The Awful State of Things Without

It feels disingenuous to write here today without mentioning the state of the world, and yet I know I will not be as coherent as I wish. I can say these things, though, at least.

1. The racism in the US is not new, and it is not (as we would like it to be) going away. This is, as I have seen others write, the system working as it was designed to, to keep white people, and especially white men, and most especially white men with power, on top, by pushing others down. This is not new. 

2. All that's new is that the videos bring it to where everyone can see it (unless they willfully close their eyes). We hear about other events, about Breonna Taylor being shot by police in her own home, in her own bed, and it's terrible, but when you see George Floyd, cuffed and on the ground, with a cop kneeling on his neck--kneeling on his neck!--until he dies... I just can't. And going through Twitter this morning, with all the videos of officers firing tear gas and rubber bullets, driving SUVs into crowds, shoving people violently to the ground...that old man walking with the cane was such a threat to you? The journalists who are covering the stories are getting shot at, arrested ... this isn't the country I want to live in.

But it is the country I live in.

3. I know that I need to do more than say this, I need to do something, but as someone who has decision paralysis on the smallest things, it is overwhelming. I can say "this is wrong"; I can donate to Black Lives Matter; I can support black-owned businesses. It doesn't feel like anywhere near enough. My good intentions aren't enough. My outrage isn't enough.

So I will sit with it. The horror, my privilege, the discomfort, the sadness. And hope to find a path through.

And now that I have gotten this incoherence down, and I have made chicken salad and brownies, and given away a reclining chair to a good home, and reconciled my bills and checkbook ... I'm going to knit.

Some Good String

Today was a bad work day, but the overall day has some better moments.

While I did have to be in the utterly pointless CEO-led meeting (now with karaoke!)(no, not kidding), I was able to stealthily knit throughout, which was the saving grace.

I was near the end of the red when I started, so some good progress.

Then the mail arrived, and brought me more from String Theory, which I ordered last week in her hail-sale (she's going to need a new roof, apparently).

One in X-Ray, which is wide stripes of bright colors separated by narrower black stripes.

And one in what she calls Background Radiation, but I call Bruins.

So that made the day a bit better!

A Little of This, Some of That

Today, my bonus-weekend day, has been a mix of boring-but-necessary (request credit report), fun catch-up (phone call with a friend, Zoom stitch and bitch later), some lazing around, and some play.

Specifically, playing with yarn. This afternoon I looked over at the spot where the sport and worsted weights live, and decided to pull them out and go through them. Cubby of sport, before:

And after. Not much difference, but good to have things in my hands. 

Worsted has two cubbies, or more like a cubby and a half.

Though when it was all back in, it looks like two, doesn't it? Mysterious.

Miss Maggie stretched out on the floor.

And earlier, giving me a Meaningful Look.

Last night, on the lap.

Rahr!

Bathing on the edge.

"What are you doing with that camera?"

She's awfully cute. It's about time for a post entirely of Maggie pictures; I certainly have enough of them.

I got a new mask, since I found one that uses the same fabric as my decorative pot holder:

We might as well amuse ourselves, eh? They have a few fun knit-adjacent fabrics, if you're looking for such.

I've also been doing a little knitting. The trianglegram shawl is growing.

Slowly growing, as it gets ever-wider, but I weighed it and haven't used a quarter of the yarn yet, so we're fine that way.

Brightening the Day

It's a grey, gloomy day here today, when it isn't actually raining, which it mostly is, and it's easy to be a bit down with it. But I had a good mail day yesterday, which is helping!

The Target box was nothing exciting, and I'll go over one package another day, but here are details of two of them.

First up: My friend's husband wrote a book! (Well, it's a novella, but that totally counts.) I backed the campaign, and my copy came yesterday!

And it's good, thank heavens; it would be so embarrassing to try and deflect talking about it otherwise. Interesting character, good story, I want to see more of Inez. Recommended if you like space/sci-fi reading.

Next up: squishy mail!

My local knitting group pointed out to me, a few weeks back, that the exchange rate from the Canadian dollar to US was in our* favor right now, and we got to talking about indie dyers up there.
*Most of us are American, anyway: one woman is back in Canada already.

They mentioned one that was new to me, MidKnit Cravings (what a great name), and I had a fun poke around the website. I started looking around for three skeins that would work together for Casapinka's Magical Thinking pattern (which, she notes, is not a poncho: "This is an important point as I have a teenaged daughter and cannot cause her social annihilation by designing a poncho, so please follow this rule of nomenclature.").

I ended up messaging back and forth with them on Facebook along the lines of "do these colors work together or would you suggest something else" and a few combo considerations later, ordered these:

The yarn is 100% merino and super-soft! This is Blowing Bubbles.

This is Unsupervised.

And this is Droplet.

I think they're going to make a fun not-a-poncho. And for now, just looking at them makes me smile.

Two Different Musical Interludes, to Usher in the Long Weekend

I saw this on Twitter this morning; I don't know if you have to be familiar with Grease, but it really made me laugh.

I’ve watched, rewatched, laughed and shared.

This is why Twitter cannot die.

❤️❤️❤️🤣😅😂❤️❤️❤️

pic.twitter.com/FF8JDDt7yO

— Jillian Hurley (@BeautyBind) May 21, 2020

Then there's this amazing accomplishment: Bach on a giant wooden xylophone in the woods.

Old Movies, New Perspective

I enjoy watching old movies, but one does get the impression that the actors way back then were, in person, as they were on the screen, if that makes sense. Censorship, what's that? Well, there were some potty mouths when they forgot their lines. Enjoy!

Pop Quiz, Work Edition

Ready for a question? Which of these do I hate the most:

1. A hurry-up-and-rush project
2. Content on COVID-19
3. Projects in PowerPoint
4. Projects in PowerPoint that are solid text, without any figures or visuals or any reason to be in PowerPoint and not in Word
5. Projects that have been rushed and are of poor quality

Trick question: I hate them all! So of course you can guess what kind of work I was doing most of today.

I know that having a job is something to be grateful for these days, but wow, some days it's harder than others to feel that gratitude.

Retrospective: Flowers in Hawaii

I probably posted some of the photos I took of flowers* in Hawaii when I was writing about that trip, but I thought it might be nice to put them up today. If you're not much of a flower person, I apologize for doing this twice in a week; I think this will get it out of my system, so try me again later.
*In which category I am including trees, flowering trees, bushes, and palms. Nature, basically.

Just a reminder, these are all taken on the Big Island, back in January of this year (January! a lifetime ago). Enjoy!

Birds, Birds, Birds

All the way back in January, my mother and had dinner out that turned out to include a show of beautiful birds hanging out nearby (the restaurant has an outdoor area and is on a canal). I took dozens of photos, but it was right before I went off to Hawaii, so I never did blog about it. Shall we look at the pretty birds now? (It's nothing profound, but I find them pretty, and soothing to look at now.)