My life has otherwise been proceeding as it has been, so I don’t have anything ground breaking to report to you all. Ho hum.

I thought I’d offer you all some noes on my knitting/fiber art progress.

I finished the green shawl. I did end up needing a bit more of the Zephyr, but I think it worked out just fine, and frankly you can’t really see it. I still have to block the shawl, but it’s really nifty.

In the mean time I’m working on a shawl using a very royal blue tencel yarn. It has the dental floss look at the moment, but I think it’ll be quite nice. I’m embarking on a very nifty lace pattern, supposedly Japanese in origin, but I’m not really aware of Japanese knitting traditions, so I think it’s just inspired and all. From Nancy Oberly’s Folk Shawls book.

I finished spinning the merino roving. this was a massive project… two pounds of yarn. I’ll probably hand dye it all and get something really cool. I foresee a sweater. It’s a little thick and thin, but I think if I knit it tightly the texture will be really interesting. and blocking can do wonderful things, and I have a lot of it.

As a shorter interim spinning project, I’ve begun work on a small amount of silk and wool roving, that I hope to spin into heavy lace lace or some sort of fingering weight yarn. Single ply, if I can set the twist enough so that it it’ll be knit-able in as singles. If not I’ll roll a center pull ball and two-ply it.

After that, I’m either going to start spinning from my stash of really pretty corriedale, or from some brown alpaca. I have some soy silk at home, but I think that will make far better winter spinning. My logic is that if spinning is a year round activity, you don’t really need to spin yarn seasonally. That is that, you don’t need to spin fine light cellulose fibers in the summer for summer knitting. In fact, if you’re trying to make yarn to knit with, you’d be better off spinning winter yarns in the summer and summer yarns in the winter. But then I suppose it doesn’t matter much.

Anyway.

There you have it. Cheers.

Ok, for all of you who I know are waiting for this one, I offer you a knitting post unencumbered by tales of my personal life, discussions of my current technological setup or weird creative tangents. All Knitting, one paragraph away.

I’m almost done with my latest shawl. I ran out of yarn, nary 3 rows away from the bind off. Which means I need to buy two more oz’s of the stuff. Thank god I have a discount. Probably in the same direction I’m going to buy another ball of the blue yarn that I have, just because the fear of running out of yarn is really too much for me.

That shawl, “the green shawl” is really amazing. It’s going to be big, and very lacy, and I hope to sell it for a fair price. (While knitting isn’t a viable way to earn all of one’s money, selling a shawl or two might me to relax a little when I’m ordering books or some such next year.

I’m currently working on finishing a sweater I’m making out of fisherman’s wool. This is lion brand yarn, that you can get at just about any craft store for about a dollar an oz. Pretty good deal. It’s ecru (“sheep”) color, but it dyes well. It’ll be a nice sweater, and I like the feel of the wool. I had plans to sell the design, but as I’m watching it unfold, I’m not sure that I like the way that it looks. On the upside, I think I’ve finally figured out how to make a crew neck, so I might just revert back to doing that. I finished the neck treatment, so now all I have to do, is make the sleeves, and block the hell out of the sucker.

You might remember me talking about my “sock project” as the never ending pair of socks that I was supposedly making. Well, I think I’m going to give up on it. I mean what I’ve done looks really good, and if I was interested, I could probably finish them in a reasonable amount of time, but I’ve lost the desire to make this pair of socks. I think it’s something to do with such fine wool. It’s such nice yarn too, I feel really bad for not being able to make the socks, but, I can’t pull it off. for anything. But then I’m in no hurry, so I don’t really need to take them off those needles, so it might linger for a while.

In other news, I have enough yarn set aside for me, to make a sweater. It’ll be a great deal of fun. I’m thinking drop shouldered crew neck. The yarn is this kettle/space dyed worsted weight wool, that’s just pretty. I might make two (another in red, I’m so predictable, really), later on in the summer. I’ll probably have a shawl project going at the same time, just to keep entertained.

Well that’s all for the moment.

