FARCEblog

And the tintintabulation of the....

DigitalDurga — Tue, 04 Nov 2008 15:51:10 GMT

papers?

Well, yes. Papers are ringing through my head. It is in fact paper writing season. Three 25 pagers, one 10 pager and one case description. So if you don't see me around for the next month, I apologize.

But I did have one thing that was something of a quickie. So I thought I'd pass it on. As a thank you gift for volunteering at the Corydon Fiber Festival I got 2 oz of lovely hand painted silk roving (reds and hot pinks, if it had any orange it would match my favorite work shirt!) and the book "This is How I Go When I Go Like This" by Linda Collier Ligon, founder of Interweave Press.

So far one line from this collection of essays has rung loudly in my ears: "There's a difference between being professional and being serious."

Yes. I may never become a professional with my knitting. I'm not sure I want to. Sure I love and admire what someone like Amy Singer does, for example. But I'm not convinced that I want my soul soothing activity to bow to anyone else's demands. So can I still be a stupendous knitter? Of course! There's a difference between professional and serious. You can be very serious about your craft and never make a living at it. You can also make your living doing something you're not very serious about.

I repeat what I said to the soap makers all those years ago - please don't belittle the hobbyist. We are out there doing what you cannot afford to do. We are the mad scientists of your world, doing the unprofitable and unpopular. Because we don't have a magazine to sell. Or a store to keep stocked. Or a certain number of designs to create (or knit) within X time period. Because we don't have to please anyone but ourselves. We are going to push, pull or drag everyone else along with us. Enjoy us for what we are, instead of comparing us to what we do not wish to be.

I'm serious about this hobbyist lifestyle of mine. I intend to be an astonishing knitter. Eventually I'd love to stun people with my hand spun/hand knits. I want my friends to feel deeply privileged when I give them something I've dyed myself, the same way the soapers loved my perfumes. Because they are not made for sale - they are priceless.

I have had it pointed out to me before that there is a hybrid creature, someone who does specific work because it aligns with their joy. One of the regulars at Knit Night ages ago knit cashmere baby sets for a website. Her work was insanely beautiful. The tiny booties, beanies and cardigan sets were breathtaking. She got paid in cashmere yarn, I believe. She was a hybrid in the sense that she was able to knit the type of stuff she liked to knit, but had some of the constraints of a professional (deadline, follow the pattern exactly, etc.) I can see this being an acceptable arrangement, as long as the terms are favorable. But that somewhat proves my point. As a serious hobbyist I have the power to be able to say no to the deal if I don't like the terms. If I'm trying to make my living with this skill I have to knit what someone will pay me to knit, whether I like it or not.

So if you want to make a profession out of my hobby, more power to you! All hobbies need their, ahem, suppliers. Supply me, encourage me, challenge me, intrigue me. Just don't ask me to want to be you. I don't. And if there are times that you envy me this freedom I have, the gay disregard for any sort of deadline or target market, just remember, you can have a hobby too. And you can be as serious about it as you like.

dragons, dragons, everywhere!

DigitalDurga — Tue, 26 Aug 2008 08:39:19 GMT

So, there's this strange little website called Dragon Cave that Mom introduced me too. You steal eggs, put them places where they will get views and clicks, and watch them grow up. It would be insidious if it wasn't so darned cute.

I mean, look at all my dragons!
***********

Have I mentioned this is addictive? There's also babies and eggs, who would appreciate it if you took the time to click on them and load their incubator pages.

********

This really shouldn't be as fun as it is. You can apparently have unlimited adult dragons, name them, describe them, breed them to get new eggs. You can sort of trade by giving the recipient the html code for the dragon, if they refresh right as you abandon, they'll claim the egg. You can have 4 eggs and/or four hatchlings, as soon as you have max of either you can't collect any more eggs. Yes, I have six eggs listed up there, three of them belong to husbeast. Yes, he's into it too, it's really funny.

It's astonishing to me. There's a community talking about them on the forums. There's livejournal groups devoted to sharing clicks, trading eggs and tracing lineages (you can trace the entire family line for bred eggs by clicking back through the parents links). I'm simply astonished.

Do me a favor, ok? Come back tomorrow and poke the orange one. And think male thoughts while you do, I want that one to be a boy.

good idea?

DigitalDurga — Sat, 23 Aug 2008 14:33:34 GMT

Ever have one of those ideas that seems just great in theory? You can see everything unrolling in easy to follow steps, and envision the happy results of your work? I have one of those. It involves me going to my pantry and smiling a smug, self satisfied smile as I open the door and see rows upon rows of my work, patiently waiting for me to unleash the smell of August tomatoes into my dreary December kitchen. Or perhaps a sparkling berry jam brightening up my morning tea in January. There is something very comforting about having food put away for the winter. More than simply starvation abatement, there is happiness to forethought, to knowing that most of the work is already done.

Growing up, my mom's kitchen had a work surface which was made up of blocks and boards and which held dozens of jars of good things. The grape juice (which mostly only I was fond of) made from grandma's recipe - a cup of grapes, some sugar, and some boiling water to each quart. You had to leave it sit for a month or two before it tasted like grape juice, and even then it is watery and thin compared to Welch's. But I drank quarts of it all summer long. Tomato juice, tomato sauce. Whole Roma tomatoes, their skins floating loosely, waiting to be slipped off as the tomatoes themselves got crushed into whatever we were cooking. Pear and peach halves floating like precious gems in simple syrup. Jams and jellies of all sorts. Applesauce, and apple butter. Still a favorite of mine, we used the recipe from a cookbook called "Cheaper and Better" which I think had more of an impact on my thought patterns than I'll ever really admit. We always doubled the cinnamon and allspice listed in that recipe though, we like a very spicy apple butter.

Mom and I would often work together on the canning. I learned to wash grapes well (you'd be amazed how sticky spiderwebs are) and how to slip tomatoes into boiling water to loosen their skins. How the archaic looking sieve works, with it's huge wooden pestle. And how to stir, somewhat patiently, until apple slices became applesauce, which got poured in great splattering streams into quart jars and then went into the boiling water canner while we continued to stir until it was apple butter. I'm not very good at being patient, so mom did a lot of the stirring while I ran off to do other things. It takes a long time for apple slices to become apple butter. Jam is actually fairly quick, once the pectin goes in you stir like a madwoman, fighting the foam which wants to engulf you, the stove and everything nearby. Once that interminable minute passes, you snatch it from the fire and try to (delicately) get it into the jars. Boiling hot jelly burns, and sticks to your skin, so there is a certain pain tolerance that has to be developed. But it takes no time at all for the hot jars to sit on a counter counting down their cooling.

It was one of my favorite games. After the jars leave the boiling water the cooling air contracts, forming a vacuum seal. You listened for the distinctive "ping" that the lids make as they snap themselves to the jar rim. ONE! I'd holler from the living room. ping. TWO! we'd both shout. THREE! FOUR! laughing now as they came like popcorn. FIVE! Inevitably we'd miss hearing one or two, left hanging until the jars were completely cool and safe to check. Trying to check the seal while they're hot can lead to a false seal, something which only shows you the error of your impatience when you open that delicious jelly and see mold, smell rot instead of fresh fruit. Very disappointing indeed.

So I had this grand idea of recapturing some of this feeling in my new home. I have a farmer's market, which has plenty of tomatoes, and I asked prices now and again, let people know I was interested in canning. Finally I got an offer which could not be refused. One farmer did not like the market, too many political maneuvers, too many unfriendly people. His vines were almost done anyway, so he told me where and when to be. I could have all the tomatoes I like, and if I saw fit to bring him some of the finished products from them, why, well, he would appreciate it.

What have I gotten myself into?

This seemed like such a good idea when I started!

The apples are from mom's orchard. There's not really enough there yet for sauce or butter, so these will be eaten, maybe sliced up for cobblers or pie fillings. We'll see how well I survive the tomatoes.

So you think you can cook....

DigitalDurga — Tue, 22 Jul 2008 08:49:11 GMT

I hosted and cooked for a friend of mine's baby shower. I think I was just showing that vegetarian party food is just as unhealthy as any other party food. The theme was a casual tea party. What I don't have any pictures of is the teas - I had classic black in my glass teapot on a warming stand, warm roobios chai. Iced green peppermint and the hit of the party - iced rosebud. Little sugar cubes, lemon slices, dairy and soy creamers. It was quite the spread. But the food... well, the food is, as you can see, the centerpiece of the day.

First, the overview:

I think I made damm near everything on that table. Assembled with a great deal of help from the cohosts. After this photo was taken we moved the cups and sugar and tea such over to a side table, so that there was more room for food on this table. Which had both extension leaves in, so it was already huge.

Here's the details.

The stupidest, easiest, tastiest treat. Get frozen cream filled puff pastry from freezer. Let thaw. Slice and stuff with strawberry bits. These disappeared fast. Very nummy.

