Betsy Phillips's Blog, page 26

Yarn

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Maybe I’ll feel different when I start using it, but right now, I am stunned by how beautiful this yarn is.

There are still so many ways I suck at this. I’m still not incredibly consistent. I hurry too much when putting my dyes together and then I’m always pissed that they don’t look any different than they always do.

Even so, it’s so beautiful.

I didn’t do any twist setting last weekend, so I have a lot of yarn that needs it this weekend, which is fine except I don’t have a lot of places to hang it up to dry.

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I’m still deeply in love with BFL, but I got some Targhee/bamboo/silk blend in my Paradise Fiber box this month and, whew, I like the hell out of that, too. Dyed up nicely, spun up nicely, feels real soft.

It Continues

I told y’all how I am having a weird sense of things coming together just right for this bombing book, in terms of me being comfortable in front of crowds and able to engage an audience.

Yesterday I had to give a brief speech that was basically like “Here’s how to buy this book. Here’s some background on the series. Here’s how excited we are. Please buy it.”

And three people complimented me on it.

In unrelated news, though, the Butcher needs to be in Phoenix next week. Which means I am going to end up being the one to finally clean out his goddamn bedroom. Am I allowed to box it all up and mail it to him in Arizona?

Because I am tempted.

It’s been two years of “I’ll get over there. I’ll do it.”

I also think I’ve decided on a pattern for the afghan I’m going to make for myself out of the yarn I’m spinning right now.

Sad, but Happy

The Butcher got an amazing job offer.

In Phoenix.

Yes, the one in Arizona.

I’m really, truly bummed. I mean, I’m having such a good time with my nephew.

But it’s so much more money than he’s making now and I think he’s going to be great at it.

I’m just sad. And I’m saying it here so that I can be all in enthusiasm-wise in person to him.

This is the kind of shit we were working for–to have full adult lives that made us happy.

But I see him at least once a week. I’m going to miss him so much.

Hellier

Am I alone in having watched this? I had it on while I was spinning and I wanted to talk to someone about it, but no one I know has seen it.

But I’m also afraid that, like, if I go to Reddit to see what people are making of it, they’re going to point out all the ways it’s stupid and ruin my positive feelings for it with their logic.

Anyway, it’s up on YouTube and I think it’s the best depiction of how most supernatural experiences work. The way it’s both really boring and kind of nonsense and deeply moving. But really personal and I’m not sure very compelling from the outside.

Saturday

Y’all, I got so much done yesterday. I got some really good revisions done on the manuscript. I dyed some fiber. I spun some fiber. I plied some yarn. I put together a chair. I took all the cardboard in my house to recycling. I rolled down the windows so the dog could bark at the world. I swept.

And then, of course, because I have anxiety, I sat around and worried that I’m in some kind of manic phase and developing a new mental illness.

But I actually think, maybe, knock on wood, I’m just having a nice time.

Asa’s Guy

Last night, I went to a lecture by Don Cochran who successfully prosecuted Bobby Frank Cherry, one of the 16th Street Baptist Church bombers. At the end of his lecture, he showed an editorial cartoon of Cherry in a cell, wearing a t-shirt that read “Segregation today. Segregation tomorrow. Segregation forever.”

It gave me chills because Asa Carter, Wallace’s speechwriter, wrote those words. Asa Carter was also Bobby Cherry’s Klan leader in 1957, when Cherry attacked Rev. Shuttlesworth.

Pinch, Pull

I’m trying to figure out how to make rolags on the drum carder. The problem is my technique, because all the elements are there–the fiber is on the carder, the carder is keeping the fibers aligned, I have two long sticks to pinch the fibers in–but I still kind of suck at it.

But I did make some rolags last night. Not great rolags, but rolags. And, y’all, in order to keep your yarn from getting clumpy, you cannot pinch too hard on the rolag. You have to keep your back hand loose. And, with your front hand, you don’t need to pinch too hard because the way the rolag is set up keeps fiber feeding into the twist.

