Why is that I am always setting myself unreasonably ambitious goals? Not only do I want all these prints matted, bagged, wrapped, but I want nice business cards and a holder and refined copy to send with them, and I want to finish mondrian's yarn, print it on nice watercolor paper, and embellish it and dd gold leaf and matt it and send it with the rest.
Oh, and I want to finish the holiday cards, print them, address and personalize, and send them out.

I need to be three people, really, all at once. Why does my brain do this to me? Does yours? How do you survive?

1. If things are well run, then each man in society does the job he is made for. - Socrates, via Plato. The Republic, Book III

2. We must needs reconsider our relationship to the Hero.

3. Everything comes back to respect, really. If I respect the Earth, I mean, honestly respect the Earth, then I must behave/consume in a way which is compatible with that respect. So too with interpersonal relations, consumption, and everything else. Justice proceeds from respect and integrity.

4. I really am not responsible for my behavior before coffee.

5. The Matrix epic is by no means the first major work (or even film) to explore the themes of human relationships, humans relating to machines, questioning reality or navigating a post-apocolyptic society. That said, I believe it has not only set a standard of excellence for sci-fi/fantasy/surreal cinematography, but it has indelibly marked the collective conciousness with its composition of truth, fiction, and structured audiovisual experience.

6. Cats and drop spindles do not mix (productively).

7. I don't think there is a number seven.

8. Genius can't build a mix around Zion. Dammit.

9. The cats are offended by the cold.

10. Can you reccommend a brand or model of portable electric space heater? Consumer Reports was less than helpful.

I come home from work tonight and Mark says to me:
"Death was always an uninvited guest, but he had impeccable manners.
Generally he asked for a glass of water, had an hors d'vours, and then killed a guest.
Most days it was ok, some days it was a little messy.
You kinda had to put up with it. "

The Suffering: Coheed and Cambria

Is there word or right to say,
Even in this old-fashioned way?
Go make your move girl.
I'm not coming home.

Would things have changed if I could've stayed?
Would you have loved me either way?
Dressed to the blues
Day to day with my collar up.

Decision sits so make it quick,
A breath inhaled from an air so sick.
I cursed the day that I'd learned
Of the web you've spun.
You had your hold till bleeding.

(Hey, Hey!)
If it was up to me,
I would've figured you out,
Way before the year clocked out.
Oh, I hope you're waiting,
Oh, I hope you're waiting.
(Hey!)

Listen well, will you marry me? (Not now, Boy)
And are you well in the Suffering? (You've been)
The most gracious of hosts
You may be invited, girl, but you're not coming in.

Listen well, will you marry me? (Not now, Boy)
And are you well in the Suffering? (You've been)
The most gracious of hosts
I may be invited, girl, but I'm not coming in.

(Hey, Hey!)
If it was up to me
I would have never walked out.
So until the sun burns out
Oh, I hope you're waiting.

We have lived as a child would care.
With this vial to drink I dare.
(Oh where have you been, oh where have you been)
Only to cry all alone with your taste on tongue.
(Oh where have you been if it hurts to be forgiving, Bye)

Should we try this again with hope? (Bye, Bye)
Or is it lost, give up the ghost.
And should I die all alone as I knew I would.
(Then burn in hell young sinner)

(Hey, Hey!)
If it was up to me
I would've figured you out
Way before the year clocked out.
Oh, I hope you're waiting.
Oh, I hope you're waiting.
(Hey!)

Listen well, will you marry me? (Not now, Boy)
And are you well in the Suffering? (You've been)
The most gracious of hosts
You may be invited, girl, but you're not coming in.

Listen well, will you marry me? (Not now, Boy)
And are you well in the Suffering? (You've been)
The most gracious of hosts
I may be invited, girl, but I'm not coming in.

(Hey, Hey!)
If it was up to me
I would've figured you out
Way before the year clocked out.
Oh, I hope you're waiting.