I’m one of those people. You know, the people who can forgive George Lucas for lots of grievous foul ups, and still love Star Wars. The idea of it. (That will not only read all those damn books, but also give them a great deal of priority over a host of far better options.) I think at the heart of it, I attach to saga’s, and I’ve attached to this one. So deal with it. What follows is a critique of the most recent movie. I hope you enjoy. I liked the story, but then I like all the stories. It connected the two stories very nicely, and in most respects it answered the questions that I thought needed to be answered. And of course, I have a few nits to pick.

• Mace Windu, refers to Palpatine as “Emperor” as, or shortly after Palpatine, makes his ascension speech to the Senate. Windu should have refereed to him as Chancellor. It’s an editing glitch, but the fact that I noticed it, and I’m usually not that sharp for these kinds of things, says something to me.
• The scene where Anakin becomes Darth Vader, not the appearance of the black cloaked figure we all know and love, but the sort of “moment” is a complete waist. Palapatine says, “come join me in my dark dark plans for dominion” and Anakin says “Ok, I’ll do whatever you want.” And the shame of it is, the proper motivation and reasoning was there. It wasn’t like they screwed up the whole point of the book, it was just in the delivery of that scene was pretty bad.
• Minor quibble, but Padame, shouldn’t have died on the table. Leia remembers her mother, vaguely, when Luke asks of her in RotJ. Now of course, it’s possible to think that you have memories of things you didn’t actually observe, but I doubt that this psychological phenomena was what they had in mind.
• Darth Vader is always described as one of the Emperor’s greatest servants, which I see as problematic. Now of course this is more a problem with Episodes 4-6. Sith Apprentices always kill their masters, eventually. And Vader, knows this, and I suppose this goes back to the motivation in my second comment, but that person (Anakin Skywalker/Vader) is rebellious enough that I don’t think the characters jive.
• Lets remember, that there are twenty years between the end of revenge, and A New Hope (IV). Now even if you grant that the sequence at the end where they show Palpatine and Vader standing on the bridge of a Star Destroyer, working on the Death Star, as being somewhere between the bulk of the movies, it’s still problematic. First of all, the bridge looks a lot like that of the Executor which wasn’t even built until after the Battle of Yavin (so the time’s way off).
• Captian Antilles, who apeared as one of the Naboo pilots, in the first movie, and now seems to be somehow tied to Bail Organa’s Ship, (and presumably Wedge’s father), is somehow from Correllia? Right. If it’s true, it’s an impressive record.
• I would like to say that I liked the many nods to events to come, and cameo’s that were sort of thrown in there. Like there was a shot with Grand Moff Tarkin. The implication that the Artoo the second trilogy, “remembered” the events of the first. Things like that made it delightful.

So that’s where I am with that. If anyone has similar comments I’d love to hear them.

There are, in my estimation a thousand clever names for a blog like ours. Our fellow bloggers/journalists have some pretty clever names. Rather than surrender to just calling this “TealArt” or something painfully clever, I generally pick a name I like, and leave it up for a few design cycles. Before, I had “The Times Of TealArt” because, mostly I thought newspapers that took the long form “The Times of *” rather than the shorter, “*_ Times” was an interesting construction, and it as as a way of putting emphasis on the observed rather than the observer, and given the nature of our medium, I think that’s an interesting statement.

But like all good things, I thought a fresh name would be fun. So for the moment, we have the somewhat loner. “TealArt: You Can’t Take the Sky From Us.” Modified of course, from the following:

Take my love, take my land Take me where I cannot stand. I don’t care, I’m still free, You can’t take the sky from me. Take me out to the black, Tell them I ain’t comin' back. Burn the land and boil the sea, You can’t take the sky from me. There’s no place I can be. Since I found Serenity. But you can’t take the sky from me…

Clever little ditty. Inspiring and all that. This also reflects on TealArt’s history, as a spark in the imagination of two fan boys. It’s the lyrics to the theme song for Firefly the short lived Joss Whedon TV series. Anyway, I like it so there. And I think I’m going to have to write a Morris Dance called “The Firefly”, stay tuned.

