Rachael

for something a little different. Courtesy of Cari’s and Amy’s blogs, I got to thinking about tattoos and the fact that it seems like we got a lot of ’em out here in blog-land. Cari mentioned something about a gallery. I think she was kidding. But hey! Here you go. I feel like I’m at a party and I’m the first one to get naked in the hot-tub, not sure if anyone will follow. But, hey, I always liked hot-tubs.

The KniTattoo Gallery.

(ps – first one to send me a photo of their knit-related tattoo wins a prize. Not sure what kind of prize, and I can’t guarantee its cool-ness (don’t get a knit tattoo just for the prize), but you’ll get a little crackerjack kind o’prize.)

Whee! Thanks for the compliments! All kudos are due Stef, anyway. Her pattern, her genius. I just do the knitting.

Okay. So the reason I don’t buy crap to eat is this: I bought a four-pack of Dove bars yesterday on a whim and ATE THREE. And I know the last one will be gone today.

It ain’t like I’m on a diet. I like the way I look and I’m happy with my weight. I’ve always been a little soft around the edges, and I accept it (mostly)happily. But come on, that’s just ridiculous. Three Dove bars? You ever had one of those? You can feel your arteries hardening and your hips widening as soon as you throw the stick out, that stick that you’ve licked until the splinters form, hoping for a bit more of that chocolate.

Ridiculous, I tell you. That’s why I go either Grocery Shopping or Other Stuff Buying. Yesterday I just ran into the grocery store for leaf bags and ended up with a box of Dove as well. If I’m legitimately grocery shopping (which only happens about once a month), I’m very good, buying myself healthy whole-grain stuff, low-fat versions of good-for-you products. Or I’ll buy a small box of okay-for-you cookies with a little chocolate and I can dole those kinds of things out for a long time. A bag of Trader Joe’s corn chips will last me two weeks. But something REALLY bad, forget it.

(But it was fun, and I don’t regret it. Just kind of surprised at my capacity, that’s all. I could have eaten that last one, I know I could have.)

I used the leaf bags to clean out my closet, the one that I haven’t been able to open for WEEKS. I’ve been wearing the same clothes over and over again, washed and left in the basket, just because I couldn’t get near the clothes rack. I got rid of six bags of clothes. Six! Well, not rid of, not just yet, since I just bundled them up and filled my car with the bags. Must donate today, as soon as I get off my ass.

I’m seeing a pattern here, no? I like excess? Even when it comes to thrift store clothing, I go a little overboard.

You should see my book piles.

Adah says sleep in the sun if you can!

What do people without blogs do when they need cheering up? Y’all helped me so much and gave me some giggles which were wildly needed. I couldn’t even watch the debacle on TV last night, preferring to catch the headline on internet news at one in the morning. I think it just hurts so much because I adore California. I love it here, I really do, and I just feel so let down. If EVERYONE had gone to the polls, and I just happened to be in the minority who didn’t want the recall to occur, then well and good. I’d accept that. What I can’t accept is the apathy, and the subsequent grumblings from said apathetics. I know that’s not a word. But it should be, goddammit.

In Canada it seems like people think a little more. Is that true? I’m gonna pull an Amy, fall in love with some fabulous Canadian girl and open a little yarn store while writing stunning novels from a tiny carriage house.

Whatcha think?

Well, all right then. Whatcha think of the Noro? Let me tell you first how I screwed it up. Not unbearably, but there’s definitely a Design Detail or two.

First of all, when Stef says kitchener the sleeves to the body, she means it. Don’t get all clever and happy with your dang self and think that means a three-needle bind off just because you happen to LURVE doing three-needle bind offs. When you do that: You end up with a raglan join on a slant AND a seam on the straightaway.

Dur. Why didn’t I think of that? I held it up, ready to be oh-so-proud of myself, then let out a banshee scream and met a friend for two beers and big steak fries. I couldn’t bear it.

Went home grudgingly, kitchenered the other sleeve and realized, hell, it’s Noro yarn. Ain’t nothing as forgiving as that. And if it won’t be noticed from a trotting horse, I can usually live with it, so it stays. No one (but you) will ever know.

