July 01, 2008
What My Entries Lack in Frequency, They Make Up For in Length
(Picture-heavy post, Dear Readers!)
Knitting-wise, I suppose the biggest news is that I’ve been…must I admit this?...Ravelrized. The only reason this even comes close to being “news” is because I avoided joining fer, like, ferever, dodging the terrifying, knitting-community-consuming tsunami that was Ravelry. I was sure the folks behind Ravelry planned to, at the very least, invade our bodies and turn us all into pod people, given all the apparently millions of things you could do with their application. But the mass community hysteria finally simmered down to a dull roar (and the wait-time for an invitation became less than 24 hours; I’m no fool) and the few, at least in my book, really useful things about Ravelry floated to the top. I haven’t done much with it, but I’ve joined a few groups and have “friended” a few people, and vice versa, and now I just visit it…because it’s what you do. If you want to find me, my Ravelry name is “Noomie.” A big gold star to the first person to figure out what that name means.
As promised, here are some photos of the Cotton Club, taken by my employee (I didn’t participate in the walk since I was still bouncing around in my rubber room (yes, I do exaggerate a wee. There was no rubber. Just a lot of really, really, really odd people.))
Here, just because this is the point, after all, the luminarias which lined the track and which displayed the names of people who had passed away, currently have cancer or who are survivors:
And, here, the pile of all the cloths and all the soaps bundled together, before the walk. How beautiful is this rainbow of colors?! Look what you did! I’m glad we didn’t place any restrictions on colors; this joyful profusion is exactly what I had in mind.
The cloths at the walk. The paper on the right is a note written by my employee explaining how the cloths came to be, and all about the hard work put in by knitters around the country (and Canada, and India!!), meaning all a’ y’all.
Here, a picture illustrating what worked against the Cotton Club that day: the weather. As you can see, everyone is huddled around a propane heater, despite the fact that it was June 7. Apparently many shivering walkers rushed up to the booth, hoping they were selling knitted hats, as they did the year before, but were destined to be disappointed. However, as I mentioned, she did sell at least 14 cloths and is working on ways to sell the others as well.
My favorite picture: Two (or three; I can’t quite tell) washcloths on their way to a good home:
Black Sheep Gathering was good. And bad. The good was just the drive itself, and seeing central Oregon for the first time. What a beautiful place! Farmland as far as the eye could see and lots of beautiful, fresh greenery. The good was also spending two days with Janine and her sister Tori. My favorite part was the second night when we all just retired to our beds and quietly and companionably knit or read without talking, just relaxing in each other’s company. Now that’s togetherness! (And there was some more good which involved money and yarn, but we don’t need to go there.)
The bad was my mood swings, from “okay” to deeply, darkly, scarily depressed. Wow. At one point, I just sat at a table with my head down on my sweatshirt, hoping to fall asleep, to escape from all the crapola and the desire to return to the rubber room. Then some sun crept up on my back and felt so warm and soothing I thought, hey, I should go lie in the sun! Which I did:
While at Black Sheep, I was determined not to take the usual sheep-in-a-pen-mostly-obscured-by-wire photos, and thought I would just limit my photo-taking to the unusual. Since 99% of my photo ops were, in fact, sheep in pens, that didn’t leave me with much. But I did get this, a lamb asleep in mom’s feed bucket:
And some photos of Southdown Babydoll sheep on their way to being shorn. Take a good look at their size, Dear Readers. These are full-grown sheep and barely hit knee-height.
Note that the shearer had to kneel down to shear them. Usually, she stood up, bent over and just hauled the sheep around like, well, sacks of wool. (Note to Niece Nicky, who is being taught by Big Sister to Think Outside the Box when it comes to women's roles in the world: Female sheep-shearer!)
Here they are later, shorn and in their tiny Babydoll sheep jackets. Note what a bright brown their fleece was on the outside (from sun exposure, I was told), but very black underneath. (To give you a further idea of their size, in the pen next door, a behemoth of a sheep that was lying down took up the entire front of the pen.)
I also learned that it can be very hard to tell the difference between lesbians and straight but hard-working, down-to-earth farm women with short hair. I can’t tell you how many times I asked myself, “Lesbian? Or straight but hard-working, down-to-earth farm woman with short hair?” And every time the answer was straight but hard-working, down-to-earth farm woman with short hair, damn it.
Tune in in a coupla days, Dear Readers, to see photos of my new family!!
Great to see you're blogging again Ryan, and I loved every picture!
Now I'm concerned that I've inadvently confused untold numbers of lesbians over the years, cuz I'm a straight, hard working, down-to-earth city woman with short hair, who rarely wears jewelry or make up. Sorry about that! (Is there a secret sign that says straight, like wearing a flower over the left ear or something? In my high school, wearing yellow on Thursdays meant you were ________, but that was close to 100 years ago.)
