venerating/hating hestia

hestia (who she was, what stood for)
my d'auliare's on her says not much

she didn't get around a lot.

saddled with her tasks, many of which are hot, tiresome and drudgingly necessary. and despite all of our time, since hestia, it really does fall as a burden on one half of many couples.

the "mundane tasks" (that in quotes from some pompous assbag in the New York Times recently) without which the gears of society would grind to a halt. laundry. cleaning. meals. maintenance of the most quotidian functions of humanity.

we clean up shitandpiss and blood and mucus and semen and orange juice - all the emissions to which our flesh is so heir.

and so much dear flesh, too. partners: sexual and social. offspring, as they occur or do not. animals as they occur or do not. the unglorified, unglamorized, unpaid labor that goes into this strict machine.

at times I implore Hestia, my brow usually sweaty, my shirt evidence of the wrestle with laundry in a too small, too hot space - one of the few places in residence that does not have a low heat compact bulb. the old fashioned globe would roast any insects on contact. the fan wheezes along, an asthmatic bagpiper.

I implore this effort to be worth it, on some grand scale, and realize it's at Hestia's altar I should prostrate myself; I seek her her none-too-cool, none-too-soft hand caressing my brow, I beg her to glorify my works, see them in her name, and to build my strength and grace.

I have become more spiritual lately, and it has much to do with the mundane. Basil sprouts, the birdhouse gourds first pair of leaves, toddler-sturdy and naiive in their oaken shade: my inspiration.

I'm skeptical, and I don't think, really, in the really really scheme of things, that it matters at all that I do any of what I do. But on a domestic level, sure, put my domocile on a stage, and we do a very nice scene. Enjoyable in the moment, sure. But not without an exhausting cost. Two voices where there was only one, plus the cat, and also I talk to myself. The signal to noise ratio is low. Is that right? The signal is like at a 3 and the noise is at a larger number, say 367. That ratio would be 3:367 and thus seems like a low number.
[I'm also studying for the graduate school exam. Math practice.]

On top of pondering the questions of everything and finding myself seeing god in the steam over a pot on the stove, I seek out sentence fragments and repair them. More easy work.

love letters to punctuation marks

inspiration, courtesy utne, via others ad infinitum.

i do better in shorter distances tho, so, here, my extremely brief and charged
love letter to a semicolon

semicolon, you allow me rapid changes in direction; behind your shield i zig and zag.




(bow)

fingersnapping, cappuccino in little white cups and smart people in hats ensue.

ace

many are touched
when a humble dionysus
falls

cast on, cast off

so, since July, I have cast on and finished:
1 Undine
1 Crow Prints

I have cast on right now another Undine (such a simple knit but so beautiful if done correctly!), a Helleborus in some hand-dyed. Both of these projects are going to rub off as I knit them - Red Number 3 difficulties in my hand dyed (or just too much dye - I need to practice patience, if I really want the layered colors that I say I want) and the Malabrigo SW sock that I'm using for the Undine (for gift purposes) is shedding a lot of blue. I'm assuming that the Malabrigo folks use neither drink mix nor food dyes for their color, so I have to wonder what I'm getting on my needles and probably my hands. Eek. Not to cast aspersions. The yarn feels amazing, but so do my favorite jeans, and the process for dyeing those is hardly environmentally neutral or beneficial.

Yep that's what I do. Knit a lot, grade papers and worry about the dye in my commercial yarns.

upon further cogitation

we're all just singing into the darkness anyway.

Lavalette - Sekku

The title of this post probably makes no sense to most of the people in the world. I'm good with that. Whatever. But for what it means to, well, also not most of the people in the world is that the handsome knitter haz an achievement! Momo looks on in feline admiration. Which is to say that she hasn't eaten me. Yet.


I just knit Kristen Kapur's small shawl pattern, Lavalette. Or, be you not a Raveler, try Lavalette. Either way, the pattern is super adorable, the perfect thing even in this pervasive moist heat. Plus, when I wear it frontways, my front looks way awesome, as noted here:


I mean. KA-POW, right? Boom! Boobs! Or maybe I'm looking too hard into this. The pattern was nice and easy, a good coaxing into the world of triangle shawl manufacture. I think I'm getting the point - centered spine, garter stitch border, yarn over, do something spiffy, yarn over, knit the centered spine, yarn over, do something spiffy, yarn over, k2. Turn and k2, yo, p to last two stitches, k2. It's just those spiffy inbetween bits that designers seem to keep coming up with, and Kapur's is a nice combination of some things done by knitting things together, and clever yarn overs, with nice stretches of stockinette. Nothing too lacy, yet the openwork section really bloomed with some blocking. I will knit this again, and it's rare for me to revisit a pattern - this is just such a good one for self-stripey yarn. We won't go there just yet. I want to say something nice about Kapur's suggestion to donate to Alzheimer's research - what an awesome designer to offer her work for free, and suggest a worthy cause as the recipient of contributions.


OOOOkay. The yarn. Noro Sekku and I'm not even going to post a link to it because I'm mad at it. But it's the yarn that I used in the shawl in the picture of the ba-daows above. Noro. I can't quit you, my Japanese friend. My Japanese friend that is colorful and charming and occasionally feels nice to the touch. My Japanese friend who should stop worrying about diet so much and go ahead and never get down to lace weight again. This yarn makes me crazy and would set a perfectionist to much rending of teeth and gnashing of garments. It's skiiiiiiiiiiiinny and then it's thick. Like real thick. Like a tuba milkshake and then back to piccolo vinaigrette. Okay. I can roll with that - this adorable pattern can take that and run with it; I think it looks charming. But. But. A knot. A knot just before a particularly cute color transition and then they SKIPPED the BEST COLOR in the WHOLE DAMN SKEIN. Okay besides the totally acidic viper green, because I adore that color, but OMG WTF happened to my indigo?
See this?


That tiny little snippet of electric violet up there beneath the orange and before the teal? That's ALL of that color in the WHOLE DAMN SKEIN. I normally do not fuss about my Japanese friend, cute and funky and quirky. Noro helped me see colors together that I'd never put together and I've worn some bright-ass accessories made of Kureyon that I probably wouldn't wear otherwise. But. I would have been okay if it were orange and brown and yellow and green and teal. I would have been okay with that. However, I know Noro well enough to gently pry into the secrets each skein of their multicolored yarns to get some idea of what I'll be getting and I swear I saw more ultra-purple than just that bitty little stripe. Plus a knot. So no. I am not going to be able to recommend the yarn to any of the knitters I know who bother to take care with our work just to pay good money for pretty yarn that leaves two ends for me to weave in and made me do color fixing in the middle of a project. Not that my Japanese friend cares. She's got enough color freaks wrapped in her spell that she won't miss me at all. But I'll miss her.

Lavalette? Knit it!
Sekku? Don't bother!

a little weather music

the county and the town currently under a flash flood warning, good for the next couple of days. we're between clouds at the moment, where i work but the dark green oak leaves against the dark blue/grey clouds off to the west look beautiful and a little menacing.

some weather inspired music...