Speaking of genetics: I noticed today that my Old Italian Lady genetics are kicking up, far earlier than anticipated.

I need to buy some tweezers. Or get even more used to being called "sir". The genealogy nerd in me (heavy on the nerd, light on the genealogy) loves this. My family runs to nameless proles and orphans before the late 18th century, so knowing our whereabouts a few thousand years ago sounds pretty neat. When we were in Chicago a few weeks ago, J was watching one of the Matrix movies on cable while I dozed in and out, my sunburned skin and brain slowly cooling to their usual forms.

Maybe it was just the overheatedness, but the costuming became the stuff of nightmares. For people who knit, pictures like this (focus on Keanu), or this, or this are like nails down a blackboard. These aren't the best shots, I admit, but there were a ton more like it in the movie.

The runs in the sweaters. EVERYWHERE.

Am I expected to believe that there wasn't a single person there with a vaguely hook-shaped metal implement and a piece of wire or string to fix that shit up? If they had enough expertise to get someone to knit the sweaters in the first place, that person would certainly be able to fix it. Non-knitters: runs like that require about an inch of yarn if you need a quick ugly fix, just enough to tie a knot and secure the topmost loop. I know, I know--post-apocalyptic world, not a lot of sheep or cotton plants around, I get it. But if thread was really so scarce as to not be able to fix huge gaping runs in sweaters, they also wouldn't be dressed in big ol' chunky knits. (I mean, look at what the people have dressed their savior in. Look at that shameful shoulder. Now, really.) And the second picture shows someone wearing a sweater over another sweater! She's willing to risk her life for the greater good, but the second layer of lopsided sweater? Oh, THAT stays.

A real culture living off the bare minimum, if it bothered with knit stuff to begin with*, would have lots of spots on their clothes that would look a lot more like the bottom few pictures of this--small mismatching squares.

To be fair, the costume design team was apparently doing this intentionally, putting a lot of energy into making everything dirty and beatup looking. And while it was gross looking, I didn't have any problem with the idea that these people didn't have resources for laundry. But I saw a whole lot of sitting around, so the characters could have been doing something with their free time. Like patching holes.

*Knitting uses more yarn and takes longer to make than something woven. On the other hand it's much more portable than a big loom, and knit fabric is warmer precisely because it's thicker, so it'd depend on exactly what's going on in that culture. Poor Irish fisherman? Knits. Poor Egyptian farmer? Wovens. Considering the constant sweatiness of the Matrix characters, their non-nomadic lifestyle, and not having a lot of extra spare time what with the daily raves, the best solution would be very simple woven tunics or something from the sari/toga/kilt family (in other words, a big piece of fabric that can be wrapped in a variety of ways).

It's not futuristic, but it's practical.
I finished my leftover yarn shawl. The pattern is a mix from the book Gathering of Lace; the center flowery thing is from the Feather and Fan shawl, the radiating lines are loosely based on the Rippling Rainbow shawl, and the outer crochet edging derives its genetics from the Feather and Fan shawl, sort of. The red yarn is Brown Sheep Naturespun Fingering left over from the first lace shawl I made, the gray is Jaggerspun Zephyr from the Mediterranean shawl, all worked on 5's. The differing gauges of these yarns made things look a little strange when they came off the needles, but everything blocked just fine. I really like the color contrast, and how the zigzags give an almost 3D effect when each differently-reflecting piece is viewed side-on.



It's wonderfully drapey and quite cozy and soft, according to Gir. This might be my new traveling shawl, which can be used to dress up an outfit, as a makeshift blanket or pillow, or give me a boost if the weather gets colder than the clothes I packed. It's serving as our tablecloth right now.

I liked making it a lot. After the Mediterranean shawl, it was positively soothing to work on. The only thing I have to say about the new Harry Potter book isn't too spoilery, so skip or read as you will.

Basically, I felt like there was major enough emotional growth and changes in point of view that it'll be a while before I can read the earlier ones again. It's like knowing the Hardy Boys solve mysteries to escape an emotionally abusive home life, and learning that they'll only go on more and more dangerous adventures to drown out the noise of their own fear until they're jumping off of bridges with poorly-attached bungee cords, hoping for death but unable to commit to it. It's like crying after looking at happy childhood-era pictures, knowing the worst was coming to the goofy carefree faces, knowing what no one knew then.

Okay, *deep breath*, that stopped being about Harry Potter at some point, there. It's interesting, what you can say, even when there are things you won't talk about. Within a less-than-24 hour period:

-J and I went to visit friends and their new very cute and wiggly baby.
-J had a dream in which many people tried to deter him from getting to the hospital, where I was apparently going into labor.
-I messed up my bc pills (which I do *maybe* once a year, the rest of the time I'm incredibly anal about them).

