7 Things

My home boy in jersey tagged me for the 7 things meme. "The rules of the game get posted at the beginning. Each player answers the questions about themselves. At the end of the post, the player then tags 5 people and posts their names, then goes to their blogs and leaves them a comment, letting them know they’ve been tagged and asking them to read your blog. Let the person who tagged you know when you’ve posted your answer."

1) What was I doing 10 years ago?

10 years ago I was in 9th grade. I played the mellophone in marching band and got excused from gym everyday because of my chronic nosebleeds. I grew 12 inches and lost twenty pounds in about thirteen months and went from Jabba the Hut to spindley and awkward. I spent all of my free time in my room reading books on witchcraft and body piercing, listening to The Fugees, Bush and Eve 6, and talking on the phone for hours about boys.


2) What are 5 things on my to-do list for today?
a. go to the grocery
b. read
c. knit the toe on my sock (it could happen)
d. go to a birthday party
e. draft proposal for exhibition


3) Snacks I enjoy:
- twizzlers
- cold chinese food
- pears


4) Things I would do if I were a billionaire:
I would open hospitals and a school in Haiti, fund my nephew's college career etc. After that I would buy the house on Sedwick that used to be a rectory, then open a botanica in one of the victorian gingerbread storefronts on Armitage where I could sell my work, santos, cloth and fresh herbs.


5) Places I have lived:
- Overland Park, Kansas
- Richmond, Virginia
- Dallas, Texas
- Atlanta, Georgia
- Athens, Georgia
- Chicago, Illinois

6) Jobs I have had:
- Regal Pets, an neighborhood pet shop that was open for 28 years before it sadly closed
- Apprentice then finally piercer at cool tattoo shop
- Piercer in a not so cool tattoo shop
- Assistant manager of now defunct bakery
- Piercer and manager of awesome tattoo/hair studio
- Line cook
- Collections assistant of a Video Art distributor

7) Friends I want to know more about (if you've done the meme, please disregard)
Heather
Kim
Andy
Wendy
Vaxgirl

Hey there's more! So I've come across a minature internet phenomenon, Iyawo Blogs. Iyawos are newly initiated priests of Lukumi, Candomble and other Orisha traditions. The first year after their consecration they have to be dressed completely in white, observe dietary and social taboos such as no shaking of hands, they can't take or recieve anything from non-intiate's hands( i.e. money, purchases, flyers) no dirty jokes etc. They also have to observe a curfew of sundown for an entire year. Several iyawos have turned to blogging for their year in white in order to pass the time normally used for a social life, as well as to document their day to day experiences of navigating the modern world dressed entirely in white and observing West African spiritual traditions.

Here are some I've been reading. I'm spending all of my time trying to find more.
Spiritualworker
Candomble in the USA

Alafia, y'all

Surely There's an Ointment for That

Life around these parts has been pretty docile as of late. There's been a lot of baking of bread. A Lot. I mean like everyday. I've gotten to the point where I'm really tired of eating bread but I just can't stop until I make a decent loaf. I'm getting there.

I also took advantage of summer by reading a non-school book, Chuck Palahniuk's "Snuff", which is about a porn star's attempt to break the gang bang world record (hint: 600). Read it before Oprah's bookclub ruins it with a raving endorsement.

And look! Yarn!



The reasons I'm excited about using the Noro sock yarn are the same reasons many people hate it. I love crunchy wool yarn and the fact that it's single-ply makes me swoon. As always, check back when I have blisters running along the tops of my fingers and the yarn has broken for the 300th time.

Keep knitting y'all!

New

I've decided that I need a new project to get the whole summer knitting thing started. When most people think of summer knitting, cotton, linen and hemp spring to mind.

I think wool. Light colored wool, but wool nonetheless.

I had two almost full skeins of Lambs Pride in "Oatmeal", a copy of the Oppionated Knitter and a friend who's getting fatter by the day. Enter the Baby Surprise Jacket:



For some reason, I thought I could cast on and knit a baby sweater in, like, twenty minutes. Not so much. But hey, it's garter stitch, and I just happen to think that garter stitch is super fun.

And look at the wrong side decreases!



I'm off to the ATL this weekend and I'm totally procuring more yarn I won't knit for about three years. Wish me luck

Summer Vacation

The end of the semester is nigh. This means one of two things:
1. I spend the summer reading, baking bread, knitting, blogging etc. I could take up running, I could visit family and friends and tend to my garden. I could explore all of the botanicas in chi-town to see who has the best selection of candles, fresh herbs and livestock (sometimes a man needs a new rooster) or I could catch up on all of the theory readings I didn't understand this semester and produce a grand body of proposals for the upcoming school year. Any and all of this could be done while enjoying the beautiful Chicago summer.

