Black Friday

*Note: I'd like to preface this post with the fact that this is my first Thanksgiving where I didn't see my family and I apologize if I wax nostalgicly. Also, as unbelievable as this story may seem, it is the honest to God truth, so that should give you some insight into how I became the person I am today.

While Thanksgiving is nice, my favorite late November Holiday is Black Friday. Ever since I was a young boy, my dad would wake me up at 3:30 AM the morning after Thanksgiving so that we could sneak out of the house without waking anybody and whisk ourselves away to the Winter wonderland that is the shopping mall. Now, my more obsessively organized father has always had the Christmas shopping done for the entire family in July, so shopping was the last thing on our minds this early in the morning. Our mission, and we accepted it with pride and humility, was to seriously fuck with the days of every other crazed shopper in the Metro Atlanta area.

The reason we got up so early was so that we could score one of the highly coveted parking spaces close to the doors of the mall. *Note: this information will be useful later.

Inside, we would stroll leisurely looking in windows and silently applauding the efforts of the few women in reindeer sweaters milling about over christmas ornament soup turines who had enough forsight to get to the mall before even God woke up in order to avoid the crowds that would come around 7:00. These women are virtuous and do not deserve our wrath.

7:00 am. All. Hell. Breaks. Loose. Thousands of people descend on the mall, raping and pillaging the sale tables in the doorways of every store. Every thirty feet is another door way into an alternate universe where moms in sweatpants and grandmas in Reeboks fight over artfully ripped polo shirts to the soundtrack of canned techno muzak (oonce-oonce-oonce o-o-oonce).

Once the carnage begins, Dad and I jump into action. I don't know if it comes from raising small kids or what, but my dad has an uncanny ability to read someone's mind and know exactly what they are going to reach for a split second later. While useful with children to keep them from grabbing hot or sharp objects, on Black Friday he uses this skill to grab anything and everything that anoher shopper has eyed and is reaching for. It doesn't matter what it is or how much of it there is, he will grab it and grab it all. T-shirt? He'll grab the whole stack out from under the nose of another shopper. Batman action figure? I've never seen a man balancing that much vacuu-formed plastic while running to the back of the store in order to price check each one.

Since retail staff is stretched so thinnly the day after Thanksgiving, we always do our best to step in when someone needs assistance. "Can you bring me this in another size?" Absolutely. "Is this a band my son would like?" Uh-huh. After we've expended our welcome, but not before we've liberally sampled the perfume testers, we move on to our most challenging feat.

The Parking Lot Game.

So, because we, unlike our fellow shoppers, had the forsight to arrive in plenty of time to snag a coveted parking space we are in a position of power. Cars circle the parking lot, looking for a space, any space. They see my father and I walking down the aisles to our car, past our car, back around and around until they lose interest. When we get back to our car, we start the motor, adjust the heat and radio then begin to pull out. At this point it is certain that another driver sees this and patiently waits for us to pull out. If this is the case, we pull back into the spot, get out of the car and go back into the mall.

Yes, I know that these are innocent humans minding their own business and that we are the kind of jerks that really take the fun out of the holidays. However, my most cherished memories of my Dad came to be at the expense of others, and I wouldn't trade that for all the good karma in the world.

Happy Holidays, y'all. I'm off to eat gravy in bed.

Work

Hey y'all! Long time no internet see. I've missed you all dearly. I have some things to show you guys.

So do you remember how I thought I could knit five pair of knee high stockings in six weeks? Yeah that didn't happen so much. It was more like half that. Five socks. Five performers. What is a resourcefull knitter to do? This would be a great time to show you a photo of five men, two wearing a pair of socks, me wearing one sock while furiously knitting the other. Unfortunately that photo doesn't exist s so we'll just have to look at the ones I do have.



The performance is called "The Body Parlor: Rudimentary rituals for biological self-production" and it's a collaboration between myself and Katrina Erickson. Why am I showing a bunch of knitters performance art you ask? Well, because it happens to be about sheep.



We've been working with the idea of sheep and humans as combined sacrificial bodies in religion and science, the products produced from their bodies turned into sacred objects and medicines.


These are the lamb masks Katrina made. They're cast foam felted with lambs wool.



Here the sheep's socks are removed and collected before his feet are washed in lamb fat soap and milk.


The milk was then syphoned from the basin and is now in being processed into cheese.


This sheep is being sheared and his fleece is collected as a relic.


So that's what I've been doing lately. Later on in the week I'll show you guys how I made the soap from butcher shop to bars, er... art. Yeah that's it.

Till then I need to get my ass knitting.

How To Look Like You're Actually Working

There's always a constant struggle between feeling like you need to be working and the shear all-consuming hatred of whatever you're being forced to work on. I'm navigating this slippery slope by knitting stockings for an upcoming project. Now, I've always tried to keep my kniting and my art seperate, but this project is a strong culmination of the work I've been doing for the past six years and it just happens to require five pair of handknit men's wool knee high stockings It's working out perfectly because I can carry them around with me and work on them anytime I can. It's psychologically fulfilling because I'm constantly working on my project, but they don't require me to focus on the mind-n
umbing ins and outs of conceptual art while I knit.

Let's look at some, eh?

This is the first one finished.



