Babies Galore

My sister-in-law liked her afghan! Everyone gasped, too, which made me so happy. And she had a fancy dress made that she wore, along with flowers, so she looked like a princess.

My niece continues to be a goddamn hilarious delight. We were trying to remain calm at dinner and so I put my hands together and “ohm”ed for her. She was very confused. “Why are you calling Jesus? Why does Jesus need to calm down?”

Y’all, I know it’s obvious. I know there’s even a song “Jesus is on the Main Line,” but it had never occurred to me that prayer is a phone call to Jesus.

Also, my nephew’s wife is pregnant. My sister-in-law called to tell me because she didn’t want me to be surprised at the shower. It’s kind of a clusterfuck, but also not my problem, so I get to just be happy about it.

But they just found out and they’re six months along. It’s a boy.

So, between bouts of teasing my brother about being a grandpa, I was trying to explain to my niece that she’ll be that baby’s aunt. But she doesn’t want to be a boy aunt! She’s going to be the baby’s nephew.

And my nephew, who is awesome, told her that she can be whatever she wants to be.

Also, my mom told me she’s kind of tired of hats. I don’t know if I will recognize her without an oddly decorated hat.

The Hardest Afghan Ever

It’s done! It’s done. Whew. Hurray. It’s done.

Little Sisters of the Poor Home for the Aged

This is my new office, starting next week.

There’s a ghost. They call her Greta. She is, I’m told, nice. Sony folks had a seance in the basement. There may have been some Satanic activities in one of the other buildings. Once we get settled, we can have the spooky tour.

I’m so very, very stoked. Also, finally, for the first time in twenty years, I get a window.

Sick Boy

My nephew has some kind of crud and his throat hurts and the only thing that seems to help is carbonation. Which meant that, when he sat on my lap last night and asked for my Sprite, I gave it to him.

I was wise enough to not drink the Sprite after him.

But when he reached up and shoved a fist full of French fries at me, I ate them. And when he laughed, even though he was clearly feeling like shit, I ate some more out of his little grubby hands.

When I complain about being sick later, let’s all remember how it happened.

Invasive

I didn’t even make it down the driveway to dinner last night before I had to stop and take a picture of my yard. These white flowers are everywhere. They weren’t there the day before. I’ve never seen them in my yard before, which this time of year is made up of clover, creeping charlie and violets.

According to friends, this is an invasive species and I should dig it up. I’m not going to because they’re all over my front yard. But also, I’m starting to become uneasy with the idea of “invasive” species. I mean, except privet. Fuck that shit. Kill it with fire.

I have a friend who’s… hmm… if I use the correct terms for what she is, it might flag at her place of employment and I don’t want to get her in trouble. Let’s say she is a plant person for a very, very large institution and part of her job is figuring out what restoring the lands of this institution to their natural state would be. What would this place look like if no one had ever fucked with it?

And she is in an ongoing philosophical battle with her coworkers, because they believe that the land’s natural state is forest. And she’s like, how can a place we know was covered in thousands of buffalo and megafauna before that have been a forest? Clearly there must have been grasslands.

The trees are invasive species that took over once the buffalo herds were devastated.

That is, if you don’t put any stock in the research that suggests that financial pressures for certain types of hides–deer and mink and fox and rabbit over bison–caused the Native Americans to cultivate forests in formerly grass spaces.

Still, though, trees are invasive.

How do we decide what’s natural? Local? Non-invasive? I live in the flood plane of Whites Creek. I get weird things in my yard because it’s a low spot in the neighborhood and stuff runs down into my yard from wherever when the weather’s wet.

Everything that’s in my yard, on my land, that the water didn’t put here is not “supposed” to be here. If I decide to keep my land “natural,” my biases about what natural are at play.

Where I wanted smug certainty, I find only more complicated unknowing.

Small Things

I mostly recuperated yesterday which led to not much getting done around the house.

I’m still really sore, but more sure nothing is broken.

