I realized that as far as y’all know, I haven’t knit anything since, um, wow, last October! But I have indeed been knitting since then. For those of you who don’t really care so much about the knitting, I recommend just skimming down to the bottom where there are cute cat pictures. Most of this post will be boring if you are the sort of person who has never been so in love with a ball of yarn that you wanted to eat it. If you are curious about any of the pictures, they can all be clicked on for larger images.

First off, my sister brought some yarn with her all the way back from her trip to Italy, and it as the most scrumptiously soft yarn you have ever felt. It’s by Filatura di Crosi, and I’m afraid it’s discontinued. It definitely needed to be a scarf, so that is what it is.

I really like how it turned out to go around my neck really narrow, almost like a choker and then have a bunch of drapey folds in the front, but it turned out like that totally by accident. When I started it, I started it way too wide, and realized I was going to have a very small baby blanket rather than a scarf. A very wise woman at my knitting group suggested that, instead of having to frog the whole thing and start over, that I just decrease a bunch. I had only two skeins of the yarn, and it’s discontinued, so I decreased a bunch and went until my first skein was gone. I decreed that to be the halfway point, and used the second skein to  increase back up. It created a pretty funny-looking flared end on both sides of the scarf which look really funny laid flat, but I like the way it looks on.

From there, I decided to tackle a felted slipper pattern that Jane had given me almost a year ago. I had enough handspun wool from Lupine, Kathy’s sheep, to make 10 slippers (or so I thought). I finished one of them (highlighted over on The Dailey’s Weekly back in March), but was almost out of wool and had to wait for an emergency shipment of more wool from Kathy before I could spin enough to make the second slipper. (Turns out it takes a LOT of yarn to make a felted slipper. When I made the first one, I just couldn’t believe that the instructions were right. The finished slipper, before felting, was big enough for three or four feet.) But anyway, I finished them both up finally, and Preston seems to like them. They look like Bigfoot Feet to me, and if I ever make another pair, I will try to felt claws on the front

It felt (haha!) really good to have completed a whole project using all yarn I had handspun myself, so I decided to tackle a project where I had to actually spin the yarn to a particular dimension with a particular project in mind. All the spinning I’d done before was just learning how it all worked and spinning the fiber to whatever dimension it seemed easiest to do. This time I decided that I wanted to make a beautiful and elegant scarf for a friend of ours. I knew she wanted something in red, and I wanted to be able to do a lacy pattern, so I looked around online and in some books and found a classic lace pattern called “Crest of the Wave” in a book I got from the library. (Sorry I don’t remember the book.) I spun up two slightly different shades of red, about an ounce each, and spun them as thin as I could. Then I plied the two shades together, and at a two-ply, it came out to be heavier than lace-weight yarn, but definitely lighter than worsted-weight. The red shading was very subtle but added some dimension to the color. I used #9 needles to knit up a scarf for my friend. She loved it. I think I could have blocked it more severely to open up the lace a little more.

Somewhere along the path, I think while I was working on the slippers, I discovered that I can knit and read at the same time! According to Elizabeth Zimmerman (who I am totally in love with and want to marry…her motto was “Knit on with confidence and hope, through all crises.”), anyone who can read aloud can also knit and read at the same time, since both involve reading a few words, or sometimes a few sentences, ahead of the words that you’re actually understanding, sort of like the function on CD players that keeps them from skipping. I’m not yet good enough to do it on patterns, but I can work just a basic knit in the round while reading. And just in the knick of time, I came across the pattern for a Kitty Pi. (Based on a design by Elizabeth Zimmerman, called the Pi Shawl, and based on the concept that as a circle’s radius doubles, it’s circumference does as well.)

