31
Last Saturday I took the train down to San Francisco to take part in the 31st Worldwide SketchCrawl, being joined on the train ride down by fellow Davis sketcher Pete Scully. We all met at a cafe at the northeast corner of Dolores Park in the Mission District and fanned out from there. At left is one of the first sketches I did there, of the prominent San Francisco landmark Sutro Tower. From the park there is a great view of this 299-meter tall antenna mast, so I was glad I remembered to bring my antenna sketchbook to record it. Across the street from the park is Mission High School, illustrated at right; its architecture is far more ornate than where I went to high school. 
I then walked a couple blocks to the west and found myself unexpectedly in front of Pica’s favorite store ImagiKnit, so I had to sketch the sign.
I had lunch at a taqueria on Mission Street, headed back to Dolores Park for a final sketch from the hill, and left early to travel to another engagement in Davis in the evening, making the train back by about all of thirty seconds.
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…