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community effort

hey there ~ happy monday, hope everyone’s summer plans are shaping up nicely. the power of community – support, friendship, advice, allies – is so awesome. so yup, now that i’ve mini buttered you up, some help? first, of the knitterly kind, then of the more-important kind.

crinkle, which i’ve gotten into the habit of calling crinkly since it was waiting forever for me to seam up and had gotten pretty.. well, you get the idea. anyhow, seaming happened this weekend and i’m not pleased at all. the question, is it my seaming or should i rip the sleeve cap and narrow it a lot? rowan in its infinite wisdom only gives the length for the sleeve, not any width demensions at all, so no help there. i’m tempted to think it’s my bad seaming, since when i tie the little strings on to help with the seaming, as seen in the left sleeve, it looks like the sleeve will fit fine. what say you?

then, some infinitely more important stuff:

~ i saw al gore’s an inconvenient truth yesterday with a friend. made me very very angry. and alternately weepy. some of it was just me responding to the slick/cheesy music score and manipulative movieness of it all, you know? but so much more was about anger at humanity. it’s like, i get frustrated and annoyed when i injure myself, but when my actions injure others, i get so much more pissed off. does that sound twisted? to me it means, in this context, i’m so sorry earth, and animals, and gorgeous nature! and i hate – not a word i use lightly at all – hate what we’ve done and are actively doing to this planet. i’m sorry to say we’re taking every living thing down with us. action is more useful than talk, than pure feelings, i know, but right now i just can’t get beyond the emotions. i will soon though – some plans are brewing – and i highly recommend this film to all. go see it, really.

~ my friend francesca worked on a recent project which deserves more attention. the playground project is a documentary on the sex trafficking of children in the u.s. after drugs and arms, the sex trafficking and prostitution of children is “the most profitable organized crime enterprise”. horrible. they need help in raising awareness of the project, and the issue in general – whatever you can do is awesome.

and to end this off with some (knitting) happiness, some successful seaming, thank goodness: urban aran! no arm bulge here, yay. so, the collar needs to be finished and a zipper needs to be bought and added, my first zipper, yikes, but still – i’m loooooving this cardigan. the recent chilly weather has been helping as well.

~ andrea

p.s. yes, the dramatic head turns and the weird cut-out tank top are distracting perhaps, but hey it was early early morning, so that’s the best i could do. also, note the little pony tail – i’m very proud of it. grow hair grow!

comment [10]

posted 12 June 06 & filed under urban aran

it feels like friday!

with my new schedule, where i have monday and wednesday’s off* it’s been a little jarring to my sense of weekdays/weekend. no complaining here, it’s a nice thing to feel like it’s friday all day only to realize friday is just a couple of days away. ;)

[* that is no work or school, but always plenty to do of course, including freelance work, yeehaw. and laundry. always laundry!]

anyhow, ta-daa! my finished norwegian knit along ‘flenten’ hat. isn’t it lovely? thanks to my big old noggin, it feels a bit too snug alas but no worries, i’ll find someone worthy-enough to give it to and i’ll definitely be making more of these. i highly recommend bea ellis knit kits for the beginner fair isle-r as the color choices are many, the pattern and chart easy to read, and the result tremendously satisfying. thanks to mj for organizing the kal! i might slip in another fair isle something or other before the kal ends, we shall see. as always, more detail on the hat, plus pics of what it looks like on the inside!, on the project page.

i’m joining lolly’s project spectrum – have you heard about it? it starts march 1st, so there’s plenty of time, especially for you crazy olympians, and the general idea is just to use more color, specifically certain color groups each month. excellent!

here in l.a., the south central farmer’s community garden is being threatened! look at this google map – that big patch of green is them, to the west all housing on teeny lots and to the east all factories and industrial area. the largest community garden in l.a., it’s about 14 acres large with over 350 farmers working on it for over ten years. now, the owner wants to demolish the garden and build a warehouse there instead – please send a letter to the politicians asking to save the garden. it’s ridiculous that instead of holding this garden up as a model, it’s being threatened with demolition! grrrr.