The least impressive looking, but delicious and I'm damm proud of it. Wild mushroom pate. Like, serious full stick of butter and heavy cream pate. With a sauteed scallion/walnut topping. Yeah. It's real.

This was a tri-layer terrine. Basil pesto, white bean pate and sun dried tomato in layers. All that oil in the corner is from the pestos. Mucho Yum.

Just a pretty. Storebought cookies in a teapot that has lost its handle. Added to the elegance.

Since it was early summer I had to have a fruit salad. With fresh peaches, blueberries, strawberries and raspberries. I had orange blossom flavored whipped cream alongside.

And of course every tea party needs scones. Two types, oatmeal currant scone for traditionalist and a blueberry one made with splenda (the momma to be is prediabetic and appreciated something not loaded with actual sucrose).

and of course there needed to be sandwiches:

ginger carrot.

wasabi cucumber, some with cherry tomato halves.

roasted eggplant tapenade with a rosemary leaf garnish.

But the most impressive thing was this:

The apricots were luscious all on thier own, so they simply got a crystal bowl to bask in.

The tarts - well... those were the real crowd pleaser.

Layers of phyllo dough, brushed with melted butter mixed with maple syrup. Filled with marscapone cheese mixed with more maple syrup. Delicately layered with fresh berries - a single raspberry, a few strawberry chunks and some blueberries.

And just in case any one is curious, yes the cohosts went to Sam's and got a meat tray. It looked exactly like it was, an afterthought and totally extraneous.

There was also store bought peach and blueberry pies, and a trilevel torte with strawberry and blueberry fillings.

Phew, that was a busy weekend! Everyone was dutifully impressed, and the food was delicious. Oh, and I leave you with one final reminder:

Farmer's Markets ROCK!

Go find one for yourself. Today. It's summer. They should be all over the place, and have really great tasty healthy stuff. <3

putting a spin on cotton

DigitalDurga — Thu, 17 Jul 2008 20:39:10 GMT

Mom loaded up a really cool spinning video on YouTube:

link

Just thought I'd share. It goes along with her podcast which you can check out at her blogor libsyn page

Pareto roving

DigitalDurga — Tue, 17 Jun 2008 08:04:06 GMT

Remember the cotton/rayon roving that I dyed?

Well here you go:

Not the greatest of pictures, I just snapped it rather quickly this morning. But the variations in the greens is translating very nicely into the single. Yellow green through blue green through a deeper green. The colors are not as saturated as I would have liked, I don't really like the fact that these are all tints of green instead of shades of green (I do tend towards the darker end of the spectrum usually). And ignore the really dark stuff at the right end of the bobbin. That's leader yarn. I've only spun about three foot long sections of roving so I haven't even covered the whole length of the bobbin yet.

But I think this will make a nice workable yarn when it's completed. The spun single is tight without being crisp and I think after plying and washing it will be a middling kind of cotton feel. Not the silky softness of shiny mercerized, but not the rough plainness of cotton t-shirt either. I think this will be a good knitting yarn.

I've been stripping the roving in half when I tear off a section, using one half and saving the other so that I can make a second bobbin with comparable color shifts. This will give me some options when plying, since I could two ply, or chain ply, or what I'm considering doing, using both bobbins simultaneously to chain ply, giving me a six ply final yarn fairly effortlessly (famous last words I'm sure). I have a total of 4 ounces of roving, so I can also do four bobbins and try cable plying.

Don't expect to see final yarn for years though. I hardly ever get time to sit at the spinning wheel. But I do love it when I do. This batch was spun while watching "Peaceful Warrior" which seemed rather appropriate actually.

Fruits of the Earth

DigitalDurga — Thu, 12 Jun 2008 09:13:16 GMT

Just an update on eating, and canning.

So how is everyone's summer going?

I was starting to feel a lot of self pity, wah wah wah, poor me, because I couldn't scrape together the cash in the spring to sign up for either of the CSA programs that I like. For those who aren't familiar, CSA = Community Supported Agriculture, and it's a system where you buy a share of what the farm produces in a growing season. So around here it's ~$400 and you get fresh local veggies every week, usually from mid May through October. My mom suggested I check out farmer's markets in town instead, since there is one literally every day of the week right now (hooray!!). So, I tried the one closest to work, on Tuesday, and the farmers who did one of the CSAs that I really like were there selling retail. Huzzah! So, I'm allotting myself $20 every week to buy fresh veggies, and I am saving money for next year.

This week I got a HUGE head of red lettuce, kale, napa cabbage, zucchini, tomatos, garlic greens (like green onions only solid and garlic-y) and small onions with thier tops, kind of a hybrid between onions and green onions. Total of about $17. Yes, I realize over the long run the CSA would be cheaper, but this way I don't have to come up with the cash all at once.

If you can find a program like this, or farmers markets near you, go do it, it is so worth the extra grocery trip.

So dinners this week - stir fry with the napa cabbage, spicy greens and white beans with the kale, marinated chick pea salad, and I already used the garlic greens to make a pasta - fresh broccoli, tomatos, red onions.... yum!

I also made jam over the weekend (last saturday), Mom dropped off a flat (2 gallons!) of locally grown berries, which she got for $17 since it was the end of the day. I did have a lot of waste, and they were a bit overripe for jam, but all told I got 9 pints and 3 jelly jars plus enough fruit for a batch of triple berry jam when the blueberries start coming in next week and a small bowl of perfect ones to eat. All gone now of course, just a pleasant memory.

But blueberry season is one of my favorites. I love going to the upick, and I know I'm terrible, but I do the kid thing... one for the bucket, one for me. One for the bucket, oh that one looks good, chomp. One for the bucket, oh, do these two taste any different?? Takes me forever to get my bucket filled.

But there is something sincerely gratifying about picking fruit, bringing it home, washing it, and canning it for later. Not all on the same day, of course, are you insane? This is all exhausting labor and needs to be split up over a weekend. I always joke that mom raised me to be a historical re-enactor, since I have so many skills which are not really requirements for modern day living. Canning is one of those things which is getting harder, so I wanted to talk a little bit about it, just to preserve my memories a little.

To preserve foods for long term storage, you usually have a couple of options. Often we use preservatives, chemical substances which inhibit decay that makes food inedible. In the pre-made world of baked goods this takes the form of all sorts of complicated words, but substances like sugar, salt and vinegar do work as well. So jam uses the sweet end of the spectrum. This seems kind of counter intuitive, but there is some logic. Jam, fruit made thick and sealed away from air is a rather inhospitable place for beasties to grow. So canning works on all of these aspects.

There are still materials available to can, usually more prominently displayed in the summer. You need sturdy glass jars, lids with a soft rubber seal and then rings to hold those lids in place until they do seal. You need several large pots, and a source of heat to make boiling water.

Here's where I had an interesting twist. I inherited one of Mom's old canning pots, a huge porcelained monstrosity with several racks. It tends to live in the basement until canning season. This year, I pulled it out and the rust was sufficiently bad that parts of the bottom looked decidely thin. So, with pictures of multiple gallons of boiling water suddenly escaping from the bottom of the pot, I decided to buy a new one this year. They tend to run all of $20, so not a huge investment. I found one at Wal-Mart (see, I told you it was getting more difficult to can, I have to spend my money at a store I hate shopping at in order to do this process. Trade offs.) and brought it home. As I was getting ready to give it a cursory washing before use, I notice the label says "not for use on glass cooktops" Umm. Excuse me? Sure enough, it dawns on my the the somewhat corrugated bottom would be a Bad Idea on smooth cooktops. Le sigh.

So, I dig out the biggest of the stainless steel soap pots, which has never actually been used for soap, since I don't think I've ever made a batch that required a 20 quart pot. Nice flat bottom, stainless steel, lid to keep the heat in. Deal, Done, Thank You, Drive Through. So I get some water in there and put it on medium heat, since it takes a long time for ~5" of water to come to a boil. I've got the jars I'm going to use in the dishwasher being washed, and then I give them an extra rinse on the rinse and hold cycle. Dish soap and rinse aid taste nasty in jam, trust me. Rinse well. Jars should be hot and seriously clean, you really want sterile. The whole purpose of this exercise is to hold food without spoiling for long periods of time, so starting with jars that have yeast or bacteria in them is, well, pointless. Similarly with the lids, so those go into a bowl and are covered with boiling water until it's time to use them.

Fruit should be washed, prepped and crushed. Strawberries are easy, since prep = cut off green bits with a sharp knife. Blueberries are even easier - wash, try to remove any spiders and/or moldy bits. The best jam comes from a mix of ripe and underripe fruit, so don't worry too much about using only perfect fruit. Yes, perfect fruit would likely make better jam, but let's not obsess about such things. For the jam I was making I used a total of 10 C of crushed strawberries, 14 C of sugar and 2 boxes of pectin. Here's the modern convienence coming out. Old school, you don't have pectin extracted from the tons of underripe fruit that can't be sold for eating. You have underripe fruit and tough luck to you if there's too much of it (jello instead of jam) or too little of it (syrup instead of jam). Since I happen to think fruit in syrup just means pancakes for breakfast instead of muffins, I wouldn't be too put out if commerical available pectin went byebye. But it does make things very easy.

