The Front Porch Swing

2010-11-04T13:36:00.000-07:00

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2010-11-04T12:46:00.001-07:00

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2010-09-18T13:14:00.000-07:00

Rally from Home

To Support baby Mario Viera

I wish I was in Miami to support Mario and his mom.

The use of a scalpel is a medical privilege based on beneficence.

To lend the medical blade to any other service is... is...

....it's an abuse of trust... You have no right to do this with your tools...

This was no accident...not like a spilled cup of coffee...

Your clamp doesn't just wind up attached to someone's penis by accident.

This is not a part of our American culture!

This was imposed on our fathers and grandfathers in a time

when every hospital circumcision was done

without even considering the consent of the parents.

This is hospital culture.

It doesn't make sense.

Every baby, every person, should be safe from genital cutting.

There is no need to quantify harm or question other people's intent...

just don't cut other people's genitals-

it seems like a simple policy to keep...

Don't you think it would be easy?

Baby Mario Viera was born in Miami 2 days after my own baby Eva was born. He was in intensive care for 10 days due to an infection. On the 8th day of his life he was circumcised in the hospital without the permission or consent of his parents... not just in the absence of their consent- but against the clear communication from his mother who was was asked repeatedly if she wanted him circumcised. Is this badgering? Harassment? Why did she even need to be asked AT ALL... let alone- asked over and over after she repeatedly said NO! For all the busy important things a hospital staff must do- you would think harassing a mother of and infant in intensive care for some elective unnecessary cosmetic genital surgery would be pretty low on the priority list!

The hospital has apologized for their "mistake" and says that they "misread" the consent form... Excuse me? How do you misread a consent form for a procedure that no child needs and this one specifically is absolutely no-way no -how is supposed to get!? Just how exactly is this consent form thing supposed to work? I would think that kids who are going to be circumcised would HAVE consent forms... and kids who are NOT going to be circumcised- would NOT have consent forms... so there is no question of how you read it- there is not way to misread a consent form that does not exist!

So anyway... yes, this is my activist sore spot, of course I'm infuriated... but the mom has an energetic, positive lawyer and an airtight case, they are approaching it a little bit differently because it's not like it's a botched circumcision or a case of malpractice- they are actually calling this a battery and have filed a report with the Miami Police. I pray that the settlement is large enough to cause ALL hospitals to question the risks and benefits of circumcision. In addition to the lawsuit against the hospital, it looks like they may press for some additional legislation - a "Mario's Law" which would move all elective circumcisions out of hospitals - that would be a pretty awesome thing!

2010-04-23T16:50:00.000-07:00

The Biggest Let Down- An Open Letter to Jillian Michaels

This post is a response to the latest buzz about a Jillian Micheals interview in Women's Health in which she stated, "I'm going to adopt. I can't handle doing that to my body .... Also, when you rescue something, it's like rescuing a part of yourself."

Dear Jillian,

A few years ago I weighed over 215 pounds. I had given birth to three children and really let myself go. As my 40th birthday loomed on the horizon I decided that I had to take action and make a change in my life or risk becoming less and less active and less and less able or willing to do anything about it. I didn't have money for a trainer or a fancy diet plan. I took a low-buck self motivated approach that included a YMCA membership, two books- your- "Master Your Metabolism" and Lou Schuler's "The New Rules of Lifting for Women" and an iPod. Over the course of a year of hard work and lots of sweat, encouragement from my husband and Advil- I totally transformed my body and was a new woman by the time I celebrated my 40th birthday last summer.

Late this fall I discovered that I was pregnant with our fourth child. This was not planned and I'll freely confess that I have been thrown for a loop. I was already struggling with depression, but I'm ashamed to admit this took me to an even darker place. For the first time in my life, I had to turn to anti-depressants- and somehow made it through this gloomy grey winter- watching the scale go back to numbers I swore I'd never see again. I grew back out of jeans in sizes I'd so recently celebrated achieving. As I struggled to find positive feelings in my heart for the sake of this sweet little baby I could not help but feel worse and worse for the lost me I worked so hard to find again. With springtime here- my mood is on the rise, and as I get rounder and rounder, approaching my late July due-date- my conviction that I will find the strength to sweat it off all over again some time down the road (I don't know if I will try for it while nursing- if my milk supply would tolerate weight loss or if I'll wait till after I wean) I know I can do this- and I will... and you know what's funny? This time around- I won't hold you up as a inspiration. Oh trust me- you WILL BE motivation... but not because of your success- I will push myself the extra mile, lift the extra set- because I am a strong woman, and a mother, because I can do it! I will smile when I cradle my beautiful new baby up with my strong arms.

I would like to make myself a role model to all the mothers out there who are working for a fitness goal. Motherhood is one of the most common reasons why a woman finds herself looking at fitness and diet to make a change in her life, health and body. If you don't think you can do it... you obviously don't believe we can do it. No matter how loud you yell like a drill instructor- your enthusiasm is just hollow Hollywood marketing.

I wouldn't care if you had stretch marks, or if you wound up with a c section scar like mine on your belly, if your thighs touch or you got some dimples on your butt and I really wouldn't have cared if you had no interest in being a mother at all- I wouldn't have thought any less of you... but the fact that you just admitted that you are too scared to tackle in your own life, with the best resources that money can buy- what your fans, without nearly the advantage, look up to you to help us overcome- makes me just turn away from you sad and dissapointed.

My son and I, exhausted, celebrate the finish of a 5K together

I think pressure on celebrities to be role models is often misplaced... but only when the public disappointment is about some aspect of the celebrities personal life that has nothing to do with their professional ability. Your skill is not just being a pretty and fit woman- your skill, your trade, is being an inspiration and a motivation- and your attitude about pregnancy hangs on you like a fat suit.

Signed- A former fan

P.S. I just read the article Fox news posted that had a quote from you I hadn't seen yet.

“I’m not going to be wearing spandex in a [workout] DVD at 40! If I am, shoot me,” she also told Women’s Health. “I want to empower people to find happiness via a healthy lifestyle, and when I say healthy, I don’t just mean diet and exercise. Those are just tools.”

Gee- I didn't realize that 40 was the cut off point. As for those tools, it takes one to know one.

2010-04-01T08:28:00.000-07:00

Pain is the topic of today’s post. I’ll begin by saying that I do not plan to measure or quantify the lasting effects of infant trauma, or discuss the various methods of pain relief available, or the frequency or willingness of circumcisers to employ them- although I may mention these things- that is not the theme of today’s blog. Today I am going to cast off the burden of providing scientific evidence for everything I want to say, and simply discuss some of my personal thoughts on our commonly held beliefs about the pain circumcised infants endure.

A great place to find articles on pain research: The CIRP Library

The idea that infancy is the best time to circumcise a boy is one of the most common justifications we find held by today’s parents. The main reason they believe infancy is best, is because they would like to exploit infant amnesia; that pain which will be forgotten is the best kind of pain to endure if one has to endure it. This relies on so many beliefs that I do not share, I will break them down as best I can.

The first is the belief is that the pain of circumcision is a pain that a man will endure at some point in his lifetime. This is false. In non-circumcising cultures, the chances that a man will need to be circumcised at some point in his life are extremely low. Therefore, parents do not need to choose the best time for their son to endure circumcision pain. By leaving his body alone, they have made a choice with fantastic odds, and the only choice that gives their son the opportunity to possibly live his entire life without ever enduring the pain of circumcision.

Next is the belief that forgotten pain is the best kind of pain. This is a field that is very tricky to study in a scientific way- if you are willing to listen to experts who have a more wholistic approach to the human body and experience- you will find lots of backing- but the medical world does not feel a need- nor do they have ethical permission to perform studies that would give us concrete answers. One of the more famous studies was done by Anna Taddio and it involved the pain responses of infants when they were vaccinated at several months old. The research revealed that infants who were circumcised, even the ones who had some pain relief for the circumcision, had a heightened pain response to the shots four and six months later. So the pain of the circumcision did not inoculate their body to pain- it actually worked more like the first exposure to an allergen- making them hyper sensitive to the next exposure.

Last is the belief that adult men should never have to suffer the pain of circumcision. That they should be protected from enduring elective or necessary pain by moving the experience forward in time to the point that it is both unnecessary and non-consensual. I offer the common phrase, “Take it like a man.” Although that’s also loaded with lots of cultural baggage that makes me uncomfortable- how can we believe that there is such a thing as taking it like a man, if we feel that newborn babies are better equipped to take it than men are?

Many parents (and Doctors and maternity nurses) also repeat dismissive apologist comments about the infant’s experience. They say things like, “He slept through it.” “He was so brave.” “What a trooper.” and “He only cried because he didn’t like being strapped to that board.”

Over twenty years ago I was raped, and part of that experience included being pinned, and then tied in a spread eagle position. I have a lot of personal empathy for a person who is crying because they have been strapped down. The violation of the rape did not begin with penetration or beating, it began with the fear I felt when I no longer had the liberty to protect myself. The terror and betrayal I felt over being tied, was just as much a part of the horror of the experience as any other aspect of it. I do not think that babies who cry from the moment of being tied are not experiencing true and deep distress. The spread eagle circumstraint position (did you know that the pelvic area of the board is slightly elevated- so even the spine is flexed backward?) is the opposite of the fetal position! Imagine how alien it would feel to have your limbs extended so unnaturally, all of them at the same time, when they had never been asked to open so far!

The question of a baby sleeping through a circumcision is in my opinion, not a matter of his experience, but a matter of our desire to define his experience. In this video, you will hear two people describe the lasting effects of the trauma- but you can also witness a circumcision- at first the infant screams and fights very hard- but at a certain point he becomes silent and his tear filled stare, vacant. As Marilyn Milos says so poignantly- “He has left his body.”

Link to the video

Circumcision is quick! Babies heal fast! True- typically it does not take very long. Do you remember how long your summer vacations were as a child? – and now those summers fly by. I often think about time- relative to the infant’s life. If you are one day old, 15 minutes is 1% of your life. Proportionally, if you were 50 years old- that experience would take six months. If a circumcision wound takes a week to heal- that is the only week of their life. The first week with their penis- their penis hurts!

I think of the nerve pathway that travels between the receptors in the baby’s genitals deep into the core of their body and finally to the special zone of their brain designed to receive sexual pleasure. I think of the miracle of those delicate nerve pathways and the synapses, miniaturized in this beautiful new person for whom the world is just unfolding. I think of those nerves like virgins…clean and pure, a new leaf. I cringe to think that the very first transmission through those wires, like when Alexander Graham Bell said, “Mr. Watson come here!”… How can we rationalize the first message through those most beautiful wires of love and intimacy to be a story of the most excruciating searing pain? This was not meant to be!

I wonder how our society would take it, if I was to suggest- “Wait- before you desecrate that pathway with a story of pain- would you pause for a minute to teach your infant about sexual pleasure first? So that at least his brain would know what sweetness was possible before it learned this trauma? Of course this is unacceptable! We can not morally sexually pleasure a little infant… that’s WRONG! …and so I ask- if it’s wrong to touch them with the intension to give pleasure? How can it be right to touch them with the knowledge that it will inflict pain?

I really need to wrap this up, but I am going to touch on one last item which is a bit of crossover activism- with breastfeeding, and it concerns the use of the sucrose pacifier for circumcisions and the fact that it has been shown to actually help reduce pain responses during a circumcision. I have nursed three children so far, and with the birth of each child I am always overwhelmed by the amazing miracle of the rooting and suck reflex infants are born with. It is the key to their survival and a blessing from God. Without it, no amount of milk could help an infant who did not have the instinct to help himself- he would just waste away quietly without putting in the work he needs to ensure his survival. When I first learned about the sucrose pacifier, something deep in me felt that this was wrong- but it took me a little while to dissect and reconstruct what it was that I found so disturbing.

When a baby is hungry, he will cry in response to the pain in his belly. When he is put to the breast, the infant must calm himself and stop crying in order to nurse effectively and resolve his problem. The pain is his belly is not gone, his hunger is not satisfied- but the correct answer has been offered and he must have faith that sucking at the breast is the solution to make the pain go away. I feel that there is something sacred here, in this gift, in this order. To give a sucrose pacifier to an infant being circumcised is an abuse in his trust that sucking will resolve his pain. Yes it may work, but it works by deceit. To take that most precious maternal association- and exploit in order to silence him- is a lie and betrayal of both mother and baby in the highest order.

2010-03-31T06:11:00.000-07:00

My parents are both artists, and I grew up in a home with no TV, and a well stocked library- most conspicuous were two enormous volumes that always sat out because they could not fit on a shelf, one Michelangelo and one Leonardo. When I was not pouring through a ravaged pile of unshelved red World Book encyclopedias, I would sometimes browse through those works of those renaissance masters, the grandiose biblical scenes of Michelangelo, and the exacting draftsmanship of Leonardo’s scientific sketches. I don’t remember being sexually curious at that time, but it must have been there that I first saw and began to understand a little more about how men are put together.

When I was 11, my mother left my father and the two of us moved to Vienna Austria; where she studied sculpture. I used to visit her at the art academy after school and I got to see first hand how sculptors work, the charcoal sketches, live models, dusty studios, buckets of clay, stone chisels and the wonderful camaraderie of the students and the leisurely way they conversed, sharing bread, wine, cheese and hand rolled cigarettes.

Some of the time in Austria we lived in the country

When her year of auditing was up, she decided to continue her studies in Pietrasanta Italy. I was sent back to New Jersey to live with my father for the year of 8th grade… and then I enrolled in a boarding school in Massachusetts for high school. During those years I was back and forth to Europe several times. My sister married a man from the Canary Islands, a windsurfing instructor at a beach resort frequented by German tourists (bathing suits optional, sunburn- inevitable) It was in Italy that I had my first sexual experience.

I worked as an artist's model in Italy
This sculpture is now in Oslo Norway

During that time, I do not remember ever being introduced to anything about circumcision, the reasons why it is done, or any prejudices about it one way or the other. There were European vacation flings, and I also had my fair share of American boyfriends in high school. I remained indifferent to any variation I might have observed from one side of the ocean to the other.

I decided to follow my mother’s example and majored in sculpture in college, focusing on figure and anatomy. Interestingly, even at the school where the famous social critic and dissident feminist Camille Paglia was teaching, the topic of circumcision and the portrayal of the phallus in Western art (we did cover fertility objects some in African art history class) were ignored in my required and elective courses. My mentoring professor avoided the issue almost all together by only hiring female models for anatomy class.

This was a long story to get to the first lightbulb moment. I was friends with a European man who was living in the US and I happened to say something about how most American men are circumcised and his jaw dropped. He turned as white as a sheet and gasped. He seemed ready to faint. Finally, he stammered, “What are they all Jews?”

This was my first encounter with, what I now consider to be, the proper reaction to circumcision. Shock. Disbelief. Disgust. Horror. Confusion. I remember back in high school I had a radical feminist religion teacher (she was really quite a man-hater) who took it upon herself to tell us about female circumcision in Africa. In gory detail, she spoke of the cutting… I remember her raised hand carving an arc in the air holding an imaginary piece of broken glass. There were rusty razor blades, herbal coagulants and village dogs to eat the scraps. Sewing girls up with thorns and the horrors of the misogynist oppression these women suffered. How after marriage their scars would be cut open again with a knife so their husband could penetrate them. We squirmed in our seats, boys and girls alike. This friend of mine sitting before me, from a culture of genital integrity, reflected all the same horror over my revelation as I remember feeling that day- and suddenly, what we do here to infant boys… it didn’t seem so normal anymore.

So by the time that I was married and expecting my first child, you can imagine the strength of my conviction in regards to my own decision about circumcision. It was not a question, given my life experience that I could in my right mind entertain.

The second light bulb moment happened when I mentioned my feelings to my husband. He hates it when I tell this story. He wishes that he could take this all back and I’d forget it and never tell a soul about what happened to us… but this was really an important moment for me and my understanding of what is going on in our culture. I’m sorry honey, I just have to tell the whole thing. He flipped. He became enraged and totally irrational. He insisted that it must be done, that it would be done. He didn’t want to do any research and didn’t want to talk about it with me. He acted in a way I had never before or since seen him behave. He insisted that a boy had to look like his father. I have since learned that this actually has a name, Ronald Goldman calls it “the adamant father syndrome” and my goodness- it’s real and it’s very intimidating. Lucky for us (remember Mama Grizzly) This was not up for debate. I wasn’t asking his permission to not cut our baby… I was stating a fact- that no one was going to be cutting our baby. I now know, after many years hearing other people’s stories, that this was not the best tactical approach, in fact it was probably the worst approach I could have taken- but I had no idea what I was going to be up against until it all blew up in my face.

He did wind up eventually researching on his own, with the privacy to work through his feelings and come to terms with something he’d never let himself think about before, free from defensiveness. He quietly conceded without seeming too enthusiastic about the idea… until the night our son was born by emergency C section 5 weeks early. We had a really close call and my husband did an amazing job getting us to the hospital in the nick of time. When he was handed that newborn baby to hold while the surgeons put me back together- the beauty of the child and his personhood, his miniature perfection so new and tender, all those perfect parts, the eyelashes and fingernails finally revealed… the miracle, the gift, the blessing, the ‘get down on my knees with gratitude you, my son, are alive’- it all became crystal clear. So when the surgeon asked my husband while I was still under general anesthesia, “When are you going to tell me the bad news about the circumcision?” Pappa bear was ready with the answer. “We aren’t.”