But look how far along I got on this! And I really like how including the left over copper afghan yarn looks. I will be so glad to be done with this. I have a cool idea for joining the panels. I hope it works.

Stripping in the Garage

I decided to take the dog to the park this morning because it’s been too wet and muddy to get a good walk in these last couple of days.

I fell. Slipped in some mud and one foot went forward and the other stayed beneath me and down I went, seemingly in slow motion. My phone went flying. The dog got dirty, too, but I don’t know if I pulled him down or if it was just that messy.

I laid there on the paved path thinking “I should take a picture of this so that people will understand.” Instead I lifted the leg that had been beneath me and made sure I could move everything. My knee already hurt so I knew I couldn’t just roll over and push myself up on the asphalt. I laid there some more, hoping and dying of embarrassment that someone would come along.

They did not.

I checked my leg again. Everything moved. Okay.

I sat up. I put my phone back in my pocket. I butt scooted toward the edge of the path until I was in the soft ground. I got up.

And I was so fucking happy to be standing again that we just went for the rest of our walk. I might regret that later. We’ll see how sore I end up.

Everything was so caked in dirt I just stripped in the garage and threw all my clothes in the wash.

I need to get in the shower and get clean myself, but I’m not quite feeling that ambitious.

My big project

I want an orange that’s a little more yellow, but look how the purple and green did! You can see that the blue and the yellow or red didn’t exactly stay mixed together. I think that blue struck first and the other colors second.

But I’m very happy with it.

The fiber is the Tour de Fleece special at Paradise Fibers right now, a Corriedale cross and, at least in my sample, it spins up very nice.

Quick, Nice Things

I made the centers into squares ready for joining onto my afghan.

I spun these two halves of the same batt. On the right is the single straight from the batt. On the left is what I ran through the drum carder a couple of times. It gives it a more uniform, heathered look. I’m going to ply them together.

I finally figured out how to make a tie-dye rainbow with acid dye! I can’t wait to see how this spins up.

The Burrito Method

I like to start with an even, thin layer of something long. This is BFL I dyed at some point in the past.

Then I stick on little bits of other stuff.

I keep an eye and make sure that I’m putting the fiber on fairly evenly.

I add my sparkle. Many people just paint the drum carder with sparkle, but that’s how you end up with thick clumps I’m not good at spinning. I should also add that, even though I don’t normally like Merino, I LOVE it for this kind of thing because it likes to cling to everything. It’s great for making sure all your other kinds of fiber stick together.

Woo! Evenly distributed sparkles on the drum! I also like to put my sparkles in in the middle, so that there’s a layer of fiber to secure them in.

Finally, I have a full drum. I take the fiber off the drum kind of like you would for rolags, except I make one huge burrito rolag.

I don’t have pictures of this next part, but what I do is grab it in the middle and start gently tugging it. I move my way back and forth across the burrito, which is stretching and stretching out into something that looks more like traditional hand-pulled roving. This part you just have to be patient with, because there’s a lot of fiber scrunched into that burrito and you want to tug gently (so that it stays in one piece), even though parts of it are going to feel very firmly stuck.

Here’s how it looks all pulled out of its burrito shape, ready for spinning.

Here’s my single.

My center-pull ball so I can ply it on itself easily.

My yarn.

And here’s how it looks as the centers of my afghan blocks.

It’s really hard for me to find the words for how satisfying it is to take something from dying the fiber to carding it to spinning it to crocheting it and every step of the way you kind of know what you’re going to get and also it’s a huge surprise.

Also, I really love these very subtle color changes, where it’s not really clear where one color starts and stops and I’ve been trying to get that just in dying alone, but no, it really works best if you do it while spinning.

And I think the burrito method helps with that, because it kind of smears the colors together as you pull the burrito open.

Murder in Music City cont.

If this thing kills me, drape it across my grave. It’s earned the right to gloat.