(Hey, Hey!)
If it was up to me
I would have never walked out.
So until the sun burns out
Oh, I hope you're waiting.

Listen well, will you marry me? (Not now, Boy)
And are you well in the Suffering? (You've been)
The most gracious of hosts
You may be invited, girl, but you're not coming in.

Listen well, will you marry me? (Not now, Boy)
And are you well in the Suffering? (You've been)
The most gracious of hosts
I may be invited, girl, but I'm not coming in.

Listen well, will you marry me? (Not now, Boy)
And are you well in the Suffering? (You've been)
The most gracious of hosts
You may be invited, girl, but you're not coming in.

Listen well, will you marry me? (Not now, Boy)
And are you well in the Suffering? (You've been)
The most gracious of hosts
I may be invited, girl, but I'm not coming in,

And you're not coming in.

http://j-giraud.deviantart.com/art/Yarns-WIP-1-144212105
http://j-giraud.deviantart.com/art/Yarns-WIP-2-144212347

1. Rocking out to a new Genius playlist - it's not a swank as Pandora, but it's better than a few hours flailing at the computer to get it to cooperate, by a long haul.

2. I like it when my tools do what they're told without backtalk.

3. No, I don't think control is an issue, why do you ask?

4. Morning coffee + Yarn Harlot Blog is a good way to start the day.

5. Falling into the internet is the only thing I don't like about the internet, really.

6. Feeling all alone in the world and constantly questioning one's sanity is rather uncool. Lately, I find that a dose of Ravelry, Harlot, and Ursula placates the urge to cut things.

7. Surrounding myself with people of like mind*, while good and uplifting, leads to the inevitable crash when confronted by the reality of my pocketbook and what I have to do to fill it.

8. Fuck The Man.

9. http://www.ravelry.com/stores/ravelry-merch-store/products/22570 .<--- Want.

10. Saw a car at Kid'n'Ewe with one of those ubiquitous black/white lozenge stickers. Said K1P2. Represent.

11. Talked/spun/geeked out with a lady from Abeline. She says there's no knitters or spinners in her town, and were it not for Ravelry she'd have long since gone mad. With 50 million (admitted) knitters in North America, and there Not Being Much to Do in Abeline, that can't possibly be true. They just haven't admitted it yet. C'mon. Fess Up Ya'll.

12. A dozen random thoughts is probably enough to fortify me for the impending Smackdown with Corel and Photoshop. Wish me luck.

* In this case, "like mind" is a broad term for anyone who "gets it". The whole creative thing, the need, the definition of self, the importance of supporting the Little/Local Folks, honoring where you and your sustenance come from. We may not all call it the same thing or be at the same place on the path, but that'd be pretty boring if we none of us had things to teach the others.

So.
I've spent a great deal of time today crating color charts and sketching and modifying photos to use as a reference for digital painting.
Now, Corel opened the color charts just fine.
Absolutely refuses to do a damned thing with the sketches or photos. Not even an error message to give me a starting place. What the hell? And on this, the support website is silent. Stupidheads.

I have Wiki'ed that wonderful, terrible term "giclee". I have found it much as I expected - that is, a bullshitting term for a decent -looking and hopefully lasting inkjet print. If I tell you here's a limited edition signed digital print though, you think "ha, I can do that at home, that isn't art, and I won't pay you for it." But If I tell you it's a giclee - even if I conceede that it is a "giclee print" it triggers the response that what I offer you may in fact be Art. Is there not something terribly wrong with associating a label with quality, and not the work that may have gone into it? Is this too the fault of the French and the invention of Style and Brand?

On a vaguely related note, Claria Ink on Arches watercolor paper compared to prang and windsor and Newton and Accademia watercolors on the same: drop water on the finished product and the color responds about the same. There is some movement, mostly in the darks, heavy staining in the blues, and pigment settles toward the edges of the water puddle. However - unlike watercolor which has dried, been re-wet, and dried again, the ink seems very stable after its inital re-wetting.

