Sopapillas not SOPA/PIPA!*

Fortunately, it appears that my Congressional delegation is united in opposition to SOPA (the House bill), and its companion Senate bill PIPA, which is scheduled for a vote next week. Because of that upcoming vote, though, and because I don't always trust Snowe and Collins to follow through based on their expressed concerns, I just sent them both the following:

I am writing you to express my opposition to the Protect IP Act. I understand that your office has expressed concern about this measure, and I do hope that you will vote against this bill when it comes up next week. While I certainly understand and support the need to protect intellectual property, applying a ham-handed, scorched earth policy such as this is not an appropriate way to address the problem. It is akin to destroying the Interstate Highway system because somewhere, at some time, it might be used by criminals. As much as it would stifle the free exchange of ideas, it would also stifle innovation and commerce.

As a nation, these are not losses we can afford, especially given the current economic and geopolitical situation. While this bill may be well-intentioned, it is not well thought out, and I appreciate your help in defeating it.

My Representative, Chellie Pingree, has come out more forcefully, indicating her intent to vote against SOPA, but I still sent her a version of the above thanking her for her opposition. If you're a US citizen and you haven't taken a few minutes to contact the people who represent you in Congress, why not? If you don't know what to write, just copy, paste, and adapt what I wrote. Go ahead, I give you permission.

*I don't know that Congress should mandate sopapillas either, actually, but I probably wouldn't get too upset if they did.

Luke's Diced, in Progress

Hopefully, this should work.

Back in a Flash?

So, there really was going to be more of a report from Rhinebeck, but it seems that over several months, life has kind of continually sidetracked me from the blog. Anyway, it was a nice time. Busy, as usual, and we didn't see nearly everyone I would have liked, but such is life. We also had a nice day after hanging with my folks and seeing some of the sights in Hyde Park, so on the whole, it was another good Rhinebeck experience.

Yarn was also purchased, and there was supposed to be a photo here of my Luke's Diced Vest that's in progress, and in which I'm using some Rhinebeck yarns, among others. As it happens, though, Blogger and my phone seem to have communication issues, and it's already past my bedtime, so no pic tonight, I'm afraid.

I think part of the dearth of entries here is due to the Facebook effect. In fact, I'm sure of it. But I think that the shift in my work schedule also plays a role, since I don't have as much time for expository writing, which is what I've more typically done. The omphaloskepsis continues; it's just not making it to this medium. I could schedule time to blog, but I'm not sure I want it to feel too much like work.

So in the new year, I'm trying to decide how best to continue this. In a couple of weeks, I'm going to be starting an online Master of Public Health program through the University of Massachusetts, which is going to add about 50% to my level of busy. I may shift to shorter entries - longer than tweets but shorter than essays - and I may look into porting everything over to Tumblr or another platform. Blogger's got issues, aside from the aforementioned communication ones, and I'm not sure if I should stay in this neighborhood or find somewhere that suits me better.

Anyway, I'm still around, still living life, and looking forward to the new year.

Rhinebeck '11 - Part the First

That's not actually a sentiment I'm expressing, particularly as regards Rhinebeck. Caro was doing some photography work at the show, though, and David and I got recruited (without any resistance, truly) to be knitwear models. I suppose that if I took the time to poke around, I could figure out how secretive we're supposed to be. It's late, though, and I'm tired, so I'll just not say any more about that, except that the above is my pose for the official model release form. Maybe I should start sending it out to modeling agencies as my headshot.

I'll write a bit more later, once I've had time to sleep, but it was a good weekend. As always, the show is ever so much more about the people you get to see than the fiber you get to pet, take home, and do lascivious things with - not necessarily, of course, in that order. There were people I missed and people I got to spend far too little time with, which is the part I always hate, but in the main, it was a fun time.

Tomorrow, however, I have massages scheduled for both David and myself, and the appointment time cannot get here too quickly.

It's That Time Again, Already?!