Fruit comes to a boil with the pectin. Once it's at a full rolling boil you stir in the sugar, and let it come to a boil again. A word of warning, this is not pasta. It takes a lot longer for the sugar to dissolve, flow and get loose enough to allow boiling again. And in the process you will likely get a lot of foam. I tend to make jam in a pot twice as big as I think I need to accomodate the actual fruit/sugar mix, because that foam can make a serious mess if it overflows. It's boiling hot, and sticky. Not my favorite combination. Now, a lot of people throw a little butter in the mix to help keep that foaming under control. But I love the foam. More on that later. Once it finally boils you set a timer for a minute, and keep stirring. Stir for that full "are you serious this can't be only a minute I've been stirring in this steam and AIGH! it exploded at me! ow ow ow ow hot hot hot why does it always explode straight at me! Where was I, right, I've been stirring for AGES now and it has to be done, is my timer broken, what do you MEAN it's only been 48 seconds... ok, deep breath almost done now, count it down, 3! 2! 1 BEEP!!!"

Ok, maybe you won't have to be as frantic as I am about it all, but once the minute is up, jam comes off the heat, stir it until it settles down and thinks about forgiving you, and then contemplate the foam. Lots of people think this is just the nastiest stuff, and I suspect thier opinion is shaped by that truely nasty foam you get from say, cooking chicken stock. But this is strawberry flavored meringue candy, more or less. I scrape it off into a bowl, put it in the fridge to harden and eat it on english muffins or biscuits.

While the fruit/sugar was coming to a reboil, pull the jars out of the dishwasher, set them up on the counter. I find a funnel to be of critical help here too. Ladle the hot jam into the jars, filling almost but not quite full. Formal recipes have headspace recommendations, but I've always found them to be ~.5" which is almost always where the shoulder of the jar hits. Smaller jars have smaller shoulder slopes and need less headspace. It all seems to be well designed to me. Fill them up, wipe any spillage, drop a lid on and try to screw the ring over the lid without 1) burning yourself terribly 2) overtightening 3) undertightening. It takes some practice and finesse, but "fingertip tight" is the goal. Repeat with all remaining jam and hopefully all remaining jars. If you planned it right you have enough of each to go around.

Then the sealed jars go into the boiling water. There's jar tongs out there that make this incredibly comfortable, adding a good five inches between your fingers and the boiling water. If not there's a lot of cursing in this step and a greater chance for dropped (meaning cracked, meaning MESSY) jars. For most jams you leave them in the boiling water for 10 minutes after it returns to a boil. There's a few purposes to this step. One, bringing things to boiling is a good way to kill the beasties who want to eat our jam before we do. Two, it heats up the air in that headspace, which expands, and escapes through the soft rubber of the lid seal. After the boiling time is up, the jars come out, set on a soft towel on the counter to cool completely. The air inside contracts, and you have a vaccum in the jar, complete with a satisfying "ping" from the lids.

That's actually my childhood memory of canning, and I still do it today. After whatever it was came out we'd play 'count the pings' There's usually silence for a second, then one or two slowly, then usually some in rapid succession... then you think it might be done, wander off to do other things, then unexpectedly "PING!" from the kitchen. Still makes me laugh, actually. It's right up there with popcorn for silly joys.

And then you have this:

Or rather, more importantly, you have this:

Enough strawberry jam to feed my husband PB&J sandwiches for, hopefully, a year, although I honestly doubt it. He seems to eat twice as much homemade as storebought. And yes, I am reusing Frog Ranch salsa jars, since they are kind enough to package in real Mason jars which are canning appropriate. I also tend to pick up jars at places like Big Lots after season.

This is one of the reasons why I'm worried about canning as a means of food storage. I need lids every time, and those are getting harder to find. Eventually jars chip or crack, rings rust. All I can really hope is that this idea of slow food, slow living, eating locally will continue to catch on and we'll keep alive the idea of putting by summer for winter. There really is something deeply gratifying about pulling one of these jars out in December. When you open it, it SMELLS like June. It tastes a lot like when you are so stuffed full of strawberries you think you'll never want to eat one again, and then have just one more. It's the payoff of the pleasure delayer.

Do you can anything? have any family favorites? Next time I might tell you about Grandma's grape juice. Yum.

what do you think?

DigitalDurga — Sun, 08 Jun 2008 22:58:54 GMT

I just finished listening to the Golden Compass on audiobook. This was one of the first ones I've listened to that had a full cast doing the voices. At first I didn't really like it. I honestly like the "dad reading me a story at bedtime" aspect of the single narrator style. But a few chapters in I surrendered to the radio show quality and really enjoyed it.

And of course, I got curious. What shape would my deamon take? I took the quiz, and his name is Boreallus, and he seems to love being a tiger. He's shiny!

Tell me what you think. In 12 days he'll settle down, so you have that long to decide whether or not this really suits me.

ETA: AIGH! When did he become a mouse?! That's a big switch. LOL Wonder if he'll stay that way??

Dye day!

DigitalDurga — Thu, 05 Jun 2008 00:55:49 GMT

As you've already seen if you read crftyspider, the fiberartist or listen to yarnspinnerstales (and you should do all three if you don't already) I hosted dye day this year. The odd Tuesday ladies occasionally get together to dye a big mess of fiber. This is usually a once a year occasion, since dying is messy and complicated and best done in the company of good friends, with food. And iced tea.

This year also required plenty of sunblock. Even with sunblock I managed to get really sunburned on my back. But I got almost two pounds of cotton lint, a pound of cotton/rayon roving, two skeins of sock yarn and some punis dyed in an afternoon. Phew! Here's a pictorial documenting the process:

This is some of the lint that I acquired from a very good hearted soul known as stashymoma on Rav. I carded some of the white on my hand cards to make the punis which will be appearing later in the show. Here the lint is shown basking in some Soda Ash water. Soda ash is required for the dyes we were using to actually bind to the fibers. I know this, because when I put some of mom's violet Procion MX dye on my esprit sock yarn with no Soda Ash, there was not violet yarn. It was rather a sad proof of experiment, but there must always be a Ho to test your Ha (sorry, stat geek joke. Moving right along).

So I squeezed the lint out and layered it in aluminum roasting trays, with the idea that as there was leftover dye available I'd dump it on my lint and see what I got. I also had a handful of punis that I'd carded earlier, two skeins of Elann Esprit (cotton elastic sock yarn) and a pound of Pareto roving (80/20 cotton/rayon). If it looks like the esprit is dark in these shots, it's partially because it was wet, and because it was not actually white. It is in fact "nougat" colored. This is because elann didn't put the white on full bag sale and because I am not afraid of overdying. ;D

This is the dyes I was planning to use. TheFiberArtist acquired a stash ::polite cough:: of these dyes from a friend of hers. This was some mad scientist stuff here, concentrated liquid dyes in old vinegar bottles with very aged, brown labels and DUST on every surface. Several of them had little twists of very dry brittle yarn on top to show what color they yielded.

Here's my colors all picked out. I didn't know if the Procion MX would dye rayon or not, where the Cushing's extra dusty would. So I picked a selection of greens and blue greens with the intent of doing a "shady lawn" sort of colorway for the Garden Spinning swap.

I measured the dye into clear plastic cups, then diluted it with more Soda Ash water. Below you can see my roving all laid out intestine like in a pan. It was very wet from having soaked overnight in a solution of 1 C. soda ash to ~4 gallons of water. I squeezed it out a bit before laying it in the pan, but it was still very wet, so I didn't dilute my dyes as much as I would have for a dryer roving. I also laid the roving shortways along the pan, the same direction I intended to pour my stripes of dye, in order to get long color repeats.

In retrospect, looking at this picture, I'm not sure why I thought those blues in the center there would end up green in the final roving. I should have added some green to them before I poured and relied less on wicking. And, since we're on a bit of retrospecting, my idea for the long color repeats would have been much better if I wasn't then turning right around and dividing this pound into 2oz chunks for the swap, a fact I thought of much much later. Go brain go!

It was a lot of fun to take the several deep breath cftyspider coached me through and pour the dye on the yarn. White was suddenly COLOR. Very satisfying to the part of me who still thinks crayons are perfectly acceptable wall decorating devices.

I also ended up snagging some yellow that crftyspider mixed up (sorry!! but it was perfect!) to add some dandelion yellow highlights to the open spots on yarnspinner's suggestion. What, your lawn doesn't have violets and dandelions in it??

I had to do some digging to make sure there wasn't much white left in the roving. I also ended up pouring so much liquid in the pan that I was worried it would all end up muddy olive colored. So I poured a lot of dye liquid off (from the darker end of course) before I did this part. After this was all dyed, I smooshed it a bit, then put a lid on top of it and set it out in the sun.