When was the last time you expected to be able to spill water on an original and not have Disaster? Are you in the habit of placing Art in direct sunlight?

Packing up the last few things, cleaning out the catbox - we're going to the Kid'n Ewe'n Llamas too! Find me there and I'll draw you something!

It would be awesome if there was a Ravelry for Art. You know, paint stash, pencil stash, reviews and comments on various media and supports. Hell, it'd be awesome if that was just an added feature in Devart, dontcha think?

Yes, I think this is my favorite season. Can I please have a job where I get 90% of this unfortunately short season to myself? Like, I need time off pretty much from September through November. There are wool festivals and art festivals and deadlines for spring festivals and conventions, and the weather is actually something approaching hostpitable for a change. This is when my brain is afire with ideas and projects and the desire to work on them all at once, and the frustration of barely being able to handle one at a time leads to inevitable spring depression when I look back and reflect on how little I've accomplished of my epic to-do list.

Let me preface this by saying: when we signed up for DSL, there were two speeds. We chose the 6MB/s down and 3MB/s up. Now, the sameprice is the lowest version of DSL, at 3MB/s down and 1.5 MB/s up.

Now lookit this and see why I hate AT&T.
http://www.speedtest.net/result/569469747.png

Clean Sweep 3

Thanks to Mason Dixon Knitting, I recently learned about IrBOL, just in time to build one such box. It’s great, because I can now destash some of the things that I can’t exactly sell but can’t bear to get rid of, and know that someone, somewhere will use it. I tell you, if I see photos emerge from Iraq that show day-glo orange pom-pom trim on something, I am going to laugh until I cry. Aside from silly trim, I’ll be sending some yarn I’ve forgotten the use for, several of my duplicate straight needles, various buttons and elastics and ribbons. I’ve set aside some knit fabrics that have been in my stash FOREVER (good fabric, but while I like to wear knits, and I like to make/wear handknits, I despise sewing with knit fabrics. It never, ever goes well.)

I think IrBOL is a brilliant idea, and I’ll be keeping my internet radar tuned for more such things.

Not all stash is terrible though, some Stash is just waiting for me to understand what it really aspires to become.
For example, let us take the 3(!) skeins of Araucania Nature Wool Solids.

Lovely, mottled color from the kettle-dying process applied to a soft, smooth and strong wool yarn. A yarn exactly calculated to make me adore it. It was actually even more gorgeous in the skein than wound into a ball, but I have no pictures of that.
You see, when I bought that yarn at the Wooly Ewe back in 2005, it was also with a whole bag of eggplant colored wool, and I was going to go home RIGHT NOW and cast on.

Really, I should have known better, but I was a young knitter. I read the pattern, sure, I had tried a little swatch of the stitch pattern and blamed my troubles on my stiff, itchy acrylic that simply would not agree to the contortions I asked of it. In all fairness, I do still believe the yarn was part of my trouble. However, for reference, THIS was the pattern I bought that yarn for.

Bi-Color Brioche

If you’re a Raveler, you can clearly see another indicator of trouble dead ahead. Ignore the faves and queues for the moment. Notice instead only 2 projects, one of which has no pictures and is hibernating. The other one, while a nice sweater, does not look like it fits in any way like the original. Also, notice she substituted sock yarn. Why would she do that? Well, notice on the pattern it calls for DK yarn and 3.5 mm needles. I encourage you to go knit a little ribbing swatch with that combination and see how you feel about it. Now remember that brioche involves passing loops over others. Now remember you have to manage all of that AND two alternate colors, which you cannot knit in the round because it is designed not with fair isle stranding but mosaic type: 1 row MC, slipping some and 1 row CC, slipping the MC stitches.
Tell me that doesn’t make you want to throw the knitting across the room and I’ll nominate you, if not for sainthood, at least for the hallowed halls of knitter’s fame.