Holy crap! When did it become October? A few of my favorite people are currently off visiting another one of my favorite people in one of my favorite places. And while it just makes me ache with the desire to be there again, tomorrow we're packing everything up and heading to another of my favorite places, where I expect to see lots and lots and lots of my favorite people over the weekend.

Once again, we're going to be the headquarters for Rhinebeck Bingo, too, so if you've signed up, be sure to come by. We'll have coupons for participants, but more importantly, I love just getting to say, "O hai!" And since my brain sometimes has a hard time remembering people, it's often as exciting for me as the last 4 times I met you. So even if you're not doing the bingo thing, come by anyway. It'll be fun!

2AM Miracle

So it's been another really long stretch between posts. A lot has happened, but I have a hard time lately finding the time to blog about it. So, some other time, but before I head off to bed I thought I'd share a little story.

On Sunday night, I had my first migraine. That's not the story, but it happened in the lead-up to the story I wanted to share and it seemed noteworthy. I've had bad headaches before, but this one came with a seriously heavy dose of nausea. So severe that I basically had to hold my breath when I took the quiche I was baking out of the oven and immediately afterward go to bed, because the smell of even really, really delicious food was going to make me hurl, which is something I almost never do. When you consider that the last time I had actually vomited was exactly 6½ years earlier (my birthday in 2005, when my friends took me to a martini bar 2 weeks after S had dumped me), to be that close to needing to make a mad dash to the Temple of the Porcelain God was more than a little significant.

Anyway, the actual story, as the title suggests, happened at 2AM. The pain and nausea had abated, littledog was getting a bit restless - which usually means he has to go pee - and I was realizing that I probably ought to, as well. So we both got up, and after I made my pit stop, we headed downstairs so Tuck could do the same.

It bears mentioning here, though I think I have also on prior occasions, that rather than a standard backyard, we have a sideyard off the kitchen ell, which was originally a cobbler's shop that was moved down the hillside and attached to the rest of the house - we think - sometime circa 1950. The yard access is through a kitchen mudroom, so the door is tucked in a corner of the building with the grass a few feet away.

So I opened the mudroom door and just as Tuck hopped down to go to the lawn and do his business, I realized there was a skunk - a small one, but a skunk, nonetheless - near the outside corner of the kitchen, not more than 8 feet from the door. Naturally, I immediately tried to reverse littledog's course, yelling, "Tuck! TUCK! TUCK!"

When it comes to his potty duties, though, littledog is very businesslike and singular of mind, particularly late at night, and he trotted right out into the grass to relieve himself, easily within 6 feet of le jeune M. LePew. I wouldn't be surprised if littledog never even noticed the creature, as it was dark and his vision isn't terribly good, but I'm equally fortunate that he is nearly completely incurious about other animals.

The other week there were two juvenile turkeys in the yard one evening when I let him out. He gave them a glance, but then turned around and headed right back to the house when he was done peeing. If they're not going to pick him up and give him lovin's, then they're not worth wasting time on, and that was pretty much how it went down with the skunk.

I think the poor little critter may have just been confused out of his mind. After all, here was this strange-looking, and maybe-or-maybe-not disinterested, dog off to one side, and a frantic, yelling human to the other side. With limited ammunition in his arsenal, the skunk made the wise decision and, thankfully, beat a hasty retreat without spraying anyone.

The even bigger miracle is how I ever managed to fall back asleep after that bit of excitement.

I Can See Clearly Now

Irene was a no more than a minor hitch for us, as I expected. Because the storm tracked inland, we got very little rain, and the wind was no more than we get in so many nor'easters that the weather reporters never ever freak out about. Not that we don't take the weather seriously, but we get enough bad weather of various sorts that we just tend to watch and be ready for it as a matter of course.

When I got home from work yesterday evening, I talked David into going down to the town wharf with me to see what was to be seen in the cove. Several of our friends and neighbors had the same idea, and we got to see a couple casualties of the storm washed aground.

