summer

rebel, rebel in the rain.

| Betsy


It’s raining and I’m sleepy and trying to enjoy the last few minutes of my Sunday night. I’m lucky enough to have a wide view from my room of the lightning show above me, and I’m thinking it’s the perfect way to end the day. Although I know that if we had thunderstorms every night, I would soon take them for granted and resent them, cursing the sound of the rain instead of allowing it to lull me to sleep.

I’m wearing paint-stained jeans, my grandfather’s belt, a thrifted Kern River t-shirt from 1986 and a shrug to keep the chill off which seems damn near inexplicable in North Carolina in late July. I know that changing into my pajamas signals the official end of the weekend, so I’m protesting.

It’s been one of those hot, sticky, summer weekends perfect in its simplicity and sweetness, with lovely late nights, good friends, homegrown tomatoes, getting lost in tiny towns, lengthy shavasanas, strong cups of coffee and long talks with the cicadas battling to drown out our voices.

Also this weekend, The Guardian had a knitting supplement today! I was happy to be one of the 13 knitters chosen to knit a pattern created by Mazz (Marisa Turmaine) who was profiled. Mazz made the news a few months ago after the BBC told her she couldn’t offer her knitted Dr. Who patterns on her website thus making the theme for the supplement “rebel knitting.” The photographs and blurbs of those of us asked to knit one of Mazz’s patterns for the supplement, are here.

Lately:
*Making sheets into skirts
*Dreaming of abstract knitting
*Happy to see people I know learn new things
*Listening to Lykke Li and The Gossip entirely too loud
*For the Love of Light: A Tribute to the Art of the Polaroid
*Finding time to watch Randy Pausch’s last lecture. (Thanks for the reminder, Garth!)
*Getting ready to cheer on the Olympics in just a few short weeks! Yay! (Especially excited to root for a good friend’s little sis, Margaret Hoelzer!)
*Fabric of Resistance, an amazing herstory project by the people who brought you Radicalcrossstitch.com! Awesome!

And now, to fall asleep to the sound of rain.

weekend odds n’ sods.

| Betsy

If you’ve never had the pleasure of spending time in the American Southeast during the summer, you’ve never seen the world slow down right before your eyes. Drink water with ice that melts in what seems like seconds, put on flip-flops, slather on sunscreen, close the door don’t let the air conditioned air out, squint your eyes to meet the hothot sun.





1. My first glimpse at my baby tomatoes!
2. New curry and coriander plants, old pots
3. Olive’s 2nd birthday (no, she didn’t actually eat the cupcake)
4. My “bedshelf” continues to grow out of control, newly added to the stack:

*The Culture of Make Believe, Derrick Jensen
*Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience, Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi
*The Knife Man: The Extraordinary Life and Times of John Hunter, Father of Modern Surgery, Wendy Moore




Other things of note (fairly) recently:

*The work of Gretchen Elsner
*Nina Katchadourian’s Mended Spiderwebs
*WSJ Opinion column, Gay Marriage is Good for America
*Flying Mayan burrito recipe (Sweet potatoes and black beans, who knew?)
*In the Middle of the Worldwind (Thanks to the Journal of Aesthetics & Protest!)
*Rob Walker’s Buying In: The Secret Dialogue Between What We Buy and Who We Are (Listen to him talk with Diane Rehm here.)

On repeat on the stereo, Santogold’s self-titled album. Holy hell, she is awesome.

muted.

| Betsy

Some days photographs are easier to manufacture than words.

Some nights down here in the American southeast it’s too hot to sleep, even though you can practically taste your dreams you’re so tired.

So we toss and tumble at night trying to think of snow and cool breezes as the temperature creeps up so much that time seems to stop.

All the while knowing that the next day will be just as hot and sticky, leaving you searching for tiny respites in glasses of iced tea and the freedom of flip flops.