Fast forward three years and several LYSs later, with these luscious wools languishing in their bag in the bottom of the stash, and a trail of confounded knitters who have tried to help me solve the problem of this supposedly reversible stitch pattern (oh did I not tell you that bit? I got the brioche down, even the two color changeover eventually). I should also mention the legion of knitters who told me “Ha! Six months (9 months... a year.. two years... three...) and you haven’t cast on? Give it up, it wasn’t meant to be. There’s other sweaters out there.”
So, I take the pattern with me to Hill Country Weavers, because the owner, she has a master’s in this sort of thing, right? She knits up a little two color brioche swatch in no time, very patiently explaining the process. She hands it to me, and I turn it over. “Ok, so now I get how to make the ribs raise up like that, I was coming from the wrong side of the stitch... but... it’s still not reversible.” She stares at me. She stares at the pattern. She stares at me some more, frowns, and noodles with the knitting again, muttering to herself. We came to a consensus that day, LYS owner, shopgirl, mom, myself and yarn.
Nope. Not meant to be.

November rolls around, I need a sweater to knit. Hey! I know, I’ll knit up that wool from the Stupid Sweater. I dig through my patterns and books and the library.. Ah ha! The Slink! I’ll knit that! I’ll even have wool left over! I’ll knit the waist section in contrast garter ribs! The yarn is the same gauge, and I got gauge! Even with the needles I intend to use for the sweater (because, you know, dpns, straights, and circs all give slightly different measurements with the way I knit.

As you can see, that lasted all of a week.

Fast forward to last March, a visit to Guthrie, OK. We jaunt out to Perry, OK for lunch, Mom brings a shawl. Good thing too, since the Eatz cafe (excellent, worth a detour if you’re in the area) is rather chilly. I’m sitting across the table and admiring it covertly, because I know it’s garter stitch, I’m enough of a knitter to know it when I see it. But it doesn’t announce the stitch - it announces the yarn. I finally break and ask her what she did to make it different. The secret? No secret.
Tiny needles.

Turns out, take a normal yarn and use needles of half the usual diameter or less, and it makes a dense fabric where all you see is the purl bumps, on both sides. No ridges, no funkified twists at the edge. Just a firm, cozy fabric with just a bit of drape. Exactly what is needed in a day to day shawl. You know, the kind of shawl you don’t feel bad about dragging everywhere, that you don’t have to fret about snags, and doubles as a small blanket.
A week later I’ll be going to my first convention, and showing my art to complete and utter strangers, without any support until Saturday. It’s a bit of a drive, but I’m riding with some gamers, so I have at least 4 hours of nothing to fill, and then whatever waiting around the convention entails. I must have knitting. I must have something easy. No patterns, no counting, no vagaries of gauge because I know I’ll be nervous and the yarn physics of that are evil. (No, seriously, evil. Tortures small animals for fun sort of evil.)



2 days later and I have enough of a shawl to be of recognizable shape, too large to be laid flat any more despite the really long circs, and I have cause to rejoice that I packed like a paranoid woman and brought more than one skein.

The laws of sustainability and knitting both state that kind of pace cannot be maintained for extended periods without serious harm. Five months later, we’re still in the second skein, but far enough in that I’m contemplating locating the third. The Tierra shawl has gone with me whenever I’ve been nervous or otherwise required to be still, and has even seen a few movies with us. The drape and hand of the fabric is exactly as I hoped, only I wonder if I shouldn’t dig out a second set of circs when I start the third skein! This sucker is big!

Apparently, the use of Bovine Growth Hormones in our food supply is directly related to the increasing numbers of outed gays.

... WTF?

My Stash certainly has a multiple personality disorder. We’ve identified distinct types, but there is some fluidity still.

