Nake-id Knits

Sun, 01 Aug 2004 19:11:25 GMT

Nake-id Moves!

Hey, I'm over here. Come see...

www.nakeidknits.com

Fri, 30 Jul 2004 14:59:25 GMT

The flattering side view

Cheater Audrey

Photo credit: Mitch (I want a photo credit) Gerber

Hmph: I'm still not satisfied with the neck. I removed it once, eliminated two lace repeats and sewed it again, but the edging still requires futzing to make it lay properly when wearing. I have to pull the top all the way down to make the lace lay flat. OK, all you gin-gimlet-sipping-Audrey-wearing babes, any suggestions?

If you want to see the less-flattering frontal view, click here.

Daily kudos: John Kerry! Let's all humbly pray that God is on your side. Amen!

Cruise critic: Go see what Mitch had to say about the cruise on cruisecritic.com.

Thu, 29 Jul 2004 14:47:18 GMT

Wednesday Miscellany

Overslept: This means you get a boring, but newsy post.

Cheater Audrey: My "Cheater Audrey" is done! (That's Audrey sans sleeves.) Pic tomorrow!

Nakeidknits.com: It's official. I'm moving my blog to www.nakeidknits.com. Look for updated galleries, faster load times and other nakeid nonsense. Hoping to launch Monday.

Sale alert: The Recycled Lamb starts its biannual sale on Friday. Everything in the store is on sale, including 10 percent off books. Go say "hi" to Jeannie who's got a new hubby!

Ponchos: OK, I'm finally on the bus. Did you see this in the NYT on Sunday: Go here and click on "Gossamer Wings."

Wed, 28 Jul 2004 14:51:51 GMT

The Love Boat

Cruising 101: There are two types of people (you thought there were more?) cruise people and non-cruise people. As my MIL says, we're the latter. So after having spent a solid week on a cruise ship, here are some thoughts for non cruisers on how to thrive on a floating pleasure palace.

1. Take the Dramamine.

2. Steer clear of the smoking lounges at high sea. (Burp.)

3. Eat the bran muffins.

4. Avoid the splashing kids and drunk newlyweds in the pool (truly remarkable that youngsters can marry and not gay adults).

5. Evacuate the "tuna tin," as Mitch called it, at every opportunity. But arrange your own shore excursions unless you plan on a second mortgage.

6. Use the stairs, always. Or you'll return looking like the Queen Mary.

7. Repress all thoughts about the Titanic.

8. Commandeer a deck chair in the shade. Veteran cruisers and their leathery hides offer a cautionary example.

9. Call it a ship not a boat. (Whatever.)

10. Marvel at how the cruise line sells luxury cruise wear, but not yarn. Jeesh.

Hope for Audrey: We have climbed Audrey's ladder. Behold:

Whew!

Daily kudos: Obama! Yeah!

Tue, 27 Jul 2004 14:16:20 GMT

Hawai'i

Aloha: Trust that anything I say about Hawai'i won't live up to the task. The islands are simply too "big" for the constraints of language--or at least, my facility with it. But here goes:

There's the palm tree-trade winds Hawai'i--the Hawai'i of spectacular pink sunsets and soft bleached sand. There's also the commercial Hawai'i--the high-rise hotels buttressing Waikiki Beach and the tourist shops filled with kukui nut leis. Then there's poor Hawai'i, the Hawai'i struggling to educate its children and find homes for working people unable to afford skyrocketing rents and home prices.

Formed by an abberant hot spot in the earth's crust, this chain of islands has attracted a host of migrants throughout its history: Seeds dropped by wayward birds. Animals and plants brought by Hawai'i's early settlers from the Marquesas. Insects blown in on leaves. Tahitians bent on war. White men bent on theological domination. Chinese and Japanese immigrants hoping for better lives. Tourists hoping for escape. It's this wild convergence of culture and will that make Hawai'i so compelling.

Oh, yeah and then there's stuff like this:

Na Pali Coast on Kauai

Fri, 16 Jul 2004 14:13:31 GMT

All laced up

Lace knitting: You know how there are things in life one wants to do but for which one shows little aptitude? Last year when I took Galina Khmeleva's Orenburg shawl class, well, let's just say I was not the brightest light in the firmament. Took me a realllllly long time to realize a yo on the knit side rotated clockwise. That's where the big hand, oh nevermind.