I’m almost done with Murder in Music City and I’ve been thinking how interesting it is in regard to my project because it has absolutely nothing to do with civil rights.

This is how the system at the time “worked.” The baseline of corruption and venality. If it was this easy to deny justice to a pretty, well-loved in her community, blonde white girl, how exponentially easier does it become to deny justice to everyone else?

But I do also think it’s fascinating just in the way that the society had a hard time recognizing and acknowledging women as evil. That clearly comes across in my research, too.

Anyway, I’m enjoying the fuck out of it.

Murder in Music City

I’ve decided to incorporate the yarn I have left over from the copper blanket. Because I don’t want to spend any more time or money on this evil thing.

I’m listening to Murder in Music City which I bought as a physical book a while back but then just left it sitting on my pile.

It’s good. I have some quibbles with the writing. He’s king of tangents (and that’s saying something coming from me) and he over-identifies some people while not with other people.

But nothing strikes me as implausible about his facts. His research seems very good and he makes a very subtle but clear argument for why his asking questions about this spooks people into revealing themselves–they have kind of come to suspect he might be the kid at the murder scene.

I’m listening with an ear to my own obsessions, but so far I’m not hearing anything that sheds too much light.

The story is just very, very sad and the fact that people are willing to just live their lives, knowing they sent an innocent man to jail, is infuriating to me. That just seems so typically Nashville to me. We simply must pretend that all is well, even when we know it’s not.

I Hate the Afghan So Much It Has Become a Form of Respect

I don’t have enough yarn to finish this fucker. I had already made my peace with not doing the two outside rows of granny squares, but now it’s clear I’m probably not going to have enough to finish the triangles.

I want to laugh about it. This afghan has kicked my butt at every step. It’s going to continue to kick my butt clear to the end. My plan is to finish up as much as I can to see where I am before I buy any more yarn. If I get farther along than I think I’m going to, then I’ll be happy. If not, I’ll have a feel for how much yarn I need.

I’m still leaving the side panels off, though. It’s supposed to be an afghan, not a bedspread, and it’s already enormous.

Procrastination, Woo Woo

I have to do my taxes today. It’s literally the only things I have to do. I’m guessing I don’t bother to turn to them until late this afternoon.

Maybe I’ll learn to make art yarn…

Or I could decide what photos I want for the book…

Maybe take the dog for a walk if we get a break in the rain…

Chagrin

The idea was that these two panels would be identical, but I ran out of red when working on the top one and then almost ran out of the acorn.

The real shit, though, is that I don’t think I’m going to have enough yarn for the side panels. Which, on the one hand, means that when I get these three panels done and sewn together, I’m done with this asshole blanket.

On the other hand, of course this blanket is just assholes all the way down.

Chicken

I’m on slightly better terms with this afghan only because I was playing chicken with this yarn and won! Which is good, because as close as I think all these tans look, when they’re right next to each other, you can see the differences. So, if this hadn’t been enough yarn to finish that triangle, it would have really annoyed me.

I also feel like I’m getting faster at them, which also makes them less annoying. If we count each set of diamonds with their four framing triangles as a block, I have thirty blocks to do. And I already have four blocks done! I may finish this afghan before I’m 90.

Wallowing in My Dislike

So, each side of the diamond gets these weird triangles, which then get sewn together thusly:

This is supposed to result in a somewhat straight line. It does not. It may pull straighter once the border goes on, but I have my doubts.

I just sincerely loathe things afghan. I resent how hard it is. I resent how often the directions are just “eh, whatever.” I resent that I have to motherfucking whipstitch things together. I have to do all this piecework and sew?! Do I look like I want to be quilting?

I only hope this part goes quickly.

Alarm

I slept straight through my alarm. It’s really a wonder what having a boss who actually gives a shit about things does for your ability to rest.

Also, I spun up a shit ton of this fiber, which I love:

I just love everything about it. I love all the bright colors. I love how they twist around each other. I even love how my shitty spinning skills leave me with weird clumpies because, with this fiber, the clumpies look intentional, like I meant to have a cool, decorative lump.