I went with three-quarter sleeves, because I’m fussy about that (and impatient). Here she is all in one piece.

I did crocheted steeks! Great thanks are due the fabulous Lisa and Schoolhouse Press for making it comprehensible. I adore crocheted steeks – they’re elegant and neat and they mean I don’t have to haul out the Sewing Machine From Hell. They’re cute, too! Look:

Before cutting

During cutting

And here she is, cut apart with button bands (will buy buttons today – I never buy them ahead of time – I have to meet the sweater first).

What next? Dunno. Knitted political banners? Oh, yeah, that’s what this blog is! Cheers, all.

I need to write, pay off debts (or at least get closer to doing so), buy less yarn and beer, and emigrate to Canada. Schwarzenegger won and I have to move. I’m actually not kidding. It may take a few years, but it’ll happen. I’ll split my time between Vancouver and Venice.

As of now, one-thirty a.m. on Wednesday, the recall was opposed by 46.5% of voters. If three point five percent more voters had just SHOWN UP and opposed this travesty, well….. It almost ain’t worth thinking about. Too painful. It proves (again) how every tiny little vote really does count (hello, Florida). I’m terribly disappointed in my home state. And it only cost us $66 million dollars! I’ve been asked to help with salary negotiations at work – how can I do that? The state tells us over and over it has no money to give to cities and their police departments. Or schools. Or the environment. Of course, I forgot. It has other, important things to do. Like recall an admittedly struggling governor and replace him with a misogynist/actor. That’ll help.

I’m bitter.

GodDAMN. I’m never bitter. I don’t like this feeling.

Aargh. I finished the Noro cardigan, just have to add buttons. It’ll help keep me warm up north.
Bleah.

Good morning!

If you live in California, FOR GOD’S SAKE, YOU MUST VOTE TODAY. If you don’t vote, Arnold will be governor, and it will be YOUR fault. If you’re my friend and don’t vote, I will hold you personally responsible for this. You don’t want to make me sad, do you? Get out there and vote, I ain’t kidding. Check out brooke’s findings on what Arnold’s thugs have been doing to protesters. It’s frightening.

VOTE!

Okay. That said, here’s Christy’s hat that sister Bethany made! Can you stand it? Her first colorwork, her first design, I love it. More pics on her site.

Wowee! to those comments yesterday! I loved ‘em all. I love the idea of Noro defeating the uniform (hee!) and the different ideas on writing and music (gonna try it, but for Fun, not For Real) and the obvious love we share of Tricks of the Trade. My favorite was Missa’s friend who writes novels BACKWARDS, in mirror writing.

Can you imagine?

I think it’s a great idea (although until I can type backwards, I ain’t gonna try it), for a couple of reasons. One, you can write on the airplane without the chump next to you reading over your shoulder (although why you’re not knitting on the plane, I just don’t understand). Two, it really does shake things up in your brain, much like writing with the left hand. I can’t write left-handed, although I’ve tried, but I CAN write backwards in script. And I don’t even have to try, it’s like flipping a switch, it just works. It’s a great party trick. And it stirs up thoughts in a slightly different way. Try it. (Ooh! And Missa’s mom offered Bethy a driveway, big shout out to her!)

And Anne wrote a couple of her own personal tricks and I remembered (again) how much I love reading about others writing, so here’s my routine, for you. If you care. If you don’t, go see Beth’s hat. It rocks.

I have an old rocking chair, kind of an upholstered chair on a big huge spring that moves in alarming and unexpected directions. Wait, this is it. It’s also Digit’s favorite chair.