So that explains that little change, I’m going to go see the new Star Wars movie soon, finally. I don’t care if it stinks really. Expect a report on that and concerning knitting things. Cool. Cheers!

I’d like to take a moment to recognize the fact that there are 450 entries on this site. That’s a lot. Well I suppose it could/should be more, but I think its worth noting. It’s yet another fact that draw attention to the idea that, we’ve been around for a REALLY long time. shrug.

I think my new computer and I have finally bonded. I think it generally takes one trying design process to bond with a computer. Graphics, web pages, long form prose writing, etc. Its like you need to push yourself to some limit with the computer to be able to trust it, to know it’s limits and yours, and then it becomes easier to work with it in the future. So I think we’re there. Now all I need to do is send off the last thing for the rebate, and I’ll be really happy.

The other thing, and what I initially intended to post here about, is the fact that, pretty much without my realizing it, Ranchero Software released a new version of NetNewsWire, which has been my news reader of preference. The interface is more Tiger-Esque, which is just fine by me (now if we can only get Mac to drop this steel look on finder, we’ll be good). But the really cool thing is that it will cope with Atom feeds. Basically it’s yet another RSS, except not as simple (RSS stands for really simple syndication.) I think it works great frankly it doesn’t matter much to me, except Blogger supports Atom and only Atom. Whereas before, I wouldn’t dedicate the time to reading Blogger powered weblogs, because my news reader wouldn’t cope with it, now my only reasoning is pure snobbery. Blogger, like LiveJournal, Xanga, etc. tend to be too easy for people to use, so EVERYONE gets one, which inspires even more people to get them. And it’s a downward spiral. I’ve had to put a lot of time into getting tealart to work the way it does. Not to mention money/work for the domain name and the hosting account, and I’d like to think that this kind of commitment leads to a higher level of quality, and I think this is confirmed. It doesn’t matter much which program you use, but blogs that are powered by freestanding software packages tend to be better than website services. And I’ll go ahead and lump TypePad in with the freestanding packages, even though it’s not, really. But I digress.

In addition to the new and better version of NetNewsWire, I’ve also found that Ranchero has what I think is a rather good offline blog editor. I’ve seen all manner of these programs, and they tend to be rather crappy. Now this isn’t all the developers fault. It’s taken a while for the protocols that allow such offline programs to connect with site to develop into allowing communication of enough features. But I think everything is starting to line up. Which is a very good thing indeed. So yeah. I’ve found what passes for blogging nirvana, for the moment.

But, and I think I’ll save this thought for later. Have you noticed how so called “traditional/old” media have been fascinated with the the development of the “blog”? I can’t help but think that they’re missing something. Or maybe they have it all right, and it just stings, but when ever I read or see one of those pieces, I cringe.

Anyway, Stay Tuned.

Ok, Here I go again. I up and figured out how the new WordPress template system works after months of hemming and hawing. I finally have something that I think I kind of like. Whatever. Uses the awesome graphic that Indi made for us, and I think we have a winner.

Confidential to Chris: You can stop laughing and pointing at me now. Thank You.

So here we are. Enough of this introspective crap about writing. It’ll happen. And no more of these 2,000 word posts once a month either.

One thing about writing that I remembered, or at any rate have decided to begin to act on. Is it doesn’t matter much what you write, so long as your fingers are making the right motions on the keyboard. Write emails, write blog posts, whatever, just move them fingers, and eventually you’ll be forced to get something out of use. I hope at least. In this dirrection, I for one am going to start back up a more strenuous TealArt posting schedule, so get those RSS readers all fired up.

I’m also in the process of trying to revive my Speculative Fiction writer’s yahoo group, which is almost five years old and has 233 people. Wow! And I’ve joined a lace knitters yahoo group which is a lot of fun, and gives me occassiton to muse on lace knitting which I think I will also do here, a fair piece.

Now all I need to do is some how figure out how to inspire TealArt Readers (and that means you) to comment on what we/I write here. It’s been a six year battle, maybe this time will be different, because the software actually works reliably. shrug

Anyway, Cheers!

