Spring Break!

Finally, after a horrific Anatomy exam with practical (uuuh, digging around inside a dead cat that early in the morning), I'm on my way to Florida to spend a week on the best beach I know of. Yeah, I'll be staying in a tiny condo with my entire family living in one room and a hallway (no bedrooms - just a bed that folds out of the wall. Yay for cheap apartment kitsch!), but I'll be outside most of the time anyway. I think this'll be the first time in years I've been down there when it's not Thanksgiving. We're driving, so I'm bringing tons of knitting and my spinning wheel. I'm also going to go yarn shop hopping while I'm there, so look for beach-inspired knits/fibers shortly.

A few things I've been working on whilst wasting valuable knit-blogging time with all these political/philosophical/photojournal posts:



Spirogyra from Knitty

I cast on for this one as soon as the new Knitty came out. It's just what I've been looking for in an armwarmer, and now I can continue being lazy and not make up my own.

I love so much about this pattern - the lace is simple and fast, the shaping is done with just a change in needle size, and it's pwetty.

I used Mericash solid that I bought ridiculously cheap at the Woolie Ewe's 5 am half price sale, and I'm kind of glad I didn't pay full price for it. It's a beautiful color and very soft, but it's a single, so it's already starting to get kind of fuzzy, and I predict it will pill with more use. That'll just give me an excuse to knit another pair in Alpaca Sox.



Mittens of my own design.

I knit three pairs of these in a week - they're fast, and they have a thumb gore that I spent quite some time trying to figure out with all kinds of fancy maths. And it makes me happy. I'm going to start selling these on etsy soon, so keep an eye out.


And sans pictures - my 2nd pair of Dashing for Kelsey, and a kind of organic-looking pair of blue mittens made from hand-sheared, hand-carded, handspun, and hand-dyed yarn I bought from a homestead farm in Waco (tons tons tons of vegetable matter... pain in the ass, organic or no).

Exploring the Infinite Abyss

Movies are so powerful. They combine multiple senses to affect you in more ways than you could imagine possible. As much as I like a good brain-dead comedy now and then, my favorite movies really make me feel.

Breakfast at Tiffany's makes me feel like it's okay to be as complicated or as uncomplicated as I need to be, and that there will always be someone there who understands and loves me for who I am.

Amelie makes me feel so indescribably happy and in love with life - it reminds me not to overlook the little details that really affect things for the better when you appreciate them.

Garden State teaches me to keep feeling. Yeah, there are things in life that hurt like hell, but pain is better than just being numb to everything. To quote Natalie Portman's character, Sam, "...it's life, and it's real. And sometimes it fucking hurts, but it's life, and it's pretty much all we got."

It is pretty much all we have. And what would it be without a little heartbreak now and then? How would anyone be able to appreciate the good times without the bad ones to compare them to? I think I remember reading in The Hiding Place (the story of a Jewish woman who survived the Holocaust and remained amazingly optimistic throughout the whole ordeal) something about how the people in the prison camp were thankful for the fleas constantly biting them, because the pain reminded them they were alive.

I've never had to deal with anything on the same level as the Holocaust, but I've definitely had ups and downs. In today's world, we're faced with the choice of being numb and never feeling anything; no joy, no sadness, no peace, no love; or feeling it all, with the happiness magnified by all the sadness you've experienced. I guess I'm thankful for the fleas, too.

Far too often I find myself joking about deep serious things; kind of glazing over the subject with sarcasm when I'm really just reluctant to show how affected I am by it. From my brief stint as a psychology student, I know that emotion = vulnerability. Which is really too bad, because it's hard to really be close to someone when you're always behind a shield of sarcastic remarks. But every now and then, someone like Sam comes along who makes you feel so safe and at home, and you just feel like telling them everything you feel and have ever felt. And it can change your life, if you let it.

Just having friends like that and being able to talk about everything important and meaningful doesn't solve everything - it may not even solve anything. But often, all you need is to find an outlet for everything building up inside your heart, good or bad. Sam, again, in her infinite wisdom says:

"...what do you do? You laugh. I'm not saying I don't cry, but in between I laugh, and I realize how silly it is to take anything too seriously. Plus, I look forward to a good cry. It feels pretty good."

This is the only reasonable solution to existentialism I've found. Live to be alive. If you're like me, and believe in one huge, overwhelming reason for your existence, nothing else really matters and you just have to laugh the rest of it off.



So go out, rent these movies, buy some Shins albums, and laugh, cry, and care about something. But don't care too much about caring.

"Ahhh, conundrum!"

Death of a Snowman

1)

2)

3)

that's what you get for whistling in the elevator, Biff.

Snow.

Apathetic = Pathetic

I guess I'm a hippie at heart.

I secretly wish everyone would just get along with everyone else, and that we could have peace, love, legalized drugs... all that fun stuff.

But I'm also a realist. I know enough about the nature of man and of the world to accept that perfection is unattainable. It seems like humans are driven by one thing: power (money, fame, good looks, popularity - they're all different ways of obtaining it). And power, as we all have learned from every comic book villain in existence, leads to corruption.

"Oh, I want to build this ginormous laser to help people, to save lives..."

Sure, and get filthy rich and have sole control over the world's supply of potable water/oil/electricity/whatever...

I'm not interested in politics. Frankly, (and my apologies to any government worker who happens to have me on their blogroll) I think politics is a dirty, repulsive, backstabbing business, and can't imagine why people seem so eager to get involved in it.

I took PolySci. I hated it. But I did learn a few things (with little thanks to my professor or textbook).

Firstly, apathy is your worst enemy. Yeah, there's a chance your vote won't count for anything, let's be honest. If you're voting democratic in a solidly red state, you're not going to change the color, or even make purple. And independents? It almost seems like they're wasting their time (next post's rant: give proportional representation a chance!). But who knows what could happen if everyone who didn't vote because they thought their vote wouldn't count for anything decided to go to the polls?

According to the first legitimate-looking website I could find on Google, eligible voter turnout in 2004's November election was FIFTY-FREAKING-FIVE PERCENT. This number simultaneously scares, saddens, and astonishes me. Almost half of our eligible US population, for whatever reason, decided not to vote on who should run the country for the next four years. I can't understand it.

Government should be run by the people, for the people. Not by 55% of the people for 55% of the people. There are plenty of countries that have never been given the chance to have any input about who governs. There are also countries where the people are forced to vote, and there may only be one name on the ballot, or they know someone will come hurt them and their family if they vote the "wrong way". In the USA we have the right to vote - and we also have the right not to vote.

So no matter what your opinion (I really don't care - as long as you have one, and you don't try to shove it down my throat without politely listening to my point of view), if you don't act on it, it's worth absolutely nothing. Whether acting on it means voting (yay!), educating others about it (ahem, radical pro-lifers, how bout some sex-ed [abstinence-only doesn't count] instead of bombing abortion clinics?), or just living it (practice what you preach, actions speak louder than words, etc.), even if I blatantly disagree with you, I'll respect what you're doing.


I apologize for this brief digression from yarn, knitting, and other more knit-blog friendly subjects (i.e. pets and children... whew. if I have to read one more post about what someone's cat has to say about a certain brand of yarn, I'm going to lose my mind.), but I had to get it out there.