K. Eason's Blog, page 10

rug therapy

Friend T, she who makes amazing pastries and cooks like fucking Top Chef, said she could never knit because it requires too much patience. (And I think...but you make pastry by hand. And you make fancy food that requires attention. I don't understand how you don't have patience).

And I said--pff. It's not patience. It's therapy. When I feel like I have control of nothing, and/or when the writing's gone to shit, I impose some order on unruly sheep fur and feel better about things.

It has been a summer in need of therapy, and since I acquired BRUISE and a spinning wheel in July...

I made this rug.


The BRUISE was spun, then plied, then knit (garter stitch) double-stranded with a single-ply merino in a truly 80s electric blue, and then felted. And although it is supposed to be my rug, for when I work at my desk...Skugga wasted no time in deciding it was his. We'll negotiate, cat.

slivers of sunlight

We didn't get totality, but we got weird reddish light and we didn't have to leave our patio and this table made an excellent pinhole viewer. 
I call this eclipse a win.

on endings

Oh my various gods, this fucking end.

I can't find it. I found the final battle and the final conflict (not the same!) and I wrote them, and... I don't know. Is that it? Are we done? It doesn't feel done. I feel like I've just missed, somehow.

Or, as Z. put it: "You hit the lung, but you're trying for the heart."

Yes. Exactly. Blood and froth and air rushing into the chest cavity and thrashing and choking but not dead yet.

I have a zero-draft. I should just go watch some Midsomer Murders and knit and let it rest. But it's making me anxious and irritable and this coffee is probably not helping.

Some days, you write the book. Some days, it kicks your ass and laughs at you.

blaming the victim

Skugga killed a hummingbird. This is not astonishing on a basic level--he's a cat, and cats kill things, especially birds. But it is astonishing because he's an indoor cat who only gets supervised patio privileges. He's not especially ambitious, as cats go. Happy to watch. Not as excited about moving.

So it's clearly the hummingbird's fault. Or hummingbirds' fault. There were three bombing around yesterday, fighting over the feeder. Two of them are seasonal interlopers, an Allen and a Rufus. The black-headed green male--the victim--is, was, the resident and the smallest. They passed into patio airspace, while Skugga was lying flat and observing ("You don't see me. I am the big black fuzzy carpet here on this concrete.") and then next I know, there's movement (the wildflowers in their pot are waving, as if something has brushed against them) and Skugga comes scuttling inside, with something green in his mouth.

Truth: I thought it was a Japanese beetle, first, and that was the tone of panic when I yelled for Nous. Then I realized it was a bird, and the panic turned into a morbid curiosity. Skugga wanted to bring his prize to the kitchen (of course. Across the living room.) and then play with it a little, and he was not keen on letting anyone close (Nous, esp. There was growling). Louhi, too, got a faceful of fuck-off, which she heeded.

Anyway. The bird didn't die fast; there was one round of drop it, bat it, oh! it fluttered! But then came a crunch and that was, very clearly, a broken neck. And then came a million very tiny feathers. Eventually, I got it, and Skugga, back outside, where there were more feathers, and some blood, and an eventual burial in a fallow flower pot.

This is what passes for excitement here, yes.

Skugga's the first of a 20+ year parade of cats who's ever killed something other than bugs. And he, my big-boned Maine Coon mix, launched straight up and snatched the hummer mid-flight. Like, goddamn sam, that's some athletic ability. I know, I know, he's a cat, that athleticism comes pre-loaded; but it's cool to see in action, so to speak.

I, however, feel a little guilty, too. See, Idris caught a lizard, but did not kill it, and I yelled at him to make him let go. (The lizard lived.) I felt bad about that, not for the lizard's sake, but for Idris's--he was so obviously shocked and upset that I was upset. So I did not yell this time, and let Skugga keep his bird, even though I realized it wasn't quite dead and I could've rescued it.

And also: I feed these hummingbirds. This little dead bird--he's the one who used to sit on the branch over the patio, chasing the female when she got too close. He wasn't afraid of Nous or me. He knew there are cats here. Wouldn't ever get below feeder height while they were outsides. But yesterday, he was too busy worrying about the other hummers coming after him, and he forgot. So yes, the cat did it, but the hummingbirds are culpable. The Allen and the Rufus enabled the fatal situation with their hostile territorial chirpings and divings. And the victim knew better. Negligence, on the part of all hummingbirds!