You see, there is what you might call Primary Stash, or Art Stash. This category overlaps with books in the sense that some books are acquired and kept purely for art reference value, and therefore largely immune to the occasional cull of the library. Some of the other things in this category are paint, ink, canvas, and various papers. Lower in the strata of this stash are media or tools for media that I use less often (pastels, chalk, charcoal, oil pastels and conte) but I simply cannot get rid of. I enjoy these messy media, even if I use them rarely now. They don’t exactly expire, either, so they’re a rather permanent fixture, I think. Within the Art Stash is a PermaStash layer, composed of various found objects for use as props, applied or transfered texture, or some theoretical sculpture I might get around to someday. Also in this layer exist the plaster molds for slip casting, and other ceramics tools: spendy, specialized objects that I one day hope to have a use for again, or at least someone to pass them to.

Secondary to this would have to be Art Stash II, or the art, rather than the tools. The idea is to gradually sell this particular stash, or re-make/compile into other art objects (thereby raising those items in the Stash Strata). Occasionally this stash is culled for items so old as to be embarrassing, and are either Recycled or placed in the Primary Stash as a support for a future work.

Another, equally impossible category is the Sewing Stash. Primary and therefore virtually permanent here are the tools and notions that make sewing possible (needles, thread, elastic, pins, bias tape etc.).
Secondary to these are the slightly less essential (but unfortunately, prolific) notions such as buttons, beads, ribbon and trim. I could cull this layer, but it’s particularly hard because the Usefulness Factor is very high. I’m trying, though, to pass some of this on to other crafters who maybe might have more Immediate Plans than I do regarding say, barrel beads or googley eyes, or retro pop-pom trim.
Sewing projects that are actually cut into are not technically Stash, but some of them have associated Stash within the next category: Fabric Stash. For example, there’s a crazy-quilt style pillow cover I’ve been working on for about three years which has a Big Blue Bag’s worth of luxe scraps assigned to it. None of those can be culled until the project is done (except maybe the black velour. I don’t really like the velour, now that I’m working with it...) The rest I can sort according to size (more or less than a yard?) and fiber content.
To be honest, some of this has a stash history that stretches back into the 80s. This kind of Stash is really, really hard. In fact, this Stash now has an entire Pax Unit (the really big one, two doors wide, greater than a hanger’s depth and 93” tall) which was designed for it and holds almost nothing else.

The “almost” refers to overflow Yarn Stash. There’s a 1 cubic foot file box full of fine cone yarn in random colors which makes good warp and also plays well with the knitting machine. Most is cotton, but some may be a blend. There’s also a Mini Blue Bag of assorted green yarns, which was recently used for a photo shoot, and which provokes the (dangerous) idea of sorting the Yarn Stash by color as well as or maybe instead of by fibre. There is also a small box of PermaStash: some souvenir yarn from Italy, gorgeous hand-spun and the remainder of the Brown Sheep hand-painted Kermit-green mohair. Ideally, I’d like such Stash to be on display, and therefore evade judgement as Stash by becoming Art, but I have to solve first the Cat Issue, and then the Dust and Moth Bait Issue. The third yarn box is actually a queue of yarns for an art-knitting-project-in-progress (Sunset Shawl), which is why it was separated from the Main Stash in the first place, and must be kept securely Away From Cats because the Fat One has developed an unfortunate degree of affection for one of the colors.

The remainder of the Yarn Stash, at least, that which is not currently On The Needles, lives in the original Stash Bag, which is the official home of all the needles and notions and especially the wools which need the most secure location (We have an unapologetically anti-moth position here.)

As you might imagine, these various forms of Stash tend to thwart Destashing attempts and can’t be run through standard Organizing Rules without a great deal of discomfort. Creative Stahs, as I think of it, sometimes needs to age. Things acquired with one purpose may turn out to be unsuitable for the intended project, and may need to be run through various tests and generally be lived with until they reveal their true destiny. How could anyone be so callous as to banish a yarn or fabric simply for being a little slow to bloom?