A tow boat was at work trying to secure the nearer of the stranded boats and after a bit got it pulled off the shore and back into the water. It quickly became apparent, though, that the boat had a crack somewhere in the hull, as it was riding progressively lower and lower in the water. So the tow boat captain had to rush to move the boat around the wharf to the boat ramp and at least managed to keep it from going down in the deep water.

By then it was getting dark, so we headed home, had dinner, watched a Simpsons DVD, then went to bed. And that was our Irene adventure.

I Felt the Earth Move, or Come on, Irene.

So Tuesday we had an earthquake. We all felt it at work, even though the news media apparently don't think anything exists north of Boston. It's not my first tremor and nothing even fell off a shelf, so it was really no big shakes (ba dum dum *ching*), but it was kind of fun to get to experience it.

Now, of course, there's Hurricane Irene, which will be downgraded fairly soon to AA+ tropical storm status. Apparently, this is "the worst storm the East Coast has seen in 50 60 70 100 1000 years!" Also apparently, "East Coast" in this case means New York City. For us, it's not going to be much worse than some of the nor'easters we've gotten over the past few years. For North Carolina, it certainly wasn't any worse than the double whammy of Bertha & Fran in 1996, or the devastation and widespread flooding of Floyd in 1999.

At any rate, my only concern is whether it will keep me from coming home after work this evening. Although I'm admittedly blasé about the storm as a whole, I'm not stupid enough to drive into dangerous winds and flooding, if that should occur. I just hope it doesn't make all the crazies insistent upon coming to see us today.

Panic

Sheer criminality? Seriously, that's the best England's political class could come up with? Prime Minister David Cameron even went so far as to reject outright the possibility that the rioting going on in the UK might be due to any underlying systemic problems. Say, perhaps, the institution of austerity measures on the backs of the working class and poor? Chronic poverty and underemployment, maybe? A legacy of Thatcherite economic policies which continue to widen the gap between rich and poor, much as Reaganomics continues to do here in the US?

Nope, it's just people spontaneously being bad. End of story. Send in the the riot police with truncheons and rubber bullets so we can all go back to cosying up to media tycoons.

Which, of course, just begs the question of who, exactly, he was vacationing with in Italy. Bashir al-Assad?

Which is not to say there's no reason for the average Londoner to be scared. I'd be freaked out of my mind. But until the UK political élite remove their collective heads from their collective arses, I expect they'll continue to experience more of the same. And the political élite here at home would do well to pay attention.

49

I'm in St. Louis right now for the American Veterinary Medical Association's annual convention and, folks, it is hotter than all hell here right now. And it's only going to get worse.

Anyway, I flew down here a day earlier than I needed to for one particular reason - so I could scratch this off my list:



I know you're all thinking WTF right now, and trust me, I wouldn't go to Arkansas without a good reason. Or at least a good enough one. And the reason is that Alaska is now the only state I have left to visit.

I don't even know when exactly I decided I should visit all fifty states, but I do know that it came about very organically. I grew up in a family that did road trips, so it was natural for me to keep doing them as I got older and started living my own life, or at least when I still had enough time to do them and not enough obligations to keep me from it. And at some point within the past 10 years, I did a tally and realized I only had Hawai'i, Arkansas, and Alaska left.

Hawai'i got crossed off the list 5 years ago, and Alaska would have been on my list of places to see either way, so Arkansas kind of came down to finding a good enough excuse to get there. A conference within a few hours seemed reasonable enough, so I rented a car and went.

Suffice to say, I don't have a reason to go back now, but if any of you should ever find yourselves in Jonesboro and in desperate need of a civilized, lefty-artsy fix, I recommend the Echo Coffee House, which is in a cozy converted residence and where they play NPR. And if you happen by there when they're having a pottery sale, I recommend picking yourself up a little souvenir.

Um, O Hai! I Can Haz Blog?

Jeez, Louise, it's been a long time!