It doesn’t end here. You see, now I understood what most of my female peers were up against, only they did not have the same foundation as I did when they finally had their turn to discuss this with their husband. Maybe they learned about what naked men look like from seeing porn. Maybe they never knew an intact man in their life. It’s possible that their sex ed book was illustrated with circumcised penises. Maybe the thought of whole continents of men going about their life with their anatomy intact, never having a problem or giving it a second thought, seems like a distant impossible abstraction, utterly unrelated to their American reality. All those myths being passed around and going unchallenged. Trusting in the men we know, who for their own peace of mind, accept the myths without wanting to break them down. The cloak of shame and silence, our sexual inhibition, our pride, and arrogance and the social pressure to conform… all these circumstances come crushing down on a vulnerable new mother and leave her unprepared to question or speak up for her child. In her wildest nightmare, no mother would invent this on her own for her newborn. If circumcision was not something already firmly entrenched in our culture, how else can we explain that she feels she must comply?

How did this become the standard in our culture? Today’s mothers may believe that circumcision is their family choice, the parent’s right… just one of the many decisions that parents must make on their child’s behalf. They may assume that the circumcision tradition in their family is the end result of lots of careful decisions by loving family members- but the fact is- only one or two generations ago- circumcision was not a choice given to mothers or fathers. It was just done. I have talked with some grandmothers who said they were given the impression that it was illegal to not circumcise- that it had to be done before you were allowed to leave the hospital.

I remember shortly after our son was born, while changing his diaper, my mother in law noted with some curiosity that we did not circumcise him. “Oh, here it comes.” I thought. Nope. She didn’t say another word. Years later my husband discovered that his father was intact. Remember how he’d insisted that a boy had to look like his father!? His own father was not circumcised and when my husband finally did discuss this with his mother he found out that the doctor in the hospital had just circumcised him as a matter of routine- that his parents had not requested it- and had they been asked- they would have said no! His family is of Native American heritage- so in his case this wasn’t just a violation of his own body- but went against his cultural heritage! But what’s done is done… and babies don’t remember it, right? His mother saw no sense in upsetting a little boy with the story of what had happened. So he, with his peers who were also routinely circumcised, grew up unquestioning, assured that circumcision was normal and just what was done.

I am an activist today because I am lucky to have had certain life experiences that left me trusting the beauty and the science of the human form, not fearing it. I was raised to stand up for what you believe, and defend the helpless. Even before I understood the circumcision situation in the USA for what it is, I was practiced as a rebel, willing to say “F-you!” to the status quo… I may not still outwardly look it, but that sparky punk rocker is still in me.

My children and I in our festival costumes

“Why do you care so much about our circumcision decision?
Why don’t you respect my right to do what is best for my child- just as I do for you?”

The answer is that I just don’t think American men and women are being given a fair chance to overcome this. When an “unbiased” trusted resource (like the Mayo Clinic) outlines the potential benefits of circumcision- and suggests we should balance them against the possible risks of surgery… but fails to enter the value or purpose of the anatomy which is lost in every case- If we don’t even have the correct equation in front of us- how can we possibly find the correct answer? I love this country, and I love the people who live here, but I feel humiliated to think that my peers accept infant genital cutting as cultural practice- an expectation even. Don’t we all have a duty to let our peers know that we do not expect them to do this? If we keep silent- they may operate on assumptions, just like the assumption that all circumcised men are happy and thankful to be circumcised. Many people have a very hard time accepting this information- it’s difficult stuff to stomach! I understand that- but that doesn’t mean that silence is the answer.

2010-03-30T11:07:00.001-07:00

Today’s genital integrity post is going to focus on doctors. Several years ago I was able to join many other intactivists at the annual convention of the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists in Philadelphia. I was able to speak to hundreds of doctors in just a few days as I handed out a flyer that I had written.

Here I am with Marilyn Milos, co-founder of NOCIRC

It was very interesting to be able to be able to speak to the people right on the front lines of circumcision in America. There was one comment that was repeated over and over by the doctors:

“The parents demand it.”

That was so interesting to me because in my interactions with parents, they typically seemed to point to medical reasons for doing it. In speaking with doctors, a large portion of them freely admitted that there was no medical benefit to the surgery and they were simply performing a cultural service at the request of parents. They also tried to shrug off their own responsibility as if their hands were tied when they were faced with a parental request that they circumcise the baby. A vicious cycle with each player pointing to the other to justify what they do.

There were many doctors from foreign countries who were openly embarrassed for what their American peers were doing. Many others said that they refuse to participate in circumcisions. There were also doctors who were very enthusiastic about circumcision and mocked the Genital Integrity rhetoric. I can say that doctors are not immune to peer pressure, and many of the obstetricians, when passing by with a group of peers, would refuse to acknowledge the Genital Integrity protesters, but some individuals would return alone, to thank us for speaking up, and to express their hope that routine infant circumcision would one day end.

There were two doctors in particular who made such a lasting impression on me with what they said. One, a fit, petite woman with short curly grey hair and fashionable prescription glasses was crossing the street during the lunch hour. I offered her my flyer and without glancing at it- she took it and threw it on the ground. She snapped at me with a pride and arrogance that I have never encountered before and said,

“I have circumcised over 5000 babies and the ONLY ones I felt bad about were the Jews… because I was taking the money away from the mohel!”

I was stunned. I reached in my purse for a pen and with a shaking hand I wrote it down word for word.

For today’s blog entry I though it would be interesting to illustrate what 5000 people looks like. I did a google image search and had to laugh that I had forgotten about the artist Spencer Tunick who poses crowds of nudes in urban environments. I found a picture (I have blurred it out some) which contains 75 people, men and women. I used photoshop to patch that picture over and over till I had 5000 represented. Several years have passed, so I assume that her number has grown considerably since then.

click the picture to view larger

Now, I would like you to imagine that grey haired 130 pound woman, with a megaphone, standing in front of a group of 5000 men, whose genitals she had altered with her knife, and to hear her say it one more time:

“I circumcised every single one of you and the ONLY ones I felt bad about were the Jews… because I took the money away from a mohel!”

The other doctor was a man, at the peak of middle aged attractiveness, and I’ll confess as a 6 foot tall woman, he was even more attractive to me because he was about 6’4”. Protesters with banners and signs had been told to stay on one side of the street, but because I only had my flyer- I was able to stand close to the entrance, and slip my paper to people rushing by, many not even suspecting that I was part of the protest across the street. I saw this tall man coming, and I think he saw me too- I gave him my flyer and he paused to read the title. He became enraged and got even taller- leaned forward and backed me up against the wall. He took a tone with me like I was a belligerent little girl and he was a school principal, he snapped:

“You don’t even know what you are talking about! Have you ever seen one!!??”

I tried to imagine what sort of objective rational counseling a pregnant woman could expect to get from that arrogant (obviously) circumcised man. As an artist, a world traveler, a sexually experienced woman, a student of anatomy and a mother of a son, of course I had “seen one”… but I know that many American women have not.

In this world of activism, the fact that many- if not most of this generation of our male doctors in America is circumcised is a major consideration. Many of these doctors have no idea how to care for an intact child, and many children are harmed by bad advice coming from them. Many other children who have minor easily treatable problems are circumcised because their doctors see their foreskin, not the pathology, as what ails them. This interaction was my proof that even medical professionals are not immune to the loss of not only their foreskin, but the loss of objectivity that infant circumcision inflicts.

There is a movement to end routine infant circumcision from within the medical community you can read more about them here:
Doctors Opposing Circumcision Website

Here is the text of my flyer if your are curious:

Ten great reasons for Obstetricians to quit circumcising babies

1.To comply with ACOG guidelines of informed consent.
Being born with a normal male sex organ is not an emergency. A male can make this decision for himself if he chooses. ACOG makes a great effort to protect the physical integrity of female patients and to secure consent for all procedures, the willingness to ignore these guidelines in order to circumcise infant males highlights a sexist double standard. Males should also be respected as whole and embodied persons.

2. Circumcision violates the Hippocratic Oath. Participation in an invasive non-medical procedure is an indicator of a physician’s professionalism.

3. American circumcision is a global embarrassment.
Callis Osaghae bled to death after a home circumcision in Ireland. Many Irish doctors were incensed when it was suggested that they should preform circumcisions for the immigrants who requested them. They felt this was an abuse of their medical training and a clear ethical broach. American doctors are protected by law, from pressure to circumcise females, yet no such legislation protects doctors from the pressure to circumcise males. Their inability to stand up to that pressure, in the absence of state mandated legislation, reflects poorly on their ability to comply with internationally accepted medical standards.

4. Obstetricians are specialists.
Despite this, obstetricians have cornered a market outside their specialty by popularizing the circumcision of male neonates. High pressure tactics in the hospital and a service industry conveyor belt give indifferent or reluctant parents the opportunity to secure a circumcision without having to do anything. A circumcising OB will rarely do any followup and will also not encounter any of the common long term pediatric or adult issues of circumcision damage. This confusion of the role of an obstetrician as child circumciser reflects poorly on the obstetric profession and abusively forces maternity nurses to cooperate.

5. Soliciting elective surgery from women in labor is abusive and unethical.
There is an implied medical endorsement when hospital staff solicits in the course of admitting patients. The AMA circumcision policy states that a lack of information and deferral of the decision until after the birth contribute to the high rate of circumcision in America. This means that if parents were given more time and more information, fewer would circumcise their son.

6. Unnecessary surgery exposes a circumciser to avoidable liability.

7. The refusal to treat infant pain is well documented. The obstetrician circumciser is the worst offender of any medical specialty; with the most appalling record right here in the northeastern US. Despite the AAP admonition that children not be exposed to the pain of circumcision, many medical schools still teach circumcision without pain relief. (using living human children)
Circumcision Practice Patterns in the United States
Stang HJ, Snellman LW Pediatrics. 1998 Jun;101(6):E5
http://pediatrics.aappublications.org/cgi/content/full/101/6/e5

8. Circumcision in America did not spring from our culture, it came from our doctors.
Circumcision is now known to have no medical value, yet doctors inexplicably offer it as a cultural service, maneuvering consent from fathers circumcised in an era predating modern respect for patient autonomy.

9. Circumcision gains public acceptance at the expense of a physician’s professional integrity.
As long as physicians are willing to involve themselves in non-medical surgery, parents will be confused about the intended purpose of such surgery.

10. The best reason to say, "NO!" is your own.

This message to obstetricians comes respectfully to you from a survivor of Placenta Previa

2010-03-28T14:01:00.000-07:00

Today’s Genital Integrity post is about mothers. I’d like to start with an assignment for you. The next time you are in a bookstore, go to the pregnancy books and pick up a copy of “From the Hips” by Rebecca Odes and Ceridwin Morris. It’s a popular new book with edgy illustrations and snazzy graphics. You don’t have to buy it, just find the section on circumcision and at the end – there is a green word balloon with a mother’s quote. How do you feel reading her words? As always, I look forward to reading your comments.

I hope that you find the graphics I’m designing for these posts to be thought provoking and amusing. If I could take all my own words, ideas and feelings and express them with a single picture, today’s would sum it up for me. I did not become an “intactivist” overnight. I feel that various life experiences laid a perfect groundwork so that when the final light bulb moments occurred, I could not help but be changed.

"The biblical injunction to circumcise speaks to a man about men. But circumcision is also a woman's issue, for on a subtle, but very potent level it is, like the akedah, about the primary disempowerment of the mother. At no other time is a woman so in touch with her most elemental and powerful mammalian instincts as after a birth, When, her culture tells her that in order for this male baby to be a man, to be part of the masculine community and bond with the male God, the men must cut her male baby on his most sensitive male organ, this mother is inevitably in conflict with her entire life-giving feminine biology. And if a woman is made to distrust her most basic instinct to protect her newborn child, what feelings can she ever trust?"
- Miriam Pollack from Jewish Women Speak Out

Circumcision is not just a men’s issue, nor is it just a parenting issue. You don’t need to be pregnant, have a medical degree or have a penis to develop your own opinion. Unfortunately, I feel that many women allow their thoughts, feelings and instincts to be disregarded - even by themselves. I feel a deep sadness to think of the number of women who in their very first moments as a mother- feel they must submit to something that goes against a very deep instinct. I understand that not all mothers feel this way, and many have a deep conviction that circumcision is the right thing to do and reasonably they do not have many, if any, negative feelings about it. In my experience as an intactivist, when mothers are given a compassionate listening audience, free of the burden to defend circumcision or past history that can't be changed... a large portion of mothers do describe feelings that are not compatible with empowerment and peace.

This link will take you to a page of mother’s stories about circumcision, it will take some courage to get through more than just a few of these. Circumcision doesn’t just hurt babies. Circumcision hurts mothers too.

Mother's Stories

Reading stories is one thing, but I always find videos so compelling, to hear someone's voice and see their face. I've chosen two videos from youtube which show two different women, the first speaks of something long in the past and the second speaks of something only hours before.

Why don’t you take a walk?

Liz talks about her son’s circumcision that day.

I hope that one day soon, mothers can look forward to the birth of their baby without this anxiety; that when baby girls were wished for, that it wasn't just because that was the only way her mother thought she could avoid a baby circumcision.

2010-03-28T10:49:00.000-07:00

To celebrate Genital Integrity Awareness Week, I will be writing a few blog posts about the subject, specifically infant male circumcision in the USA. I will be linking my blog posts from my Facebook page, and I welcome you comments here on Blogger or back at Facebook.

Yesterday I changed my profile picture at Facebook to the pink and blue Genital Integrity ribbon, and shortly after a female friend from Europe contacted me in a chat… astonished to learn that Americans frequently circumcise their sons. She had no idea. I feel happy that such a simple action could so quickly have such a positive effect on “awareness.” …but I will also confess that I have a lot of concern that some of the things I may say may upset some people. I have heard many stories about people who have been “de-friended” for making their feelings known, and have always found it curious that for something so allegedly socially acceptable, we have a lot of trouble bringing up the subject and discussing this openly and honestly with each other. I feel that an open discourse, regardless if it’s agreeable or not, is the first big step we have to take in understanding what is going on.

Today I am going to tackle the subject of hygiene. I will begin with this disclaimer: I don’t have a penis! Yes, that’s right, I have a vagina and I’ve been taking care of it for 40 years. Oh goodness… is my vagina 40 years old already? Where has the time flown?

Well, let me tell you- when I hear women say that they think male circumcision is a good idea because “it’s cleaner” I have to wonder if they would ever consider female circumcision for the same reason. I have urine, other fluids (including menstrual blood), folds of skin that are moist, hair (which I usually make an effort to remove) and just an inch or so away from that- there is my anus… and all of this is positioned on the underside of my pelvis so that if I bend myself around in my greatest contortion- I can only see about half of it. Yet I have been able to manage and no one assumes that I needed any surgical help to tidy up my anatomy and make my hygienic routine any easier. In fact, it would be illegal for anyone to make my genitals “cleaner” with surgery.

Well, “you know how boys are…” they say.

STOP. Hold the phone. Say what? This comment is nothing but sexism pure and simple. Men are perfectly capable and willing to groom themselves. I feel saddened to know that many circumcised men have found solace in this extremely common train of thought so insulting to men. They must feel comforted by the idea that they are considered “cleaner” by women. I think when the cleaner comment comes up, it’s probably a lot easier to feel a slight lift to the ego- than it is to take a step back and consider- “Why you sexist woman! How dare you even begin to pick about the cleanliness of a man as if I don’t know what you are up against in your own feminine hygiene routine? Don’t you know that my penis is hanging right there next to my hand in plain sight every time I take a shower, every time I take a leak? How lazy do you think I’d have to be to forget to wash my very favorite part of my body? Don’t you know it’s FUN to wash!? Don’t you talk to me about cleaner!”

Which brings me to the next thing; the qualifier. “Well, I guess it’s OK for boys to be uncircumcised as long as they are taught to wash properly.” Ugh. I hate that word “properly” … but I have more to say on this. This satetment is like saying, “Well, I guess breastfeeding is OK as long as you remember to change their diapers a few times a day.” One thing has nothing to do with the other! One thing (washing) has to be done regardless if the child is circumcised or not! And many people don’t know, but caring for an intact infant or child is actually easier than caring for a circumcised child. I won’t go into the specifics of this because there is already plenty of information available about how to care for babies- but I do want to take this one step further.

It’s this idea that maybe circumcision is obsolete in this day and age because we do have indoor plumbing and soap. To illustrate this misconception I offer this youtube video of Dan and Jenn who have a little Q&A series on sex matters. At the 2:07 mark pay attention to what Dan says.

Dan, I’m sorry- but you are wrong. The human body has had this design much longer than we have had soap and running water. Humans do not need to bathe the way we do today in order to keep our bodies from imploding- it’s a social nicety, it’s refreshing and relaxing to bathe. But it’s not necessary. How many centuries have hominids walked the Earth before we figured out germ theory? If the theory of evolution is correct, how is it that the very organ of reproduction could have evolved to this point with such a fatal flaw? I’m certainly not suggesting that we shouldn’t bathe- I’m simply saying, that the human right to genital integrity is not contingent on a person’s ability or willingness to wash themselves. I’ll stick my neck out an say it without a qualifier- A man has the right to be as stinking dirty as he darn well pleases and no one has a right to cut a piece of him off.

Look what a year can do!

2009-06-01T08:39:00.001-07:00

In November of 2007 I thought I'd like to try to get back in shape, I was feeling tired and weighed down carting around a baby on my hip plus about four more of them on my ass... my goal was originally a very modest, "I'd like to feel better and be in shape." I didn't want to focus too much on the weight loss because I think I was afraid I'd fail. I also probably wasn't fully aware of how fat I had really become- being a very tall person- I was carrying a a lot of weight spread across a big surface- so I didn't look roly-poly. Sometimes I would imagine my fat, calculated against my college weight, as an object separate from me... I would imagine 50 one pound boxes of butter sitting there on the shelf in the dairy aisle... and then imagine, if like a shoplifter- I could shove all that under my clothes! Oh my goodness- when I went to the feed store and bought a bag of horse feed- imagine, if like one of those "sexual responsibility" exercises they do in highschool where the make the kids cart around demanding faux infants 24/7 ... what if we all have to carry the excess burden that is inside our skin- on the outside as well!? How many days of carrying a 50# bag of horse feed would it take before I said- "You know- I want to be free of this burden!"