So I spun up a bunch more of Lupine’s wool (same stuff as Preston’s slippers) and made up a kitty pi for Pavarotti. Magoo already has a little Magic Carpet, the one and only weaving project I ever finished (and by “finished” I mean I got it 2/3 done, and then took it off the loom and tied off the extra warp ends and called them “fringe”). So I thought Pavi should have his very own place to nap. The kitty pi is designed without a top crust, but I thought Pavi’s should wrap over the top a little, since he is a burrowing animal. This was another felted project, so I made it huge and felted it down. I learned an important lesson about felting different wools. The Lupine wool was washed either by Kathy herself or by the small mill she sent it to be turned into roving. The creamy white merino that I used for half the top of the pi was processed by some large commercial facility. I think the Lupine wool still has a fair amount of oil in it, and it takes a lot longer to felt than the commercially processed white stuff. So I ended up with a lot less creamy white topping than I intended, since it felted a lot faster than the main body. Even though Magoo already has the Magic Carpet, she immediately knew that this was a fancy upgrade and moved right in.

Pavi also likes it, but he thinks it is better suited as a place to hide toys and then pounce on them when they are least expecting it.

Preston also loves the kitty pi and he wants to know how long it would take me to knit up a 6 foot one. I think this might take more wool than Lupine has to offer, so Preston made due with pretending that it was a kangaroo pouch and taking Little Roo (aka Pavi) on the hippity-hop tour of the whole house.

Pavi thinks bad attention is better than no attention, so he didn’t mind the tour.

And finally, we come to the most recent project, which is a Knitting Mystery. Preston couldn’t have a 6 Foot Preston Pi, but I agreed to make him a hat instead. He picked out colors from the yarns I had, and I used the same pattern I had used last year to make my favorite hat. I guess I must have finished it sometime during my blogging hiatus, because there’s no picture up, so you will have to trust me that this is a very fine hat. So I embarked upon the second one, using the blue and yellow yarn Preston had picked out. I followed the directions just as I did the first time. When the hat was done, and I cast off the circular needles, it seemed unnecessarily big. Rather then re-knit it, Preston suggested the we just felt it down a little, since it was all wool. Brilliant! So we dropped it in the washer, where the most peculiar thing happened. It turned into a kitty pi!

I often say that I don’t know what happened when I just don’t want to admit to a stupid mistake, but in this case, I really don’t know what happened. I made exactly the same pattern 6 months ago, and it turned into a hat. Very peculiar. I re-checked the pattern, but there weren’t any decreases that I missed or anything. I’ll take it with me to my knitting group on Monday and see if any of them can explain it to me.

This is a quick (14 second) video I took with my camera just so you could hear the sound an alpaca makes. People in the know call it humming, but I think they kinda sound like squeeky toys.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iV7gwExQH40

Yes, that’s right. I said Alapacapalooza: Three Days of Peace, Love, and Livestock. It was at a nearby fairgrounds a couple weeks ago, and I keep forgetting to post pictures. If you have never seen a real live alpaca, you are definitely missing out. They are the most adorable little things you have ever seen.

See what I mean! It’s like a furry little ewok and you just want to pinch their furry little cheeks! I didn’t try it but, I suspect that alpacas do not like to have their cheeks pinched. In fact, I suspect that they take themselves fairly seriously.

You might notice that the fiber on the alpacas in those two pictures seems different. It turns out that there are two very different kinds of alpacas–the Suri and the Huacaya. The Suri have much longer, straighter hair. I understand that their hair is more like silk, very fine and smooth and not much crimp to it. But I haven’t had a chance to feel any of the unfinished Suri fibers. I think they look kinda dorky, you know, in an adorable sort of way.

The Huacaya are the more ewok-looking ones like the first picture. Their hair is curly, but not kinky like a sheep’s, and they don’t have lanolin so it’s super soft right off the animal. It feels like holding warm clouds. Really.

Of course, they all look funny right after they get sheared.

And it turns out that they think each other looks funny after they get sheared too. I had heard this about sheep, but witnessed it with the alpacas also. It turns out that they have a pretty incredible visual memory. According to the shearer, they will remember a person’s face for about 2 years, so alpacas that she sheared last year will know who she is right away. They also recognize other alpacas visually, and they keep track of each other by sight. So when one of them gets taken out of the pen and sheared and then brought back, no one recognizes her at first. There is lots of squeeling and sniffing while the rest of the herd compiles enough secondary clues to be able to confirm her identity without all the hair.

And also, one mustn’t forget the third kind of alpaca–the punk-rock alpaca.

p.s. Someone in my knitting group gifted me a *whole alpaca fleece*! Pictures to come after I get it processed and ready for spinning. It’s a beautiful grey color from an alpaca named Rex.