Likewise in knitting the trim for Audrey, I had to learn that a yfrn and a yfwd (that would be the half twist vs. the one-and-a-half twist) were different beasts. Duh. Again. Lace makes no sense. A hole is a hole (OK, this is starting to sound very nasty, but I'll press on), so how do you repair yfrn hole from a yfwd hole or a K2TOG decrease from a sl K1 psso? In my world, a tiny error completely fubars the whole piece. Though I have progressed from frogging everything to ripping back a couple of rows, and by sheer dint of intuition, fixing the boo boo. But I still don't get it.

I'm inching along--too lazy to photograph and you've all seen the lace anyway--and it's pretty, very pretty. Too bad I suck at it. Salaam to lace knitters everywhere. You have my undying respect and admiration.

The Big Kahuna: Poor me, I'm off to Hawaii. I simply don't know how I can leave my glamorous life in higher education for a cruise of the Hawaiian Islands. How can I bear it? Oh, well, I expect your sympathy and condolences are with me. Yuck. Yuck.

The trip is in honor of my MIL's 70th birthday--rememeber La Fiesta MIL (in case you don't, here's a peeky weeky). So FIL is taking the whole mishbucha on this amazing vacation. Let's hope La Fiesta fits. Oh, yes, and are there any must-see yarn shops in Hawaii.

Aloha!

Thu, 15 Jul 2004 15:15:58 GMT

Hot stuff

Fahrenheit 911: Michael Moore's film runs down so many blind alleys, I left the theatre feeling a bit dazed. It's not that the film fails rhetorically, but the case he builds is jumbled and wobbly like a tower of colorful blocks.

Are we supposed to think Saudia Arabia is axis of evil, protected by their friends and business partners The Bushes? Did Bush-Cheney initiate the Iraqi incursion to benefit their pals at Halliburton? Did we let high-ranking Taliban--and Osama bin Laden--escape Afghanistan on purpose? What the hell is going on? Which is Moore's point exactly.

Like a Talmudic scholar, he barrages the audience with questions, doggedly attacking the popular perceptions surrounding this president--his strength as a leader, his rectitude, and his team. I reckon this is a classic propaganda technique: to probe deeper and deeper unearthing greater puzzles and troubling coincidences to the point that answers no longer matter. The subject, in this case George Bush, ends up smelling like a fish hatchery based on loosely connected questions.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not defending Dubbya; I've never held a president in so much contempt, not even Nixon. But I hate being manipulated in the cinema.

I bought it, too. I left the theatre feeling sick to my stomach, embarrassed by my American identity. Cinematically, the film is arresting. His handling of the 9-11 attacks--a black screen with nothing but the sound of two jets crashing into the towers; his clever portrayal of Bush's Mission Accomplished debacle underscored with the song, "Believe it or not I'm walking on air"; and his wrenching interview with a Flint, Michigan mother who lost a son in this war--use the medium to the fullest. I suspect we haven't yet seen Moore in the full flower of his directoral powers, but he's getting there.

He's also wrangled an incredible amount of information and data in to a two-hour film. Given the number of darts he's lobbed at the administration--the Patriot Act, Homeland Security, the coopting of the presidency in November 2000, the dynastic connections of the Bush family, and so on--he's created a picture that plays well in suburbian cineplexes. In this way, it's quite remarkable.

Ulimately, though, his strongest point comes down to the plight of the common man (if you'll permit me the politically incorrect noun for expediency). This is the question he does answer in Fahrenheit 911 is: Who's fighting the war? Believers and the desperate underclass. Only one member of Congress has a child in Iraq. Recruiters focus their energies on kids in dingy working class malls as opposed to their tony counterparts. Aspirational students from struggling families turn to the military to fund their baccalaureate degrees. Cannon fodder. These poor young kids are cannon fodder and thousands are returning home without their legs or, perhaps more painfully, without their wits.

So the film is flawed. It couldn't happen to a nicer guy, though I wish Moore had connected more of the dots. Nonetheless, Fahrenheit 911 is a powerful testament to a difficult time in our history when money supersedes humanity and jingoism overrides good sense.

Daily kudos: To Michael Wilson who's making a film, Michael Moore Hates America, about media manipulation, the American Dream and trying to land an interview with the great man himself (ala Roger and Me). Probably a bit on the conservative side, but hey, it's stuff like this that really does make America a great nation.