Tuesday, April 23, 2013

Finals Week

Because I am totally not being yarny this week...




Trufax.

See you all after exams!!  :D

Saturday, April 20, 2013

I Just Don't Know


I hadn't cried all week.  Until I saw this:


This undated photo shows Lingzi Lu in Boston.


I've pored over the info for the anthro program at BU--it's still on my short list for grad school applications this fall.  Ms Lu was busy doing something that I aspire to...She was lovely, and intelligent, and loved, and she died needlessly and senselessly.


Right at the end of class on Monday, someone peeked at their phone and exclaimed in horror: "There was a suicide bomber at the Boston Marathon!"  Honestly, it really didn't even register.  It didn't make any sense.  Right at that moment, class was ending, we were finishing up the class evaluation forms, having half a conversation with my team about meeting up for our final project, and half a conversation about a friend's PhD defense that day, and rushing out the door, and it didn't even properly sink in until I got outside and had a chance to check my phone.  Wait!  Doesn't my knitting buddy work in downtown Boston?  Was it al Qaida?  The only reason for a bomb at the marathon would be to kill as many people as possible.  Oh god.

Of course I looked at Facebook first, reputable news source that it is, and happily, it was a holiday and everyone I knew was far away from the marathon course.  Then it was just a matter of repeatedly checking the news sites as I sat on the bus on the way home until I could get home in front of the TV and find out what had happened.  Noone really knew anything.

A little boy who liked baseball and riding his bike.  A woman who went to the marathon to photograph her best friend's boyfriend crossing the finish line.  A grad student who had achieved her dream of coming to America to study.  All three gone.

Three dead, 140+ injured, and all was confusion.  Noone seemed to really know what was going on, nor who might be responsible.  I watched the BBC America coverage, since the BBC at least tries to keep the ridiculous speculation and inane commentary to a minimum. CNN should be ashamed of themselves for their coverage of this incident, but that's probably a different blog post.  (A quick example of CNN's crack reporting: "We see a dog. It is barking. It could be a K9 unit. We don't know. It is a dog."  Yeah.  That's a Pulitzer right there.)

I don't even know what to think...I think I just want to know why.  Not why in an existential, philosophical sense, but what on earth was the supposed 'reasoning' behind these two brothers going completely off the rails, holding a major East Coast city virtually hostage, murdering a police officer sitting harmlessly in his squad car, and terrifying a neighborhood for hours.  What.  The.  Hell. 

It's going to be completely nuts, and completely fucked up.  It already is, but I can deal with that.  If they thought they wanted to join a terrorist organization and that something like this would impress the head honcho so they could get their al Qaida decoder rings, fine.  If they were in the throes of folie a deux, fine.  If they had daddy issues, or were mad because they never got to date the head cheerleader, or thought that we were all infidels who deserved what we got, fine, fine, fine.  Because we are never going to really understand this. 

I wish I had something awesome to say, some profound insight or inspirational quote that would bring this whole thing around to some form of closure.  Then we could all be okay with it, and there'd be rainbows and dancing puppies and everything would be as okay as it could be after such a terrible tragedy.

But I can't.  This is how things are now.  This is the way things are going to be for the rest of our lives.  And when I ask why, it's not a "Why do bad things happen to good people?" kind of question, it's a lot more like I want 5 minutes in a room with this kid so I can grab him by the lapels and shout in his face: "What the fuck is your problem, you little shit?"

Right now, until we can figure out what has actually happened, the only thing I can think of is to make sure we don't jump to any conclusions or make any assumptions that we know what went down, or who was involved, or what their connections might have been, until we actually have some real information.  I made that mistake last night, posting a rumor about a possible arrest, and my only excuse is that it was five in the morning after a long night of watching the news and pondering the situation, and the improbable seemed like a possibility.  It was just dumb.  And I am just waiting for the assumptions to begin, for people to decide that a particular religious belief had anything to do with anything, when we still just do not know.

I don't have any answers.  I don't expect to anytime soon. We can make our donations to charities helping the survivors, and fill up the blood banks if you're able to donate...And don't forget to tell your favorite people how much you love them, every day.

Thursday, April 18, 2013

Whatcha Doin'?

All my Yarny Stuffs have been on hiatus recently, or progessing only very slowly, since exams are looming.  Apparently all my professors have decided to make my project due dates all within a day or so of each other, in complete disregard for my hobbies, social life, or need for food and sleep...  :/

But I have been working on one item in particular for a while...I'd been spinning some beautiful muted green and purple merino at one of Batty Knits' craft nights, and a friend ooh'ed and aah'ed over it so much that I had to promise to knit it up for her:




The photo really doesn't do the colorway justice--it's coming out in a gorgeous muted stripe.  The pattern is #4 Eyelet Wrap from the Vogue Accessorize book, one I have used several times for scarves and shawls/stoles.

Eventually exams will be over, and I have a serious yen to use some of the Polwarth I spun a little while back on this.  I love the colorway she used here...



But I am still on a Yarn Diet and have a billion skeins of handspun to knit up before I am allowed to buy any more!



Sunday, April 14, 2013

This Is Not A Jayne Hat

So after 10 years, Fox decided to pay some attention to the Firefly series, and by attention, I mean being a meanypants to the fans.  Yeah, I understand the whole copyright issue, but claiming copyright a decade after the fact, on an item the wardrobe department picked up in a thrift store?  Hmmm.

But of course, the knitting community and the Browncoats showed yet again how awesome and creative they are with their response to Fox's shenanigans...Would you like a Cunning Hat?  Or a parable about a Nasty Mean Canid?

Some people had Things To Say about the situation...







Can't stop the signal.





Thursday, April 11, 2013

Decisions...

So it's coming up on the end of the semester, work is piling up and tempers are getting shorter and shorter...I have a couple of days off this week, so I could catch up on reading, get a head start on some projects due next week, or...




:D

Monday, April 8, 2013

YARN!

Dancing Leaf Farm on Etsy has some really incredible colors...Seriously, look.  LOOK.  :D


Hand Dyed Yarn, Superwash Merino Wool Sock Yarn, Rainbow Colored, 'A Day At the Carnival'

She dyes both yarn and roving, though when I last checked, there seemed to be a bit more roving than yarn...This is not A Bad Thing, but you non-spinners out there had better get to shopping quick!  Though most of her fiber seems to be merino or plain Australian wool, her colors are just amazing.

Friday, April 5, 2013

Whatcha Doin'?

More horrific cell phone pictures...  :(

And yeah, I've been crocheting...Deal with it, Knittarzz!!  ;)

A stole I made so very long ago, and never finished up...I can't remember the pattern of course, but it's made from Socks That Rock by Blue Moon Fiber Arts...One of the Raven Clan colorways (bugger me if I remember which one!)  :D



And I finally finished the Cheche a la Sauce shawl!  This is in Misti Alpaca Tonos Carnaval (sock weight), in the Olive Tones colorway:


I love this so hard.  It is really soft (cause it's got alpaca in it, duh) and since I've turned the heat down in anticipation of a spring warm-up sometime soon, it's so nice to curl up in of an evening.