OMG! IT’S A BABY SQUIRREL!!

He fell out of his nest, and I think maybe he was too heavy for momma squirrel to carry him back up to the nest. I heard a squirrel in a tree near the neighbor’s driveway making a sound that I didn’t recognize. It wasn’t an alarm, or any of the usual chatter that I hear squirrels make. It was a low grumbly, talky sort of a sound. I stopped to watch for a minute, and the squirrel was looking down at the ground, but I was in the middle of doing something and I didn’t walk over to see what it was. A few minutes later, I was in the back yard and I heard Preston yelling at Magoo to “drop it!” (Magoo is such a dog sometimes, cuz she totally dropped it.) Preston scooped Magoo up and I headed toward the little fuzzy grey form squeeling on the sidewalk.

Of course, I expected it to be bad. Magoo has a history of inappropriate behavior with small fuzzy baby wild animals. (the link is to an archived version of the page, with some wonky formatting, but it’s still worth reading). But I picked up this little guy, and I could see by his fur that Magoo had just been holding him by the scruff of his neck. He was small kitten sized, and his distress call was like a high-pitched kitten distress call, and I wonder if Magoo thought he was a kitten. In any case, I couldn’t see any puncture marks. Within a couple seconds after I picked him up, he relaxed and curled up. His little eyes weren’t open yet, but he seemed to fall asleep. Every minute or so, he would wake up again, give a little distress call, and then fall asleep. We brought him inside, put him in a little box with some towels and turned to our #1 emergency resource, Google. We learned that you should keep them warm, that baby squirrels have very high metabolisms, and that if you leave them under the tree where the nest is, momma squirrel will probably come pick him up within an hour or so.

I also knew, from an interview a year or so ago, that the local human society contracts with a wildlife rehabilitator, so we called them to get the rehabber’s number. Her name is Tammy, and she said that we could try putting him in his box with a jar of warm water at the base of the tree and see if momma would come get him, but it was really cold out that day, and she didn’t think we should just leave him out. I think the way this is supposed to work is that the baby is supposed to be concerned about his safety and making distress calls so momma hears where he is and comes to get him. But this little guy is pretty comfortable with the world, and as soon as he was warm, he just curled up and went to sleep with nary a peep. Momma never knew he was there, and we started to worry that he would get too cold even with the towels.

When Tammy got off work, she came by to pick him up. She has the resources and knowledge to raise him. But she and I got to talking, and it turns out that she needs a fair amount of help with web design, and marketing, and maybe even a certain amount of feeding baby animals. It came up that Preston surfs, and she said, “Oh darn, it’s too bad I didn’t know you all last year! I had a baby river otter and I really needed someone to teach him to swim.”

!!!

Can you even imagine how cool it would be to take a river otter surfing with you!? I guess they are not born knowing how to swim or how to catch fish. Tammy ended up using a rescued raccoon to teach him to fish.

Anyway, so I’ve been working on some web design for her, and some brochure stuff, and she works during the day at the local vet hospital so I’ve been stopping by in the mornings before work to say hello to the little baby squirrel, who she carries around in her pocket. So cute! His eyes are open now, and he tries to suck on my fingers when I hold him.

So a snake-handling faith-healer and a Presbyterian minister walk into a tent revival meeting…

If you don’t get why that’s the setup for a hilarious joke, you might not get the rest of this post, and possibly you won’t understand why I spent a week of rock climbing and camping in the desert feeling like an uptight Presbyterian surrounded by people speaking in tongues and writhing in the aisles. I mentioned a couple weeks ago that I would be working as a camping/climbing instructor for a group of sophomore girls. You can read in that link about my intentions to just model enthusiasm and competence, rather than try to “teach” anything. Things didn’t turn out quite as I had planned.

All the instructors get together for two days before the trip starts to plan the trip and make sure we’re on the same page as far as boundaries and rules (can the girls have their own snacks, do we eat meals together, how do we decide who’s turn it is to clean up the kitchen, etc.). The rest of the staff is all amazing, well-qualified, and fabulous. There are 6 instructors (2 to a team) as well as 2 rock specialists who will be there for part of the time setting up climbs and monitoring big picture site safety. 5 of the instructors and one of the rock specialists are women, one of the instructors identifies as genderqueer, and one of the rock specialists is a man.