This yarn just does it for me. I can’t wait to put it in my afghan.

Speaking of afghans, this fucker.

The diamonds are done. That’s about all I want to say about that.

I’m on to the next part. It’s also ridiculously hard, though less so than the diamonds. And I’m like, but how does this give me a straight edge to sew the panels together? Friends, it does not.

I’m glad I’m doing this in wool, which should be a little more forgiving, but there’s no way this fucker lays flat. And when I look at the picture on the pattern, I think it’s draped in such a way to hide that it doesn’t lay flat.

Let’s Call it Nope-Plying

I tried to teach myself to N-ply yesterday, so I made this beautiful multicolored yarn to practice on and, as I kept fucking up, I kept getting very mad at myself because I was fucking up bad enough to make the beautiful yarn unusable. So, instead, I whooped up this gray yarn and plied the two together.

Third Man

I should have worn sunscreen. I should have even thought to wear sunscreen. But I did not. I think people really enjoyed the reading. Sheree Renee Thomas brought her friend who was such a fantastic audience person at Southern Festival of Books and so I was able to talk to him and thank him for being so awesome.

Every time I get to read with her and Caroline Randall Williams, I just feel so out of my league. I love it, don’t get me wrong, but they’re just so good. It makes me feel so very lucky. Lucky to be with them and lucky to be seeing them.

Caroline, at this point, is like some kind of priest for her Lucy poems. She has them memorized. She knows exactly how to move an audience. She fucking took the mic off the stand and walked around! And her boobs looked so great.

I told Ciona that I tend to wear bras based on emotional comfort, so I was wearing the bra I do my dyeing in, and then I showed her all the spots of color, because it was just the kind of day where you stand outside in the good weather drinking beers and discussing boobs. Ciona and her friend were momentarily confused and worried that I was… I don’t know… sometimes practicing suicide in my bra, but the green spots clarified things.

But Caroline had a whole fortress of undergarments. Which, you know, makes sense, but is not something anyone ever taught me. At some point, I’m just going to have to ask Sara Harvey to append her History of Underwear lecture with notes specifically for me about what does what, how, and why you might want that.

Chet told everyone that Sheree’s next book is coming out from Third Man so that the story she was reading was from the future. And I think she thinks of herself as someone with a kind of Afro-futurist bent, so it felt doubly fitting.

We were sitting together when Jack White came through and it was so much fun to watch her play it cool and then freak out once he was out of sight.

But mostly, Ciona and I grabbed a couch end and talked about making art and weird connections and strange coincidences. And I went home early to feed and medicate the dog and my Lyft driver and I talked about horror movies and The Skeleton Key, and I was just like, how is this my life?

Also, now both of my favorite pictures of myself were taken on Third Man property. This one from when my nephew was very wee.

And this one from yesterday.

Also, bonus picture of me with a delightfully wicked look on my face:

Apparently There’s No Sign-In Sheet?

Yesterday, as I was scrolling on Twitter, I came across a thread where it’s basically like, “See how many of these symptoms of autism you might have” and I was like “Oh, ha ha, fun” thinking I’d have like two or three, because I’m a nerd.

I have all of them.

I have this strong urge to tell you a story about this, to line up all the evidence and lay it out in a neat and convincing order.

Hopefully you can see the humor in that.

The worst part is that all my arguments with myself about it reveal to me that I have some pretty deep-seated ugly believes about people with autism. I can’t be autistic because I’m funny. I can’t be autistic because I have friends. And a social life. Kind of. I don’t make people uncomfortable, except, you know, every conservative in the state. I have a good life. I’m happy. Blah blah blah. On and on.

And then there’s the ugly hollow feeling I feel when I think “Oh, this, me, is what people wish didn’t exist.” Followed up by, “oh, no, because I’m one of the good ones.”

