Betsy Phillips's Blog, page 35

Two More

There’s just so much I like about these, but I think one of the reasons I’m most tickled is that one of the things I enjoy about looking at Julie’s art in person is that there’s a lot of repetition. Like, here’s a crow on a blue flowery background. Here’s that same crow, but on a green swirly background. Here’s that blue flowery background again, but this time with a rabbit on it. And so on.

And I feel like this afghan is going to capture that. Each motif is unique. I’m not using the same yarn combinations in the same order on any of them. But the shape is the same. The Queen Anne’s Lace in the middle is the same. The walnut is the same.

It’s really fun and satisfying to try to do a project that captures what you like and how you feel about another artist’s work in a different medium.

And, man, making something beautiful when you’re down in the dumps is a real gift to yourself. I’ll just say that.

I Did It!

I didn’t go to the thrift store. I didn’t do the dishes. I didn’t clean up the kitchen. I didn’t do any laundry.

Instead, I made these:

So far, this is everything I’d hoped it would be. And I can get  six motifs per skein of walnut yarn, which means I will have plenty to do the borders of each square how I want. Which makes me happy.

The all purple one in the lower left is the pokeberry.

I also discovered that, given time, the blue from the black beans and the blue from the indigo aren’t the same color anymore. Which is nice for my project, but it does give me some qualms about the black bean blue, but I’m trying to do each motif in such a way that, if someone fades, it won’t ruin the motif.  I’m looking at you, black bean blue. But I also have concerns about the pokeberry. If it really is colorfast, why wasn’t everything in 18th century America that color?

The Start

These are the start of the afghan I’ve been planning all summer. I have so much to do today, but I really just want to sit on the couch and make more of these. I just love this so much.

Sometimes I worry that doing rainbow colors is too hokey, that it’s cheating as a way to get out of having a color scheme, but this time, I don’t even care.

They look like wagon wheels or twirling skirts or flowers in an old timey movie. Windows in a church built by a quilting bee.

The only tricky thing is that I’m going to have to humble myself and either do my color combinations in the daylight or take everything into the bathroom where the light is best to pick colors, because I swear, last night, that one on the right was two oranges and a red, but in the daylight, it’s clearly one orange and two reds. Still beautiful, but just something to be aware of.

JESUS CRAWDAD DEATH

You can now pre-order it! Woo.

I am nervous as fuck. But also excited.

Same Old

Yesterday was just chaos. Work problems. Plumbing problems. Dog being a jerk and honking the horn with his butt and running off while I was on the phone trying to deal with work problems problems. Then stuck in traffic for a million years and dinner with the Butcher’s family and my parents and then home and being exhausted but for some reason, just puttering around not going to bed.

[image error]

But look at this baby getting tickled by his grandma.

The Blues

Y’all, I’m depressed. Not big D feel like dying depressed, but not answering my emails and not doing basic tasks and wanting to sleep and sleep and sleep depressed.

And I feel better just realizing it.

I need some things to wrap up and I need to get a handle on some other things.

But I’m not failing. This feeling of failure is just a brain thing.

Still, I wish my brain weren’t doing a thing when I have so much stuff I need to do.

Doing Things I Meant to Do a While Ago

I finished this afghan, which I don’t have a picture of yet, because I’m not going to spend any time this morning figuring out why my computer is being a dingus.

I ordered a cake for the event at Third Man Records on the 28th (4 p.m., if you want to come out!) and the baker asked me if the crawdads could be wearing luchador masks, so you know I ordered from the right place.

And I went to the new state museum. It was glorious. I cried a little bit. I can’t wait to go back.

[image error]

They had Eliza Allen’s parlor guitar! That’s lasted a ton longer than her marriage to Sam Houston. It just goes to show, ladies, put your heart in music, not love.

They also have this really fascinating early Klan robe.

[image error]

It’s pretty fascinating to me that it seems to borrow from Masonic imagery. The crescent moon over the star looks very Shriners-esque. But I’m most fascinated by the hood. It reminds me of a mummer’s outfit or the headgear from Courir de Mardi Gras.

The Courir de Mardi Gras Wikipedia page goes to great lengths to disassociate their costumes from the Klan, noting that it’s much older. But I’m assuming, if there is influence, that it flowed the other way: the Klan took on the trappings of the Courir de Mardi Gras hoods.

I’m going to have to give some more thought to it, but there’s something intriguing–maybe some meat on the bone there–about wondering if the Klan is/was some kind of inversion ceremony, though running the opposite way–where instead of poor people mocking and charming the rich, this is about powerful people mocking and terrorizing those without power.

I’ll have to think on it.

 

Blues

I will eventually get tired of this pattern, but not today!

The Southern Festival of Books Panel

You guys, it went so well. The room was packed. The Butcher’s family made it in time to hear me read. The panel was amazing. And the audience was really into it.

Sheree Renee Thomas brought a writer friend who had been mostly quiet and reserved before the event. But my god, he sat in the front row and smiled at everyone supportively and laughed when laughing was needed and shouted out when shouting was needed. It was really great. I was so grateful to him.

I think a lot about what makes or breaks a reading and I have long respected Chet’s (the guy from Third Man, who is always having literary events) ability to get the crowd to be open to stuff they might not be familiar with. But Thomas’s friend knew how to be an audience in a way that I now aspire to be for other writers. That kind of open responsiveness is just so great coming from another writer. It’s like if Penn & Teller tell you your trick is good. They know.

I read the first five pages of “Jesus Has Forgiven Me. Why Can’t You?” and it was perfect. I don’t know that I’d ever read it out loud except to myself as I was revising, so I had the fun experience of discovering that it was really great to read out loud as I was reading out loud. It was delightful.

Something is happening to me, or has happened and now I’m just noticing, but I felt completely at home reading that story in front of that crowd. Seeing nm laugh at places I hoped she’d laugh, in one case, wrote specifically based on a conversation she and I had had about what kind of forgiving Jesus would do. Having S. assure me I was dog-hair-less. The gushing text K. sent me later.

I felt beautiful. Like, not on a surface level. No, that’s not quite it. Not only on a surface level, though I looked in a mirror before the event and considered myself not just passable, but cute. But I felt so sure it was worth everyone’s time to pay attention to me. I felt like someone worth looking at.

I never feel that way. I usually feel like “oh, sorry you have to look at me,  but I’ll make it worth your time by being funny or charming or knowledgeable or quirky or whatever.” Or maybe I feel like you love me so you’re used to how I look and it’s not off-putting anymore, it’s just how this person you care about looks.

But yesterday, I felt beautiful. And sure of it. And I never want to forget how awesome that was.

Southern Festival of Books

I’m reading today at 4 in the special collections room at the library. I was going to read from “Little Sister Death,” but this morning I decided to switch to the opening of “Jesus Has Forgiven Me, Why Can’t You?”

Come by, if you’re in town.