The first sign of conflict happens in the first day when one of the instructors points out that the male rock specialist is going to have to really be aware of the fucked-up ways that all these sophomore girls are going to want to interact with him. He is an attractive rock climber in his late 20’s with a South African accent. He says he’s aware of that, and will be careful to be appropriate, but “at the same time, I won’t emasculate myself”. You could watch the hackles go up on the hardcore feminists in the room. This women’s empowerment stuff tends to attract fairly hardcore types (not necessarily feminists, but hardcore climbers, hardcore survivalists, just really intense alpha personalities in general). In this group, 3 of the women had worked together extensively before, two of the three were in a committed relationship (with each other), and all three considered “smash the patriarchy” to be an apt description of their basic platform. Wow. Try being the one man in that crowd, and find a way to not be emasculated.

Instructor teams had been decided for us, and we broke into those teams to get to know a bit about the person with whom we would be sharing responsibility for the physical and emotional safety of ten 16-year old girls in the desert for the next 5 days. I will call my partner Ashley, in part because that satisfies a childish and petty desire to call her something that I think would bother her, but mostly just to avoid using real names. Ashley and I are really different people. She’s a radical feminist, a lesbian in a committed relationship with another instructor on the course, a recovering alcoholic with tendencies toward anxiety and obsessive behavior, and has been running girls’ empowerment and wilderness courses for around 6 years. By the end of the course, I came to respect many things about her, and I learned a lot about different styles but, like the Presbyterian at the revival meeting, there was so much about her style that made me really uncomfortable.

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When I was in high school I went through a rebellious phase that involved regularly attending the local Assembly of God church and trying to bait my mother into debates about whether evolution was a supportable scientific theory. I went to church every week, and “got saved” (at least three times, cuz I was afraid that it wasn’t sticking), and went up for altar calls, and spoke in tongues at summer camp one year, and had a mad crush on the youth pastor (who later dropped out of the church and hit on me). At that same summer camp where I first spoke in tongues, we had a particularly charismatic motivational speaker. One evening, just as he was building up to a great climax, he suddenly stopped and focussed intently on someone sitting on the other side of the stage from me. I couldn’t see who he was looking at, but I heard the speaker say, still holding the microphone up to his mouth, “Is that your wife?” He was pointing at someone that I couldn’t see, but since we were all high school kids it’s unlikely that the boy was sitting next to his wife. I couldn’t hear his response, but he must have muttered that she was not. The speaker, notching it up a level both in volume and pitch, asked, “Are you going to marry her?!” The boy, probably wishing he could sink down below his seat, must have muttered something non-committal.

“THEN GET YOUR ARM OFF OF SOME OTHER MAN’S WIFE!!” the speaker yelled.

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After our first day of rock-climbing with the girls, we all stood in a circle to offer appreciations to each other. As you felt called, you could say something that you were really impressed by or thankful for from the day of rockclimbing. The girls said things like, I really appreciated how everyone cheered for me when I didn’t think I could go any further. After several appreciations, one girl said, “I appreciate Rob’s accent” and all the girls giggled. Ashley stepped forward into the circle, animated and pissed.

“There are girls here who rock-climbed for the very first time today, and ALL YOU CAN THINK ABOUT IS THAT ONE MAN!!” And she says “that one man” in the same way you might say “that turd that the cat knocked out of the litterbox”.