Then it was time to attack the punis and sock yarn. It was basically the same drill. Take fiber. Add dye. I wanted to do a warm skein and a cool skein. But mostly I wanted to see what happened when I added dye to fiber. So I wasn't the most scientific with it. The punis were dry, to see how much wicking happened (if any at all). The yarn had been soaked in tap water only, since I had no idea what overnight exposure to soda ash would do the the elasticity of the yarn.

A cool shot through the plastic. I'd just dumped some very diluted purple on the lint and was holding it up to see how much made it through.

All told I ended up with a tray of cool mix (black, purple, electric blue) a tray of warm mix (crimson, orange, yellow) and two trays of terracotta. The terracotta was a really good color, I was helpless before it.

After everything was dyed it was left in the anvil of the sun (also known as my deck. In three days the camels die. When the camels die, we die. Remember that.) for the rest of the afternoon.

Then I moved everything into my garage to wait overnight, and on Monday I began the rinsing. It took all day, and I am not joking. I started with the roving since that was the most important to have dried in a timely fashion. I dumped it out into the bathtub, trying to keep the darker parts downhill from the lighter parts (to prevent the creation of mud colored roving, which I have been told is caused by "backdying"). I totally forgot the information given to me in Cozyb's tutorial about starting with cold water to avoid this backdying. I turned the showerhead on the hottest setting (why yes, I have been accused of boiling lobsters while I shower, why do you ask? I often forget that my tub has a cold water tap too). Then I let it drain and repeated this until what drained through was pretty clear, even with me moving and squishing on the roving. With lots of water it looks like this:

all fat and sassy intestinals bleeding green. After it got rinsed about eight times, squished as dry as possible and carried outside to dry on the porch it looked like this:

Very cool and kelpy. It didn't dry there, since there was a freak rainstorm that lasted all of three minutes and accomplished nothing except raising the ambient humidity to 98%. So eventually the whole forest got moved into the garage to be poked at every few hours. It didn't rot, and it did in fact dry. Eventually. All told it took almost two days.

At the same time as that roving was rinsing I had the violet sock yarn and punis rinsing in the sink. Yes, I'm big on multitasking. Especially when one of my process goes something like: *let water filter through roving until it seems to be all gone, then rearrange roving and add water. Repeat from * until your screaming becomes intolerable or the water runs clear.

The pan of cool mix yarn and punis looked something like this immediately after dying:

Vibrant!!

Of course, the truth in dying is in the rinse water. And that purple rinsed. And rinsed. And rinsed. It took me about 8 drainings to get the green nicely cleared. I think it took closer to 20 to clear the purple. I don't know if it was just not diluted enough or what. In contrast, the terracotta lint rinsed clear in two. I actually rinsed it four times because I thought it was lying to me. But it was clear after the second one. The warm mix yarn rinsed clear in three or four rinses and I didn't even get a picture of it, since it didn't spend long enough in the sink for me to remember that I should. But the purple rinsed and rinsed some more! You can see the nougat peeking through to laugh at me:

The water stayed roughly that purple every time. It was very frustrating, since you just KNOW that the more dye leaving in the rinsewater, the paler and more bleh your final product is going to be. I was pretty much assuming at this point that I would still have nougat colored yarn, with a violet cast to it. One of those colors you call "lilac" or "LA smog" in the hopes that imagination will add color where there really is none.

In contrast, let's look at that terracotta that so charmed me. First good sign - when I went to move it into my garage I stuck a finger into it, and pulled it back out half scalded. That sucker was HOT. Not boiling by any means, but it was easily over 100F.

And pulling some lint back, the water was roughly the same color as the soaking water. So that dye exhausted amazingly well. The darker color on the edges were underneath the rest of the lint, so the parts that soaked actually in the hot dye got a bit darker than the rest.

Anyone hungry? I almost didn't post pictures of this since I thought my vegetarianism might be called into question. Somehow I managed to dye "marbled meat" color. Go me! The other warm mix had a very vibrant yellow, but the orange/red part was much more pastel.

There was also the very nicely gothic "bruise mix" lint:

I'll spare you all the bad puns that ran through my head as I rinsed this one. I think I was a little slaphappy from dye and tapwater fumes at this point. I understand now why dying is usually done by rivers. This is not the proper hobby for a desert climate. I used a lot of water, and if I didn't live right next to a river I might have felt guilty about that. As it is, I know that my heavy water consumption is ecologically helpful, since even that dye laden rinse water is cleaner than what they first pulled out of that river.

Another thing I learned. Dyed, rinsed, squeezed punis are almost as funny as wet cats, and just about as happy with life:

So very pathetic. I thought I might have totally ruined them. Luckily, they get over it:

Seriously, I did nothing to those punis except leave them in a windowsill. They apparently forgave me.

In fact, everything seemed to forgive the abuse after it had a night alone in the garage to think it over.

The kelp became actual roving. (It got even softer and nicer after I gave it a loving beating).

Even the sock yarn seemed pleased:

There's only vague hints of nougat in there. I think next time I'm going to wind the skein larger (these were done with the skein winder on my charka, which is not known for thinking big) and try some actual planning in the color arrangements. I would also love to try knitting a ball into a flat to do some non-wool friendly Flat Feet kind of yarn. I kind of coveted the ones I saw in Alaska, and I have 8 more balls of the nougat to play with.

In fact, I think the only one who took a little persuading to forgive me was my husband, who was stymied from playing his new game for the day while we had guests:

He forgave me eventually, probably because he didn't want to be banished to the garage too.

There's a great deal more photos on my flickr account, tagged with "dyeday2008" (if the direct link doesn't work).

I learned a lot from this dye day, and had a great time with everyone. I can't wait to see everything from the swap all together, and I am suddenly much more inspired to sit down at my spinning wheel!

I got an A+ in Death and Grieving

DigitalDurga — Thu, 24 Apr 2008 09:11:58 GMT

Ok, so just the title makes me giggle. No, I'm really not any better at dealing with loss than anyone else. But I did pass the class, and I learned a lot. I thought I'd share a piece of my final paper. I stretched the rules of the assignment a little to allow the creative writing. But it was worth it. This is the bulk of my paper for the cultural portion of my classwork. We all had to research a group, write a paper about their beliefs and present a summary in class. Mine was Buddhists.

I'm always of mixed emotions about this type of assignment. It's good to get exposure, and everyone was very respectful and appreciative of the group they researched. I <3 Buddhism, though it has some very difficult lessons for me about letting go.

But I also wonder how much good it does to have a five minute summary of such a wide ranging and variable topic. As long as noone thinks this is the end of the story, I suppose it's ok. But I also wonder if maybe it's better to train people to ask questions instead. Respectful, polite and curious questions. Not everyone will answer, I know. Some people are harder to get to know than others, some cultures are harder to get to know than others. But enough rambling, this is a long post as is. I'm not attaching the whole paper since there's other stuff that I don't think is as interesting. If you want to see the whole thing drop me a line, I'll email you the PDF. The story is a little heavy handed for pure fiction, welcome to the joys of writing for your audience. I might rework this to be a real short story one of these days.

Grandfather was not doing well now. Auntie told me not to worry, that he was a good man, who had brought much peace to the world. His kamma was good and so he would be reborn to a happier place. That the monks who sat and chanted were helping him accept the transition, to let go of this place and move on to the next. I thought a lot about this as I brought water for everyone to drink and wash with. I had not seen anyone dying before, and so everything was very strange now. Mother was sewing saffron colored fabric into a monk's robe. I asked her what it was for and she told me that it was just in case grandfather became a naked peta after his death, a hungry ghost. We would offer the robe to the monks, and then transfer the good deed to grandfather, and he would no longer be naked. But this confused me, since auntie said that grandfather would be reborn into a better life. I ran from the chant and incense filled house, to think. The words of the monks followed me for a long time: “All kinds of beings surely come to death, they have always died, will always die, in the same way I shall surely die, doubt about this does not exist in me.”

When I came back the monks had gone for the day and the house was quiet. Grandmother was sitting next to grandfather's bed. She held his hand and told him softly – 'be at peace my love, my light. Do not worry about us. We are strong with your love, with all you have built for us. You have lived a life of great credit, and we are honored by your deeds. You can go. You can go. Do not worry about us.' It sounded like a prayer to me, though not one I had ever heard before. The sadness in her voice made me start to cry, and my brother pinched my arm, hard. I yelped in surprise and he hissed in my ear “Do not make this any harder for him! He needs to focus on his next life. What we do now can make it much worse for him! If you cannot let go then go away!” He was about to scold me more, but then my mother called for us and I ran to her.

She asked me to warm more water for grandfather's bath and for my brother to find him clean clothes. I cried the whole time, because I did not want to lose grandfather. His stories made me laugh, and he always held me on his lap and sang to me when I was sad. He could do magic tricks, and he had not yet taught me how to do the best ones! I became angry then, and almost spilled the large bowl of warm water I was carrying. Mother asked me what was wrong and I tried to explain. She hugged me, and told me that it was ok to be sad. When we become attached to people in our life, it could hurt very much to lose them.

