Whoa, cool clothes and outfits

Man oh man. The things I stumble upon: Free People can dress me any time. I feel like an assortment of these things are already in my closet, but since those items have (individually, maybe collectively) been named "ugly" by different folks throughout the years, they remain unworn ...

I avow. I avow to be more funky. I am funky, man. Funky as a suburban white girl with a desk job can be, anyway. And no money to give to Free People.

And look at all the scarves and hats those ladies are wearing! I feel so justified for knitting up a storm.

on being, not doing

I do a lot.

I keep getting this feeling that there are so many things I want to knit, and learn about knitting, that it could go on forever and ever. I do not doubt this feeling. It could go on forever. Things left for me to learn: modular; fair isle; entrelac; colorwork; socks. Crochet, I guess. And "ssk" -- that awful slip two stiches, knit them together maneuver. Why not just knit two together, I ask again and again.

So, I do a lot, for sure.

I think it's time to make bread again. Make mobiles. Make pinch pots. Fingerpainting with black fingerpaint on really big paper sounds good, too. Touching, like that article's title that Maria Schutt gave me years ago: "everything we touch is touching us."

I learned to throw clay in the fall, five years ago. Maybe it's the cold and dry weather that keeps getting me. I'm ready for the skin on my knuckles to split open, to wear Patagonia fleece only -- because the cuffs are elasticized well, and I could shove them up to my elbows, while keeping a bit of core body heat. To wear one pair of pants for a month until they're so covered in slip, I could probably fire them and get a shell shaped like cordoroy.

And the hum of that standing kick wheel. How my hiking boots were made for the kick, how the millstone bottom would spin forever, how the throwing platform had concentric circles to help with sizing, and that perfect middle, where the post was that connected to the millstone, where the platform went concave for a minute. Where my fingers always found the center of the lump and pulled it open.

Don't even give me a kiln, maybe. Just start me with clay.

Besides, what good would an electric kiln that fires to cone 10 do me, when all I want is reduction firing and the copper hazes it makes? Or at least raku? I could build a raku kiln, I guess, if I had a gas line. Or I could ... no, I wouldn't really want to use an electric, open it up when it was super-hot, and throw pots into metal garbage cans full of newspaper and leaves and feathers and horsehair. Not a top-loading kiln, at least. That sounds terrifically dangerous and full of imminent burns.

Could I make burnished terra cotta pots, smoke fire them? I feel like one would need a lot of wood and space to make a fire hot enough to smoke fire pots. But those would be cool. Super-black and smoky. Good for mugs, maybe.

Let's start with breath and sleep and balanced meals. Let's start with a late lunch.

Kilns are expensive.

And so are wheels for throwing clay. Hmm. I just absent-mindedly checked it out, and trust me, it's not happening. I could buy another used car, or a wheel and a kiln. Yeah.

I hear there's good clay on the shore of Clinton Lake. The bank? The beach? Do lakes have shores, banks, or beaches? I know rivers have banks ... but maybe they have beaches too.

I think today is a day for the shaking of the head and the sighing. Things will lift, little girl. They have to.

"Txt of the Living Dead"

This is a good idea. Transient graffiti, cell phones, viewer-integrated projects ... good ideas.

Let's start a big old knitting deal, where everybody walks up and knits on it, whether or not they know how. Like a big blanket. Yeah, a blanket. I'd let people crochet, too. Or knot things together by hand.

I don't know what use that blanket would have ...

If I want to work with clay, real clay not polymer clay, and I don't have much (I have a little bit at home, oddly enough, with no studio or kiln), ... how will I get some? Digging it seems like the best option. All I need is a subdivision development with a lot of cuts in the hills. Wait, Illinois has no hills.

Maybe Missouri red clay is the answer. That stuff is tricky, though. But if I'm not firing it, and not trying to make anything usable at all, that shouldn't be a problem. It does come with huge chunks of white churt in it. I did dry it out and screen the stuff, before. But I guess I wouldn't have to do that now. Or else I could anyway, with a window screen, a hose ... that big plastic under-bed storage tub I have that's empty now ...

or I could just not screen it.

And hey, if I started making mobiles, would I have any takers? I'm thinking they'd be molded white sheer cotton. Kind of crumpled and horizontal, then stacked on each other. And of course Calder's mobiles are the best, especially the really one-sided mobiles.

Anyone have good manicotti recipes? Or anything traditionally Italian that comes stuffed with cheese?

"Breasts Like Martinis" by Jill McDonough

(This came to me courtesy of my dad, down there at the bottom of the folks he works with. He's a literary fellow indeed. And this came to him from Slate.com.)

-----

The bartender at Caesar's tells jokes we've heard a hundred times.
A shoelace walks into a bar, for example. I whisper
Sarah Evers told me that joke in sixth grade and Josey says
My brother Steve, 1982. A whore, a midget, a Chinaman,
nothing we haven't heard. Then a customer asks
Why are breasts like martinis? and they both start laughing.
They know this one, everybody knows this one, except
us. They don't even bother with the punch line. The bartender just says
Yeah, but I always said there should be a third one, on the back,
for dancing, dancing with the woman-shaped air behind the bar, his hand
on the breast on her back. So we figure three is too many,
one's not enough. Okay; we can do better than that. I like my breasts
like I like my martinis, we say: Small and bruised or big and dry.
Perfect.
Overflowing. Reeking of juniper, spilling all over the bar.
When I have a migraine and she reaches for me, I say
Josey, my breasts are like martinis. She nods, solemn:
People should keep their goddamn hands off yours. How
could we tell these jokes to the bartender? We can't. He'll never know.
I say it after scrubbing the kitchen cabinets, and she gets it:
dirty and wet. Walking in the wind, Josey says My breasts
are like martinis and I hail a cab, know she means shaking, ice cold.

How hard the Old 97's rock:

"We galloped through the buroughs like a pair of horny thoroughbreds
until when I said 'stop the car Doreen'
you can roll your eyes and nod, but I swear that I saw God
in the moonlight on a side street in the wreckage we call Queens ... "

and ...

"I've been reading books when no one's lookin"

---

So far that's all I have to add today. I like this migraine med I have, because it works, but an unfortunate side effect of what it does -- constrict the blood vessels in my brain that are setting off pain receptors by their swelling for whatever reason -- is that it constricts ALL my blood vessels, making me feel kind of tight and panicky.

So, on to deep breaths, cheap oatmeal in the office caf, a little less coffee maybe, a little more water.

I started knitting this last night. I want to have it done on Saturday.

It's raining?!

How did I miss that? I work facing my window these days.

Fun tidbit: this is a friend from college's portfolio site. Best pen and ink artist I know. Maybe she can make a tattoo template for me.

In knitting news ... I think I need an alpaca sweater. It's seven times warmer than wool. And yesterday evening, when it was 66 degrees in my apartment and about 45 outside, I was wearing a long-sleeved shirt, a fleece hoodie, wool socks, jeans, down booties, fingerless mitts, a quilt over all of that, and a heated body wrap.

I'm cold, folks. This is why I freak out when I get hot -- I have no idea what to do.

And, post-Christmas, I am going to start knitting socks for myself. Out of washable merino wool. In colors I love. In patterns I love. I am a freak for socks. They keep me alive ... I sleep in socks from September to May. Or down booties. Let's not discuss how many blankets I had last night. And my apartment is really well-insulated, being half-underground/garden level, with good windows, and a good heater.

So yes alpaca is expensive, but I am cold. The end.