So here's what happened, in a nutshell: Nobody entered into the Iceland tour drawing, then April was really busy, then on May 1, I moved from nights to a day schedule at work.

That's actually been a really good move, on the whole, because I finally get to sleep a pretty regular schedule. I still have some sleep issues, but on the whole, my body has really been grooving on it.

The downside is that I don't seem to be able to keep up very well, anymore. E-mail, blogrolls - I've fallen behind with all of them. I got a Droid-based phone in May, though, so I finally figured I should try to use it and catch up with all the things I write in my head and never seem to manage to commit to "printed" form.

Not much knitting going on now that the weather has turned to stinkin' hot, but I finished that lopapeysu in just 17 days and got to wear it quite a lot in our gloriously cool spring, including even a few days in June.

I cannot even begin to tell you how much I love this sweater. I do believe it's my favorite ever!

Aside from that, we went to Boston over Memorial Day weekend for an overnight getaway and met up with my cousin Liz, who was filming a movie in Worcester at the time. We were so busy catching up and seeing the Museum of Fine Arts (If you're in the area and haven't been to the Chihuly exhibit, GO!), that I only snagged one unflattering photo of her, which shall remain for family viewing only. So instead, you get this:



We also had a visit from Ragga & her family the weekend of the 4th, which was mjög skemmtilegt, but far too brief. David's parents were also visiting at the time, for the first time in almost six years and the first time since they boycotted our wedding. It was quite likely the best time we've had with them, though, and it was a little sad to see them go. Progress happens, but it takes time.

Tomorrow, David and I are heading to MA to get hugs from Amma, which are very much needed, and then I'm off to St. Louis for a week for a conference. I'm looking forward to the time away from work, which has been mostly hectic this summer, but I'm not at all looking forward to the heat. Seriously, I fully expect to melt and become part of the Mississippi floodwaters. The forecast is for 99F/37C on Saturday. Beyond gross.

If only I could bottle Iceland and take it with me everywhere!

Prjón Pr0n

Prjón is Icelandic for knitting, and what kind of woolhead would I be if I didn't do a bit of stash enhancement in the Land of Lopi? Incidentally, I had never really given it any thought, but the correct pronunciation of lopi isn't LOW-pee (insert urination joke here). Neither the o nor the i are accented, which means they're both short vowels - LOH-pih.

Language lesson aside, I mentioned that there were lopapeysur everywhere. Seriously, it was knitterly inspiration everywhere we looked. I also mentioned that Ragga threw together a half day tour for us. Knowing that David is a designer, she took us to the studio/showroom for one of the labels we saw quite a lot of in Reykjavík and which we were really impressed by - Farmers Market. As it turns out, the owners are friends of hers, and it was great to get to look at some of their designs up close.





(Yes, I know they're on hangers, but it's a tiny showroom and the most efficient way to display samples.)

And not only had we been seeing and loving their sweater designs all over town, we also saw a CD for sale at the symphony the night before that was the latest by the husband, Jóel Pálsson, who's an award-winning jazz saxophonist. So having met him, of course, we had to buy it. If you like jazz, I'd recommend it.



Ragga also arranged for us to meet and see the studio of hot ticket designer Sruli Recht. Not as much of a ready-to-wear aesthetic there, but his work is still just beautiful and wonderfully artistic. Proving the Reykjavík-is-a-small-town argument, we also just happened to bump into him and his wife the following evening in another part of town as we were looking for a bus.

Anyway, after visiting those studios, it was off to the Ístex spinning mill to see the lopi being made. Ístex is the only spinning mill in the country, and they sell the lopi under their own label as well as producing for the Reynolds label. Same yarn, different ball bands. I didn't take any photos inside the mill, but David took some video footage that I'll try to share if either of us ever gets around to editing it. Or, you could just buy Ragga's DVD, where she gives a tour of both the spinning mill and the scouring mill up north in Blönduós.



After the spinning mill was where things got really, really fun.



