Frogs and Ravens

Color Quiz

you are cadetblue #5F9EA0

Your dominant hues are green and blue. You're smart and you know it, and want to use your power to help people and relate to others. Even though you tend to battle with yourself, you solve other people's conflicts well. Your saturation level is lower than average - You don't stress out over things and don't understand people who do. Finishing projects may sometimes be a challenge, but you schedule time as you see fit and the important things all happen in the end, even if not everyone sees your grand master plan. Your outlook on life can be bright or dark, depending on the situation. You are flexible and see things objectively.

the spacefem.com html color quiz

Last time I did this, I was Light Sky Blue.

Evolution, Succession, Change

Evolution is happening at this moment in my yard.  The violets are being selected for their height, and the dandelions are trending towards the low-lying and the fast growing.  Only those that evade the mower's blades, or can puff out and spread their seeds to the winds before the next clipping, will reproduce themselves successfully.  Similarly, the birds are being reduced to those canny enough to tell small black cat from deep green shadow in the litter beneath the yew. 

The grass is struggling to maintain dominance in the lawn, a task that would be impossible without human interference.  Alongside the dandelions and violets grow maple seedlings, and suckers sprouting up from the roots of nearby trees.  Weeds encroach at the edges, attempting to create a meadow to compliment the trees' would-be forest. 

The mower moves in straight lines, the maneuverings of vegetable competition progress in patterns that are anything but straight.  The neighbor's tabby cat stalks across the shorn lawn to demand a caress, a miniature lion crossing the veldt.  In the neighbor's yard a man rustles in the bushes, clearing out the dead brush. 

We work so hard to maintain What Is, not realizing that What Is is nothing more than change.  The maple keys mingle with the petals of the crabapple on the breeze, and the moving air ruffles the cat and raises the hairs on my bare legs.  Surrounded by a sea of moving air, it is briefly easy to maintain the illusion of stability amid change, of residing in the eye of a storm of change.  The roar of the mower feels timeless, when, in truth, it is a machine designed to fight the growth and spontanaeity of time itself, embodied in the living flesh of plant and creature alike.  The mower roars, and spins like time, arresting the growth of plants as they reach for the sun, and eternity. Even when we stand still, holding our breath, ceasing our circulating, spiraling internal wind, the earth beneath us spins, spins and rolls, carrying us through space, and through time. 

Spring Rising

The yard is finally starting to resemble the scene in my banner, above.  The tulips are blowsy, petals all asplay; the daffodils have dropped their flowers entirely.  The lawn is full of dandelions and violets, and the first seeds from the former's puffs are floating on the wind.  The car and porch this morning were littered with fallen maple keys and frost-sered leaves.  The roar of the mower is upon the land, and the song of the starling and the creak of the grackle in the air. 

I am walking to work these days, taking advantage of the time between frost and palpitating humidity, between freezing winds and the stealth attacks of mosquitos.  My feet are soft from months in comfortable shoes, coddling with handknit socks; I wear my sandals in rotation, building up the warm season's callouses with care. The veins in my feet and hands distend. My freckles resurge.  Around me, the sap is rising, faster and faster, spurting out branches in leaves, growing, swelling, against the day of their inevitable fall.  The cat is empty of kittens and full of milk.  The streams burgeon with rain, the dandelions with milky sap.  Under my bare feet, I can feel the plants growing and the worms stirring up the soil.  I stand in the sun, the breeze ruffling my hair, and I inhale the spring.

Whirling

I am plying last year's tencel.  I took 8 ounces of dyed fiber and turned it into about 1500 yards of thread.  Each yard represents one spin of the spindle, one drop and one winding - one "make".  I spun, dropped, and wound, over and over, until I had a spindle of thread.  This I wound on a niddy-noddy, bobbing and tiring my arm, to make a skein.  Then I repeated the process.

This weekend I took the two skeins and I ran them together through the ball winder, spiraling their long, color-changing lengths around an eccentricly rotating hub of Japanese plastic.  One skein resisted, turning into a multi-hued snarl that had to be rewound on a toilet paper tube, yard by tangled yard.

Now I am plying from this ball of parallel strands, twisting them around each other to make the resulting yarn lie calm and relaxed.  I spin, drop, and wind, over and over.  I am impatient for the camisole I will one day knit from the fruit of my labors, but each step is important.  I am plying, calm and relaxed, my breath rising and falling with the whirl of the spindle.

A Note

If you have a Blogger blog, and have not heard from me lately, it's probably because my Blogger account is currently screwed up in the wake of trying (and failing) to set up a Google account, and I can't log in. 

Thanks, Google!  /sarcasm

Hopefully the problem will be fixed soon.

The Fiber Event

Earlier this month I made another trip to the Fleece Fair.  It was raining when I arrived, with snow (snow!) forecast.  It seems like this happened last year; Friday was warm, followed by a chilly, raw Saturday. 

In any case, there was one warm, sealed structure, two airy metal barns, and one open-sided wooden barn.  It was a good thing that people were selling warm, fuzzy merchandise; I can't imagine what it would be like if it were something like a sundress-and-straw-hat sort of event. 

An unexpectedly nice thing was that not only did I remember a number of booths from last year (most of them seemed to have returned, though not all in the same locations) but a couple of the vendors remembered me. 