I think Someone's trying to tell me something, but I'm going to stick my fingers in my ears and LALALA I CAN'T HEAR YOU.
I was bored of my projects one night a while back and decided to make a finger puppet, which only took about 45 minutes. No face on it, as I've explained before. I've since used it to amuse small children staring back between the seat cushions on flights. And Jeremy.

There must be a gene which encodes the ability to make up songs on the fly. I got it from my mom--though my dad's a better and more serious musician, he actually puts a certain level of craft into songs, so I know they're his. On the other hand, I'm still sorting through which songs my mom sang to me are known outside the family. ("Dead Skunk in the middle of the road"? Actual song. "The Monkey Chased the Rabbit 'Round The Flagpole"? Based on a Sousa march, but not a real song. "The Nip-Nap Song?" Entirely made up, though I learned that in high school. "Off We Go Into the Wild Blue Yonder" is also a real song, though our version went: "Off we go, into the wild blue yonder, doot-doodoo, doot-doot-doo dooooooo," because we only knew the first and last line of the song.)

All this is to say that the finger puppet now has a theme song, entitled "Bunny Bunny Loves You". Which sounds sappy, though Bunny Bunny is just as likely to poop on your head as give you a kiss in later stanzas. Gay Pride Chicago:

I was walking up through Boystown earlier in the day, and saw a lot of the floats, either empty or getting last-minute touchups. It was like walking through a fabulous ghost town.

(Hmm. When did "fabulous" become the exclusive purview of the gay? Seems like it's only become widespread recently, ever since every straight girl thinks she needs her very own Queer Eye-style male pet.)



A beautiful, glittering drag queen, yes, but also someone happily parading in their wheelchair. While I was looking forward to the theatricality of my first pride parade, I was suprised to find myself moved nearly to tears by some of the least theatrical parts of the parade--the PFLAG grandparents, the WWII vets. The vets, especially--I just got thinking about being a young person in a country in which you're defined as mentally ill, and still risking your life for the sake of that country. And then the amount that the country has and hasn't changed since then, and, well.



I must have said something really rude to Dan to get him to make that face.

Also, flamingo.


I was suprised at how commercial a lot of the parade was--maybe that's why the non-commercial bits affected me more. This float's advertising the Illinois Lotto. That's why there are people dressed up as those lotto ball things.


I must have accidentally pushed the button on my camera when it was hanging from my wrist, because this is a very blurry shot of the people behind me.

I once saw a tape of some anti-gay propaganda that showed the most hedonistic bits of a pride parade in D.C. And when taking pictures, yeah, you're going to take pictures of the most glittery, non-quotidian bits. But this picture shows 98% of the reality--regular people, in clothes that make them comfortable and happy, enjoying the sunshine, waving to their friends, dancing to music, laughing at the local lumberyard's double entendres (which I'm sure you can guess).


My favorite banner was attached to this float, and read "The Chicago Bears Club Salutes the true foundation of the community: Fag Hags."

My second favorite banner was for the Gay Games swim team and said "Swimming? That's So Gay!"
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There's a parade in Madison this weekend. Our church has a group heading over. I'll probably join them, since I'd like to see a parade from the other direction. So more pictures then, maybe.

(The phrase "our church has a group going over" could probably be interepreted the opposite way, so I just wanted to clarify: UU church + gay pastor = Super Happy Gay Congregation.)

A little white cat, based on this pattern, but with worsted weight yarn and increased-gauge-appropriate needles. It's for a friend's baby that just recently joined the planet.

The pattern is very straightforward but clever. It'd be a good one for a beginner--especially a beginner that's done some kind of craft stuff before. They could start on the pure rectangle of the body to get comfortable with knitting, learn decreasing and increasing on the head, take a semi-optional foray into short rows for the tail, and learn a seaming trick that turns the rectangle into the cat's legs and body.

I considered putting a face on it, but I was a little worried about how my embroidery skills would fare against teething, repeated washing, etc. Plus, it's my theory that a face sewn onto a toy can be nothing but scary (there's a puppet from my past--well, we'd best not even talk about it). Don't believe me? Just troll a bit through these and tell me different.

There's another recent project in this picture, hidden in plain sight. We bought chairs at IKEA on our way to Chicago the week before last, replacing the metal and ripped vinyl folding chairs we'd been using for the past year (and which I'd planned on replacing, oh, 11.9 months ago). Putting them together last week wasn't too tricky, though there was an omitted detail involving one of the four chair back pieces not being identical to the rest that was fixed without too much cursing. I've been pausing often in the dining area to admire the effect real chairs have on making me feel like a real adult and not just a college kid playing house.

