Wrong Kind of Funky

Have been in a bit of a funk, the past week or so, hence the lack of posting.

Part of it was the elections. For all that I'm thrilled with the new direction things seem to be taking, my state voted to add an anti-gay marriage ban to our state constitution. Which managed to really ruin whatever joy I might have felt over things like "Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi" which is a pretty damn cool thing indeed (Caz, on election night, could be heard shouting things like, "Speaker of the House... NAN. CY! PEL. O. SI! Choke on it, bitchez!" so rest assured, it wasn't all glum tidings in Thornyville. He did enough celebrating not just for the both of us, but for most of a city block, I think. grin).

But me? I find I'm still upset about it. I don't understand why some people are being told they have to live their lives according to someone else's ideology. When my Catholic mother decided to marry my Protestant father, there were plenty of people who disapproved. My grandparents (the Catholic ones) weren't thrilled. My mom's priest told her that her unborn child's existence (that'd be mine) would not be acknowledged by the Catholic church, unless they married in the Catholic church and raised me Catholic.

Clearly, plenty of people disapproved. My mom and dad decided to do something which ran counter to the ideology of a lot of people, and yet, they were completely within their rights to do it. Because it was their lives, and since this is the good ol' U.S. of A., we don't make people live their lives according to an ideology they don't subscribe to. Unless, apparently, those people are gay.

I think what upsets me most about this amendment passing is that the measure was on the ballot largely as a calculated move by certain folks in the Wisconsin legislature - they fought long and hard to make sure it was on the November ballot, as opposed to letting it get voted on next spring. It was meant to mobilize their base and help ensure a Republican victory during these mid-term elections. The gay marriage ban was just a side benefit, so far as I can tell.

Except something didn't work, because last Tuesday was a big win for Democrats all over Wisconsin. And yet, the gay marriage ban passed.

So a lot of the hope I felt when I saw some of those poll results coming in got dashed. It saddens me, that there are people so freaked out by homosexuality that they've got to make it doubly illegal here in Wisconsin (that's right, it already was illegal in Wisconsin, the amendment just made it more so, plus banned civil unions or any other status "substantially similar" to marriage for anyone's use). And it makes me feel, I guess, a bit lonely. Call me crazy, but I tend to think of myself as pretty normal, and this points out to me that, well, maybe I'm nothing of the sort.

(Oh, and then I got into an argument with a friend about how to proceed from here, as far as trying to break down these fraxing barriers to gay marriage, which just didn't help matters whatsoever.)

So yeah. That's why-for the lack of posting.

...... Let's move on, shall we? I'm pretty ready to leave that mood behind, I think. It is a new week, after all.

Old Business In other news, I think I screwed up the collar on my Olympic sweater. Well, not horribly, but... I think I picked up too many stitches for it. And so now I keep looking at it and poking at it and going, "Damn, should I re-do this?" I still haven't decided. I've got a week to decide.

I also have a week to do the sleeves on the Olympic sweater's companion so that I can assemble it and have it ready for the kids to wear for Thanksgiving with the in-laws. Shouldn't actually be a problem, I just need to get 'em going. Sleeves are easy. And then, hopefully with the Thanksgiving deadline looming over me, I won't take eight months to go from "completed knitted pieces" to "assembled sweater" like I did with the first one.

New Business

Of course, I need to focus on the sleeves. Which hasn't been easy, because I got in the Winter 2006 Interweave Knits, and A Cardigan for Arwen has really got me in a tizzy. I even have a yarn for it that I thought might work, so I've actually been (you may want to sit down for this) swatching. Yeah, you heard me.

So I was swatching away, and then panicked because I'd never heard of double-sided cabling before that, you know, actually looked like cables on both sides, and so I thought maybe Interweave was pulling a fast one on me. But a friend talked me out of my knitter's tree and so now I'm swatching the actual cable pattern for the sweater, and trying to plot out how I can actually make this work, since of course I'm not going to do the sweater strictly as written. I want to skip the hemmed waist, and I may want to do some short rows in the fronts to make it hang more nicely. Also I would love to make it longer, because as it reads, that sweater will end in exactly the wrong place for me. So as a preliminary step to doing all that wacky math, I made Caz measure my bust for me.

Ouch.

Just ouch.

Oh well. I'll vow to join the Y later, I've got a sweater to try to figure out how to do!

So now I'm sitting here trying to figure out if, assuming my swatching turns out all right and the yarn I've got really will work for this pattern, I can actually squeeze an extra 7" of width out of the yarn I've got (I do have several more balls of yarn than the pattern calls for) in order to make this all work.

Good thing this is all more geometry than algebra - I actually got a C in geometry. Oy!

Not Business At All

Of course, all of that would be easier if I could focus. But every so often lately I stare at the skeins of Kona Fingering Superwash that I initially picked up for Dye-O-Rama but wound up not using and thinking about all the packets upon packets of Kool-Aid I've got in the cupboard. And then I got The Twisted Sisters Sock Workbook from the library again (one of these days, I'll just have to buy it) and so I keep leafing through it before bed every night and dreaming of one day getting to use dyes that aren't also beverages (though that's got to wait until the kids are a good bit older, I know it's just a matter of time) and being able to dye yarns and fiber and make all kinds of gorgeous lovely things.

And that makes me think about all the fiber I got at Rhinebeck that's just waiting to be spun, and I start to ponder what I'll do with that, assuming I wrest some viable yarn out of it, and just... argh. So much playing I want to do, so little time/space.

I know I'll get there eventually, I just want "eventually" to be, y'know, sooner. grin.

In the meantime, here's a few photos of the yarn I sent to my Dye-O-Rama swap pals this summer (I got Three Sisters Yarn, so I sent a skein for each sister):




They aren't the best pictures - it was rainy and crummy when I took them, so the overhead light in the dining room was all I had to work with, but... it's close.