I get up, flip the laptop on, make coffee (in an Italian caffetierra) and toast with peanut-butter and honey. Every day. This doesn’t vary. I sit cross-legged and slouched in the chair, pull the computer into my lap and check email while eating. After breakfast, I open a morning pages document (the private one, the sloppy, no-brainer one where I just ramble and wake up) and write about a page. Then I open this page and write a blog entry. Hi! Then I get up and make a cup of green tea and wash my dishes. I’ve already opened the novel and it’s open on the desktop so when I sit down again it’s ready and waiting for little ole me to show up. Then I write, without thinking or groaning about my plight in life. If the phone rings, I answer it. If the cat throws up, I clean. If the awful neighbors take out the trash, however, I don’t help. They’re so terrible, they can take the trash out every once in a while by themselves. I write for five hundred words, and I don’t care how good or bad they are. Just so they are. (Then later at work on my break, I go to a quiet spot, have another cuppa and write the other five hundred – that seems to come easier, usually, perhaps because I’ve been so linear for hours that it’s a relief to play on the page). That’s my routine, or at least what I like it to be, on the mornings when it works.

I used to write my morning pages with a gift from a Great Love, an antique Waterman 1927 Lady Patrician fountain pen (pic here) that I dipped in purple Pelican ink, while reclining on my divan. I don’t anymore, and I owe that to Brenda Ueland, who said she could type almost as fast as she thought, so she felt more natural on a typewriter. I agree with a lot that Julia Cameron says about the benefits of writing long-hand – it’s the difference between walking and driving to the store: even though it takes longer, you notice a lot more on the walk. But I love to type. So there. I do miss the excuse to use the fountain pens (and I have a little collection, a Mont Blanc and a Namiki, to name-drop a couple), so I make up reasons. I make my grocery lists sometimes with a two inch fountain pen I bought in Venice in March….

Enough. What’s your routine?

Writing about writing – what is it with us writers? There’s nothing so absorbing as reading about the way another person writes. It’s as if we’re waiting for the solution. I actually get excited when I realize someone is going to reveal in the next few sentences how she writes – where it happens, what time she writes, what method she uses, where she sits, what music she listens to (or doesn’t). It’s like I’m waiting for the magic key. If asked, I could tell you there is no magic key. I know that. I know that books are made of sentences, and sentences are written a moment at a time. That’s all writing is – stringing together sentences one after another. It isn’t magic. (Well, that could be argued, but it ain’t Cinderella garden-variety magic. It’s more like soul magic, if anything.)

But when I read that a successful novel was written long-hand on yellow legal pads with a number two pencil, I give it a thought. Hmmm. I picture myself on my couch, pencil in hand (do I even OWN a number two right now?), I envision the pile of yellow legal pads. And I know that I HATE to write long-hand nowadays, and I should let the dream go. But for a brief moment I think, huh. Maybe that’s the way a real writer writes.

Have been thinking about emotion and how to drop down into it. God forbid I push my little characters into emotions that aren’t real, appropriate for the situation, or honestly felt, but I’ve got them sitting in the kitchen TRYING to feel. I’m trying to feel for them, and it’s not working. My characters usually do their own thing, or most of them do. When I have to push them it’s because they don’t want to move. I should heed that. I think that music could be a key for me (yellow legal pad?) but I’m going to wait until the rewrite(s) to try that out. Logistics play into this: I write early in the morning and I live in an apartment where I can hear every word the girl next door says. If I played music at six a.m., she’d shoot me. And I write on my break at work – also not feasible to listen to music, even on a walkman (I have to listen for the page in case it gets busy and I have to respond back).

Geez, I sound like I’m justifying. Maybe I am, a little. Okay, a lot. I’m TERRIFIED to write to music, lest I cliff-dive without calling the paramedics first and having them stand by. But when I finish, and start ripping the book apart (I almost feel like I’ll be really starting to write then), I’ll try music. I swear.

This week I’m re-reading The Right to Write by Julia Cameron. She’s pretty touchy-feely and just a touch new-agey, but it works for me. I’m thinking a lot about quantity. If I take care of the quantity, the universe will take care of the quality. It sounds odd and a little out there, but I’ve found it to be true time and time again. If I show up and write, it works out that it doesn’t suck that much. In fact, it’s usually pretty all right.

Me in the torso of my Noro raglan:

‘Scuse the uniform underneath.
I think I’m going to do ¾ sleeves and cardiganize it, using Lisa’s crochet method. I’ve never tried it so I’m a little nervous about it, but crochet steek, here I come! Happy Monday, all.