schmindigo

About fucking time. In Meridian, Mississippi, we visited the grave of James Chaney, the African American civil rights activist who was murdered along with two white activists from the north. Chaney was actually from Meridian, but his family had a hard time finding a cemetery that would accept his grave, because they were all afraid of vandalism. Can you imagine? It's already bad enough to be beaten to death by the Klan, but then there's no place to be buried because everyone is afraid that those evil fuckers will still be coming after you, even in death?? Chaney was finally buried in a tiny church graveyard outside of town. Despite the green beauty of the trees & the singing birds, we felt kind of creeped out driving up the little side road, but the place turned out to have a very peaceful air about it. Chaney's grave is marked by a beautiful, large slab of dark stone (granite?) right by the side of the road, apart from the rest, which form a cluster farther back in the center of the clearing. I wonder about the placement; was it to make it easier for people like us to find it, or were they hoping that vandals would not bother to venture into the main part of the churchyard if their primary target was so easily accessible?

You know, it really came home to me, on this trip, in a way I'd never fully grasped before: the civil rights movement was an all-out bloody war. You always hear about it as a "movement" or a "struggle", but it was war. These people died for us. It's because of them that Donna & I felt as safe as we did, driving dark country roads at night in our rental car, staying at whatever motels we wanted, eating & shopping & peeing wherever we needed to. (Granted, we didn't dare ask the country club if we could swim in their pool.) We never had to pause & wonder, "in this town, should I use the white or the colored drinking fountain?" For Asian folks in the South, these things did vary from community to community. One restaurant owner told us about his first day at school, how the cafeteria was divided with Black on one side & white on the other, & he had no idea what to do so he just walked slowly down the middle until some white kids he knew waved him over to their side.

Digging through the rapidly proliferating heaps of web information about the tsunami, Donna unearthed this righteous (& I do mean that in the best way possible) article by Rebecca Solnit. I'd been sort of peeking over Donna's shoulder at the horrible pictures, weeping a little in between rows of a mindless moss-stitch scarf, not knowing really how to digest it all. So it was a relief to read such emotionally & politically intelligent commentary. Remembering to cry & also reading smart stuff like this, that's my recommendation for post-tsunami coping, if you're a lucky one like me, who hasn't been directly affected. Of course, if you're also brilliant, I recommend writing more like this for the rest of us to read.

& yeah, I did pick up the knitting again, just tonight. I realized I needed something really brainless to knit as a break from editing these little sound pieces for the show, which is what I did all day until I couldn't think anymore.

I must not be so busy if I had time to follow the link Ms. Plastic Lam sent me so I could giggle at this nutty thing. Wait. This is even funnier! Lots of artists doing knitted & crocheted projects these days. So far I am keeping the worlds separate, though.

The Girl Where'd You Get That Hat club also dragged me away from the studio to see House of Flying Daggers. Nothing like some hyperbolic Chinese eye candy to give a person some perspective on things. No matter what stress this show puts me under, it can't possibly get as bad as being in the middle of a fatal love triangle. Even Takeshi Kaneshiro ain't worth that shit.

Whew am I ever back-blogged... I've been up to my ears in pre-show stuff, which is all moving along in a sort of densely detailed way. I'm trying to clear the decks of admin stuff so I can focus on the sound installation, since I've never done one before & I have no idea what I'm doing! Well, that's not entirely true, but I do feel like I'm going way out on a limb with this sound thing. We shall see what I manage to come up with. Confidence-inspiring, ain't I?

So, considering how devoted I've been to Agnes Martin, it's interesting that I feel so little sadness at her passing. I think there are big clues in this reaction, about the fullness & spiritual quality of her life & work. How can I be sad when she clearly gave everything, both to herself & to the world? Just looking at one of her paintings saturates me with the most wonderful sense of the sublime. There is so much abundance in each work. Even though I can't claim to know (since I never even met her), I suspect that she died with no regrets, no sense of unfulfilled potential, none of the stuff that makes death a sad thing. A role model till the very end.

Well. Way on the other side of things, you could almost say in the anti-sublime, I'm still wigged out about the tsunami aftermath. I have a bad, bad feeling about how high the death toll is going to go. I heard on the news that the earth is now actually spinning faster & wobblier because of that quake! A day is now 3 milliseconds shorter! That is so totally bizarre to me.