Well, I worked out very hard for two months and I did feel better, my clothes started to fit differently- but I did not lose a single pound!! This was very disappointing but I did not give up- and suddenly- pounds started melting off. I has bought into the theory that muscle burns more calories than fat- and by building muscle- I would increase (rather than starve and cripple) my metabolism. Wow- when it finally kicked in- the results were very satisfying.

I went from a size 16 or 14 jeans, now to an 8.

I ran a 5K last summer, and I feel like I look ten years younger (maybe I just FEEL ten years younger!)

These pictures in my "fat jeans" were taken last summer. Since then I have lost another 5 pounds and increased some muscle mass. I'll see if I can dig up a mortifying rare "before" picture as well as an updated today picture.

(Renee is a friend who had some very helpful tips and motivations that kept me focused)

Technorati Tags: weight loss,motherhood,motivation,before and after,fitness,fifty pounds

Duke

2009-05-27T06:23:00.001-07:00

I know I have much to be thankful for in that his death was without suffering and his life's work, which was to love his family and all people he had a chance to meet, was a joy right to the end.

Duke, our 13 year old Boxer was put to sleep on Thursday evening April 28, 2008.

His last meal was bison.

He was 13.

On Wednesday I took the kids to go buy "Daisy" a dog bed... making it official- we are keeping her. While we were gone, Duke must have had a seizure or stroke and when we came home he was changed and I knew he was at the end. A sad timing.
Only a week earlier he was cantering up the hill to our house after his daily "naughty trip" down to the bridge at the bottom of the hill ... I don't know what it was about that little walk to try to find some deer guts to roll in- but he loved to sneak off in the morning and be back by 10... I find some comfort in thinking that he must have been thrilled at his prospects when that last big bridge finally appeared before him...and on the other side he met his Bullydog friends Thelma and Darby, and Tyler the horse.

My son, pictured here six years ago, is taking it with tremendous courage. He's some kid. Duke took his job raising the kids (don't try to convince him otherwise) with tremendous good humor and patience.

I remember a funny incident when my son was a baby- hardly mobile, and was on a blanket in the yard... I was gardening and jokingly told Duke to keep an eye on him. After some time I heard the boy start to fuss and turned around to find him at the edge of the blanket- arms and legs flailing- with Duke, grinning and proud, sitting on him.

Because of his tail and uncropped ears, many people didn't recognise Duke as a purebred boxer. He was certainly not showdog ideal- but he did come from AKC parents. He was picked from the litter at only 2 days old so that his tail would be spared when all the other puppies had theirs docked. This turned especially cute on the day we returned to the breeder to get him at 8 weeks and a sea of joyous boxer pups came bounding across the yard- but only one had a tail wagging above the brown wiggling mass... 13 years a puppy and always wagging.

Duke's nostril structure was awful- causing his breathing to be pretty loud and snorty. I had considered some surgery but the vet turned me away from that and suggested I learn to live with it. Who'd guess that now I'm crying to think of trying to learn to live without it. This garnered Duke all the conjugatable nickname variants of snuss, snussa, snussy. And just like a wife might train a man with with huffs and sighs... Duke had me trained to respond to his particular snorts and sniffs which could mean things like, "Dodi is sleeping in my bed would you get her out of it?" "Are you finished with that (burger, pizza, spaghetti... etc)?" "Did you not see me here standing at the door?" "I need a hug" "A little lower there... and to the right"

Did you know that Boxers give the best puppy kisses? That because it's all fuzzy lips and no cold nose.

A long time away

2009-05-24T10:19:00.001-07:00

Hello out there my long lost friends. It's been a while since I posted on my blog... I guess I should explain.

Just before I stopped blogging you will see I posted about finding that little dog Daisy. Well, little Daisy soon found her way into our hearts but I was reluctant to take on a fourth dog when Duke's health was going downhill. The day I decided to make it official, we went out to buy Daisy a little dog bed. Duke must have had a stroke while we were out. When we came home- the Duke we knew was gone, he was alive, but erased. It was a sad irony how I struggled so hard to open my heart to Daisy out of concern for Duke... and then, when I did take that step to make Daisy ours, Duke gave up his spot by the stove for her.

At the time I could not bear to write a blog entry about Duke. ...and as other things came along, stories from Great and Small Farm, happy, sad, interesting, creative... I could not bring myself to leapfrog the new entry past the unwritten memorial for old Duke and somehow a year and a half has passed.

I promise to soon write that post, and then all the ones in between and try to get this blog current again. I have missed this.

2008-02-28T13:30:00.000-08:00

Look at our first quilt!

There is a new botton on my sidebar, the "Freedom Isn't Free Quilting Bee" This effort was the brain-child of a woman from California named Natascha- please visit her blog to see more pictures and details about the project. This quilt and was made with quilt blocks contributed by 11 AnySoldier supporters...and then the hard work of putting it all together and backing it was done by Natascha. Thank you so much!

This quilt was called the "Pioneer Quilt", and aside from the size of the 8.5" squares- we had free rein for colors and themes. Amazing contuinity considering these came from all over the country don't you think?

More quilts are planned for the future and there are even more quilters signed up raring to go.

Originally I'd volunteered to make 4 squares, but due to the good turnout only one was needed. The remaining squares might make it into future quilts. This is and example of one of my Army star blocks. This block is made of 41 pieces of cloth!

2008-02-06T16:52:00.001-08:00

This is my latest cartoon, it's a Valentine for the Sky Soldier paratroopers of the 173rd who are fighting out at the tip of the spear in the Afghanistan Mountains. Please keep them in your prayers.

The image began as a ball point pen drawing, which was scanned and then colored using various photoshop techniques and a wacom pressure sensitive tablet. The fire is mostly a photograph (about 80%) which has been manipulated to fit the forms of the heart. The sword and wing is the division patch, and the rest is mostly inspired by Ed Roth and popular tattoos.

Check January 2007 archive to see last year's AnySoldier Valentine.

I know I haven't shared much of my visual art here on this blog, maybe I will more in the future. A very short term goal I have is to learn how to create realistic looking flames like these freehand using photoshop. I'll tell you how it goes.

The little dog is doing fine, gaining weight and coming out of her shell, she's a frisky hoot at playtime and enjoys going for tag along walks around the farm. I am still thinking that I need to find a home for her. I am going to be looking more into some Rat Terrier Rescue Groups and see what they suggest. No name.

I'll have a new knitting project to post soon, no WIP pictures, but I finished the little EZ "Heart Hat" today... it's in a dove blue and unbleached white sugar'n cream cotton... a valentine present for that sweet little baby from Alaska.

2008-01-31T08:14:00.000-08:00

I think we people have a bad habit of praying when we need something and forgetting to be thankful when our prayers are answered.

One of the worst emotions I think a person can ever encounter is the sick feeling of having hurt someone when you thought you were doing good. That happened to me yesterday.

The night before a little stray dog approached me in town when I was visiting my mom. As I parked my truck she came shivering to me from behind a dumpster with a "Can you help me?"expression on her face, but she was so timid I couldn't approach her. She was skinny and shivering so bad. Several other people parked while I tried to call her and I asked them all if they'd ever seen her- and they apatheticly said no.

I asked my husband to bring me a dog crate and I was able to lure her into it with some delicious smelling hot meatloaf fresh out of mom's oven...She got a flea bath right away, but she's got mange and might be pregnant too... more vetting than I can afford- the next ten hours were spent trying to muster up the gumption to take her into the pound- but she'd been so happy snuggled in that crate with a hot water bottle getting the chill off her bones- It was hard to think of her on a concrete floor without anybody fat. maybe I can find a terrier rescue to take her in where she's be fostered in a home.... she would hop on 3 legs when I took her out the cold was so hard on her- how did she make it before? I made a little shirt for her out of one of my daughter's old turtlenecks- just slipped it over her head with the back in the front and rolled up the sleeves- cut a short slit up the back so I could cinch up the waist with a knot... oh she was happy in her pink shirt!

Then we were getting ready to go out- I was changing and asked my husband to take her out- and she ran from him!! By the time I was able to get outside-she was GONE into the night... in a new place, without a name to call or acollar or a sense of where she was... and wearing that damn pink shirt!!! Iwas just sick.I just thought of her getting tangled in some brambles or a barbed wire fence... as a stray dog she had a chance- but as a stuck dog she was a goner! I imagined the cuffs on the arms getting soaked and unrolling, tripping her... finding the pathetic scene months from now hanging from a fence... argh. My husband must have gotten up 10 times in the night to check the crate we'd left on the back porch for her if she came back... and it began to pour.

Finally the next day after noon- she came back- without the shirt. She got some dewormer and must be feeling warmer now because she likes tosleep on the top of the crate (like Snoopy). She let me pick the brokenglass out of the pads of her feet with some tweezers.

No puppies. (yet) The bulging belly seems to have been mostly composed of deer hair. I'll spare you the details.

2008-01-24T09:49:00.000-08:00

SKULL CAP

If I have to knock Brandon off the top of this page, I'm going to have to replace him with another cute guy or my readers will protest. Yeah, the sad news is that I won't be posting any pictures of Brandon doing a victory waltz with me, someone else won the American Hero Grand Prize- but hey- it was Brian Horn the founder of AnySoldier.com... so I'm not complaining! (even if I am a little dissapointed that our efforts for Brandon didn't pay off in the way I'd hoped) They are still all heroes and we love them all!

Isn't he adorable?

(try me.)

Here's Angus modeling his brand new hat from the pattern "We call them Pirates" What a fun knit. I didn't know what size I'd get- but with 3 men in the house I figured it would fit one of them. Older brother Broadus is a bit jealous, so I'm going to try to hunt up a set of needles to stretch my gauge a tad and use up the rest of this yarn which was purchased originally for the "WTF over?" hat.

This hat, below, was made for the purpose of an online auction to raise a donation for AnySoldier.com

Also on the AnySoldier front- here is a set of 8 pillowcase tops which I made for Christmas presents for paratroopers of the 173rd who are currently in a remote part of Afghanistan. These were shipped out in early December and feedback is starting to trickle back in. Each pillowcase top was backed with soft warm flannel and shipped with a pillow and a few cans of Copenhagen snuff and a big Hershey bar.

The original idea for these came from a classic Chuck Norris joke which says that everyone has Superman sheets- but Superman has Chuck Norris sheets. I always think of our soldiers as Supermen- and I thought if anyone should have Chuck Norris sheets it would be them (did you know that bedding is a prized care package item and that many soldiers will go their entire deployment without a pillow or set of sheets?) - after shopping around I found out that they don't make Chuck Norris sheets... so I thought that I would have to just make them myself.

I did some research and found out about a product called "Bubble Jet Set" which allegedly will make regular old printer ink waterfast when printed on treated fabric. I'm not going to be there to see the long term waterfastness of these pillows... I feel a little uncomfortable not having done any tests beforehand - but from what I understand- these guys will be lucky to get a hot shower... I really doubt the pillows will be washed much, if at all before this deployment is over.

In order to get your fabric to run through a printer it needs to be backed with butcher paper for stiffness. I spent a few days working on photoshop collages of military themes for paratroopers (Including lots of Chuck Norris facts) - these were specially customized for our heroes of the 173rd "Sky Soldiers". In the end I had about 20 various layouts which would print on 8.5 x 11 either verticaly or horizontally. Each pillow top required 7 pages of printed fabric which was then pieced like a quilt.

On a final note, I was forwarded a very beautiful thank you note from a soldier who had been a recipient of some of the "Sew Much Comfort" retrofitted clothing (see the link in my sidebar) If you have sewing abilities, please consider this very worthwhile way that we in the civilian sector can give back to the brave men who give so much to our country.

"My name is XXXX XXXX . You probably don't remember me or my story but, I remember you every time I open one of my clothes drawers. I received some of your clothes during my stay in Walter Reed Medical Center, as I was there recovering from wounds I received in Afghanistan on XXXXXXXX. I was very badly wounded and your clothes with the Velcro sides allowed me to change my clothes with less pain than I would have been able to otherwise. When I left Walter Reed for XXXX my wife contacted your group asking for help again. I am very happy to say that your group was able to once again help me and sent me more pants, shorts, and drawers which I still use today. I just want to thank you and your group for all your help I had broken my pelvis, shattered my foot and broken both my legs. Without your fine clothes I don't I would have been able to be dressed without being in terrible agony so I just want to thank you from the bottom of my heart for all that you and the volunteers who help you do it really means a lot to me and my wife. If you can thank everyone there it would mean a whole lot to us. By the way I came though fine my pelvis was fixed, my legs healed and I lost my foot. Don't worry about the foot though it was my left one which I never liked anyways and I have a prosthesis already so I am walking already. Once again thank you and keep up the good work"

2007-12-22T11:41:00.000-08:00

VOTE FOR BRANDON!
2007 American Hero Award

Last week I nominated Brandon Rork for the VA Mortgage Center 2007 American Hero Award. (this is an award for active duty servicemen who were deployed in either Iraq or Afghanistan)

I was thrilled to learn he was chosen as a finalist and that has already net him a sweet $500 prize.

Now there is public voting to determine the winner- and $5000 is at stake.

Our man is from Norwood Ohio- and he is an amazing hero who has Rambo caliber prowess with a machine gun!! He just got home from an extended tour in Iraq serving with the 10th Mountain Division.

Read the full account of the events written by his Commanding Officer!

He is AWESOME!
See a picture of the huge truck!

This was his view from his watch! That's the truck!

This is the hood ornament from the truck he now keeps in his pocket.

If you go to the Bengals game tomorrow- from what I understand they will be honoring Brandon at the game- he's the real deal- a standing ovation- you must read the full story to appreciate what a blessing Brandon's quick thinking and actions were: A suicide bomber drove a dumptruck loaded with 7 times as many explosives as what was used in Oklahoma City through the gates of their patrol base! Brandon machine gunned the engine block and got that truck stopped. They even managed to disable the driver, get him out of a suicide vest and take him into custody alive! Had that truck exploded, the loss of life would have probably made the bombing on the barracks in Beirut look like small time.

The voting will continue till Jan 11, 2008.

UPDATE: VA MORTGAGE NOW REQUESTS ONLY ONE VOTE PER DAY.

Vote for Brandon! Read the WHOLE story- they way the cut the paragraph on the contest page- it almost looks like he was nominated because he's a translator...

well... translate THIS you wack-job suicide bomber- ratatatatatatatatata!!!!!!!!

Can you hear Brandon now!?

http://www.vamortgagecenter.com/hero_vote.html

Please pass this on to all your friends and anyone else you know who wakes up in a free country!

keep voting! Every Day!

and have a very Merry Christmas!

2007-10-29T10:22:00.000-07:00

ACID BLUE

WARNING: INTENSE KNITTING AHEAD

Objective: To knit a black hat in the round with a four letter word in blue on the front.

Is Intarsia the proper technique to tackle this problem? NO... most obviously because the contrast color yarn would wind up on the wrong edge of the design after one round.

How could we employ two color knitting with floats without making the full circle with our contrast color?

I devised a strategy which uses my ambidextrous knitting technique and three strands of yarn.

This process is a little like rubbing your belly and patting your head while walking and chewing gum. No one element is that difficult- but together they may make quite a muddle. Thankfully it's not important to do all aspects at the same time and if you break it down there are specific events occurring all around the circle of your needles (making the long stretch of no design a little more interesting to knit even!)

First- a person really needs to know how to knit in both directions- we won't be flipping back and forth in and out and purling inside our tube of work. If someone would like to translate this ambidextrous technique for the purlers- please be my guest. But for today- we knit in both directions. Oh- and before I forget- I made this up- but that's not so say that it hasn't been done before- if you have seen this method elsewhere- I'd love to see how it's presented!

The Action of Knitting

We are going to pick a point in our unpatterned stockinette to have our "seam" now this seam will be virtually invisible, perhaps a slight stiffening of the material and minute distortion of the stitches- so if you are doing this on a sweater knit in the round- I'd put the seam on the side not down the middle of the back. It's not important where the seam is- just make it somewhere away from your pattern zone. Mark this point with a stitch marker.

You can see in the above illustration the break where we "bounce" off that stitch marker like a tether ball- we swing back and forth bouncing off that marker without ever crossing it with our knitting. (think of knitting as the verb- our action of making stitches)

OK Sarah- Won't that just make a flat piece of knitting? We have all made blankets on circular needles doing that.

Yep- you are right- it would - if we were only knitting with one piece of yarn... but I'm going use two pieces of yarn. Now in my sample hat here- I used two strands of the same black yarn- so the difference is invisible. But for the diagrams here I am showing red and gray yarns for contrast.

One strand is going to travel in a clockwise direction and the other will go counterclockwise.... throughout the whole process these pieces of yarn will be put down to rest and picked up again- but continue in the same direction they were originally headed.

Now here is the tricky part - at that seam marker- Say you are approaching the marker from the right side with the gray yarn... when you get to the marker- pick up the red yarn in your other hand- hold both strands good and tight as you knit the first couple of stitches because they will want to loosen up- but you change direction and begin knitting with red- backwards. This will bounce you back toward your design and you will find your contrast color waiting there for you where you left it- ready to be knit backwards across the design with floats. When your red yarn has made an almost full circle and you are now approaching your marker from the left- you pick up the gray yarn- hold tight- and reverse direction- knitting with gray now.

The crossings of these two strands are almost like shoelaces crossing and climbing- and they are almost invisible - little x's instead of the = of a typical purl bridge.