In light of the fact that I don’t really have anything else to post about, I’m going to offer you an update on all the things happening in my life at this point. I hope you’re all deeply interested. Ha!

Ok, so being home isn’t as bad as I feared, but I haven’t really accomplished much. You’ll note that the design around here isn’t what it usually is (this is the time of year that TealArt usually gets budgeted into attention/time budget), I’ve of course done a lot of knitting, and a (very very) little reading.

While I strive for knitting accomplishment, and really enjoy finishing a project, I think I’ve discovered that finishing written things provide a greater sense of accomplishment. Which is interesting, because last semester my course work was entirely based on papers, (2 classes, 4 hours, out of 23 hours, had tests in addition to two papers) and finishing a paper wasn’t particularly exciting. Now I think next semester might be a little bit better. I don’t have to figure out any new disciplinary method (last semester I took two classes outside of my majors, and felt like a fish out of water, pretty much the whole time), and I’m only taking 19 hours: well, certainly no more than 19.

Once upon a time, I used to preach that, the need to write, simply to write, is what defined a person as a writer. Since then I think I’ve moderated a bit, as I have found lots of writers who don’t seem to partake in this “need to write” urge. Also, as I’ve gotten more busy with academic work in the last two years, I haven’t been pressing a fiction project as I did when I was writing Circle Games. (I’d like to say, that the binder carrying CG goes almost everywhere with me, though I haven’t really opened it much of late.)

I’ve pronounced Another Round, what would be my second novel project dead, more than once, and eventually when I get the urge to write I revive it and work on it some more. I have a pretty good start, but not really enough of an urge to put in the effort it deserves. I kept a window open for a few days and wrote 3-6 pages, give or take a bit. While this isn’t anything to spit at, it’s not the kind of energy it could have been, and I’m not feeling it. I also know that, well it’s crap. I mean I think the story is engaging, and it’s not the right for me right now. I think the allegory and social commentary aspects are all set up, but there isn’t depth. And try as I might, 20,000 words and the characters aren’t fully formed. For Circle Games they were and still are. And the genre doesn’t feel like something I’m into any more. I haven’t been reading it. I haven’t been thinking it. And I don’t have the science background to believe it for myself. Maybe this is the same argument that I’ve been making for a long time, and maybe I mean it this time.

While it’s good to know this about myself and my writing, the problem is that it leaves me with a metaphoric blank page with the words “Great American Novel” at the top. You all will probably remember this winter when I talked about writing another all new book. Well at the time, before the shit hit the fan, I made some notes for a story, which I rediscovered as the summer started, and I found that it wasn’t really all that good. So I’m back to the drawing board, and I don’t have anything. The problem becomes that as soon as the blank paper appears on the screen I get the undying urge to knit, which I don’t fight because I like to knit and all. So I have something of an impasse on my hands.

In the past, in addition to some sort of fiction project, I’ve had some other writing related project. It was mobile technology, it was TealArt, it was gender theory musing. I think knitting should be my next thing, because it makes sense. I’m not going to make the mistake of trying to start my own website above and beyond TealArt. I’m not that digitally charismatic, nor do I have the time resources to tackle a project like that alone, and somehow I doubt I could Tom Sawyer Chris into that. On the other hand, I realized a few days ago, that I really like editing, and that side of things. So maybe doing a periodical of some sort would work out. The other thing is that, the knitting community, for lack of a better term, functions very differently. There are a number of fairly successful knitting blogs (I read about 12 of them), 1 big online magazine, another much smaller one, and then thousands of every day knitters that maintain blogs, with varying readerships. There are also 2 or 3 print magazines (depending on how you count Vogue-Knitting; I don’t). I’m not going to register a new domain and start a knitting blog, I have a blog, this one, and it continues to satisfy all of my blogging needs. Which leaves designing; I already make the designs, so writing them up wouldn’t seem to be too hard; and general knitting writing. I have fairly entertaining curmudgeonly opinions about knitting, but they aren’t new, and at least on Knitty there have been a few articles that describe my technique, so I could probably scratch that. There’s already columnist for Knitter’s Magazine who has the “talk about knitting and life” shtick down (and she’s wonderful) so that might be a hard sell to make. Anyway, I’m thinking about it.