Posted by: Diana on July 1, 2008 11:24 AMHi, Ryan,
It's good to hear you again. I've always enjoyed your wit and energy. I teach English in a High School, and this very morning was trying to make a poem called "Love after Love" by Derek Wallcott mean something to fifteen-year-olds, some of whom have yet to experience love at all. I do think that it might speak to you though. Google it and see.
I see you chose to leave out the wild trip across the river to the bookstore.....
Posted by: Janine on July 1, 2008 11:36 AMDid you flutter your eyelashes at some poor, confused straight woman? Man, I hate it when a woman flutters in vain.
Posted by: Liz in NoWhere PA on July 1, 2008 11:40 AMNo, no there was no fluttering of eyelashes, no accidental flirting going on. It's just something that happens in your brain: Gay? Or not? Besides, all the love I needed that weekend was provided by my wonderful friends: Janine, Tori, LindaK, the Village Yarn & Tea group, Rebecca, Peggy and all my other knitting peeps.
Oh, and, Janine, I also forgot to mention that AFTER we spent hours at Black Sheep, we went to a YARN STORE!! (BTW, Elaine is now the proud possessor of the variegated brown Smooshie. Yay! Girl's got TASTE!)
Posted by: Ryan on July 1, 2008 12:03 PMI was just about to flood your mailbox asking concernedly for the whereabouts of my cloth, but I got wise and came over here instead. I assume the India one is mine! (Things have been known to vanish in the mail, leaving only their envelopes behind to reach the addressees).
I know you've had a lot to deal with recently, so I understand why you wouldn't want to be wading through to mail everyone you got a cloth from. I hope you don't think I'm trying to say you should have.
Dang. I'm not expressing myself very well.
Whew. Thank you for organising this, and I thought you might like to know the cotton for the cloth I made came to me from a knitter in Norway, who RAK'ed me from Ravelry. And now it's in a home somewhere in the US. I think that's amazing!
Posted by: Swapna on July 1, 2008 12:10 PMCute sheep!
Posted by: jennu on July 1, 2008 12:25 PMRe: the sunburn... ever tried dawbing Vinegar (Apple-cider vinegar to be specific) on the burned area? Interesting cooling effect and I would swear on a stack of my dad's books that it turns the burn into tan (if you're not burned too badly). You'll smell like a pickle for awhile, but then, in some people's minds (ahem...) that's not an altogether bad thing.
Posted by: ken-bob on July 1, 2008 12:41 PMThose sheep are so cute!
And sunlight is great for any sort of brain imbalances. Sitting by a windwo if its soo hot outside is good, too!
Kindred spirits with sensitive skin! I want to tell you how much your willingness to speak openly of your struggle with mental health helps others. (I still wake up every morning crying. Sometimes it stops, sometimes it doesn't.) There I was identifying all over the place, and then you showed your ankle. Well, move over, hon! I didn't know you could swim without a T-shirt until I was 21. I absorbed so much sunscreen as a child that there are elements of it in my blood. On a rafting trip through the Grand Canyon, I was the one in a hat, long sleeve shirt, and long pants. Even then, the tops of my feet got sunburned.
No one knows your pain, but lots of people do care about you. There is a wonderful quote, it may have been Charles Lindbergh (who was wrong about a lot of stuff, but not this). He said something like, "It is not in the moment you are stuck that you need courage. It is in the long, uphill climb back to sanity." If you can think of it, know that others are climbing with you, thinking of you and wishing you the very best.
Ryan, you don't know how happy I am to have a new post from you. I hope you can feel the positive energy we are sending your way. And it's really wild that your sense of humor (black though it may be...) is intact. I love it!!
Posted by: Bonney on July 1, 2008 01:48 PMGlad to hear from you! and oh my, those sheep in their coats are cute :)
Posted by: Lyssa on July 1, 2008 02:28 PMAnother long distance friend glad to see you posting again, and glad I took the time to come up and introduce myself at BSG (by Morgaines both). Keep your head up high, you're gonna be OK.
Posted by: Lynne on July 1, 2008 03:03 PMSo good to hear from you, and so good to know you are venturing out into the world. That can be a scary time, as you know. But venturing out among knitters is probably the absolute safest way to go -- they are such a snuggly, caring, bunch :-)
Posted by: kmkat on July 1, 2008 03:04 PMSeeing you have posted makes me smile.
Now, I want to know about the trip to the book store. Was it crossing the river that was interesting or the book store that was interesting?
Oh, and Ryan, falling off a treadmill, I have you beat, I completely ruptured my achilles tendon, taking three step forward to set a volleyball.