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I thought Ashley’s point was a good and valid one. In fact, I supported her intentions throughout the trip. But her approach made me so uncomfortable, with its roots in emotional manipulation, that I had a rough time playing along. Her approach was all about the emotional build-up, creating a scenario where the participant really starts to see how fucked-up they are, how undeserving, how sinful, (or in this case) how intolerant, how middle class, how brainwashed by society. And when you have people genuinely freaked out, you offer them an amazing solution, you throw out the altar call, you tell them what they need to do to be all right. If this had been church camp, we would have told them that they need to accept Jesus as their lord and personal savior. Since this was about girls empowerment and breaking down cliques within their class, we told them that they should eat lunch with the Asian students and stop acting stupid around boys.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m totally in support of breaking down cliques and not acting stupid around boys. For that matter, I’ve got no problem with folks practicing Christianity. I just don’t think that emotional manipulation is a very effective way to create long-lasting change. And I think it’s dishonest and, well, manipulative. Everything about Ashley’s approach to the week was about creating a situation where the students would be out of their element and vulnerable. They would not be allowed to go into their tents until bedtime; they would not be allowed access to their personal snacks except at one regular time after dinner (this is a big issue when half of the students are from asian countries and the only food we are offering is mac and cheese and pb&j); everyone must wait for everyone to have food at each meal before eating; there will be no downtime or time for personal reflection or journaling; we will run one “trust exercise” after another during times when we aren’t climbing or eating; etc.

There is no doubt that these are effective ways of creating community and breaking down barriers. When you make people emotionally vulnerable, make the group the only possible means of support, and create a situation where people will feel physically unsafe (like rock-climbing), you will have a rock-solid group of supportive girls after three days. But will you have a rock-solid community after 30 days, when they are back in their comfort zones with their pre-existing means of support?

Obviously, there are a lot of charismatic Christians out there, so this must be an approach that works for people.  The emotional build-up and catharsis of it must be effective for people, but I never found it so. That’s why I kept having to get “re-saved”.  The effects never lasted much longer than a few weeks past summer camp. Pretty soon, alone in my bedroom trying to pray, I would start to wonder what was the point of speaking in tongues anyway? If I didn’t even know what I was saying, could I possibly mean it? Why would God care what language I pray in anyway? And actually, while we’re at it, why would God even care if I pray? It’s not like he doesn’t know what I’m thinking, right? And why would God care what I’m thinking, since he already knows what I will do with my whole life? And that doesn’t even really make sense, so maybe this whole thing doesn’t make sense…and pretty soon I had headed down the dark tunnel to sin and iniquity, or at least to wearing too much lipstick and hanging out with the stoners.

These girls have been indoctrinated in the marketing of women’s empowerment from early on. It’s a pervasive part of our culture to give lip service to women’s equality in order to
sell shampoo, or tampons. (”Shouldn’t you be leading a carefree life?”) These girls know how to talk the talk, they know all the right answers, just like I knew how to explain to people how speaking in tongues is a valuable gift from God. But I didn’t believe it, and I don’t think these girls believe it either. And all you get with the emotional approach is people who feel it for a while, but there’s no intellectual commitment to it. The fervor fades. They’ve never seen anyone living it in the long-term.

On the last morning, I offered that if anyone wanted to get up early enough to climb a nearby bluff with me and watch the sunrise, I would be willing to wake people up for that. All but one of the girls agreed, and we woke up at 5am to hike up the hill in the dark and watch the sunrise. We sat, scattered in our own spots, while the sun came up over the far-off and flat horizon, past the freeway and the powerlines receding into the distance.

Afterwards we talked about the things we had seen and heard, and mostly about the things we thought about while we sat. Many of the girls had very interesting things to say, but the one who, unknowingly, had a message for me was the girl from Korea who said, “I mostly didn’t think about anything, I just wondered how the sun would rise. I have never seen the sun rise before.”

My mind was blown. Can you imagine never having seen the sunrise? Not even being sure *how* it rises? I felt really ashamed of how much I take for granted. I didn’t admit to them that mostly what I had been thinking, while we sat, was that I wish something good would happen. All there is is the sunrise and some cliff swallows calling, and I wish something really *exciting* would happen. Her thought made me realize, how freaking exciting is it that the sun rises every day!? How amazing is it that I have the opportunity to sit here on a windy desert cliff and watch it in silence with a group of people whose minds are blown by the simple fact that it is happening!?

And that was the most real thing that happened all week. And I was glad that I had a chance to share with them a real experience, one where a regular person chooses to get out of bed before dawn and experience the real world. Because that is what I believe in. I don’t particularly care about smashing patriarchy, or about who you share your lunch with. But I do care about creating connections, between people and people, between people and earth. If I had to choose something to smash, it would be civilization, and the idea that people need to be coerced into caring about each other and the world, and the fact that people don’t care enough about the sunrise to have ever seen one. I believe in the sunrise.

