closer

 

Dear Ones,

Your song of the day is here!  You know, I think, that is is a favorite song of mine, from the old days; but I love Lola Young's rendition at least as much as the original.  Still, you will have your own opinions and so here is the old song.

The other day, my Dad, who does say the darnedest things, was maybe feeling a little lost, in a kind of fast paced conversation about the characteristics of the living Generations (i.e.: Silent, Boomer, X, Millennial, Z, Alpha).  Anyway, he wasn't threatened by anything these other generations had or said or did, except for the one Great Sin of the X Gen, which is, and this is nuts, that the music is/was "terrible."  

Now, you, perhaps, in your healthy, regulated discussions with your father,  might have said: "give me an example," or, "wait, let's define 'terrible' in terms of music."  But, I, I have been being trained for years to say nothing, to be good, to shut up, and admonished not to 'be so sensitive,' so of course, I said nothing.  But I have been thinking on it for the last month, and you know, I don't think he even listened to but a handful of songs from my youth, and beyond that, his great loves in music are strangely displaced in time and space: he loves Dixieland jazz from 1930 to 1950.  Now, he was born in 1946, so, mathematically, his teenage music would have been 1960 to 1970, or maybe 1958 to 1968.  I know what you are thinking, he must have an 'old soul,' but I think maybe he has a bad case of the Nostalgias.  

Nostalgia, as a disease, is running wild right now, and you have to be careful not to catch it no matter how old you are.  One early symptom is commenting on the (astounding) price of a thing, any thing.  If you hear yourself saying out loud something about the price of eggs or gasoline, you should drink a lot of water and get yourself to bed and stay there until you have found some music you like from this year, even if it is a cover version of an 'old' song!

yarn-o-matic

 

Dear String People,

These things* are the ne plus ultra of objects for me.  I am trying to make something like them (see above).  The One Cat likes to sleep on it, even partly finished.  The Two Cat likes to wrestle it into a snarled heap.  The three of us together are pretty chuffed with this project, which has been going on for months and months.

My other yarn projects include a sweater with the kind of skinny-slow-splitty yarn that I cyclically swear off.  I am in an ascendant phase of swearing, which might reach its peak in something wearable, and it might just languish in a cute knitting bag until death does us part.  I was betting on the sweater until recently, when I got to the point of the sleeves.  So many sweaters end there, I expect.  Still, maybe it could have a life as a short skirt?  It doesn't even have sleeves, but separating the 266 stitches into two sections of 131 has been a serious blow to morale.  Morale is everything in making.

Anyway, the whole silly sweater thing wouldn't have even been attempted if it weren't for the beauty of these yarns from La Bien Aimee.  So delicious!  I showed them to a friend who said: "My next cat is going to be a skein."

* I really love this artist's work; all of it, the yarn things, the watercolors, the photographs, the clay things.  I am in extreme awe and envy of Renilde de Peuter.  See more of her work here.  As usual, I am asking myself, Why Can't I Be You, Renilde?