She explained that if I could learn to accept that death comes because of birth, then it would hurt a little less. While we bathed grandfather she told me a story of when the Buddha was a young man and he rode in a chariot around the city outside the palace. He saw a sick man, and an old man, and a dead man. These were the three revelations for the Buddha, who was young and strong and healthy. He asked - how did this happen? How could this be? His chariot driver explained that this was what happened to everything. We are born, and so we must get sick. We are born, and so we must get old. We are born, and so we must eventually die and be reborn again. This is true for all things on the earth, there is no escaping the pain of this truth. And then the Buddha and his driver saw a holy man, and the Buddha asked, who is that man, who sits so quietly? What is he doing? His driver answered, he is a holy man, one who had turned his life into a search for enlightenment, he is looking for a way to be free of the sadness of existing. Grandfather had been following the story, and told me how the Buddha decided then to become a holy man, to look for ways to be free of the attachments of life. His gift to us was discovering the path to nirvana, the freedom from the endless cycle of birth and rebirth within a life.

After we made grandfather comfortable and left the room mother asked me several times, do you understand, my daughter? We do not wail or weep beside your grandfather because we want to help him let go of his attachments to us and this life. We burn incense and chant prayers for him so that all his senses will be engaged in moving on. We must accept his passing, and release our own attachments to him so that he has the best rebirth possible. His death offers us a chance to find our own enlightenment, to examine our own lives and see what more we have to accomplish. What you feel now is exactly what you need in order to heal, but you need to be quiet in order to hear what those feelings have to teach you. You must give them space, and not lose yourself in your weeping. Now go, and check on your grandfather. Speak to him of the good things you have done today, and let him know that you do these things in his honor, because he taught you well how to be a good person. And remember, death is not the end of things. It is a change, from one place to another, from one life to another. Ask your grandfather if he knows where he will go next. Ask if he has seen any signs yet, as some people can be blessed in this way.

The monks returned the next day to sing their prayers again. Sometimes they sat silently. Sometimes one or another of them would again converse with grandfather. They seemed to speak to him often, often of his life and accomplishments. Once they had asked if he preferred burial or cremation when he finally passed on. Grandfather asked which one Buddha had chosen, and the monk said that either was appropriate. He reassured grandfather that it was a matter of preference alone, since by then he would no longer be in this body, grandfather's soul would have moved on to the incorporeal world and would be awaiting reincarnation in the next life. Grandfather said he wanted a burial service and the monk spent awhile talking to father before he left that day. I wanted to ask one of the monks how I would know my grandfather when he came back, but they started chanting again and I had to stand still and listen.

I often heard grandfather having discussions with father, or mother, or grandmother. Once he called my brother in and spoke to him for almost an hour before strength left him and he slept through the rest of the day and the entire night. I wondered what these hushed conversations meant. Sometimes I heard prayers, and sometimes laughter or soft tears. One day it was my turn, and I sat beside my grandfather as he explained to me that he was very sorry that he could no longer teach me any more magic tricks, but he knew that I was a clever little girl, and I would learn many more on my own after he was gone. He pointed to one of his many books and told me to take it with me back to my room. He asked me if I had any questions, but I was too shy to ask. I shook my head and left to do my homework, after I gave him one more hug, of course. He no longer felt the way he used to, but I remembered one of the monks explaining to grandmother that it is only when we bring forward the memory of how someone used to be that we are pained by the comparison. By letting go of any expectations we can avoid the pain of losing those expectations. So I tried.

Then one morning, grandfather did not wake up. I watched as my family worked to bathe him, and dress him. First Grandmother touched him very gently on the crown of his head. Then she took his favorite watch off his wrist and gave it to my father. Then she took his wedding ring and placed it in her pocket. My brother had gone to summon the monks back to the house. While I folded a cotton sheet into the bottom of the casket I asked my auntie why grandfather was dressed so simply, plain white pants, a crisp white shirt, bare feet. She responded that he was dead now, and could carry nothing but his kamma with him into his new life. We would honor the body he left us out of respect for the life that he shared with us, and our good deeds would reflect well on him, but there was no need for anything more.

When grandmother deemed him ready, my father gently lifted grandfather from his bed and placed him in the simple coffin next to the altar he had prepared. It too was simple. A statue of the Buddha, smiling from his lotus flower. A picture of grandfather, still strong and healthy, his wrinkled smile reaching out to me. As people arrived to visit grandfather for the last time some of them added to this altar, fragrant flowers, or a stick of incense. They came and told grandfather of some good deed they had done in his name, a donation perhaps, or a caring conversation with someone else. One old woman, a friend of his from school I think, said she had been up chanting all night with another old friend of theirs, who would also die soon. She sat and listened to the chanting for grandfather for a long time.

Most of us stood and either chanted or listened, depending on whether we knew the prayers. When the monks arrived we could follow them – standing when they stood, sitting when they sat, letting the prayers carry our thoughts. They recited Dhamma teachings – the truths of Buddha's journey into enlightenment. The head monk spoke softly about what he had learned from speaking with grandfather, how much love he had for his family, and how we had benefited from his example and how he had benefited from our many good deeds. He thanked my mother and grandmother when they presented him with the robes my mother had sewn, a neatly folded bundle of cheery yellow fabric amidst the pure white and deep somber colors of the gathered people.

We stayed there, the house open to all who would come and visit with grandfather for the rest of that day and all the next, since some of his friends were father away than our city. Those who came stood before his altar with their hands clasped and bowed deeply to him. Or even just stood in silence for a moment with him. Everyone was somber, quiet, even peaceful. My oldest brother, who was far away in school, would not be able to come before we buried grandfather. But he had promised to come to the third memorial service, which should happen closer to break, a little more than a month from now. When I got bored and fidgety, my mother sent me to make tea for everyone, or to go play in the back yard. I overheard my auntie and my grandfather's friend at one point, talking about how it was good to hear children playing, to be reminded that the wheel turns, and there is happiness in the world too.

The third morning we dressed in clean white clothes, sealed the casket and took it to the hearse which would take grandfather to the cemetery. Mother explained to my brother and I that we would walk slowly behind the hearse, and be silent. We were to think about everything we had seen, but questions would have to wait until later. This was the last service we would do for our grandfather, and we were to behave ourselves so that he could be proud of us. When we arrived at the cemetery we would have the opportunity to speak one last time to grandfather, to tell him about some good thing that we had done, and dedicate it to him. There would be a pitcher of water, and as we spoke we were to pour a small amount over our index finger. I tried to ask mother why we would do such a thing, but she told me it was a reminder of another story from the Buddha's life and I would have to wait until she could tell me the whole thing.

I walked with my family the whole way to the cemetery, even though my feet hurt and the sun became too warm and I wanted my father to carry me. I was silent, thinking about how I was supposed to be radiating loving-kindness to my grandfather, wherever he was now, to help his next birth be even better than this one had been. I thought about how earlier grandmother and auntie talked about how grandfather had been a good man, perhaps a little too attached to this world and his family, but a devout Buddhist and virtuous indeed. How could someone want better than that, I wondered. What else was there in life besides family? Besides being comfortable? Besides being good?

I wanted to ask my mother, or one of the monks walking alongside us, but mother had said that questions would have to wait. I knew there would be other opportunities. Grandmother had already started planning the first memorial service, to be held this weekend. The next would be in just a few weeks, then the vague plans for what we would do when my eldest brother could return to celebrate his grandfather's life and honor his memory. He might know the answers to some of my questions as well, since he was in school and had read many stacks of books. Or he would be brave enough to visit the monks with me, and ask the questions I was too shy to ask. I kept my silence as we lowered grandfather's coffin into the ground, and even the whole way home.

I looked at the book of magic tricks grandfather had given me and thought about the funeral. A few monks had come with us, but it had been Father who did most of the talking. The smell of incense was still strong, even in my room, and I think I slept for awhile. I know I awoke curled up around my book. I wondered if someday I would have a grandchild, and whether, if I did, she would want to learn silly magic tricks from her grandmother.

geeking

DigitalDurga — Fri, 11 Apr 2008 10:41:52 GMT

I am such a hopeless geek, this made me snort tea:

Mindful Self Indulgence

DigitalDurga — Fri, 11 Apr 2008 09:40:56 GMT

I've been a bit distracted lately. For the most part, this isn't a terrible thing. I have long standing habits of putting everything important into my PDA, and it remembers for me. This leaves my brain free to focus on what I am doing, instead of trying to keep up with constant random reminders. But lately it has had some unfortunate consequences.

See, I drink tea. Often. I have a marvelous kettle which I received as a wedding shower present, from my husband's grandmother (no, it's not actually an old kettle, she bought it off my registry). I managed to completely ruin it this week, by putting water on to boil for some tea, sitting down at my computer and completely forgetting about it. My husband and I both sat there thinking, wow, is someone grilling this late at night? what's that odd smell... hmm.. it's not going away...Until finally something clicked, he went running into the kitchen, turned the burner off, fought the kettle off the burner and confirmed my fear. It had cracks through the inside and outside coatings, completely unsuitable for use. Fortunately it seems like the burner survived unscathed (we have a smooth ceramic glass type stove, which I'm not very familiar with. If I don't know how to break something, I'm usually cautious with it.)