Now I gotta go do stuff. I haven't had any time to knit! Dang.

More earthquake/tsunami stuff: I just made a donation to Doctors Without Borders & encourage everyone to follow suit. If you want to pick out another organization more suited to your particular sensibility, check out the list. The magnitude of need over there right now is mind-boggling, as is this animation of the wave.

So sad about the earthquake in the Indian Ocean. It's the biggest earthquake that's happened in my whole life! How scary... I can't believe how many people are dead from the tsunamis. However, even with a tragedy of this scale, I am able to temper my shock with a small infusion of geeky pleasure: Meigan told me she gets USGS email notification of quakes over a certain magnitude. Hey, I wanna sign up too!

Sorry, but the most exciting developments lately are still in the knitting realm. I successfully made a pair of cabled wristwarmers, which is my first-ever self-designed knitting project (scarves don't count)! I'm quite proud of myself. As for the upcoming extravaganza o' Chinese restaurant photos, the postcard is at the printers. (Yes, I do recommend them. This is my fifth postcard order with them. Nuff said.)

egg hat

It's not like me to link to a schmancy clothing catalog, but there's a good (knitting) reason for it: egg hats! I had torn off this cover & saved it several weeks ago & just now decided to see if I could knit an egg hat for the entertainment of our household. Talk about your easy, fun & fast knitting projects! You can put on some eggs to hard boil & knit the hat while they're cooking.

[Warning: knitting instructions ahead. If you're in this for the Chinese restaurants, go look at some other part of the blog or the rest of my website.]

Indigo's egg hat
Using worsted weight yarn & #8 dp needles, work 3-stitch I-cord for around 1/2" or 3/4". Then put 1 stitch each on 3 dp needles. The whole hat is stockinette, so from here you just increase 1 st per needle for a round, then knit for a round or 2, then increase another st per needle, &c. &c. until you end up w/ 7 sts per needle (21 total). Then *k1, p1, k1* for a round. Then bind off in pattern, et voila! Your egg hat. Dress your egg & hide it in the fridge for some unwitting family member to discover. Silly, silly, silly!

The first few creased blossoms of my paperwhites have emerged. The bulbs were very eager this year, maybe because I bought them kind of late. While the green shoots were still only a few inches tall, pointy pods of blooms could be seen enthusiastically pushing up between the leaves. Now that the flowers are just barely open, they're just as eagerly exuding their amazing fragrance. Makes December worth it. Let the aromatherapy begin!

If not for my network of diligent spies, I wouldn've known that Evening Magazine appears to be running my segment again tonight. & if not for that, I wouldn've known that they use those segments over & over again! Isn't that cheating? I mean, print magazines don't run the same story over again, do they? Mind you, I'm not complaining or anything. If it gets more people to send me menus, that's fine with me. What's that you say? "Wouldn've" isn't a legitimate contraction? Tough.

I do believe a good time was had by all at Pamela Z's CD release party. What I always love about seeing Ms. Z perform (other than her amazing music, of course) is how much fun she obviously has doing it. Her illustrious pals who performed last night were clearly having a lot of fun too. Even though I was so totally tired that I had a moment of serious doubt before getting on the bridge to go, I was just as happy as a clam once there, even sitting on the floor. The proceedings gave me a much-needed shot of inspiration to work on the sound portion of my upcoming show. Not that I dare to compare myself with any of these folks; I am a mere sound baby (& no musician at all), but babies learn to talk by being talked to, so why not listen to the best? (& peek at all their geek-heaven equipment, too?) Anyway, go buy that thang!

Un-blogworthy activities continue behind the scenes here in Indigolandia. But I can report that the show is shaping up & so is the catalog. I think it's safe to announce (Mercury retrograde & all) that Imogene Lim will be writing the essay for the catalog. I'm so happy that my first choice writer said yes! The opening will be the first Thursday of February, that's the 3rd, at 5:30pm, & the show will be up till the end of March.

I have been (temporarily) liberated from film-scanning hell & am now plotting & scheming about a giant cable that I want to knit. I know, it doesn't look giant on that page, but when you're using Rowan Big Wool it gets pretty... big. At least that's what I'm hoping. Don't ask me how I got to be such a size queen with the cables.