You can't take your eye off something that will kill you. Ever.

George Romero

Aww man. George Romero is dead. There are zombie jokes to be made (my spouse says: I am keeping my guard up until we're sure), yeah yeah, okay. But dammit. He made good horror.

Teaching my zombies class(es) this spring will be a little sadder now.

WAR BANDAGE: the coaster edition

So here they are. The WAR BANDAGE coasters. There are... eleven. I know. I still have some fiber left, but it's a 2-ply version, rather than a single-ply (which these are), and I am not sure yet that I want it to to become coasters, or something else.

Anyway, I acquired the Sidekick partway through this project. Note the bottom four coasters: they were produced on a kick-spindle, which produced a finer thread. I also spun them differently; instead of peeling a strip of fiber off the hank and spinning the whole length, I was doing color-specific chunks. All the red together, blue, etc. So you end up with the gradations of color at the end, when it's knit. They're all flatter, thinner, and lighter than their later siblings, too.
The Striped Seven were single-plied on the wheel, using the long strips of fiber from the entire hank, so you get the long repetitions of color. The yarn was thicker, too, and not as even as the kick-spindle (learning curve!), so there is more variation in texture, and a thicker coaster overall.

Felting was harder than it should've been. Hot water, agitation...I mean, when I am not trying to shrink something, it's easy. But when I set out to do it, somehow I end up having to do it twice. There is still more stitch definition than I expected, especially on the Striped Seven, but I think that is also a feature of using too-small needles in the coaster itself, and thus having a pretty dense fiber before attempting to felt. On the other hand--these suckers are heat-proof and they will soak up a small ocean.

I also understand why a coaster might be $20 now, if you did the work entirely by hand. I didn't prep the fiber, or dye it; all I did was spin and knit, and I am guessing each individual Striped Seven has about 45-60 minutes of work in it. The kick-spindle four have more than that, because kick-spindles are slower.

my borrowed sidekick*

So M. came over with a Schacht Sidekick spinning wheel on Friday, and I had a little religious experience. Or, like, I spun 2 oz. of wool in an afternoon instead of in 2 weeks on my trusty drop spindle. M. very patiently walked me through how to unpack and assemble the wheel and all that stuff that the instruction manual covers, but which I will learn better by observing, and then doing. Because as soon as she left, I had to change a bobbin and belts fell off wheels and there was physics** and I had to consult videos, but goddammit, I figured it out.

And! She brought me WAR BANDAGE 1.0, which is really...not war like? I mean, there's no blood. It's black/purpley blue instead. Blueberry Bandage? Bruise? YES. We shall call it BRUISE. Anyway, I have like 8 oz. of that, too, which will be something like 800 yds at the end, and who knows what will happen?

(Prediction: a conflict of duty vs. desire. I have a merit review file and four syllabi and the godsrotted WIP to finish this summer and all I want to do is spin yarn and binge watch Netflix.)

*There is not a good word in English for 'that which has been lent to me'. Loaned sounds like I was the agent of the loaning. Borrowed sounds like I asked. I need a word that means 'M. offered and I leapt gratefully upon the chance and clutched it to my cold little heart.'

**I took astrophysics in college, after I took astronomy; but I never took basic physics, like, ever. I took two years of chemistry in high school instead.

here. have a cat.

In lieu of an actual post--delayed by a combination of trying to finish the toadfucking WIP (not yet!) and a parental visit (part of the reason WIP remains IP)--I share with you Cat On A Cabinet, or, Stop Looking at Me You're Not Supposed To See Me Goddammit.



Parents are departed, writing has resumed, and a real post will come... soon. Maybe. M. is bringing over a small spinning wheel today, so who knows what will happen. (Besides: spinning, writing, beer, and the introvert's recovery from a week of enforced togetherness with people whom I love! but who also voted for 45).

gratitude

Yesterday was the very first time, ever, that someone has said to me (and to Nous, who was with me), "Thank you for teaching our kids to write. It's important."