Please excuse the blurry photo. Have you ever tried to take a picture of your leg in a knee high stocking? It sucks. Find a friend to do it for you.


This is the one I'm currently working on. It's going pretty fast, knit on size sevens with worsted weight wool
.

The astute among you may notice that these socks are knit from two very differnt colors of wool. This occured because I didn't order enough yarn for these black holes passing as socks. More yarn will arrive shortly so I can make actual pairs.

There's a fairly handsome cable running down the leg of the first sock, but it has been eschewed for the future generations of socks, as it is both a time suck and yarn eater.



It does look mighty fine though, if I do say so myself.

This One's for My Infants

I don't know if it's the unseasonably cool weather, the rush before the start of school or the coming apocalypse, but I'm finishing my knitting projects.
Check it:


I wish I had a closer photo of the collar because it's a bit wonky, not helped by the fact that I crocheted it four times. Apparently I'm going for the artfully handmade aesthetic. No worries. Wonky collars like this go for $75 in my 'hood. It will look smashing on the daughter of a militant reformist-feminist performance artist.

I left the jacket buttoned while it blocked, and I must say it made for some pretty sweet button holes. Look how nicely the buttons stand up, too! Sigh, it's the small things that keep us from being cool.



Okay, I'm wrapping this mofo and sending it on it's way, but first I'm going to go out today and do all of the things I said I was going to do this summer, but never got around to.



Keep it real y'all

Something Finished

It's easy to get jaded in the land of internet knitting. We put ourselves under constant pressure to make something fancier ("maybe I should make it in lace with fair isle!") , more complicated ("so, if I start with a knit octagon which will eventually be the bottom of the foot, pick up stitches...") and with more exotic, hand-painted-ier than thou yarn. While all of these things are awesome and I do love a challenge, I've lost a little bit of perspective.

While I was knitting my latest pair of socks, I just saw them as a rookie stockinette project that took up space on the shelf in my studio. I can't tell you how many times I whined to my overly patient friends about my inability to make things while I knit round after round on these bastards. My colleagues, incredible painters and metal workers, would reply "How can you say that? Look at what you're making!"

While I was washing my new socks for the first time today I remembered my first pair. I had only been knitting for a few months and somehow decided that striped socks were the answer to all of my construction-induced anxiety. If I could knit a sock, I could make anything. I started with the most awesome red/white/orange and blue self-striping yarn (I love this color so much I have another ball of it for when my first pair wear out) and a photocopy of a pattern from the yarn shop. I knit my socks while I soldered, fiber-glassed, cast plastic, welded (this I really shouldn't do strictly for the safety of anyone within 15 feet of me). After four months I had a pile of mediocre sculpture and a pair of freaking striped socks!

The moral of the story is that at one time stockinette socks were the pinnacle of my engineering aspirations. Since then I have knit way more complicated things, made some really weird objects etc. but before all of the antibiotic marshmallows and leeching tables, there were the damn striped socks.

Let's Make One Out of You and Me

Today's post is based on assumptions. Shall we begin?

Assumption 1: James likes to knit.
Evidence: He has sixty pounds of wool and tons of knitting equipment (i.e. needles, swift, ball winder, row counters, special little scissors, tape measures etc.). Not to mention more patterns and books than a whole family of cold Swedes (I like to think they knit quickly and beautifully even in their sleep [yes I understand that this is ethnic profiling and completely unfounded in reality] ) could knit in a life time.

Assumption 2: James likes taking pictures of his knitting successes (few) and failures (many) in order to post them on the internet for the world to see.
Evidence: Scroll down a few months.

Why then, dear reader, have I not knit a stitch or blogged in three weeks before today? Where has the mojo gone? I could try to blame it on the muggy weather, but as any knit blogger will tell you, that is no excuse. Alas. Let's look at stuff.



Despite all of my efforts to not finish until the kid is able to drive, the Baby Surprise Jacket is coming along well. I will not let this baby face a Chicago winter without a sturdy wool/mohair casing.

I've been baking, and it's improved if I do say so myself.



This is braided sweet pastry filled with apples and golden raisins. It tasted pretty awesome. Notice the distinctive fish-like shape? I think this occurred due to some inexperience on my part. Whatever it is, I'm into. I'm going to attempt to recreate it with challah filled with smoked salmon and chived cream cheese for an upcoming Yemaya Celebration in Chicago.

And look!



Tomatoes! Now with 35% less salmonella! (Brought to you by roof top gardners everywhere).

What's up

I figured I should finish a project once in a while, so I picked up my sock and knit the toe. I was pleased that I would have such a snappy pair of striped socks and was already planning the charming photos I would take of the pair. That's until I noticed that I'm an idiot.



This is the top of the sock. Looks ok, right? Well, this is the bottom:



I forgot to redistribute the stitches so my decreases are really poorly placed. The top of the toe curls in and the decreases on the bottom of the toe will suck to walk on. Don't even get me started on the impossibility of grafting the mofo shut. I'll just rip the sucker back.

At least I have new yarn.



It's Valley Yarns Berkshire (obviously) in Navy. I've got ten more of its bretheren chilling in my office. Together they will join forces and become a sweater for little ol' me. Well, that is after I finish the three other sweaters I've started in the last year. I'll get around to it.

In other news, a local Chicago man made brioche while under the influence of alcohol.



And it was good.