So, you might have noticed that things are looking a little different around here. I know it might take a little getting used to, but I wanted to point out one of the cool shiny new features on the new design. Now you can subscribe to Feedburner e-mails, which will send you each new post in an e-mail. That way if you don’t like the site design, you don’t even have to come see it if you don’t want to! And also, it’s an easier way to learn about new content than having to click over here every day, even though I only post every week or two. Anyway, if you just put your e-mail address in the nifty box in the blue column to the right and click Subscribe, you’ll be set. It’ll send you a test e-mail so you can be sure they won’t end up in your Bulk Mail folder or something, and then it will send you any new posts I make. How did we ever live without the niftyness that is the innernets?

Next week, I will be heading out to the desert with a group of sophomore girls for the second year in a row. I wrote about it last year and I hope for it to be as good this year. Mostly, I am really looking forward to some camping and being outside. I am hoping to go into it with the idea of just modeling excitement about being there, and less intent to actually “teach” anything. I think I am moving further and further away from the idea that kids need to be taught. Mostly, they learn exactly what they need to if you can just create space where adults will step back and let them learn. And also model that the “cool” thing to do is to learn new stuff. The more I learn about skateboard culture, the more I realize that these kids are incredibly motivated to learn new things and strive to attain goals. No one has to force them or grade them or ground them if they don’t practice for a certain number of hours every day. And mostly that’s because people that they like and respect have modeled for them that skating is cool and worth pursuing. People who make money on skate-related products do so because they utilize the voices of those role models to encourage skaters to keep pursuing their goals.

I think educators could learn a lot from those marketers. And I realize what a crazy thing that is to say.

So anyway, I’ll be out in the desert camping and climbing for the next week. Possibly there will be stories when I get back. Also possibly there will be pictures of knitting and spinning that I will be working on during the drive. Also possibly there will be pictures of the garden that I started this morning.

I had just got to my spot in the backyard, next to the garden, when I saw a dandelion leap into the air all by itself! It leapt up along with all the dirt around it in a neat mound and then settle back down into the ground looking as if nothing had happened. This seemed like unusual behavior for a dandelion, so I kept watching. This action repeated several times, and seemed to be moving underground across the garden bed, leaving a trail of slightly mounded dirt on the surface. A mole in the garden!

Or was it a gopher? It didn’t move any dirt to the surface, and I didn’t see any dirt hills nearby.

While it was fascinating to watch, I also don’t really want moles cavorting about in the garden, so I thought I might try a little test. I’ve seen those nature documentaries where the coyotes dig madly after some burrowing rodent and often come up empty-handed. But how fast can a mole really move? They don’t even really have legs to speak of, just big hands attached right to their bodies. So I thought I’d see if I could catch a mole, and also maybe give it a little scare to convince it that it would rather dig somewhere other than my garden.

I didn’t come anywhere close. The first time, I didn’t think strategically, and just started digging where I saw the motion. Of course, it had plenty of time to retreat before I got as deep as it’s tunnel (about 8 to 10 inches deep, but I didn’t measure so I’m just guessing). After uncovering its tunnel, and realizing it was long gone, I want back to sitting quietly. In only a few minutes I saw dirt being pushed into the exposed hole of the tunnel from the inside, blocking the entrance. And shortly after that, I saw the earth moving from further excavations in the same spot, only about 8 inches deeper. This time I waited for it to get a little ways further than where I expected the new tunnel to be and started digging behind the guy, thinking that I would collapse the escape tunnel and have him trapped. I’m not sure what went wrong with that plan, but there was definitely no mole or gopher or any other critter in the tunnel when I got to it.

I waited several minutes to see if he would come back again, but either he had moved his construction plans for the morning, or he simply outwaited me, and I eventually had to get up and go to work. I left the second tunnel uncovered, and I’m curious to see how the area looks when I get home this eve.

Also, I’m using this month as a kick in the pants to choose a new sit spot, since I haven’t done so after the last time I moved. I wonder if this is one vote against using the garden as a sit spot. Rather than just observing what’s going on, I have a vested interest in who resides in my garden and I am tempted to intervene.