My instinct was to downplay it, because I am toadshit at taking thanks, and because I don't think I deserve gratitude for doing my job. I chose this profession. Besides, in context:We were at Trader Joe's doing the Sunday shopping, and while we were checking out (and bagging our own groceries, because that is how we roll) the checker asked how the quarter was going. Not done yet, I said, and the students are over it, and we are over it, and spring quarter's the worst. And then the checker one lane over laughed, concurred (I assume she's a student?) and it became a 3-way commiseration, oh, spring quarter, the cruelest, the worst, wah.

And into that, our checker says what she says, not ironically, not sarcastically, but sincerely.

We joke, Nous and I, that one does not do this job for the accolades. That one should not do any job for the accolades, except jobs for which accolades are the point, and maybe not even then.* Yeah, we get thanks from our students sometimes, and that's great--but the cards or the cookies or whatever aren't motivation. And clearly it's not the money, either. It's just... what we do. What we're good at. And yes, I do it in part because I think it's important work, teaching students to write, but I don't expect anyone else to notice, much less remark on it.

I am used to being professionally devalued by the public at large--teacher unions are evil, teachers whine, you guys get summers off (no! we are paid 9/12. Big difference). And sometimes there are shithead teachers, of course, just like in any other profession. It's also like we're supposed to do more with less, all the time, and we have to keep justifying our existence and apologizing for the assholes among us and defending our actual expertise (because those who can't, teach, amirite? oh har har). It's like...we have to explain to management why adding 4 students to a class is an actual burden of time, and deserves compensation. Because of course we will grade extra papers, and have extra conferences, and do the work like we do no matter how many kids are in the room. They know that. They count on that. They seem offended when we suggest remuneration for labor. And I can guess why that is, where the roots of assuming we just do this because of our feels, and that we don't have a right to comment on our workplaces (cough, patriarchy and traditionally female profession, cough). And Nous and I, we're doubly damned: adjunct instructors, not senate faculty. Same degree, half the salary, no tenure, more students.

So yeah, thanks is not something I'm used to hearing, or expecting to hear.

It was nice that someone noticed. Not gonna lie. But also weird and discomforting. It's not weird when a student says thanks, because they're directly experiencing the teaching, and presumably they reap the benefits. But a total stranger who does not (to my knowledge) have a kid in my class? Just a general, objective hey, what you do matters in the world, thanks?

I don't know what to do with that.


*My Nicomachean Ethics are showing again.

i made something

Nous got me a drop spindle and some Very Pretty Fiber from Blarney Yarns a couple Christmases ago. I've finally started making yarn with it. This is complicated by the fact I have only the one drop spindle, and now a kick-spindle, but nothing like a wheel. So, you know, it's a slow process.

First we spin the fiber into thread. I spin fine, and the more stressed I am, the more finely I spin. So, yeah, spidersilk. Once it's thread, we take it off the drop spindle and put it on a bobbin (or, as we like to call them in my house: a toilet paper roll). Each of these is exactly half the unspun fiber by weight (1.5 oz). Since the thread fiber varies in thickness--from gossamer to hey, I can almost see that thread!--the actual length of yarn is anyone's guess.

Then we take a big knitting needles, stick the bobbin on it, and secure it in a...box. Because this here is a high-class fancy operation, yes sirree! Note the variance in the thread colors: Mirhya does f-cing gorgeous dyes. That pink on the top gives way to a purple as dark as the middle roll's, which also has orange and pink in the layers. That bottom purple has some beautiful blues. I can't remember the names...Sangria, Villain, and... something? But she picked them for the bundle (and for me, since she knows me).

Then we add a kick spindle, over there on the right, mostly obscured by Louhi. And then we spin, and spin, and spin... and when that is done, we take the now 3-ply yarn off the drop spindle, wind it around a pair of chair legs (no photos of that. Hands full) and tie it off. And THEN we have this, which is about 99 yds of heavy sock/sport weight. I'm anticipating about the same amount from the second 1.5 oz, for a total of 200 yds. 

I'm not sure what I think of spinning, y'all. I love playing with fiber. It's super slow and time-consuming (I know! Drop spindle guarantees that) for not a lot of yarn. I think a wheel would probably change my life. I think... well. First I will finish this, and WAR BANDAGE, and then we'll see.