Enough about writing. On to real talk about knitting, because that seems to be the only thing that I’ve kept up consistently.

Near the end of the semester I made a shawl out of 50/50 Silk Wool Zephyr Lace Weight yarn. It’s about 4 ounces of yarn total. Pi Shawl (that is Elizabeth Zimmermen’s shawl pattern that’s circular and has these increases that happen in groups (the number of stitches double as the diameter doubles. so every 3, then 6, then 12, 24, and 48 rows there is one round where the number of stitches double. The pattern is drop dead easy, and combines the right amount of mindlessness with possibility for creativity. I’ve done this kind of thing before. Now I’ve made 4 ones of very passable quality, and another 3 (earlier) experiments which fail to stand up to even the lowest judgments of quality.

After I finished the Zephyr shawl, I started one using Skacel Merino Lace Yarn, which I’m convinced is the perfect lace yarn. It’s cheap, 13 bucks a skien (100g; 1345 yards), and one skien will make an entire shawl. I finished that shawl today. It’s more complicated, with more lace, but it’s really nice. In a dark teal. I of course don’t have any use for these, but they’re fun to make. They’d make god gifts, and I could probably be convinced to sell them.

As for current knitting, I have a few projects that I’m working on. The main project at the moment is a red, alpaca, shawl. Rather that work lace patterns, I’m doing textured patterns. It’s a subtle effect, but I think it will keep me interested. Preliminary testing shows that I need to work on improving the patterns a bit, and that while it may require about the same level of engagement, the pay off isn’t as great. Nevertheless I’m going to continue this, at the moment because I think this is about as close to a “manly” shawl as I’m going to get. Lace, though beautiful, isn’t terribly practical for day to day wear, in the same way that texture might be. I’d like to complete one shawl like this just to try it out. I’ve also started knitting on another one (I know I know), out of a cone of yarn I bought almost a year ago. This is part of a stash reduction attempt. At the moment, I’m using it as a swatch to test out another texture pattern that will pop up later in the red shawl. Also, as the red shawl is a project for this weekend’s MidWest Morris Ale, I want to be extra sure that I don’t run out of yarn. I’m pretty damn sure that I’m going to run out of yarn on this one, which is ok, because I’d like to edge it in black, and it’s a kind of yarn that’s fairly easy to get.

Other projects which aren’t within arms reach at the moment, and remain on the plan for this summer (and beyond) are: The sleeves for a sweater I made this semester, some sort of very simple, stole/scarve using some hand dyed yarn in my stash (quick-y project). There’s also enough zephyr for another 2 shawls, and I have another skein of merino lace weight. Also, I’m going to buy a pound of Tencel yarn to make a shawl or four. In some order. When I get back to beloit, I have my Ram’s Horn sweater to take a stab at for a third try, and a few other that I can make.

In terms of current and upcoming main projects, I have the two shawls currently under way, then the sleeves, then probably the Tencel, and probably another Zephyr one in greens if I have time this summer. Then back to Beloit, where I’ll work on whatever shawl is still on the needles until the weather breaks and I can do some fall sweater production. Then again, this could all change with my whim.

Now to tie this all together. I’m a big project kind of guy. I haven’t really been able to write fiction unless it’s as part of a big project; I find knitting things that aren’t big projects to be a bore (in the neighborhood of 20,000 stitches and 20-25 hours of SERIOUS work), and I think that both my writing issue, and this “knitting character” come from the same place. On the upside, I’ve found it much easier to knit the big projects, than it is to write them, but the time scales are way off.

Now that I’ve tied this monster of a post into a nice little bow, I think I’ll compleatly wreck the ending by talking about my computer situation.