When you knit past your design- it's pretty self explanatory- your contrast yarn can go back and forth- almost as if you were knitting flat- while your background colors will interlace row by row and produce the background field (come to think of it- it might even be fun to do this with two colors of background yarn!) The only tricky thing I can think to add is that you should carry a small float past the end edge of your design (I've been going 3 stitches past the end) and then twist the contrast color around the working yarn to hold it in place for when it doubles back. If you don't float past your design- the design will not be motivated to spread out wide and might just crunch up on it's supporting floats- by tacking the contrast yarn out into the stability of the stockinette it's going to work out better - but it will produce a slightly quilted effect when put under heavy tension. You will also (this will make sense when you do it) need to twist the contrast yarn so that it goes smoothly upward toward the next row it will be worked in.

2007-10-29T06:15:00.000-07:00

Shooty aplenty

A fantastic visit last week from friends from Nebraska... they brought cameras (if you notice the outstanding jump in photo quality here), guns, ammo... and even empty Starbucks Double Shot Espresso cans. I got to try out all the guns and really enjoyed shooting this rifle with the scope. ... which actually allowed me the pleasure of hitting a target- over and over. (about 45 yards) One (surprise) can was still full of coffee and afforded a spectacular gusher when hit- wow!

The pistol grip shotgun here... although very fun to look at, I didn't enjoy quite as much shooting from the hip as the precision of that scope.

Yesterday John and I went out for a little more shooting practice and I got to try a single shot shotgun and a .22 revolver. Once again... eh... not liking a shotgun too much. The revolver was fun as all get out- and although I was very close to my targets (about 30 feet) I was able to get all six shots on the same board! -lol

Here's a look at some of that.
The boards were about 18 inches square and these scans- they are just a portion of that-

the larger circles are about 4 inches across.

2007-10-28T10:26:00.000-07:00

Win some / Lose some

Did you know that there is a holiday called "Sweetest Day"? I don't. I never heard of it before I moved to the midwest. I don't have a Hallmark store nearby that pushes the idea into my periforal guilt cortex. I don't feel that Valentine's Day is only half of the semianual celebration of romance. I mean... if you include a couple's anniversay and birthdays- that would make 5 love holidays a year... and comon folks... isn't every day a love holiday?

So I confess that in this duo- I am the schlepp who totally - without even a twinkle of recognition- misses this moment to dump a fivespot on a card. My husband, never defeated, persistently reminds me of the holiday with sweet, caring tender gifts and cards. This year, he bought me four very expensive tires for my truck... and then for the little box that makes every woman's heart race... there was an iPod nano. (which came free with the tires)

oh wait, I'm getting ahead of myself. STOP/EJECT REWIND ....

Last week I stumbled across a box of cassette tapes. It was a mix of tapes which belonged to John and I in the years before we were married to each other. Most home made tapes from friends, and due to our unusual musical tastes- some very underground stuff... Hoist from Philadelphia, Bucking Strap from Cincinnati, Theater of Hate from a show in Sweden, Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds, CCM of Pisa, Joan Jett live... lots of unmarked tapes too. I'd been recently lamenting the loss of music to my life, when it used to play a pretty big part. While the hip music scene has evolved to mp3 downloads, I'd been left behind. I dusted off this box of tapes and resolved to listen to them, and either mark or toss them...

Then, before I got to start on that project- I got the new iPod. I went to my mom's house to use her high speed connection to do some downloads. In the mean time, John came home to a cold empty house and was feeling under the weather. He lit a fire in the woodstove and went out to the garage to do a little work. When he came back in, he found the fire roaring and the CD/Cassette player and box of tapes beginning to melt to the top of the stove....

Did I say how much I LOVE my iPOd!?

If you have any suggestions of music you love to listen to on your iPod- for working out or just working ... I'm all ears! I have been enjoying KT Tunstall, Muse, No Doubt, Nickleback, Emmy Lou Harris... it's all over- try me!

2007-10-28T10:11:00.000-07:00

AMIDALA

(in purple costume)

2007-10-28T10:02:00.000-07:00

YODA

2007-09-25T13:33:00.000-07:00

UPDATE: Lost horses claimed!

The horses had a four day holiday at Great and Small Farm and were claimed on Sunday night... leaving on Monday fornoon. They came from just a few miles away at a homestead which lays on the other side of a creek from the road- so not visible as you drive by- which might explain why no one could say they had ever seen these animals before.

It turns out the beautiful horse belongs to the Chief of Police. Currently I do not know if he knows his horse was ever missing because this other guy was supposed to be taking care of him... perhaps the reason why the lost horses were not called in and reported to the Sheriff was because he was hoping that he'd find the animal before the chief of Police found out... !? (maybe I'm reading too much into it)

2007-09-21T21:01:00.002-07:00

Wild Horses.... not actual wild, or feral even... but currently lost... arrived at my farm sometime in the pre-dawn hours of the day. Causing a big commotion among our resident herd of four. A cute pair, I know they look like a mommy and baby, the big one is actually a he, and the little one is a pony. Spoke with several nearby horsemen, none of us recognize these animals. Call to the sheriff- no leads. (the sheriff has let me down in this way before- I once called in a different found horse, and the owner had called in a lost one... but the sheriff's office failed to make the connection that my found red mare with the white stocking was one and the same as the lost red mare with the white stocking)

Drought report- Horrible. Hay- scarce and expensive... and it's only September.

Every person I spoke with seemed delighted to suggest to me that these animals may have been purposely set free rather than to starve inside their pasture fence or face their fate in the market of horses being unloaded by all the people who can not afford to feed an animal twice it's market value in hay in a few months.

18 hours so far and no one has come looking.

2007-09-16T11:30:00.000-07:00

A beautiful gift!

A swift!

I received a wonderful gift the other day, from a person who may not have even understood fully what a truly wonderful and appreciated thing this is. She's never even seen my spinning wheel, so she had no way of knowing that it is the exact color as my spinning wheel. The wood turning looks as if it was even done by the same craftsman. And this... the weekend of the community wide yard-sale... To think that she could have set it out and instead she set it aside for me. It's a very small delicate piece with a stamp on the bottom which says "Made in Italy" The woman who gave it to me, Ida, hails from Brooklyn and is as Italian as they come. I hope to find that there might be a little bit more to the story behind it.

For those who are not familiar with the job of a swift... I am sure you have seen cartoons of a patient old man with his hands held out while the old wife is wrapping a ball of yarn... if she had a swift he could be out golfing. It allows you to wind or unwind a large hank of yarn (for example for dying) without it becoming a tangled mess.

2007-09-10T14:25:00.000-07:00

FIVE!

Wow the time sure flew by.

That little baby in my avatar is five.

(and yes, I'm wearing the same dress for our portrait)

We wrapped up a week long birthday celebration with a "Tinkerbell Tea"

Originally we'd planned to have it in a grape arbor outside, but due to my run of bad luck with thunderstorms and events I plan- after a summer long drought- we had a big storm 45 minutes before the party was to begin. The last time we had a good rain was way back in mid-July when I had planned a seminar to introduce people to AnySoldier. (There was even a thunderstorm at our outdoor wedding in 1995) Had I picked up on this trend sooner I might have planned something earlier in the summer and we'd have had rain when it could have helped! So the party was moved inside to Grandma's apartment.

Instead of floating around inside the leafy walls of grape vines of the arbor- the giant fern stood in as a Fairy environment and I think it worked out very well, combined with their little notes, the whole thing reminded me a lot of "the Chuckle Patch" from the Magic Garden (does anyone remember that show?) There were seven Fairy guests, and six little girls. (One special fairy is for a friend who could not attend) Each fairy had a note which told her name, her special talents and loves, who she was attending the party with and where we might find her in the future (in a tree overhead, dancing with autumn leaves, collecting raindrops from a rainbow... etc)

The fairies were a Dollar Store find- only a buck... but no wings. The winged porcelain dolls they did have were, frankly hideous... they looked more like trolls than fairies, so I got the ballerinas and took on the "figure out how the heck to make fairy wings" burden on myself.

Of course crafty readers I will tell you my solution: I got some iridescent crepe type fabric in a few shades and some white floral wire. I taped the floral wire to the fabric with wide packing tape and simply cut the wing outline- the upper wings are long and leaf shaped and the lower pair are smaller and rounder. The tape is clear- it prevents fraying and adds just a little stiffness. This will not hold up to regular play- but it should be fine for ornamental or decorative uses. I did wings and flowers for the seven fairies in under and hour. Composing their notes took a little more time.

One aspect of Birthday parties that always bums me out is that your precious birthday child inevitable turns bratty during the present opening scene- and all the other kids seem longingly left out. So we kept the presents to the family party and at the Tinkerbell Tea every girl got a gift. Each bag was tailored to her age and personality as well as her fairy's attributes (or was it the other way around?)

I was concerned that the bags may not have been perfectly fairly balanced in terms of whatever the heck it is that can make these things turn sour- but to my delight, each girl seemed to respond as if she had gotten the very best gift.

See ya (see ya!)
Hope you had a good good time...(na-na!)
Hope you have a good good morning, to ya
Hope we get to see ya again!
(Nah nah! Na-nana-na-nana-nah)

2007-09-02T10:21:00.000-07:00

Anyone who is a regular reader here will know that I am a big fan of amphibians. A three minute video of the American Toad Amplexus? Comon!? I know. Here... wait folks please... hear me out. This Frogman is not like the others... really... he's a MIME! Please... just six minutes of your time- I know you will laugh. (Stay through all the credits)

2007-09-02T09:54:00.000-07:00

***La farándula***

Parents caught out on the town: evidence posted on internet at MidwestLatino.com!

It was a great night for a martini and a cigar in downtown Cincinnati at the Havanna Martini Club. The giant band was smokin' and the dancers were hot stuff!

Are Salsa lessons in order?

2007-08-16T04:20:00.002-07:00

My "Before" "Crying in the parking lot" and "Mustering up a smile" pictures.

I don't know if anyone really cares about the drama of me getting my hair cut. But here is the result... it's much shorter, and lighter in weight and color. Now that I'm home I should thank the sweet stylist named Rayanne (pronounced Ryan) who did the most gentle job with the foils and gave me a haircut that is "ponytail" friendly and probably won't look like hell with two inches of roots.

Never mind all that, I did literally leave the salon in tears because it was the cap on: "Let's highlight Sarah's inability to communicate or be heard by anyone" day. My hair is not anywhere near red or red highlights, and I don't seem to have any bangs to hide the deepening frown lines which now make my face look like I'm in pain all the time... and on top of all that, I didn't even get a blow dry. I actually came into the salon with pictures, so how I managed to not be clear enough is beyond me.

I guess she did find the line I was looking for when I said, I want to go from Christian Fundamentalist long, to sexy long. It's a nice haircut... it's just not quite the makeover I'd hoped for.

2007-08-12T14:15:00.000-07:00

Update on the poultry-eating frogs: It's horrifyingly true! Yesterday my son's attention was drawn to the pond by our red hen flapping her wings wildly- when he got there he discovered her distress over one of her new chicks out in the water as if drowning. Before he could get something to scoop it out- a frog surfaced and finished what he'd started and dragged the chick under.

So it seems that the frogs are now making like crocodiles at an African watering hole! - going after the little animals who come down to drink.

The duckling update is that we are down to just one, the other succumbing to the affection of baby Angus. The remaining duckling, M&M, is growing fast and will soon have to find his place in the barnyard pecking order. He carries a name which is a little tougher than a little duckie deserves but when Fiona named him after her favorite candy, she didn't know it was also a rapper. A candy wrapper.

The other news is that I did pass the quality control check for producing the retrofitted shorts for "Sew Much Comfort" I received a package with all the supplies I need to make SIX new pairs of stylin' basketball shorts. That will be a lot of very satisfying work which I am going to get started on.... right now!

I had a birthday last week and I'm going to treat myself to a new hairstyle. Maybe next week I can post before and after pictures!

2007-07-23T20:16:00.001-07:00

Last week we had four little blue swedish ducklings hatch naturally under their mother. Unfortunatly we lost two of them in two days- probably to the big bullfrogs (yes- a bullfrog can eat a newborn duckling!) So I had to make the sad decision to take the babies away from their mother and hand raise them at least until they were too big for a frog to swallow. So now, much to the delight of baby Angus, we have ducklings in the bathroom.

Ducklings love to eat their greens and you can put some fresh picked clover along with some water in the blender for a second, or snip up some fresh spinach with scissors, dandelion greens are great too... drop the greens in fresh water and the babies will dabble it up happily.

Fiona shows off the babies and her new "I did it myself" haircut.

We did a cute litte duckling craft. I smeared some washable children's paint in the bottom of the bathtub between some sheets of typing paper and let the little ducks track it all over- the little pit pat of their feet was so sweet, and their tracks made very cute stationary. The art in the project came in knowing when to remove the ducklings before they left any extras.

2007-07-04T12:08:00.000-07:00

Patriot Indiana

July 4, 2007

Patriot Indiana is the only town in the Untied States named Patriot. It's a quiet river town in an oxbow of the Ohio river far from the nearest highway or bridge. Population in the 2000 census was 202. Despite the small size, Patriot has a big heart and puts on the best fourth of July parade they can muster which consists mostly of all the firetrucks, the ATV riders and some horsemen.

Today I decided to take my camera along so I could take some photos to make a CD to send to servicemen overseas. I wanted to share a little piece of our country with them and let them know how much we value our freedom.

It is really an amazing thing to watch the smiles light up when I told people what I was doing. I have never had an experience like this as a photographer- but the people just were so open and full of pride and love. I know my pictures are not technically perfect, it's just a little Cannon PowerShot... but I think the love these people have for our troops surely shines through all my exposure problems.

After the parade was over there was a dedication ceremony of a memorial park in town. The park consists of a gazebo, two memorial stones, the old school bell and many flagpoles which fly the flags of each branch of the armed services. The American flag on the center pole was raised by an Iraq veteran from Patriot (in the foreground in the gray shirt) who brought the flag home and presented it to his hometown two years ago.

I 'm just posting a few select photos here, the rest can be found in an Album on Flickr.

It was an honor to meet this gentleman, Russell Fitzgerald, a veteran of WWII. When I asked if I might take his photo to send to our soldiers stationed overseas, he removed his hat and nodded. He arrived in the theater in North Africa and then fought in Italy and France. I told him that I had lived in Italy and the Italian people still deeply love Americans for what you guys did.

2007-06-16T19:47:00.000-07:00

I recently found out about an effort that I think is very important and special. It's called Sew Much Comfort and you can learn more about what they do on their website. Briefly- volunteer seamstresses retrofit and custom make adaptive clothing for soldiers who have been wounded. Store bought boxer shorts, T-shirts, basketball shorts- are all reworked so that they have velcro and snap openings on one side or both to make it easier to get dressed over braces, casts or halos. They also make pants with larger legs and a velcro side opening to accommodate a brace. These specialty garments are in high demand and not only are functional- the feeling of wearing real clothes and not a hospital gown is a big morale boost.

This first set I did has been sent off for quality control - hopefully I did good with these, their instructions are very specific about how it needs to be done. Hopefully then the regional director will have some advice for me how to manage the tax deductible donations end of getting new garments to retrofit. I'd like to make more of these basketball shorts, they say they are the item in highest demand because they are the most expensive item to purchase. These shorts were only $7 on sale... I don't think that's too bad.

2007-06-12T07:53:00.000-07:00

A Meme from Joyce

#1 Is it about the finished item or about the process of knitting? Some of both? Has your focus changed one direction or the other over time?

For me it's a little of both. I think I used to be much more product oriented, but now I get much more satisfaction during knitting that it balances out. When I finally get the satisfaction of having finished a project, seeing it complete- I want to take a little break from knitting and then jump right in to the next thing.

#2 How do you view mistakes? Do you think they give your project character? Is it important to have one, as my Aunt says, because only God is perfect? Or would you rip all the way back to row 5 of your husband's finished sweater knit on size 3 needles to eradicate a mistake no one else would notice?

I enjoy fixing mistakes, but ripping out is hardly ever a reasonable solution. I usually catch mistakes soon after making them. I love doing difficult laddering fixes, like if a cable was twisted the wrong way. I also enjoy fixing mistakes for other people. It's fun to save the day. I don't fix mistakes because I'm a perfectionist- I fix them because I can, and because I get as much pleasure from fixing a mistake as I do from knitting- so why miss an opportunity? .... a question like the one you posed- rip back to row 3 of a finished sweater? No I would never do that... but I might actually cut the yarn back at the mistake- pick out the mistake and use a piece of scrap yarn to graft a seamless perfect patch in that spot.

#3 Would you rather knit a project that is comfortable for your skill level, or do you prefer a challenge that requires you to figure out new things?

I love a challenge. I enjoy the thinking and the rewards. I feel annoyed when I encounter people who are afraid to try new things in crafts- knitting, fiber arts- are such a low risk activity- there is nothing to lose in failing- so why not at least shoot high for succeeding!?

#4 What is something you really want to make but haven't yet? What holds you back? Is it money, skill level, time, fear of the unknown or something else?

I would like to make a blanket that I saw in the Knitter's Almanac. It's a blanket of mitered squares which are grafted together to produce a magical effect she claims looks of having been knit from all directions at once. Her blanket is of one solid color- but I would like to try a variation on this with color.

First I would knit one mitered square so that I could measure the length of yarn needed to do it. Then I would create 12 individual pieces of slow shading yarn. (for a 3x4 block blanket, or 20 for a 4x5) Now you might be asking yourself- what is the point of grafting the squares seamlessly if they are going to be different colors? Well- I dream that the finished blanket would be rainbow tones- and the blocks would be two color families- a warm set and a cool set- but both sets would finish with a common color.

For example- one set would be *green blue purple red* and the other set would be *yellow orange red* So all the squares would have red edges and when grafted the red would actually produce a grid effect. I think the shading between warms and cools as well as the angles and perpendiculars would be pretty. I can't decide if I'd like to spin dyed roving or dye spun yarn- but I am fascinated by the idea of an individaul strand that is created to play a specific role in a piece of knitting. ...imagining the project shoe-box containing 12 wound cakes of colorful yarn radiating color out from their cores, arranged in a little miniature plump grid version of the blanket they will be extrapolated into...