Álafoss was the company that used to process the wool until they went belly up in '91 and Ístex stepped in and bought up the remains. The old Álafoss mill is now a yarn shop and a cluster of other artisans' shops, and the name still lives on in the name of the chunky lopi yarn, of which we bought a fair bit of. I got some to make a design in one of the Reynolds pattern books that I've always liked.



The navy blue is an extra pattern color I'm working into the original design just for a little pop against the neutral base palette. I'm also taking inspiration from Ragga and working it top down. David picked out yarn for himself to work Ragga's Óðinn pattern, which is a free pattern written for traditional bottom up construction and is featured on the DVD.



I also got a one kilo bale of plötulopi - aka, Icelandic unspun - plus a couple of contrast colors to make myself one or two more sweaters. I'm thinking seamless construction based on some of the Japanese sweater patterns I have, and I'm really excited to play with this wool. The sock yarn, which is Danish, isn't particularly great, but it was something to work on during the flight home.



I also got buttons!



Altogether, our wool purchases added up to roughly $135 US - that's for 3 to 4 sweaters' worth of lopi! Plus, Iceland has a tax refund scheme to encourage tourists to buy stuff. On any purchase over 4,000ISK that you will be taking out of the country, participating retailers give you a form to fill out which you can then cash in at the airport before you leave to get 15% of the total purchase back. Single purchases with a refund amount over 5,000ISK (i.e., purchases over 33,333ISK) require an extra step of obtaining a customs stamp EXCEPT for woolen products, which are exempt. You can buy all the wool you want. So what that meant for us was that the final tally on our wool purchase, which is a significant stash enhancement, came to about $120. Plus they put it in a nice, and very large bag for us.



As a little aside, the old Álafoss factory also had a swimming pool complex, because the waterfall that used to power the mill also has geothermal springs, and local children used to learn to swim there. More recently, though, the building was used by the band Sigur Rós to record their first album.



On our way back into Reykjavík, we stopped at one more LYS. It was otherwise a fairly typical shop, but it was where I made my most treasured find of the trip. It's a collection of traditional Icelandic textile designs, compiled over the course of 3 years from old manuscripts and containing over 700 designs, plus a history in Icelandic and English of the patterns and discussion of the rules of symmetry and mathematics of how the patterns were developed. And it's only available in Iceland.





Tombóla/Raffle

At the end of our afternoon with her, Ragga gave us four discount cards good for 15,000ISK off on of her Knitting Iceland tours through 2012, to use ourselves or to give away.



That morning she had been on the phone trying to reach her younger brother, who lives in Tokyo, as it was just hours after the earthquake there. And between that, and the New Zealand quake, and all the conflicts in the Arab world recently, I thought that the best thing to do with them would be to hold a drawing to try to raise funds for Médecins sans Frontières/Doctors Without Borders, who have been responding to both natural and manmade situations like this for forty years.

I expect most of you already know this, if for no other reason than for the Yarn Harlot's support of the organization over the last several years. They're an organization that gets the idea that we're all one human family and that we should take care of each other, and for that reason alone they deserve support.

So this is how the raffle will work: Make a donation to MSF between now and April 1 and send confirmation of your donation to me at mel(dot)vassey(at)gmail(dot)com with the subject line "raffle". For every $5 US (or equivalent in your own currency) that you donate to MSF, you will get one entry into the raffle. Donate $100 and you'll get 20 entries, but don't feel like a $5 donation is too little. It could buy enough medication to save a life.

On April 2 (my birthday!), I will use a random number generator to pick four winning entries. If you have multiple entries, you will have an opportunity to win more than one of the cards. As I said, the face value of each card is 15,000ISK, which is roughly $129 US at current exchange rates. Having seen what Ragga can throw together literally at the last minute, I expect these tours are going to be nothing short of phenomenal, especially with teachers like Ysolda Teague and Franklin Habit on board.

So go forth and donate, then let me know all about it. Then go to Iceland and have the time of your life.