So. One kettle down. I switch to a reliable saucepan for my water boiling needs. Within three days I pulled the same stunt! I was a little faster on the "hmm what's that smell" part of the scenario, but the same result: one very overheated saucepan. In this case the ending might not be so dire, it's a solid metal saucepan, no coatings of any kind to have been damaged. So this one might be salvagable with some Barkeeper's and steel wool.

But still. I'm very upset at myself over this. This is the level of distraction where more serious accidents can happen. So I'm making a commitment to start my yoga program up again. I need to do a better job of keeping my head clear.

And as for the tea, my friend Spydie had the most brilliant suggestion - an electric kettle:

It hold more than enough for a full pot of tea (which is good actually, since one of my habits it to pour the leftover boiling water down my drains to help keep them clear). It's MUCH faster than the stovetop kettle. When you pick it up from the base, it's totally seperate and flat, no cords or prongs or anything, so it can travel to another room easily. It keeps the water warm through the insulated carafe. But here's the best parts - it automatically turns itself off when the water boils, and it refuses to turn on if it's empty. I won't promise that there's no way I can ruin this thing (I am awfully ingenious in my destructive powers sometimes) but it is much, much harder.

I'm going to develop the habit of refilling it when I've emptied it, which means tea is always a click away now.

Oh, and it looks all sci-fi in my morning kitchen.

For some reason that makes me almost as happy as the somehow musical "click" when it turns itself off.

I have this fetish for well designed tools - things that do a job so well that it becomes hard to imagine how to do it any better. I think this will be one of those things. See, even in the process of making tea this morning, I wandered into the kitchen, pushed the button, put some dishes away and wandered back out of the kitchen. This led me to my computer, where I checked my email, opened up all my morning blog reading, and started sorting out my school work for the day. It occurred to me that I should make this blog post about the new kettle, so I grabbed my camera, shot some pics, uploaded them. Renamed, resized, rotated and resaved. Somewhere in the process I smiled to myself when I heard the click that tells me the water is ready. I said I'd go get it in just a second. Then I went to grab my phone, check for messages and update my to do list. A quick bathroom break and I'm back at my computer, reading. I was getting a little hungry, so I wandered back into the kitchen, put a bagel in the toaster, contemplated the frozen fruit possibilities for a smoothie, then looked over and saw the steam in the kettle lid. Oh yeah!! Tea! I get out the tea pot, the tea I wanted and checked to see if the water was still hot. Yes indeed it was. So I have tea, and no cooking vessels were harmed in the making of it.

I think this is the start of a long and happy relationship.

2-4 rows per week

DigitalDurga — Wed, 26 Mar 2008 15:19:29 GMT

If it looks like I haven't been knitting lately, it's a trick of your impatient eyes.

There has been growth here, progress is being made.

But it is the progress of plants, the growth of forests. At this point, my favorite knitting project moves at the rate of 2-4 rows per week.

Much like the movement of continental plates, sometimes even this speed is disconcertingly apparent. My mystery stole is complicated stitches, on very small needles, with miles and miles to go before complete. Every time I work a chart row, and then purl back across (2 rows) I feel accomplished. If I can then do a second chart row and purl back, I feel deliriously satisfied with myself. I am making progress. The stole might actually be finished prior to SeaSocks (though I still have this nagging feeling that I will be blocking this thing on the ship before dinner some night).

I'm working a modification to the pattern which attaches the wing differently. Rather than a somewhat abrupt line of demarcation (in the original pattern there is a row of eyelets, and then the wing begins) this modification takes the cat's paw diamonds, enlongates them slowly into the feather stitch of the wing. The border pattern finishes, is framed by a progression of slanting eyelets. The modified design appeals to me, because it has flow and balance. The original answered the designers intentions, this one answers mine. The concept of the stole is "Swan Lake" and it is intended to be asymmetrical. There is very traditional lace knitting on one side, a wing on the other, with that hard line between them, the break between night and day. But for me, who appreciates dusk and twilight, I'd rather have a stole which represents that in between time which is both, and neither. Perhaps I'll rename this one LadyHawke, in honor of that movie where the lovers can only touch in that moments in between.

But, I chose to switch beads, to accent the difference between night and day, woman and bird, just a little more. The beads used at the base of the feathers are bright silver lined clear crystal glass. Very high quality and lovely. The ones I used in the beginning, and will continue to use along the border edge for as long as it lasts are duller silver, etched glass. They are a little more muted, still lovely, but earthly. The feather beads look like stars.

I think, just maybe, this will become one of my showcase knitting pieces. I am proud of myself for working through this project. It is the most complicated piece of knitting I think I have ever done. I have managed to imbue it with ritual meaning as well. So, two rows at a time, I am building balance into my life. I can develop both wings and restraint. I can fly as well as return home. I can enjoy losing myself in the complicated decoding of chart into stitches, the muttering incantation of the stitches which become a picture under my fingers.

I am starting to love this piece, although, I'm in no hurry to finish it. 2-4 rows at a time. That's the speed of this knitting. Anything wrong with that? I am certainly making progress, of that I have no doubt:

It's already almost as long as I am. It will shrink some after being washed, but this stole will likely still be more than 7 feet long when it's done. I keep saying I want this to be finished before the cruise, but honestly, that's only 44 days from now. 6 weeks or so. I have more than 12 rows to go. And I really don't want to force this to grow any faster than it wants to, I want to enjoy this amazing experience for as long as I am allowed. I am not yet done finding my balance, so my knitting can not be finished either. But both are making progress, 2-4 rows at a time.

Ding!

DigitalDurga — Sun, 23 Mar 2008 10:19:14 GMT

I know, I know, I said the next post would be knitting, but I haven't finished the pictures yet. Sorry.

Instead, I'm going to post a joke only a few of you will get, and talk a little about turning 30. One of the characters I play in World of Warcraft is a Tauren druid. They are shape shifters, which is loads of fun. I really like having one character who has the potential to be tank, melee DPS, caster DPS or healer. And at level 30 they get a cheetah form which runs about 40% faster than walk speed. No one else gets a speed boost like that. At level 40 everyone gets the riding mount, which increases your speed by 60%. But only druids get to move a little faster, a little earlier.

So I took a picture of my new travel form:

Yup. I hit level 30 today. I'm actually far too stressed about school and life in general to be really stressed about this marker birthday. I am doing something of a life review, which is one of my traditions for the base ten birthdays. I always take the opportunity to see where I am, where I'm going, and who I want to be. Am I becoming a better person? One of my favorite podcasts at the moment is Urban Dharma and the latest episode that I listened to is one where he spoke about his journey as a Buddhist. He mentioned that he was no longer the person he was at 20, or 30. That Buddhists see life as a team sport, a relay race between the selves we are right now and who we will be in the future. I laughed out loud when he talked about throwing a memorial service for all his past selves, wishing them well. I started crying when he said his normal sign off "Be happy. Be peaceful. And most of all, be free, from suffering."

I did a lot this past ten years. I graduated college (age 23), and went back to college (age 29). I ended the relationship that I'd had since age 19 around age 24. After that I fell in love with a remarkable man and eventually married him (age 27). I moved a few times over the course of the years, including my first ever solo apartment (age 24). I bought a house (also age 27, and definitely related to the man and the marriage). I learned to belly dance. I've made several new friends, and gotten to know some existing ones better. I discovered how much I love process improvement, and was certified as a Six Sigma Black Belt (age 29).

I really feel like I'm hitting something of a stride now. I'm grown up enough to be able to accomplish amazing things. I'm young enough to be healthy, strong and energetic. I am very much loved, by many wonderful people and that makes a huge difference. I have no problem letting the decade runner from my 20s go sit on the beach for awhile. She did a great job. We've gone over the job debriefing, I have all her files, and I think I'm ready to take over now. I've got a couple of big things planned for 30s, but at least for the first few months I'm going to let things continue according to her plan, see what works out. I am happy with who I am, even as I struggle continuously with how to be authentic, aware and ascending amid the realities of keeping a body alive and comfortable.

I was aided and abetted in this decade's review by one of my mom's presents. She made a wonderful slideshow of pictures with music and voice-over. The pictures range from before my birth to a few years ago. It was marvelous fun to see my grandfather looking so young, and to see friends from age 6,8 and 10 and REMEMBER THEIR NAMES! Wow. That startled me. It was fun to watch all my various hair styles and colors parade before me.

I should have let you show this at the restaurant Mom, sorry about that. It would have been great fun, and I simply wussed out. You did a really great job, and I give you public permission to show that to anyone who wants to see it. I shouldn't let my shame about growing up in the 80s stop you from sharing. Everyone else suffered through it as well.

