Betsy Phillips's Blog, page 33

They Made Me a Book Trailer!

I stepped on a nail last night. I’m fine. My toe is a tiny bit tender, but it was right above my huge ancient callous so it didn’t even bleed. But I called my doctor to check and see when the last time I had a tetanus shot was anyway.

And now I’m wondering if I can use it for book promo. “JESUS CRAWDAD DEATH is so metal you’re going to get lockjaw!”

Ha, okay, I guess it’s not that great. But the book trailer is!

Troubles

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It’s weird to go from an afghan that was exactly what I wanted, and better, every step of the way to this afghan that I feel is kind of fighting me. I don’t have as much yarn as I thought I did. It’s too wide and I’m worried I won’t have enough yarn to make it as long as it needs to be for as wide as it is.

And I don’t know what I’ll do if I don’t have enough blue.

But then I look at the ways the colors I dyed play out over each motif and it seems worth fighting with.

But also, you guys, the amount of dog hair this afghan has collected. I don’t even know. It’s so gross and hilarious.

Kenny Rogers

Yesterday we had our holiday party and there was a “how well do you know the other people in your division?” game where some people had sent in little-known facts about themselves and you had to guess who it was.

One person’s secret was that she was a huge Kenny Rogers fan.

So, I went around from cluster to cluster singing “You’ve got to know when to hold ’em, know when to fold ’em” until I reached the cluster where a woman threw up her hands and sang “know when to walk away, know when to run.”

I didn’t even bother to look for anyone else. I felt like–and still do feel like–such a genius.

I still remember when they did “The Gambler” on The Muppet Show. I cried at the end.

More Stars

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Yes, the cat photobombed my afghan picture.

I remain concerned about how wide this is. I’m also not 100% in love with how I did the gradient (though, since this is the first time I made this, I was bound to not be great at it). But I still love it and I hope the blue parts will make it come together in ways I find satisfying.

Spinning

I ordered myself a drop spindle and some fiber. I don’t expect not to suck at it, but I really want to learn to spin. Not even well. I don’t need to learn how to spin well. But I want to make some yarn. I want to know what that process is like.

Which, I think, means that my efforts to enclose everyone in afghans are probably slowing down. Or changing shape. I want something different from my fiber work, even if I can’t say for certain what different will look like.

Which, too, is where I am with my fiction.

Maybe with life.

I forgot my prescriptions at work and had to go yesterday to dig them out of my desk. I took the dog. He was such a good boy, but so nervous. He didn’t particularly like the elevator and he seemed worried when I dropped his leash once we were off the elevator (but there literally was no place for him to go but the other end of the hallway). But also excited.

I admire the way he doesn’t let his nervousness stop him from having adventures. He just makes his nervousness a part of the experience.

Today’s the Day!

The official pub date of Jesus, Crawdad, Death.

Stars Upon Thars

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This is one quarter of the stars for this afghan and yet, I still feel like I am working on getting it set up so that it’s easier to work on. I’m also pleased and relieved that, as I get more starts attached, it’s shrinking up some. I was starting to worry that ten  by twelve was going to be just ridiculously enormous, but when everything is attached and pulls against each other, it’s okay.

The biggest challenge is really just keeping the thing somewhat flat on my body as I work so that I don’t attach stars to the wrong things. But in general, I’m pleased with it. Orange next, and then red. Then I’ll probably need a little purple to finish it off. Then I’ll fill the holes. And then a border. I don’t even want to think about how to border this yet.

The challenge is definitely going to be in the border.

Wherever You Go, There You Are

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The picture has nothing to do with anything, except to remind me that the work remains.

It’s hard to live in a state where the majority of the people take great pleasure in actively hating me. And yet, the super secret thing I know is that people everywhere hate people like me and the people I love.

How can people who would delight in calling up the families of first graders and describing all the ways in which they would harm those first graders on the first day of school raise good people, except by accident?

But also, how can we be a nation with the grave evils of genocide and slavery baked right into our creation and not be deeply fucked up? And can we be unfucked? I don’t know. But I do know that what we/I need to face is that I’m not the clean-up crew, just mopping up a few small unfortunate messes left after some great unfuckening.

We’re still fucked. We are not unfucked. And that is the work.

Ghost Creek

I’m listening to Ghostland: An American History in Haunted Places while I work on this afghan and it’s really good. It has me thinking a lot about how places become haunted and what it means to be haunted as well as the components Americans expect in a ghost story in order to believe that it’s true.

He’s really good at teasing out some of the racial components. I wish he were better about teasing out some of the gender components. But overall, I’m enjoying the shit out of it.

This morning, I just walked the dog up and down the driveway because the storms last night had made the ground too wet to walk across. This was my view:

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Back behind those two trees is the concrete ditch the creek that runs through my yard has been forced into. The muck you’re looking at here is what remains after a night in which the creek returns to its old ways.

It feels like a ghost, like my yard is haunted by the old path of the creek. And it’s real and true. My yard is haunted by the old path of the creek. Sometimes, like last night with all the storms, a creek appears in the old spot and moves through the land in the old ways, and then vanishes again.

So much we think is gone for good, irrevocably destroyed, comes back in ways that are unsettling. Why should the dead be any different?

The Next Art Blanket

I can’t remember if I said, but all these hand-dyed blankets that weren’t for nieces and nephews are for some of my local artist friends. The one I just finished is for Julie Sola of Fat Crow Press.

This next one is for Lesley Patterson-Marx. I had thought it was going to be a blanket of flowers, but tell me these don’t look like stars?

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I think I’m going to do the stars in fire colors–yellows, oranges, reds. I mean, they can be flowers, too, if they want. Whatever the viewer needs. And then fill the gaps between them in sky colors.

And that technique that I learned for the flat braid join is serving me really well for joining these stars/flowers. It really looks like they’re wrapped together instead of stuck to each other. I’m very happy with it so far. But there will be 120 star/flowers, so get back to me after this drags on.

Ha ha.