2007-06-10T17:51:00.000-07:00

Denali Dawn

I once lived for a brief time in a landscape with a mountain which rose above the treeline. It was in Austria and the Mountain was Otcher. One thing that was so striking about the mountain was that sunrise came so much sooner to the mountain that to the rolling farmlands in the valley. There was a brilliance and magic to see the beautiful colors reflected on the glaciers, to think of the silence and wind, the proximity to heaven.

It's been a while since I have posted any knitting, I've been working on this gift for a baby who is going to be born in Alaska this summer. This is the Jojoland yarn I purchased back in March. The colors of the yarn reminded me so much of the beautiful sunrises I've seen on mountains, I have named this one of a kind design "Denali Dawn" For a real picture of a the morning sun catching Mt. McKinley, check here. The beads are Czech glass and were all strung before knitting. there are even a few beads up at the "tiara zone" of the hood. What's an arctic princess to do!?

I used many of my favorite stitches in this sweater, the beaded smocking I learned doing "Crumpets" The lower edges are seed stitch to prevent rolling, the sleeves are very elastic mistake rib, the sides are seed stitch, there is a lot of braided cable, some calculated decreasing in ribbing to make the yoke, some calculated increasing to shape the hood, a tiny bit of linen stitch and lots of picking up stitches so there are no seams.
From the side view you can see that the cable runs from the wrist right up the outside of the arm- the textured pattern of the yoke is interrupted for the cable, which aside from changing color at the top edge of the yoke, goes on uninterrupted over the shoulder, and up into the hood until at the very end- the two sides of cable are grafted together.

This close up of the back of the hood shows that the shoulder caps (peach) were actually shaped with lightly increasing short rows (bouncing back and forth picking up stitches off the blue yoke edge) to the neck- at that point the hood is knit as if it were a flat piece with either edge forming the hood sides which will frame the baby's face. I this knitting on little double pointed needles. I don't have a circular needle that small. Unfortunately one needle was a little bigger than the others and it did mess up my stitch tension some.

As I shaped the hood I had to have a lot of faith that the shape was going to come together- I had the work split onto 3 DPN's One in the center and one on each side with the cheek and cable. When I finally had enough rise in the hood and it was time to begin shaping the top- I reduced the stitches on the middle needle by 50% by K2tog. My plan was to nibble away at the remaining 50% by decreasing on each side at every other row. I knew that this would produce a triangular shape to the top center and I wanted one that was more round- so I decided to use the linen stitch for that triangle- because the linen stitch does not grow lengthwise at the same rate as stockinette- I thought it would bide me some time till I got all my stitches decreased. it worked... up at the very peak of the triangle- I simply quit knitting the linen section all together and slipped 6 which helped me round off that peak.

Then there was a matter of a big graft through the cable- but it was long awaited and enjoyed.

I wanted to add an underlayer to the gift- but could not find any jammies in the right shade of salmon pink to go with the sweater- (I was shipping with the sweater and all the needles hanging out of my bag) Finally I remembered this beautiful dye kit that I have been too chicken to try and I thought there was a light purple in it... so I bought some white onsies and white romper pants and dyed them "Wysteria" What a great match! Lucky me! I also made the little skirt- it's yellow chiffon with the prettiest tundra flower trim (the ribbon flowers are yellow warp with a purple weft poking out the edges in little spikes) Under the chiffon is a salmon pink petticoat with a white ruffle.

This whole project has been so much fun!

2007-05-16T12:42:00.001-07:00

I have added some videos of some of my favorite animals from spring. These videos are not intended to be funny or exciting, they are quiet segments of real life.

Purple martins building nests and interacting as a strong community. At the start of the video you can hear the horn of a barge at the lock on the Ohio river miles away!

The bullfrog video was shot in the dark, so although the frogs are there, you won't see them. At about the 55 second point the chorus starts to get very intense, and then a rest, and another verse or two. They seem to build on a song and repeat the same patterns over and over. Turn up the volume. A biologist was once at our farm and could recognise the voices of six types of frogs. I would like to know all the voices too.

Never confuse frogs and toads again- this video records the high pitch song of a two day breeding frenzy of American Toads.

The chicks from this video are now Robin sized birds with feathers, but they still stick close to mother and all 10 are still alive. The weekend the toads are breeding their call is inescapable!

Speck shows his moves!

2007-05-10T16:10:00.000-07:00

I have to do some extreme sewing this week and then it'll be dress rehearsal dance recital hell...ehh... practice week. Every afternoon- all afternoon with all three kids on "behavior pointe" in the windowless cinder block cell block cafeteria of the Rising Sun "school is on lockdown can't go in and out for walks in the sunshine"... the only thing sunny about that place is the name. My son is in two skits and there were no male costume offerings to suit the themes- so I'm on the spot. That's ok- I can handle it as long as I can keep everyone's hands off the brilliant white sailor shirt pieces at least until it's made.

Poor dance teacher- there has been a costuming disaster this year- the company who had her costume order appears to have taken the money and run. They are not returning her calls and she hears that hundreds of other dance schools are in the same boat- so at the last minute she had to contact another company and order ready made ready to go costumes... and wouldn't you know it- of the costume options- the only costumes (for all the skits) which they had left in stock were the blue. Usually a lot of interest is built into the mediocre dancing (did I just say that?)with an exciting variety of costumes... but the kids will almost all be dressed in some shade of blue, and dancing in front of a beautifully painted backdrop from last year of... a blue (sunless)sky. The stage at the middle school does not have any sort of lighting and it's lit with the most morose green cast fluorescent school lights. There are two lighting options- bright and dim. There is a chance that some lights may be imported- I pray. When the replacement costumes arrive- they will have to be fitted at the very last minute. I think I might offer to help with that- but I will need my mom's backup to keep the kids.

Well, here it is, the sailor shirt finished. (from scratch, no pattern!)

The dance is a really nice tap routine, a salute to our armed services. I had to make the eagle on the patch up using just regular old zig zag on my machine- I don't have any sort of fancy embroidery program. I think it came out good enough for a stage... with dim fluorescent lights. Next up- The African Safari Jazz Cheetah!

2007-05-09T17:04:00.000-07:00

Our pond is a nice size- and it grows a nice size bullfrog- that's for sure. When I was a kid we used to catch frogs and tadpoles tag team style in this swampy little shallow wetland creeks in New Jersey- back with the rotting oak leaves and skunk cabbage. Well- catching frogs here on the farm is not so easy when one hop delivers them to a sure escape in the deep bottom of the pond.

Country folks talk big about frog gigging- in fact our neighbor has apparently been listening to his dinner sing to him from our pond and today asked John if he could have some of our frogs, he said they sound real big... hah- don't we know it! Would you believe they even sell frog legs at Walmart? Do they sell frog legs at everyone's Walmart? I have yet to taste- or see anyone else eat a frog leg though, and I'll be fine if I never do.

Which brings me to our funny story today. The three kids and I were out on the pond in our canoe ...really- the pond is not THAT big.... but it's fun to paddle all around it and see the frogs in their hiding places and visit the red wing blackbirds in the cattails building their nests. I let the canoe drift right up to the shore and we cornered a really big frog- I was just thinking that we just might be able to reach out and catch him when - BONK- he jumped right into the canoe with us. He hopped around a few times from end to end and of course we all had some tippy canoe frog freaky giggling catch 'em if you can hilarity- and eventually I got my hand on him and we took him in and took his picture just so people would have to believe us when we tell them that we have some really big frogs here.

2007-04-19T05:06:00.000-07:00

The little red hen has hatched ten beautiful chicks. Five are dark and five are light with stripes. She hid her nest in a back corner on the floor of the goat shed to keep those eggs from being collected for breakfast. A smart choice on her part, away from dogs and other predators. Unforeseen, was the recent cold snap which brought six freezing cold freshly sheared goats cramming into the shed to keep warm. Somehow this brave girl kept her eggs safe from all the trampling feet and kept up the incubation through several nights of sub freezing weather. A marvelous accomplishment!

2007-04-10T07:47:00.000-07:00

In our local Amish community, their church rule is to not hang paintings or photographs on the wall. It is not disallowed though to have decorative useful objects in the home. So as a way of getting around the first rule, not of of rebellion of course, but just following the natural human desire for ornament- any item which could be hung on a wall (including the shelf itself) or placed on that shelf, like a clock, calendar, canister set or set of drinking glasses- will usually be chosen or painted for it's inevitable decorative value in the home.

A baby boy was born to some friends of mine who had moved far away. The baby's uncle who still lives locally contacted me and asked if I might paint a hunting scene on a gun-stock as a gift for the baby. He said that he has many nieces and nephews, but that baby John was the first of them to be named for him and he was so proud that he wanted to spoil the baby. I agreed to do the job, but was a little confused over how to proceed. There is not much precedent for hand painted gun-stocks and I didn't know how I would be able to protect my artists paints without changing the finish already on the stock. It presented a technical problem. The more I thought about it, the more I thought that wood burning was a more appropriate style for a gun and would not need any clear coat or change the finish on the wood.

I did this scene and inscribed the back and delivered the gun last night. Uncle John was thrilled and I was relieved that he was happy with the wood burning. He told me that actually he had wanted it wood burned but didn't know anyone who did that, so he just asked me to paint it.

2007-04-07T11:42:00.000-07:00

Recently I posted a picture of my father and I at the Parthenon. I have lots of stories from that trip to Greece during the orthodox Easter in 1982. There were many sights we were able to enjoy directly related to the Holy Day, for example riding a train through villages and urban neighborhoods and virtually every home had a spitted lamb on an open fire in the yard. One night we had a view from roof of the hotel- of the beautiful nighttime parade of lights...worshipers descending the zig-zagging footpath of the Acropolis, carrying candles from the midnight service at the Parthenon to take home. Later, a flush of car traffic coming through the downtown streets, each car with a candle visible inside.

We had not anticipated that our trip was going to occur during their holy week because we had already celebrated Easter. Unfamiliar with the Greek Orthodox tradition we were not prepared for tourism snafus, like museums being closed or trains being canceled. Should I mention that our journey began with a missed flight due to my mother's inability to ever master the 24 hour clock in Austria? The resulting train adventure (without proper visas or provisions) through Hungary and Yugoslavia will get it's own page one day.

While in Greece we rented a car and made several day trips, one time driving to Epidaurus to see the famous Amphitheater from the 4th century. Unfortunately we arrived to closed and locked gates. The guard on duty made it clear that the site was closed for the Holy day. My mother said, using her only Greek,"Christos Anesti." (Christ is risen) to which the guard replied, "Alithos Anesti!" (He is risen indeed!") and he unlocked the gates for us. We had the entire Amphitheater to ourselves. It is true what they say about the acoustics, you could hear a person's foot shuffle in the gravel from the floor all the way up to the top. My father set up his camera on a tripod and took a giant panoramic scene in about seven shots. Here's one I found online- same ancient wonder- minus the gangly twelve year old from my father's series.
Panoramic view of the theater

This website has more pictures and information about the Greek Easter, she reminds me with her mention of wildflowers how green and lush Greece was at that time of year. It was also the first and only time I ever saw a field of poppies.

Here in Indiana, we enjoyed a puppet show at the historic Hoosier Theater put on by the Frisch Marrionette Company. Afterwards was the town egg hunt on the courthouse lawn. Our pretty spring weather had a shocking recoil the past few days, we had snow yesterday and freezing temps today. The winter coats, not blossoms are more indicative of the day's weather. The children were sorted into age groups and John took baby Angus to his first egg scramble. From across the lawn I tried to get a shot of my guys... and... is that really?... the Easter Bunny giving Angus a pair of bunny ears? (there is a person in a giant white rabbit suit on the other side of the fence)

Much to John's delight, in his first egg scramble- baby Angus displayed perfect gathering form...

Other fathers apparently were not as happy with their child's performance. This is a view of the four year old section... odd balance of girls, I hope that this does not present a problem in years to come. My Fiona is in this picture, she's the one in pink and blue.

Happy Easter everyone... all around the world- no matter how you celebrate.

For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son,

that whosoever believeth in him should not perish,

but have everlasting life.

John 3:16

2007-03-04T17:59:00.000-08:00

Happier than two girls in a yarn store- with eight kids between us, we two knitting moms were happy to get out without any kids and enjoy a little afternoon out in Northern Kentucky! Here we are at Knit-on in Bellview Kentucky on the Ohio River. I picked out a soft wool fingering weight yarn in pastel baby tones. Jojoland "Melody"

On a completely unrelated note, I used to hate shopping for jeans- trying them on was such a chore- now with three kids- it's an impossibility. So I got up the courage to just order some jeans online from Old Navy. The jeans came in record time and are a perfect fit- what a treat to be able to order the "longs" because the stores never carry longs in sizes larger than 5 (it's like they think that tall women are not really larger people- they are simply short women stretched like silly putty) I'd be thrilled if it weren't for the dumb pockets... what's up with this?

Why BOTHER!? This is a pair of John's standard Levis next to my new Old Navy Jeans. The amount of seaming, rivets and craftsmanship that went into constructing these pockets are identical- what missing is about 1 or 2 cents worth of cotton muslin. For the life of me I can't figure it out... is it because pockets inside your pants might actually show up as an outline on your thigh when you wear your jeans super tight?

2007-02-16T05:23:00.000-08:00

This storm came through in so many bands, I'm sure that everyone will have different types of photos from how the precip came down before Valentine's day. For us it was mostly ice, and thankfully the ice has not damaged many trees, just decorated them with a beautiful crystal glaze.

Broadus took this picture of the willow. His photography is really improving. For a while he struggled to hold the camera steady while pressing the shutter, he seems to have mastered that. He accidentally got his wet glove on the lens- which added some foggy mystery to the willow shot.

The thorny multiflora brambles were disarmed.

Hammock strings.

2007-02-07T13:26:00.000-08:00

A new hat for the baby. This design came from the "Knitter's Dozen" book. It's the Fini Blues pattern, which is shown in Brown and white in the book. I altered the pattern just a little because there were a few rows with huge floats that I didn't think would work for a baby. I really love the fancy braid break between the top and bottom of the hat. I am mulling over adding ear flaps to keep Angus from pulling the hat off- but so far, if I let him forget about the hat- he can be distracted with much more fun pursuits like kissing his cute little reflection.

2007-01-24T18:47:00.000-08:00

Violinist

Astronomer

Photographer

Graphic Designer

Marathon Runner

Electrician

Child of God

2007-01-18T11:05:00.000-08:00

Last week's steady rain is resulting in a slow rising Ohio river. Expected to crest at about 48 feet sometime tomorrow below the official flood stage... but well after it has swallowed our familiar riverfront park.

"Why does it only flood in Indiana?" my son asked.

"I assure you the river rises on both sides equally," I told him, "It's just that here- the banks on the Kentucky side are so steep, and we are on the flood plain, so we see more water here- but as you follow the river the floodplains switch sides."

This conversation gave me the opportunity to explain about the river's oxbows and how fertile floodplains are formed. I wanted to follow up our discussion with a good look at the elevations on a topographic map. Unfortunately I was not able to find a free map of the Ohio River basin, so we looked at the Aeriel photo on Google maps. The Aeriel photographs revealed much more than I expected because the patchwork of the farm fields of the floodplain stood in sharp contrast to the wooded hills with clefts of creeks which almost inevitably lay directly opposite.

The farmland lays on the inside of the curve of each oxbow. I found great beauty in the intricate levels of texture, color, land, water, straight and curvilinear, flat and jagged - all displayed like a rich textile, evidence of an ancient flow that carves and deposits the river silt. As we traced our way down the river from our town to Louisville- my son noticed a few dart shaped islands and I mentioned that sometimes in a slightly different situation, the curves of an oxbow become so exaggerated that they touch- cutting off an island and allowing the river to follow a new path. Just a little further on our aerial river trek we saw an amazing figure in the landscape- just across the river from Alton Indiana, can you see it?

If the path of the Ohio River interests you, I recommend this historical novel which is based on a true story which played out locally right along this river and along the backwaters. "Follow the River" By James Alexander Thom. It's the story of Mary Ingalls who was kidnapped from Virginia by Shawnee in 1755, escaped at Big Bone Lick Kentucky and was guided and tormented by the Ohio River as she used it to find her way home through the wilderness. Another suggestion if you like Historical Novels is "The Frontiersman" by Alan Eckert which details the life of Simon Kenton.

2007-01-16T10:18:00.000-08:00

My AnySoldier Valentine

I don't have my camera with me today- so excuse the poor scan of my own little gourd valentine. The scan couldn't get it all sharp because of the convex surface. It's woodburned with a light stain of red and blue color. It says "American Hero" and I really like the lettering because it reminds me of the Declaration of Independence. It's about 4 inches across.

It's still January- but I was thinking about Valentine's Day. Valentine's Day in the service specifically. I thought how hard it must be to keep connections with your loved ones when you are so far away and the everyday grind must be so difficult. Since I learned about Anysoldier.com I have been trying to send care packages, postcards and letters of support when I can, and I encourage everyone else to do so as well.

The most recent package I made up consists of a Valentine's craft project. I cut some heart shaped blanks from some hardshell gourds using a craftsman mini tool. The convex surface of the gourd makes a very pleasing curved shape that really gives each one a unique appearance. There is one group of soldiers I know of who have a woodburning tool, so I am just going to send them the gourd blanks. The package going to Ramadi is also going to have some purple and pink satin ribbon- some dimensional fabric paint- sandpaper, and some tiny self stick paper roses (I figure that they will want to pretty up the valentines they send home) It's probably not much, but I hope that spending a few hours crafting a little trinket like this will help lighten the heart of some dad to think of the smile on his little girl's face when she gets it.

