New obsession

Before I get started, I just wanted to gush a bit about what I did last Friday. I usually blog on Friday evenings, but last week I was at my local symphony, and oh, boy. I have a bit of a groupie crush on our symphony's music director/main conductor, and last week merely cemented the wrongety-wrong-wrong groupie lust I have for him. The program was Beethoven's Pastoral Symphony and The Rite of Spring--a nice pair of spring-time, tree-huggin', nature-lovin' goodness. And then they added actors. For the Beethoven piece, one of the actors read a letter Beethoven wrote about his deafness and love of nature and whatnot, but what they did for The Rite of Spring was beyond cool: our local modern dance company came to recreate the dance performed when RoS premiered. The actors came back (several this time), including actors who had been sitting in the audience who recreated the riots from the original premier!!! I laughed so hard, I almost bust a gut. And the orchestra was playing pieces from RoS that were interspersed with the yelling and rioting and actors reciting letters from Stravinsky. It was so exciting and thrilling and chaotic and so absolutely beatnik that I could have cried for joy. Take that, conservative midwestern town! I kept waiting for the bongos. Ah, well. Maybe next time.

Someone had a nice Sunday this past weekend. Usually, Dog likes to keep his buns warm in front of my heater. He's even got a blankie to curl up with. To wit:


Look at the nice surprise he got the other day:

Sunspot! He spent nearly ten minutes rolling and lazing about, sunning his belly in the sunspot before our regularly scheduled shitful weather recommenced. Poor boy!

I have a new hobby, too. Lace.

This is a new knitting skill for me. I like garter and stockinette and all that jazz, but there's something almost erotic to my pervy knitter sensibilities to knitting lace patterns. It's fiddly enough to satisfy my inner OCD freak, yet simple enough to not make me feel like a total twat.

It's the Gossamer Shell Scarf from One-Skein Wonders by Judith Durant. Yes, it's going to take up more than one skein. Which is fine, as I've got three of this fiddly mohair stuff. Still soft as kitten fur, still a pain in the arse.

Anyway, since I'm having so much fun with this project, and planning to make a lacy shawl with my hard-won green laceweight merino (see last post), I treated myself a bit. My creativity teacher paid me to order some chunky weight yarn for him (which I may or may not have mentioned), so I converted my profit into laceweight merino. I didn't realize until the day it arrived that the name of the colorway (Red Hat) referred to that group for sheep-women who follow that stupid poem about wearing purple when they get old--as if wearing purple somehow makes you a rebel or something. Excuse me? I have purple in my closet, even though sometimes it makes me look like my kidneys are failing. I don't see what's so risky about wearing purple (jaundiced appearance aside), or red hats or getting together with the other "old ladies" (don't glare at me, they use the term themselves on their website) and playing canasta. This is probably why (as my creativity teacher told me) I would have been lobotomized if I'd been born fifty years earlier--I don't understand why they think doing what they want to do is somehow so wild and crazy; like wearing purple. Oooh, hold them back! The Sheeple are getting carazy! No, crazy is painting yourself up like an ancient celt and going to work naked but for woad. Or Maori facial tats (which are beautiful, btw. If I met a Maori guy with the real thing, I might have to jump him, just on general principles.) Wearing red and purple and having a ladie's day out twice a month is rather lame, in terms of wild and crazy behavior. If you really want to impress me, buy a Harley. Or a cabana boy. Or both.

I think, since I just watched Frida last week, that I'm going to figure out how to make a very Hispanic-inspired shawl with it--and take that, Sheeple, Frida Kahlo wouldn't have joined your silly little club, because she wore whatever the hell she wanted whenever she wanted and slept with just about anything she wanted, too. Including, if the gossip is to be believed, Trotsky, which I find icky when looking at pictures of the real Trotsky but not so bad when Trotsky is played by Geoffrey Rush. Hey, I liked him as Barbossa.

Anyway, I feel there's a lovely irony about using the yarn for a shawl to honor her. It's almost subversive. Besides, there's something rather fiesta-like about the red and purples together. Maybe it's because the red is a very orange-y red. Anyway, I'm seing long fringe, an open stitch, and more beads. Beads, beads, beads!

I've gotten beads to match the green yarn, and I'm excited about the prospect of beading a shawl. I think I've even figured out how to do it properly, too. Anyway. I'm thinking about blowing part of an unexpected (small) windfall that's coming my way tomorrow on more laceweight yarn for more shawls--there are more shawls that I want to knit than yarn of the appropriate gauge in my stash--since some of the prettiest colorways are still on clearance. And maybe I'll get myself a nice, naughty knits book...maybe Naughty Needles or Knitting Lingerie Style. I like the playful attitude and unique shapes featured in both. And the idea of knitting my own bra (from KLS) to fit is intoxicating. Finally, an undergarment that really fits!

Oh, well. I'd best go feed Dog. He gets stoppy when the kib isn't on time. Poor lad. Monday. Monday we find out if he can go for walks outdoors, and he gets actual medical permission to get on furniture (not that he hasn't been sneaking up on the couch at times, but I won't have to feel guilty about it anymore.)