So, when I first learned to spin, I was pinching with both my front and back hands. The twist came up the fiber and when I felt it in my front hand, I opened up the pinch and let the fiber draw into the twist, keeping my back hand pinched up so the twist couldn’t get into the rest of my fiber.

This is, turns out, a great way to get lumps.

But something about the rolag made me realize I’m always pinching too hard. And, you don’t have to draft every section of fiber if you’ve already pre-drafted. You might, indeed, have some sections of fiber that are already the right thickness. Just let those sections pass through the pinch.

And that’s true for all spins!

So, my making rolags technique still kind of sucks but my learning to spin rolags technique seems to have improved my spinning game in general.

Craft Room

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The transition from den/junk room to craft room is slowly happening! I have these awesome shelves. I have a sturdy repurposed desk for my drum carder. I have a repurposed rolling TV stand for… I’m not sure what, yet, and a couple of chairs on their way.

The Butcher and I tried to put the new spinning wheel together. We did… not great. But it sure is pretty.

Pictures of Us & Things

I had coffee in the morning with S. and I was telling her my desire to turn the den into a craft room and I don’t know why, but I left coffee, went to Home Depot, bought myself the kind of shelving that I want, went to lunch at Steak & Shake and decided I didn’t like any of the chairs that the local furniture places were showing online, so I came home and bought myself a couple of chairs for the craft room.

Then I started emptying that motherfucker out. Whew. I am so sore today. And there are still two computer towers, a huge old monitor, and a TV in there, but the Butcher is coming over this morning to help me take them to recycling. And put the shelves together, I hope.

I took these pictures while I was taking a break (before the mop broke. Did you know you could break a mop?)

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I really hate pictures of myself. I just feel like I look fat and gross and it bugs the shit out of me. But here I am, unshowered, no makeup, covered in skunked beer (long story, but what the fuck, den?), dirty, fat, and cute. Like, this is cool to look at. It’s okay. It’s not gross.

Also, I set the twist in a bunch of yarn, so here’s my bathroom.

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Can you just wear yarn around as jewelry? Do we have a consensus on that?

Hobbs and Shaw

Here I am, only a human person with human person capacities and The Rock is out here making Hobbs and Shaw into the romantic comedy of the year:

“Going in to Hobbs and Shaw, they still have a very biting chemistry, and they are polar opposites of each other in every sense of the word: from where they’re from, how they talk, what their likes are, what their philosophies are, what their fundamental core values are,” Johnson previously told EW. “But yet, they still have this magnetic attraction that happens between them that the universe brings them together, certainly against their will.”

Mark my words, they give Shaw a sister for Hobbs to end up with because Hollywood will not give us the Hobbs & Shaw romance we deserve. We’ll watch a character just like Shaw, but female, slide in and take the spot the narrative has generated for Shaw, because we both desire for The Rock and Jason Statham to fuck in front of us and we can’t admit that desire to ourselves.

This is one of the things I find most fascinating about the best Jason Statham movies. They’re dude movies. The audience for them is 100% supposed to be dudes. And yet, Jason Statham is always getting stripped down in them. And, more importantly, the camera lingers all over him. The audience is supposed to look at his body and supposed to enjoy looking at it.

But there’s always some tacked on, extraneous woman.

It’s like, if the male gaze is supposed to let men have a fantasy where every woman is for their consumption and every action hero is a male power fantasy–do her, be him. A lot of Statham’s roles–or I guess a lot of Statham’s directors–are constantly positing the question “but don’t you want to do him a little bit, too? I mean, look at his chest or his shoulders or whatever” to their male audience.

And yet, to mask the fact that the films are creating a space for men to desire Statham, there’s always some extraneous woman.

As for me, The Rock, Jason Statham, and fucking Idris Elba? If that movie theater isn’t 60% women, I don’t understand this world.