I like things clean. I really do. I’m not a minimalist, but I am adamantly opposed to kitsch and clutter. A coffee table really does need a Thing on it, but I like to see at least 50% of the surface clear. I like things to be arranged in an orderly fashion upon it, but it still needs to be sort of livable. I like the current magazines/books to be in a tidy stack, preferably small enough that a cat leaning against it doesn’t mean immediate chaos. A little decoration is ok, so long as it remains orderly and simple: right now, a cream colored bowl of striking shape which holds a single white laundry-scented candle sphere surrounded by black river rocks. Right now, There is a small textile thing anchoring the Stack and the Bowl: ideally the remote and/or coffee cup and/or knitting occupies one side of the Bowl, the Stack the other. At the moment, unfortunately, the knitting rests on the Stack, and the other side of the cloth is Random. But at least it’s still within the borders of the cloth!
I don’t understand why that eases my mind, but it does. We’ve been in this house a year now, and while we’ve been unpacked for a while, we’re still figuring out how to really live with the space.

Last month, I decided it was high time the studio was actually functional. Oh sure, I’d set aside the space, set up easel and art cart, chair and supplies, but every time I went in there to work, I felt unsettled, uncertain, and almost always had to rearrange just to get any work done. Time is a precious thing, and when the drive to Make is strong, the very last thing I want to be doing is spending half my studio time tying to find a stupid brush or arranging/clearing a surface for drawing.
So. We banished everything, and practically gutted the room. We demolished the hulking, ugly, inefficient closet and pulled up the gross carpet. Unfortunately, under the carpet was even uglier vinyl tiles, and there went my plan for a chic concrete floor. Even so, a week and much sweatiness later, the walls became a happy if unconventional green, the floor is an inexpensive but surprisingly happy beech laminate rendered a bit more classy by 3” salvaged baseboards. We even banished the popcorn ceiling and repainted it a brilliant white. This room is so full of light now - I chose it for my studio for having the best light in the house, and now it’s even better. It’s a very happy space. I don’t think the green walls distort the light much, if at all, and I think of this color as energetic without being aggressive.
We added storage space back into the room with some hefty wall cabinets in the former closet space, and I tucked my desk in underneath: wonder of wonders, my art computer can now live in my art room! I haven’t brought the bookcase back in yet, and I’m not certain now that I will, even though the colors of it guided the design of the room. The outer wall, with desk, window, art cart and easel is pretty well set, but the interior wall is still something of a cipher. I’m ok with that for now, because the outer wall is sort of the “working” side of the room, and that’s the most essential thing.

A side effect of redoing this room is that it has provoked contemplation of Stash.
I {have been} am aware of Stash already, but managing it has always been difficult. Organizing things in general is hard anyway, but the various permutations of Stash tend to evade classification and culling.

I used to think my books were the hardest things to cull and maintain, but I realize now that’s not quite true. Books may have slight variation in size, but there is some degree of order to be had in topic and format, and can be culled when they are found to have little re-read value. Non-fiction is harder to cull: non-fiction can’t always be caught by the have-I-read-it-this-year or the do-I-remember-the-text-in-detail questions.
I have a few criteria to identify unnecessary non-fiction though:
Is it readily available on the web or at the library?
Have I *ever* made use of the material within?
Does the author/thesis seriously piss me off?
Is there a better reference I could replace it with?
Does this book have value as Vintage Object or have other significant sentimental value? (Yes, I do realize that’s a dangerous trap!)
Most damning of all is this one: would ten pages or so of notes serve me better than the book itself?

Obviously, none of the Stash is very susceptible to these criteria.

Gradually, I'm moving my art, writing, and stock to my new G5. It's a rather slow process. Aparently the Tapestry stuff alone was 20 megs. I finally moved my music library - took all day. Only my stock folder was bigger than my music library.

Even longer than moving platforms is finally culling for duplicates, saving with updated coding, and deleting things in *those* folders that I don't actually need anymore.

I expect to be still doing that three montsh from now.