But luckily, as if to spite the consistency of the heat and tendency to wall up inside with the air conditioning on, each day still brings the smallest of surprises.

public transportation, summer reading.

| Betsy

Public transportation is a joy to me (when I manage to get up early enough to catch the bus to work) as not only does it allow me the luxury of traveling and knitting but we’re also lucky enough to have a free local bus system! There’s something lovely about industrial/institutional design that grabs me. Around here, the interior of buses are either blue or orange, in those blocky clunky colors of my 70s childhood.

One of my current challenges is to get myself out of the habit of looking at my hands as I knit, so I’m back to taking my knitting with me wherever I go again. Usually I’m such in a rush that I don’t have time to enjoy just sitting and knitting- I’m always working on a project with a deadline or fighting off sleep! While selling zines this past weekend at a local craft fair, I was reminded of how much I enjoy knitting simple squares for afghans or scarves in public and the dialogue it never fails to envelop me in. I hope I never stop adoring the conversations with children, the elderly and everyone in between that occur when I bring out my craftwork, as it is one of craft’s most magical qualities.

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As work slows down for the summer here at the university, that means a bit more time for online reading. (Unlike the bus, the coffeeshop or the bars, I can’t knit at my desk!)

Recently, I have been enamoured by the likes of:

Craft Culture (esp. this by Tanya Harrod)
Collective
Craftresearch.blogspot
Graffiti Archaeology
MAKE zine
Radical Craft Conference (so sad I wasn’t there!)
Studio Incite

Not to mention daydreaming about the knitting images here.

And for more on the definition of craftivism, here’s a link to a recent piece I wrote for Knitchicks.

the start of summer, the end of burnout.

| Betsy

I saw my first firefly Friday night. It blinky-blinked its tail once before disappearing around the corner of my red brick apartment building. In that split second, I was reminded of how life in general is the best when comprised of a multitude of beautifully perfect blips in time. Those seconds that we might miss if we were to blink.

Last summer I returned back to the American south for two weeks, vowing to never spend another summer here where the air is thick with humidity, your pores consisently expel the heat and time seems to slow down because it’s just too damn hot. And yet, here I am, one year later, back in the American south.

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But as I constantly have to remind myself, ‘everything is possible.’ And in this jobless annoyance, I’ve been paying more attention than ever to the possibility that new doors may open if I actually open my eyes.

I’ve been wearing flipflops everyday even though it requires vigilance on keeping my toenails polished and non-chipped. The flip-flop-scuff sound that they make on the asphalt as I walk around town reminds me of the summer I lived at the beach and would take refuge in the roar of the ocean after the sun went down.

I’ve been applying for jobs that are never quite the perfect fit and writing and creating at weird hours and attempting to get hip to the idea that this summer malaise has just begun and will linger until late August at best. In my downtime, I’ve been reading about others who are also stuttering and watching as time flits past and soldiers on as they remain paralysed against an invisible force of inertia. Just when these stories seem to make me feel even more powerless, I discover one that is full of hope and strength and power-rending all the former tales of sorrow useless.

The kids on my street are out of school for the summer and lately they seemed to be delighting in leaving tiny bicycles in the middle of the street, creating an obstacle course for my big car. Hearing them yell and play outside reminds me of the last day of school each year, when we would tear out of our classrooms screaming in excitement that at last freedom was here. The time for swimming and running barefoot and catching fireflies was at hand.

What is it about fireflies that sets my imagination free? I wonder if its the irridescent glow that shines so bright for a second then disappears only to reappear again seconds later in close proximity, but never in the same spot twice. Lately as I continue to read tales of creative burnout and lack of energy, I just want to close my eyes and wish upon the burnout bearer a moment by the edge of the woods at dusk.

If you find yourself in the concrete jungle far apart from the woods, then I bestow on you an extra second to look up at the stars tonight. A moment where you look up in the hope that a shooting star just might pass, that wild crazy sense of hope that has probably been hidden since you were a child, a blip in time where everything seems right and kind and possible.

I’ll admit it, summer is my least favorite season of the year. But somehow, throughout time, it continues to endear itself to me in the tiniest and most astounding ways.