Posted by: PICAdrienne on July 1, 2008 04:18 PMMy 16yo sheep-collecting daughter (Mary- what else!) has a grand plan (for several years now) to adopt a South Down Babydoll and pass it off to the neighbors (and her Dad) in our "no livestock allowed" urban neighborhood as a new type of purebred European sheepdog ("it looks and sounds like a sheep so it can fit in better with the flock and fool the predators! WOW- isn't it amazing what they can do with DNA these days!"- Scary isn't it, how it almost makes sense?!) It was with no small amount of trepidation that I took her and her best friend to the Wool Market at Estes Park, CO and I count myself lucky that we came home with only some yarn and an Angora rabbit. Luckily we didn't see any Babydolls this year or there could have been trouble!
Posted by: Tish on July 1, 2008 04:27 PMOh, NOOOW, I know why I have been attracting lesbians all my life. Oh, well, they are more fun than a lot of the straight women I've met. Good to hear from you, you are a terrific person. Hang in there, work on loving yourself as much as we all love you-even if some of us are straight. :)
Posted by: Angie on July 1, 2008 04:37 PMOh I LOVE those little sheepies! I'd love to have one too, but I'm not sure the cats would go for it (and I understand it's ridiculously hard to teach sheep to use a litterbox). Regarding the ..uh...tan? OW! But if the rays cheered, it's worth it. PS Add me to the Happy to see y'all crowd! {waving in a westerly direction}
Posted by: dale-harriet in WI on July 1, 2008 04:40 PMNoomie = New Me, or that'd be my best guess.
Glad you posted; whatever you write always makes me smile. And you know, I've never ever wanted a sheep before, but those Babydolls are just adorable. You think my cats would ever forgive me?
Posted by: diann on July 1, 2008 05:09 PMWe call them "false cognates," and they are particularly plentiful in the Midwest. ;-)
Eons ago (like at the dawn of the Internet), a friend of mine sent me this link, to the "Lesbian or German Lady?" quiz: http://www.blairmag.com/blair4/dyke/gaydar.html
Jane and I now refer to "German Lady shoes."
Posted by: Becca on July 1, 2008 06:01 PMAw ... I thought I was going to be the first one to "get" your Ravelry handle, and thus get the gold star. Dang.
GREAT post, dear Ryan! I love that you can be joking but not try to sugar coat the pain. Good writing, on top of everything else!
Cute sheep!
Posted by: MaryB in Richmond on July 1, 2008 06:03 PMI'm still floundering around in Ravelry - it's becoming my new to-do list. Better 'n sticky notes and longer lasting. Glad you are out and about. And thanks for the cuteness of the babydolls.
Posted by: Abby on July 1, 2008 07:10 PMYay for Babydoll sheeps and pictures of Cotton Club cloths. Tumultuous applause for hauling yourself out of the pit and being brave enough to keep on keeping on. I'm convinced that women are the stronger sex. I'm a short-haired, hard-working, un-makeuped straight woman, but you can flirt with me whenever you want. I flirt with everyone, gay or straight, I'm an equal-opportunity flirt. (It's my long eyelashes, I think, or maybe my one dimple.)
Posted by: Barbara on July 1, 2008 07:43 PMOh, those sheep are so cute! They belong on my (only in my mind) farm of mini-animals. Someday, someday...
Posted by: Leslie on July 1, 2008 08:26 PMI've decided that Noomie is a name for a novice in the realm of the numinous. May you soon rise from the muck and blossom like a lotus!
(I'm in love with the sheep in the flames coat!)
Posted by: Kristen on July 1, 2008 09:00 PMWelcome back, "New Me!" It's so good to see you post!
Posted by: Betty on July 1, 2008 10:06 PMI'm glad to see you're back--you've been missed. And those sheep? Holy adorable! Especially in their little jackets...good lord.
Hang in there, okay? Keep looking for the sun!
Posted by: Julie in Wi on July 2, 2008 07:07 AMP.S. Ryan, it is ok to be alone for a while. (Ask me how I know!) Take time to heal and recover. Ironically, being whole makes being half of a couple better. Love your next partner, whoever she may be, NOW by taking care of YOU.
Posted by: Abby on July 2, 2008 08:07 AMWell, hot damn, it's my favourite ankle-flasher posting again...Yay, Ryan!
The waves do pass if you just sit and let them wash over you. That's what waves are engineered to do, you see... (Deep, non?) :-)
Posted by: Lee Ann on July 2, 2008 08:58 AMAh yes, around here it's the straight hard working cowgirls and ranchers, but the same general confusion. It's god to see you posting.
Posted by: ellenk on July 2, 2008 07:08 PMLala and I play a mean game of "Lesbian? Or German Lady?" To the point where we're in polite company and we want to check in with each other on someone, we can just say, "German?" An answering, "No...." means we both think she's family....
Posted by: Rachael on July 2, 2008 08:19 PM