If doing something like this interests you, please go the the AnySoldier website and spend some time reading the updates from overseas. You will quickly get a feel for the types of things that the troops are in need of... but beyond snack-food and hygiene supplies- what they need the most is the knowledge that they are loved, supported, remembered and appreciated by those of us at home. The postage on a letter or package is the same as sending a letter to the next town over. You can put your support on a bumper sticker... but you can also put it in a package and send it to them directly.

2007-01-15T07:14:00.000-08:00

Flying Chance won his race last week by so far he looks like he is all alone in this racetrack finish line photo. We were invited up to the track by his owner to enjoy a pre-race barbecue and a night out at the track. Boy did this horse deliver! Afterwards we went down to get in the picture at the winner's circle- John and I are in the back row standing next to the guy with the beard.

2007-01-10T09:57:00.000-08:00

I finished the socks last week with little to no fanfare. I’m really not happy with them. I guess the gauge is too loose because they are not warm and they feel rough to stand on, like net. I used size twos as suggested on the ball band- but I think from now on I am going to knit all my socks with incredibly tight gauge.

Beyond the breezy texture of the knitting, the pooling really threw me for a loop. I thought it was fun on the first sock and anticipated more of the same for the second sock. Unfortunately the second ball of yarn had a very different pattern randomly developing in the colored plies and the large sections of solid red simply weren’t there. The second sock did wind up with a pooled pattern but it was very subtle- there are bands of marled rows alternating with bands of solid color rows red and purple. Because I planned to wear these with clogs- I switched back to my remaining first ball for the heel and ankle to at least get a little cohesion- so this is the end result.

As I lost enthusiasm for the socks I realized that this wonderful yarn had just been misapplied in the project and I decided to try it out on the Diamond Head hat pattern by David Xenakis from the “Knitter’s Dozen” hats book.

Sure enough the nature of the yarn really shines when knit into tiny facets of this diamond design. Can you believe this is the same yarn as the socks!?

It is a very fiddly project and there are so many ends to weave. As I worked on it I kept thinking that a person with forethought could avoid most of the end weaving if they began the project with seven bobbins of yarn and didn’t break the yarn at the tip of each diamond… well… next time, if there ever is a next time. This design seems more reasonable for crochet than knitting but I am enjoying it… let’s see if I can still say that after I weave in all the ends!

This pattern was written and charted for people who would turn the work- since no row was longer than 22 stitches I used an unconventional (although not unheard of) method of knitting without turning. I made two little videos to demonstrate.

In this video I knit short rows without turning the work over by alternating between knitting english and continental style with the yarn always held in my right hand.

In this video I knit in the continental style without turning, this time I change yarn hands when I change directions.

2006-12-31T16:40:00.000-08:00

Guess what I forgot to do when I turned the heel. That's right, forgot to add that nifty little reinforcing thread.

As for the pooling, I kept thinking I was going to have an increased number of stitches at the turn- forgetting that the short row geometry adds distance without adding stitch numbers.

And look at that, the pooling didn't shatter- it just keeps spiraling around until, mysteriously it decided to switch direction up here near the top of the leg.

I am a little bit concerned about getting a real soft stretchy bind off. I think I will try the "Russian Bind Off" which I found on in this very informative listing of Laurie B's Toes and Heels.

2006-12-30T08:59:00.000-08:00

This yarn is starting to pool a bit as the foot takes shape. This is not a self striping yarn- the patterns are coming from a very shallow angle of stacked color. The pure red sections of the yarn are only about 7 inches long. I don't mind the pooling at this point- but I imagine that when I get to the heel and the leg this striped effect will be broken up into a homogeneous mix. I think if I was doing a sock pattern which had a knit texture- I might be annoyed by the dominant pooling effect.

2006-12-29T12:58:00.000-08:00

I gave a friend some sock yarn for Christmas (and bought myself some too!) The sales girl assured me that one large ball of the gift yarn would complete a pair of socks. I feel a little wary and didn't want my friend to have any more sock knitting frustrations (I won't elaborate... but let's just say that she deserves to have a nice trouble free knit by now) So upon gifting I suggested that we use her scale and my ball winder to split the ball in half and she knit the socks from the toe up till she runs out of yarn. She's game- but neither of us have done toe up socks- so it will be a learning experience for the two of us.

Beth, from Crafty Canines Stuck on Socks suggested that I try the classic toe up pattern from Wendy Johnson. Last night I tried my first provisional cast on and it was pretty fun to unzip that cast on chain. I'm still not the most secure short row knitter, but the miters of the toe seem to have fallen into place and the foot is getting right going now. I had to rework my stitch counts a little because I'm only getting 6 stitches to an inch on these size 2 needles.

The yarn is Lang Yarns "Ja Woll" and it came with a nifty little spool of single play thread... duh... I was thinking it was for finishing, forgetting that socks really don't have finishing- so why would they have that in the package!? Silly me- it's a strand of reinforcing thread, and I didn't figure that out till just now- so I guess one toe is not going to have reinforcing- but both heels will.

There is some really bright news on the farm- our hens have started laying again. It was so hard to even use store bought eggs when we are so spoiled on farm eggs. The baby managed to get on the table today and knock a few fresh eggs together- since they were cracked already I thought I'd open them onto a plate and show a color comparison between two of our eggs and an egg from a factory farm. Not only are these farm eggs coming from happy pastured poultry, providing a much more beautiful food - they are lower in calories, lower in the bad cholesterol and higher in omega 3 fatty acids than eggs from battery hens. If the visible evidence right on this plate here is not enough - read this great article from Mother Earth News. Here is a chart which shows the nutrients of eggs compared- so why does the American Egg Board say that “The nutrient content of eggs is not affected by whether hens are raised free-range or in floor or cage operations."

2006-12-26T11:34:00.000-08:00

Here is the picture which almost didn't happen. In the first week of December I took the baby to the doctor for his one year well baby check. The baby is thriving and healthy, but I was fighting a mean sinus infection. We joined John for lunch and then took him back to work.

I sat for several minutes in the mall parking lot and tried to muster the courage to get all three kids out of the truck and into the core of the mall for a photo and visit with Santa. I could barely breathe and the thought of the task was almost too much- but I pulled it together and decided that there are some things you just have to do- so we went for it... only to be turned away from the back of the long line because Santa was going to lunch. This event seemed to set the tone for the rest of the month of December.

Near the end of the month John suggested that we give it one more try and he would meet me after work and provide the moral support and whatever else it took to get these kids onto Santa's lap. I didn't manage to get out of the house on time, so John had to kill an hour waiting for us before we all went into the mall together. This time when we got to the amazingly short line to see Santa- we were greeted by a lady with a clipboard and an imposing tower of stacking beepers. What a brilliant merchandising concept- allow people to wander around the mall shopping rather than spend time not shopping on the Santa line. Only thing was, the "wait" was an unusually round number- two hours. Hmmm.... who came up with this one? Poor John, to think he had just spent the past hour waiting for us in the parking lot.

We got to test out the new food court, complete with it's uncleanable glass tabletops, lousy acoustics, strangely malfunctioning modern toileting systems and creepy claustrophobic safe room style nursing closet. (I think we will have to revisit this allocated nursing room topic again.)

At least when we finally got to visit Santa, Angus didn't cry, he was very interested in looking at Santa and they could barely get him to break his focus to look around at the camera.

2006-12-25T18:34:00.000-08:00

This curtain was my Christmas gift to Fiona. It's about $50 worth of materials and 6 hours of labor, I got the fabrics on sale- and I'm very happy with the finished result, much nicer than any of the other "indoor play tent" arrangements I have seen in catalogs. It was a trick to tailor it because I had to factor for the slope of the ceiling when I did the scallops up at the top. I also was doing all the work in secret and away from our home... so that was the biggest hurdle. Big thanks go out to my friends who helped with babysitting! Does anyone know if there is a proper name for this type of curtain/headboard arrangement?

2006-12-16T20:22:00.000-08:00

I try so hard to keep my blog positive that the setbacks of late have left me with a bad case of writer's block. I can't figure a way past this hurdle other than stright over it and I'll be damned if I am going to let the problems of jobs poorly started take the blog out as well- so here goes. It turns out that the contractor we were working with was no good on many levels. Beyond that discovery, we lost our weather or hope of finding anyone else who could do a proper job, what needs to be done - it simply isn't possible to do what needs to happen in freezing or unpredictable weather. We had to face the facts that this job was not going to get done this year, so we wrapped it up... literally.

I hope my friends understand that my Holiday Greeting is not a joke about Jesus, it's a joke on me... because I had really hoped on decorating the cabin with some classic porch lights and a wreath on the door with white candles in the new windows... you can close your eyes and imagine it for me can't you?

Oh, and while you have your eyes closed, you may want to keep them closed and not scroll further if you don't want to see a picture of me skinning a deer. This deer was a gift from John's boss. We skinned it and quartered it at his hunting farm in Kentucky. After we brought it home John did all the hard work of the finish butchering in the kitchen while I went out shopping. We haven't had steaks for a while and boy the were delicious- John is really quite a chef!

2006-11-16T11:35:00.000-08:00

Also discovered in the mantle was this small metal object. It appears to be brass and has two sets of lines scribed around it. It is shaped very much like a pen nib, but the metal is very heavy and it's much larger than any nib I have seen.There is no split at the tip to allow ink to flow. Any ideas as to what it might be?

2006-11-16T02:27:00.000-08:00

The mantle comes off.

Here is a detail of the mystery sticks... knitting?

This is the Warner's Safe Yeast ad from the flipside.

Log joists under the house.

2006-11-15T19:35:00.000-08:00

Today was heavy steady rain so the outside progress on the chimney was held up a little, but John had taken the day off work and was going to make the most of it. The guys just moved inside and made some amazing progress on the interior fireplace. There was a layer of brick which was laid right on top of the floor- that and the old mantle were removed- and a hole cut in the floor so that we could pour a proper slab for a hearth- and when we finish the hearth- it will be level with the floor- opening up a lot more options for that floor space. Cutting a hole in the floor gave us a great view of the joists under the cabin which look to be in great condition.

In the process of removing the mantle, John found some crumbly brown paper which he quickly passed off to me and got back to business. One little booklet was folded in thirds and the paper is very damaged from... (what eats away old paper? termites?) The booklet is stapled along the binding and I am afraid to open it and break all the pages. ...part of it I can read a list of maladies... some other scraps of paper he handed me actually fit in the same image, a beautiful although only partial, full color image of a ...(play twilight zone theme here)... a mother, by a fireplace... with her baby learning to walk!

Here are the three pieces, details in the scene: herbs hanging above the fireplace, a gun over the mantle, hat and coat hung on the wall, a cup and cream pitcher on the table and a third figure seated at the table, this figure appears to be wearing a white ruffled bonnet visible right at the edge of the window frame. There are three thin sticks on the table which I can not identify... but I think they might be knitting needles!!

On the flipside of this page is an ad for Warner's Safe Yeast which has testimonials from around the country and the date July 12, 1887 included (gotta love it when they just give you a date like that!)

Well, I was going to post some more pictures but that's not going well. More later!

2006-11-14T16:07:00.000-08:00

The stone (from Kentucky) is washed prior to cutting.

The hole.

This is the back of the unfinished chimney as it was when it was covered with siding many years ago.

The chimney after only one day.

The chimney at the end of the second day.

(Angus chose this week to walk!)

Yeah big boy!

2006-11-12T07:21:00.000-08:00

Finally finished! The shoulders of this sweater are pure fun. They have a very native dancer type of feel to them, like eagle wings. A tiny hint of Egypt and a tiny bit o' rasta. The color shading of the yoke bands shade around from front to back.. The center of the back starts with yellow, the arms have red- and the front is blue. I think the climbing ring of yellow adds a little extra visual movement to the entire design.

I love to see his cute face in the middle of that sunburst!

2006-11-10T14:51:00.000-08:00

This little sweater for Angus is turning into a very elaborate project. It started in linen stitch with some inexpensive acrylic "Crayon" yarn. Shortly after the lower edge took shape- the yarn began to pool in the most amazing way- like a giant sunset across the back. I fell in love with this unintentional design element and began to try to think of ways to build on it.

I knew the pooling pattern could not survive the arm join, so I decided to switch to a stranded knitting yoke in black and crayon- maybe thinking back to those crayon scratch off art projects from elementary school. I quit with the linen stitch and started knitting a pattern in the varigated yarn with stockinette- but the darkest purple color was just losing it against the black and the patterns would not stand up if they continued being broken by sections of purple popping in here and there in varigate yarn fashion. Ripped that out and back to the armjoin row.

Next game plan was to simplify the design to vertical bars of color between black bars- but rather than allow the rainbow to trace out horizontally- I was going to force each strand of spectrum to shade upward in a straight line by using an intarsia type technique.

I wound off my yarn around some chairs and cut lengths carefully so that the colors shaded in a way that reflected the pooling colors of the lower torso. 25 strands of yarn + one black. I had difficulty at first figuring out how to manage these pieces, (first with 25 little cardboard bobbins- that was a nightmare.) I began to think a simple braid would avoid tangles and then it struck me that if I chained the hank from the tail in- I could feed out new yarn as I needed it by unchaining from the top.

This is not true intarsia because the black strands behind the colored bars- the colored bars are only twisted in once each row- so the colored bar is attached- but slightly able to slide on the strands holding it. I will have to see after blocking if this is an interesting or problematic feature- the ability of the colored bars to curl in on themselves vertically without having to shoulder the stretch of the garment which is bourne entirely by the black stranding- gives the colored sections a little puff.

I'm not working from a pattern and I hope that I can decrease through the shoulders in a harmonious way right up to the neck.

2006-11-09T20:11:00.000-08:00

Yesterday, among other things- Phil pulled my giant rock out of the ground with his machine. I found this rock buried in mud years ago and all I knew was that it was big. (Rocks like this are very unusual for our farm)

I am hoping that we can use this rock for our front step.

I asked Broadus to take a photograph of the rock being sure to include something for a size reference. I love the resulting photo (notice the teeny tiny horses in the scene) Speck assumes the "Lion King" pose.

2006-11-07T14:26:00.000-08:00

After at least a century the logs are revealed. In a bold move I am sure seems akin to wearing our underpants on top of our jeans...

We are exposing the original log walls of the 1845 cabin. It was covered with clapboard siding probably as soon as the homeowner/builder (Charles and Elvira David) could afford it. They say that back then everyone would have wanted a clapboard sided house as there was no status or fashion in a crude log cabin. Oh and the clapboard was so beautifully finished! Mr. David was a captain and also had a partnership in a local drygoods store.

Revealing this west wall today uncovers a new mystery... a never finished fireplace back (square hole to the right of the bushes)- log walls without any stone chinking behind the clapboard sides (to the right of the fireplace)... no stones, no plaster, no mud... nothing but fist sized gaps between the logs... stones don't evaporate, and termites don't eat them... whoever put the clapboard siding on there- put it up over these huge uninsulated gaps. Nothing is really holding the logs in place where they are cut for the fireplace except for the framing around the hole! Other areas of the cabin do have fully finished chinking- so it must have been removed - What were they thinking? ...not even any mud or straw for insulation!

I can't say I really understand what was going on here, because there were local homes built with brick or milled lumber. It does not seem that the cabin was erected without effort- but aspects of how the cabin was finished seem such a mystery. We have to think on our feet because we didn't know what we would be dealing with untill the siding came off- but now we have winter fast on our heels and little more (or less) than some drywall holding it off.

We will probably do a fieldstone square in the central area to finish the fireplace back.

This is a close up of the southwest corner joints where the rest of the house was added on. I wonder why the angled panels? Some interior plaster lath visible. The log joints are shaped like a little house with a pointed roof.

I think I should have learned yoga last week. I am so stressed right now.

2006-10-30T05:50:00.000-08:00

The majorette and the baby clown! What fun we had!

2006-10-28T11:50:00.000-07:00

Off to the Halloween parade!

2006-10-25T16:38:00.000-07:00

Last Sunday we went to the Ohio Cup Disc Dog competition at Riverdowns Racetrack (in the infield) The weather was awful- it was cold with no sun and a brutal hard wind blasting us across the filed all day. I packed a camping tent to shelter the baby and that worked out really well. Mom joined us with some meatloaf for lunch and held the baby in the tent when we went out and took turns trying to throw discs to Speck in the toss-n'-fetch. Everyone in the family, even Fiona, did better than me. My frisbees flew like turkeys thrown from a helocopter. Speck was fantastic and undistracted by the other dogs and people there. He did so well for John and Broadus that they made the cut to go on to the second round. Broadus wound up winning third place Juniors- and he got a beautiful ribbon and dogtag medal.

I photoshopped this picture as a joke to show what the weather felt like.

I have wanted to take a picture of the kids and the goat cart with the fall colors for two years now and today it was warm enough for them to wear their German costumes. I was kind of hoping to get something greeting card quality, but my focus and timing were off today. The kids did great modeling under the circumstances. (headstrong goat issues)

I made Fiona a hat in 24 hrs- it was a very rewarding knit to have a start and finish. I used some white unspun Icelandic yarn I had recycled out of a Goodwill sweater. Yesterday I dyed two small hanks with Wilton's dyes and by evening the yarn was dry and ready to knit.

The pattern is a really cute elfin little thing with a mitered ribbed edge and short row filling in the ear flaps.

The color pattern was just something I made up. This hat really hugs the face and nape of the neck. It's tempting to always put ties on an earflap hat- but for this design that would be overkill. I finished the hat by 9 AM and it was big enough to fit me- I popped it in the wash and it felted down really nice. This is going to be a WARM hat. I'll make Angus one after we get through haloween.

2006-10-09T10:00:00.000-07:00

Last week I put a lot of work into rehabbing our chicken shed. I pressure washed the old paint off, took off the old rotted trim and replaced it with new, reframed the door and built a new dutch door (which was a trick because the walls are not plum), put in a concrete step and ramp, repainted the rabbit hutch and the shed- interior and exterior, changing the color from peeling white to neutral greens. I want to do the block pony barn to match before winter, and I hope that I get enough warm weather yet to paint.