There were the usual bags and balls and tubs full of roving, and tufts of fleece, and rolled up bundles of raw wool fresh off the sheep.  In all the barns were cages of angora bunnies, and one place was selling, in addition to bunnies, a tiny angora goat and a Persian kitten!  To all sides were balls and hanging skeins of yarn, wooly garments and artsy felted flowers, hats, animals and colorful lumps.  There were racks of needles, jumbles of niddy-noddies, bouquets of spindles, herds of spinning wheels, and ranks of rigid heddle and table looms.  There were a number of bars of scented soap, and a lot of knitting and sheep-themed tchotches.  One man was wandering around in a brilliant, chevron-design sweater he'd designed and knit himself, several Menonite women, many large women in dramatic wooly knits, a few people wearing shawls, and many wearing hats, gloves and scarves (see - the perfect marriage of weather and event).  In between the crowds of slower-moving adults darted children, who paused to pet rabbits, stare at spinners, and huddle around space heaters, clutching stuffed llamas and sheep, tugging on their parents' hands. 

I loaded myself up, though I tried to hold back from too much roving; most of the lot I bought last year is still sitting in my room mocking me.  I bought: a silk "hankie" dyed in a range of deep, rich browns; several ounces of tencel dyed in blues and greens; a skein of laceweight bouclé mohair in varigated blues and greens; a skein of brown and black alpaca yarn (both mohair and alpaca skeins intended for shawls); a copper fibula shawl pin; two Bosworth spindles, one large, one small; a "skein" of roving in blacks and greens; some knitting needles, both straights and circulars; and a skein of cream laceweight for D.  There's enough here to keep me busy for months.

Then I drove home in fluffy rain, er, fleecy rain... no, I have to admit it, snow.  The smaller birds were on the porch, the "fluffy rain" was accumulating on the daffodils, and I could hear it striking the leaves and the blades of grass - a peaceful, skittery sound.  It was still snow in April, however.

Earth Day?

Chris Clarke has written a thought-provoking post about Earth Day this week.  The basic gist of it is that he fails to find it compelling, seeing it as a feel-good day for corporations, and arguing that celebrating our connection to the planet and its inhabitants isn't something that should be reduced to something so shallow.

I basically agree.  It's strange that something so vital to our existence and well-being is feted on one day out of 365 (or 366 in leap years) and more or less ignored by the majority during the rest of the year.  It's wrong that the event functions as a kind of bumpersticker for most, a token meant to garner social approval without sacrifice.  It's disturbing how so often Earth Day activities promote simplistic, limited, and individualist solutions (buy fluorescent bulbs!) while shying away from more radical ones, or ones which might cause discomfort to CEOs.  And yet...

I have an affection for Earth Day.  The first one took place the same year I was born, and I've felt a personal interest in it ever since.  The thing that makes Earth Day special to me is that it is one day when my beliefs and values are in the public eye, held up for praise, and celebrated by large numbers of people, openly.  The rest of the year, if I want that feeling of social relevance and community feeling, I have to search out small groups of like-minded people (surprisingly hard to do, especially offline).  Then I go home, and the tv is full of advertisements about the latest wingding, the news is ignoring the problems of water shortages and habitat destruction, politicians are filling the airwaves with dismissive rants about anti-capitalist radical environmentalists (if they mention them at all), and so on. 

If I express my love and affection for trees, I'm a loony tree-hugger.  If I admire an insect, I'm strange.  If I question the way we've been doing things, I'm anti-American.  I am told that the only way to be a patriot is to strip our lands for coal and to plant genetically modified monocrops for ethanol and to taint the desert with military tests for actions overseas to protect our oil.

In short, for 364 days out of the year (365 in leap years) I am made to feel like a freak by the dominant discourse of our society.  Is it little wonder that I cherish the small sanctuary Earth Day represents?

Of course it is not enough.  But when you are hungry, even a crumb looks pretty damn good.  I want more than a crumb, and will keep asking for more. I will continue to celebrate Earth Day in the spirit in which it is intended, until the time it is just one more day of the year, yet just as special.

Happy Earth Day!

Edited to add:  Yes, I know this is a cool image.  Yes, I know it would be neat to have it on your own blog.  HOWEVER, if you want to use it, please download your own copy and host it on your own site.  Do NOT simply link to it.  This is called HOTLINKING, and it is a really rude thing to do - and if you're the sort of person who likes this image, I'm sure you'd prefer to do the right thing.  Thanks.

For more info about hotlinking and how to avoid it, go here:  http://www.webweaver.nu/html-tips/hotlinking.shtml


 

Here's a couple of cool things to do that honor the day:  Project Budburst (c/o Numenius) and, if you're more ambitious, the First Annual Blogger Bioblitz.

(I've unfortunately missed the start of the first (though this is a trial year, so you should still go check it out - next year's official start begins in January).  I'm daunted by the idea of the second - I still have trouble identifying trees and common insects, let alone the inhabitants of our weed-filled yard.  Still, I'm putting these links here so I'll remember to do them next year - and because they are, well, cool.)

Other links, to things both practical and cool:

Sounds Familiar

The essayist is a self-liberated man, sustained by the childish belief that everything he thinks about, everything that happens to him, is of general interest.  He is a fellow who thoroughly enjoys his work, just as people who take bird walks enjoy theirs.  Each new excursion of the essayist, each new "attempt," differs from the last and takes him into new country.  This delights him.  Only a person who is congenitally self-centered has the effrontery and the stamina to write essays.

--E.B. White, Forward to Essays of E.B. White, 1977 ed.

Apathy, Despair, Violence

Over at Cassandra Pages, Beth has written in response to the recent violence at VTech, and I feel compelled to re-post here what I wrote in her comments thread.  Her piece, and the ones she was reacting to, provoked me to respond, because I think that perhaps my non-reaction, or unwillingness to react, to what happened, is part of the cultural context that encourages such extreme reactions.  I distance myself to avoid feeling complicit, but, as a person living in this society, I have absorbed - and come to take for granted - the kinds of sick behaviors and attitudes that lead to these sorts of things.  That, I find, is more disturbing to me than the violence itself.