I upgraded, and passed off my trusty little iBook to my mother. In it’s place I have a very shinny very nice, Powerbook G4 15". I’m psyched about the extra hard drive space, (of which I only have 30 gigs free, along with 20 gigs on my iPod). The speed is nice, the video memory is really nice, the screen is to die for. I’m not terribly wild about the heat output, or the battery life, in comparison to the ibook, but I think part of it’s the season (having a warm computer on your lap or under your hands is more of an issue when it’s hot out than it is in the depths of Wisconsin winter (when I’m also more likely to have a blanket and jeans between me and the computer in the winter). I’m going to need to upgrade the ram, at one end of the fall semester or the other, but I expected that. Sooner or later I’m going to have to buy an external firewire drive for backup and additional storage, but that’s more or less unaffected by the new computer (it forestalls it a little bit because I now have about 50 gb of space to play around with, rather than 15-20 gb). We’ll have to see how much I end up carrying around the computer. I’ve occasionally rethought the PDA question, but any time that I would carry around a PDA as it is, I already have the laptop. This might change, we’ll have to wait for the school year I suppose.

Ok, I think I’m done. I’ll see you all soon.

Ok, here it goes, a few things have crossed my mind as being minorly irksome, and I thought that you might like to take note of them in all their snarky goodness.

1. It’s my birthday tomorrow/today (may 19th). I keep managing to forget this. I thought it was next week somehow. I’m not good with this addition thing. Or maybe it’s subtraction, and that’s my problem. How’d it sneak up on me like that.

2. Why on earth can’t someone make a good bluetooth mouse that I could buy. By good, I mean more than three buttons, optical sensor, and a normal sized. Also, I got a computer with an internal bluetooth unit because I didn’t want to have to deal with something that I have to plug into the computer. Apple makes a nice bluetooth mouse, but if I’m going to lay down the money for a 60 dollar mouse, a few more buttons would be nice. A few other companies make these mouses, for about the same price point, but the mouses are small and cramped. I have an internal track-pad for this. The reason I want an external mouse is for the times I’m sitting at my desk doing something delicate for a long time. I don’t want something that’s going to give me a hand cramp. So I guess what I want is for Logitech to make their bluetooth devices compatible with Mac. How hard could it be. My Microsoft trackball, was plug and play. It wasn’t even that good with my PC. Come on folks.

3. Why won’t the Windows Media Player for OS X download and install right for me. I have a program (VLC) that will do what I need it to, but, it’s poor quality, or a poorly designed program. Given that people aren’t getting payed for the development I’m not that surprised.

4. I have to get up at like 5 am for a 7:30 flight to Detroit for the morris ale, which starts at 8pm. And given that I know all the mass dances save for one, (and I need to practice another) it doesn’t start until say… midnight. How do I expect to stay up until 3 or 4, if I have to get up at 5? Really now. grumble Sorry if that made no sense to you. I’m going to a dance weekend memorial day, and I have to get up at an insane time for a flight. And the thing about dance weekends, is it’s all about the pick up dancing and singing, which just starts at midnight. So I’m heading into this, with a handicap, I feel, and it’s not a big issue, I’ll just want to complain.

5. I wish school didn’t rob my attenion span like it did. I’ve been sitting around here looking at the wall (and let me tell you it’s very white and very unadorned) and I’m basically unable to do anything. I knit a few rows on my shawl and then I grow restless, and I’ll spin for a short while, and then I try and write, and I’m not getting anywhere. Now granted I’m in the boring stage of the knitting, and I view spinning as either a deeply meditative activity, or a very social one. And I’m writing the wrong book. I’ve been reading philosophy senior thesis' that my dad gave me (and the associated theory) and so most of what would turn into tealart essays is this really futile look at so called radical french feminism in the 70s as it relates to modern queer theory. I think it’s kind of interesting to draw these connections and do some thinking, but I think there’s absolutely NO utility in hashing this out. It’s important to keep in touch with our intellectual heritage to avoid constantly rehashing old territory, but I think there are better ways to expend energy.

Ok, five is enough for now.

Cheers.