Most interesting to me was one mom's final comments on the slideshow, about looking back and seeing everything that we've done, everywhere that we've been. And that really is one of the themes of my life. I take opportunities. I make options. There is so much I want to do, so much I want to learn. I think I'm not really freaked out about turning 30 because I don't feel old. Heck, I'm planning on living to 100 years, so I'm not even a third of the way through my life yet.

I am also faced with the decision which only really crops up every now and again on my birthday. Do I wish to bake myself a cake, or simply gorge on Easter candy? Of course, since dinner last night was at Shalimar Indian restaurant, and afterwards I went to the grocery next door there is also a package of mixed Indian sweets, and one of gulab sandwiches (the fried dough in honey things, but they're split open and stuffed with some tasty looking cheese stuff). So I might just go for the completely different this time.

It's ok to have dessert for breakfast on your birthday right? Good. 'Cause I think I've decided that tea and something sticky sweet is going to set the proper tone for the day:

Gutterpunks and limitless options

DigitalDurga — Thu, 20 Mar 2008 12:49:19 GMT

As I was taking my shower today I was musing on the gutterpunks I encountered during my time in New Orleans. I'd been reminded of them during a class discussion on cultural relativism, and I've been pondering why they might have had such a strong impact on my psyche, to remember them over ten years later.

Then I open my mailbox and this is a piece of my horoscope for the day:

When you understand that there are many paths that lead to fulfillment, you will never be frustrated. If one source of fulfillment is unavailable, you know there are other ways you can meet your needs. You become more self-sufficient when you realize that satisfaction is something you create for yourself rather than looking to other people or specific circumstances to fulfill you. Exercising your creativity where your options are concerned allows you to seek satisfaction though different choices. When you are willing to look for other roads to fulfillment today, your options will become limitless.

And I think I've figured out the connection.

See, the class discussion was about how this particular culture treated orphans. They left them to run the streets, fend for themselves, fight the dogs for scraps, etc. All things we here would consider more than vaguely reprehensible, and the anthropologist observing this was shocked to say the least. Relativism would usually have us end up by shrugging our shoulders, saying, well, their morality condones this, so who am I to judge? But the author we're reading (Cook) has a different take. He's quoting Boas (a hero of anthropology apparently) who suggested asking why this is the way orphans are treating in this culture. The anthropologist being quoted in this example was apparently hassling the adults about how these orphans were treated, and they responded, why wouldn't we treat them this way? they will become stronger than anyone, tougher than the rest of us, the best hunters and leaders out of all of us. If we don't do this, we would be much worse off as a people. Hmm.... not exactly the uncaring disrespect one would expect, right?

Which is what led me to the gutterpunks. Many were self-chosen orphans. They had run away from home, looking for freedom or at least something that passed for a better life. They often had none of the social support systems we take for granted. They rebelled against all 'normal' standards. Instead of becoming hunters and leaders, they became prostitutes and drug dealers. An anthropologist looking at our culture would probably be equally as shocked, because our answer to the same question would be "they chose to live this way." We're not better as a people because of it, certainly.

They really got me thinking, at a time in my life when rebellion was still super sexy, about what freedom really means. I loved their mobility. If everything you have fits in a backpack, there really is no limit to where you can travel, as long as you don't expect to be comfortable. But is mobility really freedom? I also envied them their ability to completely ignore most authority. There were no parents, no professors or bosses in their lives. No time cards, no to do lists. But they still had responsibilities, they still had to care for themselves, surviving is not an optional pursuit. So not having to answer to authority is not really freedom either. They certainly had freedom of self expression, they could color, pierce and tattoo themselves however they wished. But, then again, so did I. I dyed my hair purple and got tattooed and pierced just to prove the point to myself. So the freedom of self-expression is larger than their particular path in life. We both had freedom to choose who we spent our time with.

And yet I had several freedoms they did not have. I was free from hunger or thirst. I was granted the resources I needed to pursue my love of learning, which is one of the freedoms I treasure the most, freedom to learn, freedom of knowledge. I had money I could exchange for greater comfort, and even silliness. In fact, most of the time I could choose between multiple options in my life, where I saw fewer options in their lives.

And that's the connection and the conclusion. Freedom in many ways is about choices. Knowing what your options are, and being able to decide from those options. Expanding your options means expanding the potential ways to satisfy your needs and desires.

There's another wrinkle to this. Around this time I was also taking a course in Taoism. I loved that class. It met on the second floor of the humanities building, and I could score a seat near the back, looking out a window at a huge, old, gnarled and stubborn tree. I loved that tree. Its first level branches were twice as big around as me. It looked huge, and comforting, and I loved staring at the intricacies of its bark. I paid more attention to that tree than the class usually, though I like to think that the professor found that appropriate to the subject matter. And I devoured the readings, I read every page of every book assigned to us. So when one day, the professor asked us "what is freedom?" I perked up a little. One of the guys in the front began with the typical western philisophical answer... freedom is the state of existence where one is free of all outside influences and constraints, complete self-determination in all things, and as such is largely an illusion...The teacher cut him off. Yes, but what would Lieh-tzu or Lao-tzu say freedom is? I raised my hand and gave the answer that still rings true for me today... Freedom is recognizing the constraints that you exist within, and being content with them. It is knowing that we will always be limited, and yet choosing to act anyway.

Far from being an unreachable ideal, freedom is an ACTION. It is something you do, every day, when you weigh the options available to you, make your decisions, and rest content within those decisions. It realizes that resources are a critical component, but resources only enable action, not cause it. Anyone can be free. We just have to take actions, within our available options and resources. And that's where it got interesting for me. What happens when I change my available resources? And what happens when I train myself to look for the non-obvious options?

I'm still working on it. But life encompasses freedom, so I have plenty of time.

Don't worry, the next entry is knitting. I just need to snap a few pictures first.

Interesting thoughts

DigitalDurga — Tue, 29 Jan 2008 11:11:34 GMT

Sorry for the lack of updates, I've been doing a lot of writing, just not here!

I thought I'd share one of my first papers, from my Ethical Theories class. It's a quick sketch of an idea, but I find it pretty powerful already. If you download it, let me know what you think, and what might need to be expanded to make it more clear or understandable.

Hope everyone is having a good week!

Oh, and there is more knitting too, I just need to upload some pictures.

Relational Obligations

The paper is talking about the scope of our obligations, and I reference Kant's perfect and imperfect duties to self and others in it (since I'm talking about a twist on that setup). To seriously oversimplify, Kant's ethics are built around duties, things you "ought" to do. These duties can be owed to self or others. He said there are perfect duties which must always and forever be followed, no excuses, no whining. An example of a perfect duty to others is to tell the truth. Imperfect duties should be done, but there are cases where it is excusable not to do so (usually when a perfect duty interferes). For example, be nice to people could be considered an imperfect duty, since my duty to tell you the truth (even when it may not be the nice thing to do) wins. And all these ethical decisions are supposed to be totally removed from any emotional influence. It is not what I want that determines if something is right. It is right, or it is wrong, or it is morally neutral. Ta da, end of story.

This tends to lead ethics in the direction of obligation vs. "above and beyond" categorization for actions. As in what do I HAVE to do, and what does it make me a better person to do. (Superorgatory is the technical term for actions which are "above and beyond the call of duty" see how it all fits? Duty and more than duty.)

In one of the readings we had for class the author (Card) is actually arguing how this only works well if you are dealing with equals. In the imbalanced power structures that our culture always seems to have (women are still paid .70 on the dollar because.....?) this kind of thinking is pretty, but inaccurate. She had the idea of formal and informal and intimate and non-intimate relationships that I glommed onto to spark this paper.

So here I'm talking about how evaluating our morality in terms of the relationship type makes things make a lot more sense. For a formal non-intimate relationship of course Kant's perfect and imperfect duties make sense. Those relationships are contractually based and supposed to be divorced from all emotion. Most of ethics has kinda hung out in this formal non-intimate world for most of history, with occasionally forays into how we should treat our friends.

But what about paying for a drunk someone's taxi ride home? Is that something I have to do? It doesn't seem to be universally true. But what is that drunk someone was my friend who I was out partying with? Suddenly it seems like I really should be making sure s/he gets home safe. But the fact that it would be very noble of me to pay for a drunk stranger's taxi ride home, but wrong of me not to pay for my friend's safety makes no sense in the limited view of "must" vs "could".

But it does make sense when we look at a stranger as an informal non intimate relationship - which most strangers are. But my drinking buddy is an informal intimate relationship, so I could be a bad person for NOT paying her way home. Especially if she then died in a car wreck because she had to drive. It would very much be seen as my fault for not taking care of said friend. So mostly I'm arguing that it's impossible to say that "paying for someone's cab ride home" can be labeled as obligatory or superogoratory without knowing the relationship involved. But once you know the relationship, it's easy to say that one is "above and beyond" and the other an "ought".