Bianca the bunny has not been feeling well and she went to the vet on Saturday for snuffles. She is now in antibiotics 2x a day and seems to be doing better on them. At first I thought the change in her behavior had to do with changing the color of her hutch- but when she developed labored breathing I knew it was more than that.

I'll finish here with some pictures of Speck's frisbee antics. He is such a jock and a joker. We play with him every night and he brings us a lot of joy. He is even developing a backflip- but it's difficult to catch on film.

Speck's herding is also improving as we are now letting the goats go loose out of their small pen to the big horse pasture. Speck is getting better at listening to me when I ask him to gently drive them out of the pen and he backs off when I tell him. He also knows that penning is the goal when we bring them in and he no longer charges inside the pen behind the goats- now he stands proudly at the gate with a grin on his face.

2006-09-19T15:19:00.000-07:00

See a video of me spinning with my Kromski Polinaise.

2006-09-17T08:59:00.000-07:00

The baby goats are so sweet to handle for shearing, they are not like the big goats at all, they are so soft and lightweight- they just go limp and lay still for the most part, even when not being held in a shearing hold. After shearing Jesse in a shearing hold (you can see him nekked and peeking out from the side of the proch) my back was already complaining- so I put April on the table (yes- there is a goat in there) and she just laid there like a kitty getting her belly rubbed. Look maaaaa.... no hands!

If you don't rememebr who April is, you can check back in the April 2006 archive and see pictures of her then. She was May's girl twin and could not stand up after being born. She could not nurse because of this and I worked very hard to get that baby up to her mom regularly. She wore little braces on her legs made out of yarn and duct tape and within a few days she was able to rise and walk unassisted. Look at her now! Jesse was Nana's boy twin, and her is the newborn Nana is cuddling in that touching birth photo.

I tried washing fleece with Orvus paste for the first time- that stuff works really well. It cost about $20 for 120 oz at the farm supply store. I have heard it also does wonders to get Clydesdale feathers white. The first batch of fleece I washed bits that I considered grade B, dirtier and a little matted, but not bad enough to toss. After washing I thought I may as well dye it right then since it was already wet and hot.

I dyed a pink and blue cotton candy combo- and it combs out into a really soft lilac. If I can figure out how to spin it- I might use it on a hat for my daughter. It's not really grade B after all!

2006-09-15T08:33:00.000-07:00

It's a crisp cool September morning and my left foot is snug and warm in my new sock. I won a contest over at http://curlyknitter.blogspot.com/ and my prize arrived this week- totally making my day. I was headed out to an afternoon of dance classes with the kids and was lamenting the fact that I didn't have any knitting to bring with- and there on the mailbox was a package containing two beautiful balls of Sisu fantasy from Norway. I dashed in the house to grab my sock needles and we were off.

I made the pattern up as I went and decided to try a few elements offered by Elizabeth Zimmerman in "Knitting Without Tears" The four stitch garter border on the heel flaps and a German heel. I don't like the German heel- it's too square and baggy, not fitted- and since these were going to be clog socks- the baggy heel is a downer. The sides of the heel flaps on the other hand- are as streamlined as can be- a benefit lost when wearing shoes that don't touch the sides of your feet.

The top stripe of the sock is green and it worked out that the toe was green too- bonus! The green ran out about 5 rows too soon- so I borrowed some green from the other end of the ball to finish. The remaining yarn has no green left- yeeeowch- that was close! The other ball of Sisu does not start with a green repeat- which makes me think that I may not luck out being able to start and finish the same way. This other ball may be asking for yellow or aqua- which may leave my heels looking like nautical flags. I'm going to try to not stress about this. Knitting without anxiety!

I got my baby a pair of Robeez booties last week and as a big bonus for me- they came in this cute little bag- perfect for a sock project- it even has a little handle and a zipper and it fits two balls of yarn and a set of DPN's perfectly.

2006-09-14T14:19:00.000-07:00

I think that there is a very big clue as to who my secret pal is in the above photo- that yarn has got to be a clue... it's very beautiful varying from aqua to periwinkel tones. I'm pretty sure the fiber is silk- it's as soft and shiny as can be. At first glance I thought it was a machine made yarn- but as I untied the bow I saw that it's got some thick and thin and is navajo plyed- and no mill does that!

Another clue about my secret pal is that she is the princess of packaging. I think she might have experience in retail, industrial design, or guest industries- her packages are so beautifully crafted and chic. Major pampering!

Inside the package is a Procion adventure! I have never tried these dyes- and just yesterday I was talking to a friend who is a master of tye dye and batik and she told me that she gets all her supplies from Dharma Trading. I had just visited their website and was amazed and overwhelmed by the various offerings- and then today- as if by perfect intuition- Here is this beautiful package from my SP- it's Manos cotton and four colors of procionMX dye and the soda ash and urea! I am so excited to try this new dye process- I hope I don't mess it up.

When I took photos of this gift for the blog- I forgot that I had a sunset picture from the other day still on the disc- 3 of the the colors of the dye- *I think* are very close to the colors found in this scene! ( the black cherry is missing ) Nice huh?

2006-08-31T08:05:00.000-07:00

I had not tried dying my mohair roving, so this week I gave that a go. It was also an experiment in hand painted oven dyed roving. The last time I had dyed mohair it was in the locks which I then worked with combs. This time I wound up felting the mess of it. I don't know how that happened- but mohair likes to gob together just sitting around on a shelf, so I'm not at all surprised by the long colored strips of felt I produced. At least I was only doing a small trial run. It was slighty spinnable, but made my fingers tired. I do like the way that the pink, plum, grey, blue and white all meshed together in this marled 2 ply. I think I am going to have to stick with dying finished yarn.

2006-08-30T11:52:00.000-07:00

Shaving An Australian Shepherd

With a crawling baby on the floor I just could not take it anymore- the dog hair had to go! Since 90% of the hair appeared to originate from the 33% of our dog pack which is Dodi- out came the clippers. With a little extra courage thanks to Cesar Milan- I bypassed her snappish bluffy protests and kept on with it- and what do you know- she got over the panic and settled into a relaxed (alright begrudging) frame of mind. The clip was very close to the skin which despite her overall blackness, is white- she wound up looking like a mearle whippet mix- now a week later the black hair is really filling in over the skin and she just looks like a slick black tailless mutt. And I am very pleased to report that the dog hair situation in the house is much improved.

Dodi is a very soft dog and I have to say that taking photographs of her is almost as traumatizing as clipping her. It looks as if she may heve been recently beaten with a tri-pod, but I assure you that it's nothing but camera-shy and only lovey words were spoken.

2006-08-29T06:42:00.000-07:00

Well the festival is over, does that mean it's time to relax or get busy now? I love this picture of the kids- every year the heirloom lederhosen get smaller in proportion to my son-there is still a lot of room in the pants- but I think I may need to get a supplemental pair of suspenders for next year- this kid is growing fast!

I saw a sweater for sale at the festival that I really liked. I could have bought the sweater for less than the yarn would be- but that would be too practical wouldn't it? I think this would be really cute on my daughter.

2006-08-24T20:30:00.000-07:00

Lederhosen socks in action!

2006-08-24T19:29:00.000-07:00

This is my made up ear flap hat for a baby. It's just a basic round cap with a ribbed brim. It was decreased in 6 sections and then finished off with a little I cord loop. Stitches were picked up around the bottom edge and worked even for several rows- then gradually stitches were bound off as each ear flap was worked individually. Finally near the bottom of the flap the edges taper from both sides and then resolve as I cord. This is the basic structure I turn to when I need to make something up in whatever gauge. The blue stitching is purely decorative.

I recieved a wonderful gift from a friend today- an old pair of overalls which were knit by "an old Italian lady" (I'll see if I can find out more about who she was)

The pants themselves don't really thrill me, they are in need of some repairs and the legs are very ample- just huge- with ribbed lower legs (think "Hammertime") but it was this detail of the front that I thought made these pants such a find- I love how the trapazoid is worked with the little edges and the garter stitch straps (they are reinforced with hand sewn grossgrain ribbon) The design is just a little duplicate stitch, and in three colors of blue. I have to do more examining yet- but it appears that the upper edge of the waist ribbing is a bound off edge- so these were knit from the bottom up. I think this little design would be beautiful worked into a jumper dress or a slightly slimmer fitted pair of pants. These have an elastic sewn in waistband and I'm not sure why- I think it would work fine without elastic- heck- it's overalls!

A clean goat!

The goat wash went fairly well, I used Dawn dishsoap to start, the worked into woolite mixed with a bluing horse shampoo, and then finished with a horse conditioner. Sadly the bluing still left some yellow stains and other spots of course turned blue- so the goat went from dingy grey to a bright pastel blue and yellow. He smells great and is so soft to touch. He looks super shiny and fancy at night. His coat is still a bit wet- 7 hours after we washed him!

2006-08-24T07:09:00.000-07:00

I got to try out my new tool last night. I can't say what it is just yet because I don't want to spoil any surprises. But I had a really fun time using it and I was very happy with the results.

I finished the second lederhosen sock yesterday. I can't believe that I fell for second sock syndrome as hard as I did. I thought that I had finished both socks months ago - today is the first performance at the Wine Festival and I was pulling their costumes together on Tuesday and discovered that I only had 1.5 socks. knit knit knit knit

Before the festival tonight we have to go out and work with the goat hitched to the cart a little, and then give Nibus another bath (it takes more than one to wash out 6 months of barnyard) so he looks gleaming white for the parade. I wish I had a goat shaped vat I could stand him in up to his neck for an hour. Don't think I haven't considered the horse water trough!

2006-08-20T10:12:00.000-07:00

After finishing Crumpets- (and forgetting to take a picture of it with the straps on) I decided to try to use up the remaining pink yarn before starting off on something else. My idea was just to have a pink sweater on hand the next time someone has a baby girl.

This sweater was knit with almost no seaming from a design in Elizabeth Zimmerman's Knitter's almanac. The lace pattern is called "Gull Wing" and the sweater is knit from the neck down. Increases in the garter stitch shape the yoke and the only seams are from the armpits to wrist.

This was the first time I made this sweater, and I was not visualizing the arms correctly until it was too late. I overshot the point where I should have begun the sleeves. I am not happy with the arm connecting into the body a little too low- but oddly this fitting problem is not apparent when the sweater is on a baby. My nine month old son was so kind to model the sweater for me- looking decidedly masculine in pink. Also- I try to keep the arm length on baby sweaters short to help keep the cuffs dry and clean.

The original pattern called for evenly spaced buttons down the front- but I opted to group them all at the yoke. I did not make buttonholes as I did the knitting- but added them later by wedging a pen into the garter stitch and then stitching the hole open with a needle.

I am pretty sure that this will be a pattern which I will do again and again. It was a very fun knit.

2006-08-10T06:21:00.000-07:00

Crumpets!

I was knitting Crumpets just as happy as a lark until I found out that the pattern I had purchased, the very first pattern I had ever purchased online... was totally off in stating the number of beads needed for the bodice- like- by half- I know- Don't say you didn't try to warn me- all over the internet there is info about how many beads a person really does need- it's just that you don't know to look until you run out of beads only two inches into it... and living an hour away from the craft store and since they were sold out of the beads I needed- I was going to be held up for a few days... days I really can't spare because the baby's birthday is next week.

So I figured I would knit the skirt from the bottom up and graft after I had finished the bodice. So I did the mind numbing stockinette skirt then finished the last four fun repeats of the bodice pattern- and then I bit the bullet and grafted all 132 stitches of the bodice to the 132 stitches of the decreased skirt. My solace in the whole ordeal is that rather than having the skirt full of increases at the waist- I have very tidy K2tog all around.

I didn't want to do the tie at the top of the shoulder straps indicated in the pattern. I wanted to have "bump free" cardigan options- so I wanted to make the shoulder straps ribbonlike flat straps. How to do it- and how to do it with a few beads ta-boot? I tried several things but I could not cast on and bind off and get the two edges to match- I really like the look of that doubled bind off- the one over two bind off... looks like a herringbone... so how did I do it?

I used the provisional cast on (for the first time ever- what a cool trick!) As I figure 8ed my way along I added my beads where I wanted them- then I knit one row. (I only added beads on a small portion of the strap)

After knitting one row I bound off that side using the one over two bind off then I kind of fudged my way around the end because it's going to be hidden by seaming anyway... then I removed the spare yarn and knit a row on the other side- then I bound off the other edge and viola- I have two matching edges on a strap that won't stretch, roll, spiral or curl! Another bonus about the way this strap is made is that if you leave yourself a tail when you do the provisional cast on- when you finish- you will have a tail at the other end as well- so you can sew on your straps without any extra ends to weave.

This yarn is Sinfonia, the beads are Czech Glass.

2006-07-20T07:48:00.000-07:00

There has been a recent discussion about "the stash" on the EZasPi list. I have not been able to post. Personally I feel that "stash" is a sign of weakness. I battle with clutter and the idea of purposly hoarding gobs of yarn with no intended project in mind seems boderline sinful. This is not to say that I don't have a stash, it's just that my stash weights on me like a bag of sentimentaly treasured and gendered baby clothes that have a 50% chance of suiting a baby who has not even been concieved.

Which brings me to a little ball of inexpensive carrier yarn- impulse buy at Hobby Lobby from last winter. This super silky Yarn Bee appealed to the nature lover in me and it reminded me of lichen, flecks of green and yellow with grey and bits of pink tossed in. I tried knitting it alone. I tried knitting it with other yarns. I don't know how many swatches I made with it, and none pleased me.

I had some girl color Wildfoote sock yarn scraps left over from a baby surprise jacket (also seen in the My little pony coats) but not enough to make a Fiona sized sweater. So I decided to purchase more Wildfoote in order to have enough to use up the other scraps in the stash... knitter logic right?

A friend (she knows who she is) was working on a cardigan with a folded picot edge and I was dying to try it- so I thought up this little fuzzy fake fair isle design- inspired by a hummingbird nest.

hummingbird nest picture

...which is made of lichen and spiderwebs among other things.

I used the EZ percentage system to knit this from the bottom up- it was quickly obvious that the percentages start to slip at the child size- so instead of 20% for a sleeve- I used 24% and even that is still a little snug at the cuffs.

I also had a design change after doing the lower torso picot edge- I knit the seam together before I began the section with the carrier yarn- which made a flimsy row to support the wayward hem. I hoped that it would sort itself out in blocking which it did- but for the sleeve cuffs I made the inner hem deeper so that the joining would happen where the carrier yarn was already employed and the fabric more stable.

The rest of the construction was very straightforward with several color changes of the Wildfoote yarn. The change from grey base to muted green is almost invisible above the arm join.

The last design detail was a row of k2m1 all the way around before casting off- this mirrored the last row of decreases in the yoke and left a very elastic edge for sewing down the folded picot.

The result is that I almost prefectly consumed the entire ball of yarn bee ... I used up a lot of the remaining pink and almost all of the lilac... and I now have a lot of grey and green left over- and if I did the math I would know that in completing this project I made my stash grow.

2006-07-13T07:44:00.000-07:00

TURTLEBABY:

The kids dressed the baby in this adorable costume this morning. I can hardly call it a costume- they just strapped a pillow to his back- but the transformation was one of the most effective I have ever seen. The baby is recently mobile and gets around very well- but he still does not support himself on his knees- so his movements are perfect turtle pushes. I didn't know what they were doing and I had such a laugh when the little guy came poking around the corner.

This mower seat has been Willa's favorite spot since she was a wee little thing. I missed my chance to photograph her when she could lay all curled up in the seat like a kitten... but she is still mighty cute. I wonder when or if she will ever grow out of it. I guess I could try to fabricate a better "raised bed" for her.

2006-07-08T17:51:00.000-07:00

The weather at the Kentucky Horse Park could not have been more beautiful today. The parade of carriages was amazing- I actually began to get nervous that I would run out of digital memory before the beautiful turnouts stopped cresting the hill.

My only regret was that I did not get to enjoy the review with my husband by my side- he was at the arena with the kids listening to the commentary and I had ventured out onto the lane by the steeplechase barn to get some more scenic shots.

I know that he must have learned all sorts of tasty tidbits about the historic vehicles I was hoping that he could tell me about everything while we went over my photos- but he'll probably save his newly aquired trivia to surprise me at another event.

The Carriage Association workers/volunteers were wonderful, helpful at every turn. I got to see the beautiful new office and browse the gift shop which was well stocked with books and videos. I treated myself to a pair of Driving Essentials Gloves and a Video of Micheal Muir's Journey across America- I just could not resist the Stonewall Sporthorses, and I am hoping that I can somehow manage to arrange a video night with some Amish friends who have MD. I think they will find the drive to be very inspirational.

We got to meet Kathleen and John Henry- the butcher cart AND Mr. Mule were both much larger than I had imagined.

The black barn in this photo is the Steeplechase Barn where John and I were married in May of 1995. I'm half tempted to photoshop this awesome turnout into our wedding pictures.. who would know?

2006-07-02T09:15:00.000-07:00

Linen Stitch- How do I love thee? Let me count the ways!

I just finished this little dishcloth (Is it obvious that I am needing to decompress after the Pi shawl?) The picture is rotated 90 degrees from how it was produced- the front side is at the top.

Look what happened- the tiny front stripes go one way, and on the flip side of the cloth the stripes go the other direction! Neato right?

Each row knit only produces 0.5 rows of progress- so knitting alternating colors gives you some itty bitty horizontal stripes that would be impossible in plain stickinette. Another fun aspect of this cloth is that the solid yellow border was possible to produce as the piece was knit- no picking up after- that's because out and back for four stitches of seed stich- is the perfect bridge for when you are not knitting blue out to the edges.

A very satisfying little knit... and by the way Superman was a wonderful comic book summer blockbuster.