2. I get a second job. I spend said glorious days in a kitchen making food for the million people enjoying the beautiful Chicago summer. I pay off some credit card debt, buy a new camera and restock my savings account during the absolute last summer vacation of my life.

We shall see.

Speaking of summer and school, I have produced some work that, while existing in the dark gloom of my studio, can be reproduced through the magic of photography fo you, my dear friends.


eh?



This project doubles as grad school studio work and my summer garden. Priceless.

I have been knitting, covertly. There's alot of pressure to be focused 'round these parts. I guess that has something to do with learning, credentials, etc. I, however, being the flightiest, most prone to daydream weeks away at a time, need to present the outward appearance that I'm avoiding distractions.

Imbetween these boughts of posturing, I knit this:



I have an eight hour departmental meeting on Saturday, so I plan to really blast through this sucker.
Well, that's the plan anyway.

Resurfacing

Hey guys! I always said that I would never apologize for not blogging enough, because frankly, we all have lives and it makes for some seriously boring reading. So I won't do that. What I will do is take you all on the adventure that has been my life since my last (meager) post.

After searching my rat's nest of a house for my camera cord with no success, I resigned myself to buying a new one. I had to go to seven (7!) stores to find the correct cable. With this small success under my belt, I can show you photos.



So, this may or may not be the bread I wrote about in my last post. I'm not sure of the stigma and or ethics of posting photos taken a month ago and already blogged about. But look! Apparently I can bake now!



This is no small miracle, my friends. I managed a freakin' artisan bakery for two (2!) years, worked with some of the finest bakers in the south, and never made a desirable loaf of bread.

On to production:
So my knitting has been moving at the most zen-like pace for months now. For example, I sat down in my studio the other day after a really tough critique, picked up the sock (singular) that I have been working on since, oh, August, and turned the heel. So I'm averaging about 1.5 stitches a day. I'm okay with this. My production focus has been on other things as the end of the semester looms.

Take these for example:



These are Num-Nums, The World's First Antibiotic Marshmallows. They're cute and kind of creepy.



This is what I do with my time. I create companies, factories, labs and stores that make and sell the world's most antagonistic products. And my parents are worried about the practical applications of a Master's degree in performance art. Pshaw.



At least I get to knit today while I wait for help de-installing this monstrocity.

Imagine the Bunny!

I had a wonderful Easter today, and I made sure to take pictures to share with my beloved internet friends. Unfortunately, I seem to have misplaced my camera cable, so this post is pictureless.

Maybe if I describe the pictures I took, after reading the descriptions, y'all could close your eyes and imagine the photos in all of their digital glory. Let's try it.

I woke up this morning to bake bread for Easter. I made sure to position my kneading board where it would get the best diffused spring morning light. I arranged the dough (after shaping it into an even, yet rustic blob) on a lightly floured board. Snap! Picture one! See isn't this fun?

I joined the sleeves to my sweater and began knitting the raglan decreases. If you look closely, you can see that the ribbing is probably going to line up along the decreases just like in the book. Snap! Picture two! I swear to god this whole imagination thing is the technology of the future.

After returning from an afternoon at the theater, I made a pot of vegan jambalaya (I know, oxy-moron, but it's passable and I like having someone to sleep next to). I also made (vegan) fried cabbage and (so not vegan it hurts) macaroni and cheese. Arranged artfully with the rustic, yet perfect bread from this morning, embroidered napkins, buckets of cold beer and raspberry malt liquor and you have Snap! Picture three!

Wasn't that fun? Mental pictures are often richer and more saturated than the origional, anyway. (maybe while my head is hanging in shame my camera cord will pass into my field of vision.)

Thorpe

This is the most useful hat I've ever knit for my self. Due to my large, stretched earlobes and their susceptablity to frostbite, I have very particular needs for my headgear. As many hats as I've knit in the past few months, I usually wear a hat bought at Target for my day to day adventures. That has all changed now.



It's Thorpe, Kirsten Kapur's über hat. It's supa warm, it fits well and it looks cool enough for everyday wear. Knit from the top down, the construction is simple and intuitive. I did start this hat three times due to gauge issues and the difficulty of joining four stitches to work in the round on dpns, but I'm sure someone of average intellegence will have an easier time at it.

The yarn is the left over Unikat from my scarf, which coincedentaly, is finished as well. It's supposedly super-bulky, but I used #7 needles to achieve an appropriate fabric. I just added two more increase rounds and it fits like a head-shaped glove. It feels like having a very well behaved rabbit strapped to my head. I mean it's soft.



Oh, I've been silk screening some t-shirts for one of my installations. There are seven designs, but this one is the winner, hands down:

Here's the front:



And this is the back:



That's all I got.