(No, I'm not going to talk about London. There seems to be a blog community expectation about Big News, that everyone should have ready-made speeches. But I'm ineloquent, I've never been to England, I hate politics. I don't do Insightful Analysis. I just feel sad and terribly old.)

The garden is coming along, and quickly. I took these pictures late last week, and there's another ripening tomato (the one pictured was eaten), and there are two more pretty good-sized peppers. I think the morning glories will flower any day now, the cucumbers have buds, I may actually get a sugar snow pea or two, and the very late peppers from seed FINALLY look strong and are growing at an appreciable rate, even if I will probably need to bring them inside before their fruit ripens.

We have a cord suspended between the vertical support beams of the patio, from which the bird feeder is hung. Over the weekend I tied yarn to it and tied some of the vine-producing plants to it. I'm hoping that in a few more weeks we'll have a wall of green sprouting.

Not everything worked out. The lavender I bought at the farmers' market last year has always been fairly weak, and repotting seems to have done it in. All the peas save one decided that growing was less interesting than dying slowly, from the base up, like ingenues with consumption. The cukes, while putting out flowers, have leaves that look like some bug has been burrowing through them.

But I'm still working on things. I planted a few more morning glories--a friend and I traded seeds. I'll try the peas again later in the season. We'll see how it goes.

When I finished the Mediterranean Shawl, I made this, um, decorative thing, which was the opposite of the shawl in every way, which made it perfect. It took two days, it's made of flaming red acrylic, it's CROCHET, for goodness' sake.

It can in no way be mistaken for an heirloom. What a relief.

I saw a webpage.... somewhere, where they were crocheting hyperbolic planes. (here are some knit ones, but I discovered, as this author says, that the knit ones are a pain to make.) It's super easy, even with barely-competent crochet skills like mine. one simply makes more than one stitch in every previously-made stitch, so the first round has 4 stitches, the second 8, the third 16, etc., etc. I went until I ran out of yarn, and the resulting pointless thing is between the size of a baseball and softball. I attached a rubber band to the center and bounce it from my hand like a yoyo when I'm jittery.

When Fillyjonk recently mentioned Jelly fungi in a comment over here, the pictures reminded me of this thing. So it's good for nerds of all stripes--it's a hyperbolic plane! It's Witch's Butter! It's both! There are pictures. Piles of them. Finished objects and thriving plants and proud drag queens. But work gets in the way of proper photoshopping. Dammit. Here's the one that loses the least from going up as-is:



Some little things for the Dulaan project. I used my usual boring hat recipe, a little smaller than usual for kid-sized heads.

Hat Recipe:

As blank slates go, this is about the blankest.

With worsted weight yarn and size 7 needles, cast on 110 stitches for a fat head like mine, 100 for a regular head, 90 or so for a kid head, 120 if you want to put a bunch of colorwork or cables into it.

Do 5-10 rows of ribbing, garter stitch, or other non-curlifying knittification. Do 2-3x as much if you have plenty of yarn and want the brim to fold over.

Make cables, stripes, Fair Isle, or boring stockinette until the hat, still relatively squished-up on circulars, fits on your head and is the right length (if doing this for a kid, you may need to call them over for a few seconds instead).

*k8, k2tog*, repeat * to * until the end of the row, then knit a row plain.

*k7, k2tog*, repeat * to * until the end of the row, then knit a row plain.

*k6, k2tog*, repeat * to * until the end of the row, then knit a row plain.

*k5, k2tog*, repeat * to * until the end of the row, then knit a row plain.

Continue in this way, switching to double-pointed needles when the circulars get uncomfortable. When you've gotten to last row (aka *k0, k2tog*), break the yarn a foot away from the knitting, thread the yarn through the remaining loops twice, pull closed, and weave in the ends.

The Christmas before last, everyone in my dad's family got a hat made from this recipe, though sometimes I messed with the decreases to work more seamlessly with the pattern. In the process I experimented with cables, figured out 2-colored knitting, discovered the mysterious and intimidating "no stitch" symbol on charts, and got more fearless. I ripped the stranded knit hat out--twice--because I didn't know how much it would pull in. But now I know how it works. A small price to pay for 6 hours of lost knitting.

I don't understand the people that get super-intimidated by new techniques. Make a frickin' hat! It only takes a day! Give it to a friend! Looks like garbage? Fill it with trash and throw it away! It doesn't all need to be an heirloom.

I'm working on another pair of felted slippers for my stepmom (she liked the ones I made for Christmas so much she wore them out--as good a compliment one can get for a present, in my opinion). They're just like the ones I made before, except I saw this neat little braided effect in Folk Knitting in Estonia, and I decided to try that. I learned something new. Big whoop.