2006-06-29T12:49:00.000-07:00

Blocking a washcloth- that would be like putting a clean ice cube tray in the dish drain rack, right?
...Something I'm never never going to do!

Lessons learned from doubleknitting-
1. It's really hard to control your stitch tension on two seperate pieces of knitting at the same time when it's the same piece of yarn.
2. Any mistake will probably be perfectly duplicated on the other side as well.
3. This is a situation where a border would be wonderful to cover the awkward edges.

At first I was going to label the photo "front" and "back"... I realized I had embraced the soul of doubleknitting with all the heart of say, the kind of person who would operate a clothes dryer with solar energy.

2006-06-27T13:10:00.000-07:00

Seeing double... knitting. The last time I ventured into double knitting was to knit a pair of preemie socks on a pair (not set) of double pointed needles. It wasn't true double knitting, it was just knit, slip, knit, slip out on one side and back on the other. Doing the tiny stitches on one needle allowed me to manage the tiny rounds without having to wrangle all that pointy stuff.

This time I am going to try for a pattern in two colors to make a material with two "right" sides. This time I'm purling a back stitch and knitting a front stitch in alternating colors. Because the yarn changes color every four (or eight depending on how you think about it) stitches- the material is very well stuck together. In a few rows I am going to make the pattern double back until I have a square washcloth with v's.

It's taking a while to get the hang of where the yarns need to be when the knits and purls are made but I think by the time I am done with this square I may be ready to tackle a design like the sunset saddleblanket colors. I'm still floundering at the edges- they are locked together but it's not always pretty. I figured out that horizontal stripes in doubleknit ar not stuck together- vertical ones are stuck together- but would be a total PITA. Diagonals are nice and stick with argyle type design integrity smarts. So if I do go for the saddlepad design- I'm going to have to plan the diamonds so they tack the layers together- I don't want the layers to be shifty like a pillowcase.

2006-06-23T15:12:00.000-07:00

One of these skeins is not like the other! (the oddball is Alpaca/cotton... can you pick it out?) I included my hand for scale. This mohair is from a roving I had processed at Wooly Knob fiber mill. I really like their service and quality of their work... it's just too bad that my goat fleece is not a higher grade. The yarn has a nice sheen and will probably be very pretty dyed up- but it is not soft enough for sweaters or jackets.

2006-06-22T17:12:00.000-07:00

I have been spinning a bunch of my mohair and having a challenge to think of what it will become. It's a little too coarse for anything but a horse blanket or a carpet- so I'm thinking in that direction... only problem is I don't have a loom. So I was thinking of trying a pattern like this in double knit. I was inspired by a square of the wall hanging by Lucy Neatby

When it does come time to dye this I will want at least 6 colors- three for the background and three for the foreground- if not six colors- somehow to get a very gradual gradation along the lengths. I'm no dying expert, so this will take some concentration- but until then I have plenty of spinning left to do.

2006-06-13T20:03:00.000-07:00

How to tie a mud knot for a carriage horse:

My version of a mudknot stays in for hours, tight without hurting tail circulation. You need no polo wrap or even rubberbands. I like to use a shoelace the color of the tail hair- but did it with a red ribbon here for visibility. The ribbon is too long, but I didn't want to cut it. You only need a yard. When I used to drive commercial carriages I tied my horse's tail up so that it did not go in the diaper bag and so he still had a flowing long tail for his days off.

You can French braid the tail if you want to be really fancy. Here I demonstrate just braiding from the tip of the tail. Notice how I sectioned the hair so that the two side sections will make a sweep for about the last four inches of tailbone.

When making the braid- be sure to sweep it outward toward yourself and not just straight down toward the ground.

That middle section of hair will probably be shorter and thinner than the other two sections- so you will need to eventually borrow some hair from another section so that all sections of braid finish at the same time.

When you are about 4 inches from the end of the hair- add the ribbon. When you are close to the end of the hairs- make a half hitch with one side of the ribbon around the other piece of ribbon and all the remaining hair.

Fold the braid upwards and to one side- wrap the braid around the tail bone.

Tuck the braid/ribbon through one loop of the braid base and pull it snug.

Double the braid back and wrap it around the tailbone in the other direction until there is no more tail to wrap.

The ribbons now part ways- one goes around one way- the other goes around the other way... wrap the tail once and tie in a bow. If you want it to be invisible- tuck the bow inside.

If your horse has never had a mud you may want to tie his tail up a few times before you hitch him so he is already used to it. There will be a lot of weight at the end of his tail bone and if he hits himself with it he may not recognize it as his own tail. For most horses the mudknot keeps their tail heavy and better behaved, but for some determined tail wringers it just gives them more momentum to swing that puppy.

2006-06-09T20:37:00.000-07:00

Big Block! ... and I don't mean the kind in a truck. I finished up the perfection leaf lace last night and grafted the ends this morning. I really lucked out with the way the pattern lined up on the right row- but somehow I just could not get the zig zag to graft uninterrupted. I finally decided that the problem was not in my method of grafting, but that I may have made a mistake way back at the start of the edging before I really knew the pattern, and before I could have even understood the error. I figured that I just had to "let it go" which I did with ease as that is how this whole project has been- an excercise in relaxation. In fact- I'm feeling a little bit lost now that I'm done- I don't have my bunchy orange lap dog to take with me where ever I go.

I don't know if the method I used to block this has been done- or if I made it up- but it worked for me. My son said it was like a drum. Originally I was going to tape the paperclips to the wooden floor- but the tape did not stick well enough- so I used carpet. Unblocked my Pi had a radius of 33 inches so I added 1/3 more and then ten more inches for the stretching.

First I placed a paper clip in the stitch of each point. I found out that I had 94 repeats. I had to handle the shawl carefully from that point on because the paperclips wanted to snag any material which rubbed it. I marked the clips in 1/4s with tape. In hindsight I thought that it might be a good idea to add stitch markers as I knit so that the correct stitch would be automatically marked rather than having to find it- these would also not snag and would provide a strong pull and are not very expensive to nip out later with some wire cutters.

Using a cord for a radius I divided the carpet into four quarters and placed paperclips 24, 23, 24, 23 spaced in the quarters. Luckily my handwidth made a good measure for spacing. It's not precise- but hey... theme. I just jabbed the paperclip into the looped pile of the carpet- then I laced the whole thing with some slippery kite string and adjusted a few times. My son was a great help during this process.

I'll admit that I am going to miss the texture of the unblocked pi- but it photographs better than it looks in 3d. In anxious to see how the severely blocked shawl will react after it is released from it's gridle. In the end the shawl grew over 20 inches.

2006-06-06T04:41:00.000-07:00

Two wonderful days in a row! We got Lacey hitched today with just a little bit of jumping around. The third time was the charm and once we got her hitched to the cart she was fine and walked off just like a ... majorette. Getting these two ponies hitched and going again is such a relief and joy for me. I hope we can do lots of fun things with them this year.

2006-06-04T18:49:00.000-07:00

What a marvelous day! We hitched Freckles to the easy entry cart for the first time. He has had a lot of time off since the pregnancy and birth of Angus... he started right up without a problem- we went for a lovely drive out on the road. Today was perfect horse weather- cool and breezy with mixed clouds. Soon I will hitch Lacey... I hope it goes as well- I can only wish. Freckles is really so outstanding a little guy!

2006-05-26T15:39:00.000-07:00

The new color chart is working out very well for me and my knitting speed for the border is back to normal. Here is a close up of the edging spread out- it should tighten up a bit more with blocking- but it's really neat to see how different the orange slub cotton manages this pattern from the white yarn in the knitting-and website sample.

Last night my DH asked me if "this thing was ever going to end" and if I was knitting "a circus tent" I think he is getting sick of me hauling around this orange pile with me where ever we go.

How I redid the chart in photoshop:

I opened the original black and white grid chart in photoshop and then made the canvas larger so I could stretch the chart vertically.
Then I opened up a new layer and laid some colored bars across the various pattern rows- by turning down the transparency of the entire layer it allowed me to see the original grid through the colors and for me to have pastel shades in the final image.
Then with the text tool in a new layer and a bold font- I wrote over all the spots where there were plain knit stitches. turning into a 6 sure makes things easier on my eyes.
Then I used a new layer of text, and a different font to mark all the k2tog and yo spots.
Finally I turned off the original grid and put in a white background. The End! Happy Chart.

2006-05-25T15:01:00.000-07:00

I have been working on the lace edging and I have been struggling to read the pattern. I have both versions (word and graph) of the vintage 1891 pattern printed out from the fantastic website resource of Sarah Bradbury....
http://www.knitting-and.com/homework/perfection-leaf-lace.htm

Anyway- I have to knit five hundred some odd rows of this 12 row repeat- and I'm just not getting the groove of it. I love how the lace looks- but I hate knitting it word by word and I keep hoping that I will memorize it- but my brain is just not grabbing on to these slippery jagged notations.

I wound up copy/pasting the text pattern and adding larger spaces between the pattern rows. Then I circled the rows with different colors of crayon, so I could visually return to "the red row" I think part of the problem is that the key first stitches of every other row of the pattern gradually go from 6 down to 1- but the numbering of the rows is such that the row number and the key number are not matched or relevant. Would it be easier to tell the knitter- "In this pattern you should count the rows of your pattern in reverse- starting with row twelve the row begins with six stitches... 12... 6... numbers make sense! As it is we have row 11 with starts with 4, row 9 with five and seven with 6.

Well- I misplaced my cheat sheet and had to print it out again and decided that rather than fight this dragon- I'm going to take it to the spa for a makeover. I redid the whole thing using photoshop and suddenly it become very readable (for me) I am very interested in the ways that people learn and the various types of "thinkers" and I'm curious to hear if other knitters like the chart that I made for this pattern- does it help you too?

It's read from bottom to top right to left, just like a chart. Between every pattern row- there is a plain knit (or purl as the case may be) row. The right edge of the chart is the straight edge of this edging. The large number represents a number of stitches to knit, / is a k2tog, and O is a yarn over. The pattern starts with a base of 28 cast on stitches.

2006-05-22T08:36:00.000-07:00

Has it been this long? The last time I took a picture of the orange Pi Shawl it was the size of a dinner plate- now it's big enough to blanket a pony. So, let's be clear- Banjo is a large pony- he is not the size of a racehorse. I was trying to find a good surface to spread out this unblocked work for an in-progress photo and discovered that the round darkness of the pony and the slight prickle to his hide does a great job at holding the shawl spread out... I am NOT knitting a fly sheet! (Don't even joke about that!)

The border of this shawl, ("perfection leaf lace" from knitting-and.com) is knit around the edge so that there is no casting off. The pattern of the border is about 30 stitches wide- so it will add a lot of width and gobble up a lot of yarn. I have plenty of yarn left- so that's fine... it is just some real slow going to get all the way around the shawl. I just started on the border yesterday- so that's about a days worth of knitting there. It' looks like this project may take me through the summer. I did block a sample of the border and I love how this slubby yarn blocks- after wetting it really melts into place and the designs become much more distinct. I'm still trying to figure out a strategy for the big block... and will have lots of time to dwell on that.

In mulling over the mathematics of thePI shawl- I'm now understanding that I really didn't need to do a doubling row- or rather- since I didn't need to make this round 98 rows deep- I didn't need the fullness that would require doubling. I am only needing about half of that radial distance- so I probably could have gotten by with a 50% increase rather than a 100%. What does that mean? It means that my giant border is going to be a lot longer than it needs to be- but that also means that it will block wider and with less tension- and in the end- I think that will be fine.

2006-04-17T19:02:00.000-07:00

I'm going to send some photos to the Maryland Sheep and Wool Festival, hopefully the fact that they are photos of goats is not going to be an issue. I decided that since I'm going through the effort of making up a package, that I would like to see both my kids enter in the Junior Division- so these are the shots!!

When I unloaded the camera into the computer and was scanning the previews... I FLIPPED- I asked my son, he's 8... "did you realize what you were doing when you took this picture? Do you know what composition is?" he said, "Well I know what it is when you are writing, but I don't know what it means with photography." So I proceeded to show him all the ways this photo has awesome tight composition... he looked at me and shrugged... "well I was just trying to get all the goats in the picture!" oh man... the photo of the year is taken by Mr. Humility.

My daughter loves this enhanced picture of April and Stormy.

2006-04-16T14:02:00.000-07:00

What an amazing sky we had on Friday! As the sun was going down huge billows of mammatus clouds dripped down like a blanket of lava lamp in the unstable atmosphere.

This is my start to the Mystery Pi Shawl. I am using a flake cotton which is mostly thin like a crochet thread- but has big slubs which add a lot of texture and Art Deco interest. I think this shawl will be wonderful over pink or black. The color is a bright tangerine. I chose the "D" option for the first pattern band from the EZasPi knit along.

2006-04-09T11:41:00.000-07:00

"I have waited my whole life for you!"

The second twin emerges
Earlier, Nana labored with the company of May's twins.

A morning check found Nana with a steeply pitched pelvis, a sure sign of a birth coming soon. An hour later she was nested in to the goat house meditating her way through some big contractions. May's babys stayed close by with Nana and May went out to the field to graze. Nana was very expressive during her labor, staring at her belly, nudging it with her nose, flexing her ears and stretching her mouth. I really felt for the old girl but gave her some space for the early part of labor. When she really seemed to get to the pushing stage I went in with her and she seemed to really appreciate being petted and soothed.

She seemed to be pushing and straining a lot without much progress. When I finally saw the tips of the hooves emerging I was pretty sure they were upside down, so I went in the house to call talk my mother in law about what we should do. Lois is a pro at birthing the mammals from years on a dairy farm and she talked me through every possible position until I was totally terrified. When I got back to Nana there was a nose and a dark purple tounge sticking out too- and everything was facing the right way. Nana seemed to be having a very hard time pushing the baby out. I helped pull the baby's feet just a little and as soon as the shoulders delivered the rest slid out fast. Nana went to work cleaning him up and the next kid, a girl, came "right out on his heels" now I know where that phrase comes from. As I was suctioning the goo out of the second twin's mouth- the first was already climbing to his feet and poking around for a teat.

Just about then our neighbors were pulling out of their driveway and noticed our family commotion- and we invited them to come over and see the miracle too. I'm guessing about six people came over to "ooh" and "awe" over the little babies who were so strong!

Nana hugged her babies with her neck as she cleaned them off. To look at the pictures you could almost cry for her that she has no arms to hold her newborns. The expression of love and contentment on her face is so clear it's as if she is saying, "I have waited my whole life for you!"

2006-04-09T11:20:00.000-07:00

The little skirt came off the needles last night. I was happy to see the end result of the ribbed ruffle which was not fully realized until off the restriction of the needle. This skirt pattern is pretty straightforward with the only elusive design element being a series of increasing short rows at the back base of the waistband which gives a good rise to back. The waistband is 2x2 ribbing with YO eyelits for a drawstring.

The lower edge ribbing begins with a M1 every 2 stitches- after a round this turns to k2 p1. After 3 rounds of that another row of increase in the purl section which then becomes K2 P2 for 3 more rows. Then an increase round with a M1 between the two K sts and that becomes K3 P2 for 3 rounds. Then increase in the middle of the P sections for a K3 P3 pattern.

The end result is a very springy ribbing with flair- it gives all the flounce of a ruffle and leaves the clownish loopy element behind.

My daughter put this outfit together herself and I am amazed at how her decision to wear her hat brim down seems to go perfectly with a 1920's style flapper skirt! I'm thinking that this skirt would be fantastic done in two colors- the second color as a stripe just above the pleats would really accentuate the hobble skirt look.

2006-04-07T18:04:00.000-07:00

Yesterday April's leg supports came off in stages, the lower legs in the AM and the upper legs in the afternoon. She is now walking... running and hopping... able to initiate and maintain nursing all on her own! She has made so much progress in a day! Here is a picture of April and Stormy- she's the one trying to dash out of the frame! Don't worry- Speck, the cattle dog is on the other side of the fence.

2006-04-05T13:39:00.000-07:00

Orthodics for a baby goat

It's been a tough day and a half but I think little April is almost out of the woods. She still has a long way to go in terms of walking on her own- but this afternoon she was out moving in the grass with her mom and brother Stormy. She's not bucking and kicking... but she can shuffle around.

Yesterday afternoon I took her down to the Vet for a vitamin powerboost injection and to get an honest opinion from the vet if she might make it or if she had a crippling birth defect. He called her "spraddle legged" and thought she would be fine with a little extra help- so we are going to give it our best shot. He suggested that some people tie the legs together to help them get balance and control.

When we got home I threw together a stanchion with some old fenceposts so I would be able to help the baby get to the teat without getting boxed in the ear and without May circling and stomping on us all. So now this LC is working with a teat target that only moves about 4 inches forward and back. April still seems to have a good suck reflex and a strong will to live.

The first try at tying Aprils leg's together went pretty well- I padded her legs with paper towel and then wrapped the cuff with duct tape and then tied a length of yarn around. The padding and tape should prevent the yarn from cutting into her skin and the cuffs can turn a bit as she shuffles. It looked great at first and it gave her lots of stability to stand- but when she fell down her knees flipped outward till they faced backwards (as if she had no shoulderblades at all!) This is illustrated in one of the pictures. I realized that she would need a second string to keep her knees together. Now with the double support she can stand, lay down and shuffle around. She can kneel down to nurse without sinking down to her sternum.

I was up several times during the night to make sure April keeps her strength up and then I came in to my own little nursling who was fussing as we are all coming down with a cold. Today I was exhausted and along with the physical misery of this cold I was starting to have feelings of despair creeping in because we had one bad nursing session with April who seemed to have lost her will or ability to suck. Finally this afternoon April had another good nurse at the stanchion and then afterwards I got to see her really moving around on her own and I realize that it's possible that the bad session may have simply been lack of hunger! Maybe she had already nursed on her own! Let's hope!