It happened last year, & it's happening again: in the wintertime the Chinese restaurant project blog magically transforms into a knitting blog. I can't help it! It's not like I'm not doing tons of work on the Chinese restaurants, because I am, it's just that there's not a whole lot to say about it. Unless you want to read more complaints about dust on the negatives. (I must say my new Wacom tablet is saving my ass, I mean, my wrist. Why did I wait this long? Thanks again, Creative Work Fund!) In the meantime, I finished one of a pair of Nearly Gloves last night & am trying to restrain myself from making the other one until after I finish de-speckling the rest of my restaurant images. These babies (the fingerless gloves, not the images) knit up really fast & fun! Last night while binding off the edge I was worrying out loud about how much stuff I have to do, whereupon Donna diagnosed: "You're in Deep Procrastination!" Hey, a girl needs something to do while waiting for Photoshop to read those enormous TIFFs.

dust

Easy to slip a few blogless days when there's film scanning involved. I am deeply annoyed by dust! It seems like it should be so easy to slip the negative into the film holder, slap it on the scanner glass & press a button, but noooo, I am plagued by many varieties of evil dust. There are the little linty bits, which show up as whimsical squiggles on the image, & then there are the superfine particles, which manifest as scattered white dots. All enough to drive me insane, as if you couldn't tell already since here I am blogging about dust! How humiliating. This is where my lackadaisical housekeeping (studiokeeping?) comes back to bite me in the ass.

It wouldn't be like this in Martha's house. She has other problems, of course. Gotta hand it to her for how she's maintaining. Seems like this can only be good for her public image, I mean, suddenly she has this underdog thing going, & the "Free Martha" meme is propogating away. It gives her a hipness she never had before. Used to be that she was the only person who I actually loved to hate & hated to love, but now, hey, whatta complex, rich stew of cultural meaning! Theoryheads are surely writing delicious papers....

But I was talking about dust. The crocheting of wool flowers in the immediate vicinity of the scanner cannot possibly be helping my cause. In fact clearly I am working at cross-purposes with myself. At least I know which images I have to scan, thanks to patient & caring feedback from my very helpful art pals both near & far: Irene in DC, Heather in Austin, Oriane in Brooklyn, & the home team crit girls, Donna, Birgit, Debra & Peggy. What would I do without each & every one of you? Y'all rock!!!

Last chance to see the very brilliant Eurydice at the Berkeley Rep! It closes Sunday. You can get same-day half-price tickets by paying cash at the box office when it opens at noon. It's funny & sad & clever & sweet, witty & beautiful. All that plus an amazing set with lots of cool water tricks. You'll like it.

One thing about the Mississippi Delta: it has a very strong sense of place. It's specific. When you're there, you know you're there. It's not like some other places where you just feel that you could be almost anywhere in America. Maybe part of it has to do with the blues, how all of us who have listened to the blues have absorbed a sort of subconscious knowledge about the birthplace of this music, so that when we go to that place we recognize it on that mythic or archetypal level. Does that make sense?

On a much more mundane level, when we were in Greenville I felt that this sense of place was reinforced by the brown tap water. Kind of demoralizing if you're used to clear, colorless water, but it also lets you know where you are. I couldn't google up much about it, other than this article, which is a couple years old. I'm not ashamed to say, I'm glad I mostly drank bottled water while we were there.

I've mostly been crocheting wool flowers instead of getting real work done, but I did start logging some of the recordings I made in the South. There's a lot of stuff there & I haven't the first clue what I'm going to do with it all. Further adventures in a new medium....

Meanwhile, if you're interesting in the therapeutic/procrastinatory benefits of crochet flowers, here's an easy pattern for basic, flat 5-petal flowers:

ch 5, join to form ring
*ch 3, dc in ring, ch3, sl st in ring
repeat from * 4x

You can crank a bunch of these out in no time, & then either felt them or not. Donna observed that felting is like shrinky dinks. It is! She's so smart.

Another morsel o' demographic goodness: Jennifer 8. Lee (yes, 8 is really her middle name) informs me that, out of all 50 states, Mississippi has the lowest number of Chinese restaurants per capita. I love that shit.