how to grow fresh air, featuring 50 plants that help purify the air in your home. cool. also, inverted indoor gardening – v. tempting. lastly, check out this crazy keyboard – i love it! in general, pics of nature taking over technology/ man-made-things make me giddily happy.

can you believe it’s almost the end of january already? wow.

comment [7]

posted 26 January 06 & filed under lenten hat, politics

bolivia!

i’m so proud of bolivia: yesterday they elected evo morales as president, making him the first indigenous bolivian to hold the presidency. a former cocalero, he has vowed to de-criminalize the coca leaf and wants to kick the u.s. military out of bolivia. he also wants to nationalize the vast resources bolivia has, particularly natural gas, rather than let them be sold for enormous profit by multinational corporations and no one else. in a country where the last presidents won by mere 20-somethings percent, evo morales’ win of 51% of the population is incredible. hopefully, this will mean big changes in bolivia, with the majority of the population being finally represented in the laws and decisions made by the government.

according to the new york times, ”...Morales said his government would cooperate closely with other “anti-imperialists,” referring to Venezuela and Cuba. He said he would welcome cordial relations with the United States, but not “a relationship of submission.” i say, que viva!

in me-news, yesterday i hung out with a whole gang of knitbloggers. oof, that was fun. one key moment that really encapsulated the atmosphere: a woman walks by wearing a handknit long sweater and we all stop mid-conversation and just stare, 30 seconds later we’re discussing how it’s really a simple pattern using mostly garter and feather & fan lace stitch, and then one woman grabs her camera and is just ready to run after and take a picture of said garment. so fun! sounds probably crazy to others, but that was such a great moment.

there were probably twenty-odd knitters there, but i only had a chance to really chat with a handful – hi mj, lori, julia, marnie, lauren and kathy! – and as it was, it was really overwhelming, in a good way. so fun so fun. i really feel like i got a good glimpse of people’s different personalities and now feel so much more part of something real, whereas sometimes that’s suprisingly hard to remember. ;) weird, maybe, but there it is. thanks for organizing this, lauren, it was a awesome!

(oh can i just say that everyone’s knitting skills were crazy good? yup, i had to stop myself from staring too much. don’t want to scare people..! and p.s. see lauren’s post for pics, since i plumb forgot to take even one – that’s the back of my very blonde head in one of the photos, yay.)

some links:
~ penguin books is offering the christmas carol as a free podcast – i love that book.

~ crazy list of graffiti from pompeii, very shocking stuff predominates, but my favorite is this one: “On April 19th, I made bread”. ha!

~ if you haven’t used pandora yet, you really should. it recommends music to you based on what you like and then it plays the music for you, along with explanations as to why they think you’d like it.

~ for phellow phildar phiends (woah, there, sorry) out there, this stitchery from the new-to-me online knitting journal knitting fog helps a lot when deciphering french patterns [via christine]

today’s my last day at work ~ happy day to all!

comment [5]

posted 19 December 05 & filed under knitting, politics

gobble-gobble-ahh

‘A Thanksgiving Prayer’ by William Burroughs:

“Thanks for the wild turkey and the passenger pigeons, destined to be shit out through wholesome American guts.

Thanks for a continent to despoil and poison.

Thanks for Indians to provide a modicum of challenge and danger.

Thanks for vast herds of bison to kill and skin leaving the carcasses to rot.

Thanks for bounties on wolves and coyotes.

Thanks for the American dream, To vulgarize and to falsify until the bare lies shine through.

Thanks for the KKK.

For nigger-killin’ lawmen, feelin’ their notches.

For decent church-goin’ women, with their mean, pinched, bitter, evil faces.

Thanks for “Kill a Queer for Christ” stickers.

Thanks for laboratory AIDS.

Thanks for Prohibition and the war against drugs.

Thanks for a country where nobody’s allowed to mind their
own business.

Thanks for a nation of finks.

Yes, thanks for all the memories—all right let’s see your arms!

You always were a headache and you always were a bore.

Thanks for the last and greatest betrayal of the last and greatest of human dreams.”