So each category of relationships has it's own must and should type actions, and they do overlap quite a bit. What is a nice thing to do for one category might be required by another category. And we seem to be able to hold people in different relationships categories at the same time (or at least shift somewhat easily between them).

Ok, enough on that rambling!

I'm curious what your thoughts are.

Officially....

DigitalDurga — Mon, 07 Jan 2008 03:50:38 GMT

the poopiest of days.

Pepper's gone. Out of my four hedgie herd there remains only one. Nutmeg. We'll see how long she lasts without her sister. Hedgehogs don't normally like to live together, but these two were almost inseparable. They had the option to be in two separate sleeping areas, but they moved between them together. When their mother Ginger was a alive they all three slept in the same little igloo hiding spot. They were the world's friendliest hedgies I think. Certainly the friendliest my vet has ever worked with.

When Ginger died I felt stupid for not taking more pictures of them together when I could. Then I said, it's ok, get pictures of the sisters.

Now there's only the one.

Somehow I'm just not as excited about the first day of school as I was an hour ago.

papers, papers, everywhere

DigitalDurga — Tue, 11 Dec 2007 10:06:12 GMT

Well, I had said I would post some of the school writing that I was proud of here for those of you who were interested. So here you go, the three papers from Fall 2007 semester. My first semester of being a Bioethics Masters student.

All three drew on the research I had done about intersexuality (very few people use the word hermaphrodites any more, it's so Nineteenth Century).

The one I'm most proud of is the one for my Race, Gender and Culture class. This one focuses most on the gender issues in the subject, and how our current medical view that anatomy determines gender is used to justify taking actions on newborns which are unethical.

The middle one ended up being the historical overview paper I did for my History of American Sexuality class. This was my elective this semester, and it was very educational. This assignment was a little different, the professor really wanted us to do an analysis of the existing scholarship to see if we could find frameworks and assumption in their work. This turned out to be harder than I expected! There is a pretty sharp break between those who see most (or only) social influence on our systems of gender/sexuality and those who see most (or only) biological influences. Both tend to point to anatomy to make their cases. So it got really confusing. But I think writing the RGC paper helped me sort it out. The biological essentialism is really that anatomy determines gender. Period, nothing else. It could be external genitals, it could be genes/chromosomes or hormonal imprinting on the fetal brain. But one way or the other we're born knowing that we're male or female and that, as they say, is that. But that's not always that, there are people who can and do play with gender all the time. We certainly play with sexuality all the time. It's hard to look over the cultures of the world and see how differently they have constructed sex and say it's all inherently biology. So this is my attempt to take that debate to one particular issue and see what everyone says.

The one I'm least proud of surprised me. My Foundations of Bioethics class was my favorite to attend. We got into rip roaring debates every class and I feel like I came out of there with a great understanding of the major bioethical theories. But when I sat down to write a paper showing how in every case the flaws we found in the theories were addressed by another theory, I didn't do such a good job. I really believe that bioethics is headed for an integrated theory (there's several accepted ethical theories at the moment, principles like respect for autonomy and beneficence figure largely, but there is also casuistry, care ethics, virtue ethics, and narrative ethics for example). I tried to show how each theory would take the complicated problem presented by intersexuality and not do as good of a job as the combined theory. Which I still think is true, I'm just not happy with the strength of my arguments proving that belief!

I think I have totally forgotten how to write a philosophy paper, which is a sad realization. Ah well, I'll have more opportunities next semester, it's two philosophy classes coming up, Ethical Theories and Current Controversies. Should be a rocking good time.

Oh, and please feel free to pass these papers on to any you might think is interested, but they are my work. You can quote me if you like, but always use proper citation format. ::chuckle:: Please let me know if you've snagged them to read, and what you think. I'd love to open a discussion on any of these topics.

I knew it...

DigitalDurga — Wed, 05 Dec 2007 13:33:37 GMT

Mmmm hmmm. Yup. I knew it.

Don't you love how your subconcious mind can sneak things in on you that don't make sense until later?

Yeah... remember that little clause in "December is FO month" post? The one about last minute Christmas gifts being an exception?

I just got a call from my Mom about a great present idea for my step-dad, a notoriously hard to gift fellow (how do you buy a gift for someone who knows how much EVERYTHING costs??) But. It's knitted.

::Sigh:: Ah ha... that's why that clause where there. I knew this was coming.

I wasn't playing the odds or anything, I promise!

Scooba's First Mission!

DigitalDurga — Fri, 30 Nov 2007 16:08:33 GMT

Scooba arrived yesterday while I was in school, so I came home to a big box. Squeee!!

I dutifully unpacked everything, charged her (Scoob-ah, duh, of course it's a her. Sheesh!) up for the recommended overnight, measured cleaning solution in, put the tank back on the base and pressed "make it so". She retorted "Check Tank" so I did. It had dripped a great deal, so I added a little more water, double checked the seal on the tank opening and tried again. This time I was rewarded with a musical little chip and a LOUD vacuum noise. Sheesh. I was on the phone with my mom at the time and had to leave the room, but even one room over was fine for conversation.

Scooba actually vacuums, scrubs and squegees up the dirty water all in one pass. As she was working there was some residual dampness on the floors, but nothing close to what you get with a standard mop. I got hungry in the midst of her cleaning cycle so I padded in with bare feet and they were definitely damp and a little sticky by the time I got done making toast. The Scooba also comes with Clorox cleaning solution (everyone calls it Scooba Juice) which isn't bad, but I really loathe chemical perfumes so I'll likely switch to white vinegar as a cleaning solution.

I had skipped my regular mopping of the kitchen floor in preparation for this inaugural run (I swear it has nothing to do with Grad School. Nope, not a thing! I did it on purpose, I swear!) So Scooba was up against some nastiness on the floors. Probably the cats' water bowl sludge was tops on my list of things I didn't want to touch. But right along the stove edge was the dirtiest:

Yeah, that's always a mess there. If I was better about wiping up spills and such as they happened and all, but mostly what happens is that any trace of stickiness on the floor captures cat hair tumbleweeds. It gets out of hand fast. You can also see various sticky dirt and you can't see the weird random marks that drying water from cat bowl sloshing leaves.

So I had high hopes for Scooba's success along the stove....

Dangit. Ok, so that hope didn't pan out at all. Scooba is a few inches tall and there's really only an inch clearance there, not enough for her to get her brushes into at all. So I'll still be hand scrubbing that part of the floor. ::Sigh:: But all the other sticky stuff and weird water marks were gone. All scrubbed clean.

I also gave her some test dust (leftover from the quick sweep I did before this mission). There was a full dustpan of cat hair lurking in the corners before that quick sweep, so I figured I'd help her out a little.

She did great on that type of dirt. And the sludge type dirt. And even the sticky spots type of dirt. Even after I'd swept I was surprised by how much cat and human hair Scooba got in her scrubbing, as I found out cleaning the tanks and the brushes. A lot of it was built up along the squeegee edge. That bugged me a little, why did wet cat hair get all the way to the final squeegee brush? That should have gotten picked up by the vacuum.

Here she is at work:

And here's the fraidy cats wondering whether they can A. Eat it (the orange one) or B. Use it to take over the world (the brown/black one). Ninja hunter kitten was the first one out to investigate Scooba, but I couldn't get a picture of her. She crouched in a tiny little lump about where Dunkin (cat is, and stared, occasionally shivering like she was going to take a running pounce, but not... just... yet... Then she did the same routine at the doorway... then around the corner... She thought she had Scooba once when Scooba was in a corner. Then Scooba turned around and came straight at the kitten who RAN FOR HER LIFE and hasn't been back to the kitchen yet.

Scooba also had a problem with this corner for some reason. There's a little button of plastic that sticks up from the front bumper, and that had gotten hooked under this cabinet corner. I had to actually push down on the bumper and coax Scooba backwards to get her unhooked so I have to find some way to block that off next time.
Any suggestions are welcome!

Overall the floor was very nicely cleaned by the time S was done with her mission. If Roomba is this good on the rest of the house I will be a very happy kitty.

The process design aspect of this post is the interesting fact that iRobot didn't create a robot that scrubbed the floors the way I would. I tend to work in a very linear and methodical way around the room when I'm cleaning a floor. These robots don't. They bounce around, spiral, follow the walls and general do things very inefficiently to my eyes. It takes this thing 45 minutes to mop the floor. When I'm motivated I can bust out the same level of cleaning in 10 minutes or less (don't believe me? Put on some happy music and time yourself. You'll beat 10 minutes every time). But the end results work very well. I find it interesting that they did this. Is this a case of acceptable inefficiency because human time/labor isn't involved? Or is this random patterning really the most efficient algorithm for robotic cleaning?

I've always felt that efficiency looks different for different people and processes, so this might become my example case. I need to learn more about why this was the solution they came to market with. There's a lot of engineering that goes into these robots, and I'm really curious why they behave differently. I'm assuming there's a reason.

Oh, and if you get curious about my robots you can learn more at iRobotand the Roomba Review Forum. The Forum folks are phenomenal, and very wise.