That’s pretty ugly. But it just keeps bubbling up. I guess I’ll see for how long.

So, on the one hand, I don’t feel any different than I felt earlier in the week. I can’t really see how knowing this might make any difference to my life. Like, I don’t think I’m suffering from it in any way. But also, I’m very fortunate to be able to arrange my life to suit me. That may not always be the case.

On the other hand, I have some existential vertigo. Like, oh, is this why x happened that way or why I’ve always felt y? And that’s not fun.

And I do wonder if there’s something I’m supposed to do now? Like, if things seem okay, do I need to try to get an official diagnosis? And this one is really hard for me–can I trust myself to know if things are actually okay?

The whole thing is weird and I’m not sure how I feel about it. Which, yes, also on the checklist.

Which, I guess, I also dislike: finding out that all my charming quirks, which I believed were unique to me and made me special are actually common enough to be boxes to check off.

So… yeah.

I’m going to read at the Third Man 10th Anniversary this afternoon and I need to be my charming and witty self, so I’m going to try not to dwell on this.

But dwelling on things. Or, you know, obsessing over them. It’s my way. It’s also on the list.

I Knew It

Yesterday, I found out a bit of information that made a weird thing that has been bugging me for over fifteen years make sense.

Y’all, the older I get, the more I’ve come to realize that the whole “they’re going to take our spots” anxiety is because a lot of old mediocre white guys have been coasting by on the idea that white guys should give jobs to each other and keep each other employed no matter how crappy one of them is.

The idea that you, who actually try, might be valued for your trying is a threat to them.

Which is not to say that, if you’re a white guy who tries, you have it made. The coasting guys have ways of keeping you down, too. But the coasters. They are fascinating to me.

Delights for the Eyes

So, I got this cool self-made-batt kit and I made a giant fiber burrito and then stretched it out into roving.

And I made this ridiculous yarn. And then I ordered more fiber so I could make more ridiculous yarn and put it in my afghan.

And, y’all, I may finally get merino. I still have no idea why anyone would want to spin merino by itself, unless for some reason you think spinning a kitchen sponge is fun. But all the things that make it super annoying when you’re just trying to spin a basic worsted make it perfect for this kind of thing.

It was nm, I believe, who I was telling that the thing I hate most about merino is that it’s like the kindergartener you can depend on to figure out how to hold hands with everyone else in class and bring them along everywhere. But I usually only want a couple of kindergarteners at a time, so to speak. I don’t need merino finding a way to hold a million hands with itself.

But in a batt preparation like this, where you have sparklies and silk and I swear maybe some cotton and a few different kinds of wool, you need someone who knows how to hold hands with everyone, even the folks–like the sparklies–that don’t normally hold hands. So, you just make sure you have some merino touching everything and everything sticks together. You can tug it into a nice thin (well, not thin in my case, but someone with better skills!) line for spinning. You can get this amazing thing.

So, merino. If you just need a wool fiber to move from point a (your hand) to point b (the spinning wheel), I’m still not sold on merino. But if you need something that you can card on a drum with a bunch of other stuff and roll up and stretch out and twist around other bits and bobs before going to the spinning wheel, merino’s the fiber for the job.

I also spun some shetland this weekend which I really liked. It was mixed with silk, so it had an interesting shine.

But it’s a little scratchy. It was really fun to spin, though. If I didn’t have to consider its end use, I might be a bigger fan. What I liked about it was it has a nice, long staple length, the fibers, even in the combed top, slid next to each other pretty easily, and it feels sturdy. The only other thing I didn’t like about it was that, even though the colors in the braid looked super, super saturated and vivid, everything became a little more muted in the spun yarn. I honestly think that’s part of what the silk is supposed to be doing–making sure the colors stay somewhat vivid.

I’m going to be curious to see how it blooms, because it compacted a lot more than I expected. Like even in the thing spots, there’s a lot more fiber than you’d think. It feels like that must eventually boing back.