these days of leiderhosen

Today when walking to work I saw a bit of hand penned graffitti on a paper bin. In a young feminine hand with purple and green ink it read: "Peace begins with Personal Happiness." Ah. Yes, Darling. Of course it all starts with you and your needs and your satisfaction. Claim you are working towards Peace with a capital P. Personal Happiness. Do you want sprinkles on that? I must be reading this all wrong or am tired of slogging away in a little burgh full of enlightened little sparkly nymphs with all the answers. Somedays, it's a miracle I don't just take a bat to every chirpy twit spouting adolescent baloney. Yeah, personal happiness is 'important' but it's a fleeting inconstant, although always welcome. Despair gets shit done. Angst creates a lot of socks and watches a lot of classic films that are not typically at the top of the heap. Joy picks great colors. Amusement keeps makes the next day possible. Personal happiness is about you and maybe thos...

Inspiring textile artist: Kjoo from Etsy. Great colors, Will Ferrell sunscreen ! Pasty, pudgy, furry, white guys! The inadvertant cow-bell playing sex god pulls a Coppertone moment for a good cause!

Get yourself the low down on The Supreme Leader of Iran , brought to you by Garrison Keillor.

I have finally found the perfect canister for my sister Heather; handmade ceramic with four horses (four siblings, four horses). It is a very beautiful and appropriate piece. Although the thought of decanting a sibling makes me a little quivery, but she's sitting in a cardboard box in a very tacky "velvet" bag and that is just not be borne. The artist is Denise of Morris Pottery. Go look at her work ; she is very talented, both as a potter and an illustrator. Her animal images are fantastic and playful. Triumph! After much ballyhoo and pointed emailing, Barbara has finally returned our July rent check! The Steven seems very impressed. Now let's see how I do on the $1,000 security department. Moving update: Books are out weighing clothes, kitchen equipment and yarn. (Three categories: fiber art/cookbooks/literature-reference) Every day, I schlep a bag of discards over the the Berkeley Library Bookshop. (In the last bag, there might have been erotica as well as all...

... for some Irish Rockabilly. More? Okay. This is one of the Steven's favorite songs:

Let me once again sing the praise of the Lazy Stupid Godless Group on Ravelry (for the non-knitterati, it's a website for knitters. The LSG messageboard group is beyond awesome (the List Avatar is Johnny Cash flipping off the camera). There really is no point, other than to shoot the shit, share the grief and try to get through the day without killing anyone. Sometimes we just flash our racks and/or the latest yarn porn just amuse ourselves. Occasionally we pimp our co-workers. The Big Issues come up pretty regularly, in between long diatribes about sex of all varieties. Today some young thing requested help with an abrupt call to return home to an alienated and unhappy family for the death of a cousin. This was her first big experience with grieving in family context. Good stuff came out of it and she got lots of good advice and the right smattering of sympathy: People grieve or panic in unique ways. As far as I’m concerned, every way is right. The unspeakable tragedy: Paren...

I had a lovely dinner in the city with Ben, although I developed a mad crush on the waiter with odd glasses, a substantial nose and a rather dapper hat. Ben is always charming, funny and somewhat shocking; even when he is miserable and mistreated he can make me choke on my own beverage. And San Francisco was lovely, lovely. Here at Casa del Leiderhosen we are about 50% packed. With my closet emptied I can see what a perfectly appropriate garret bedroom it might have made. I have four boxes of evening clothes and two big boxes of vintage wool coats and could not tell you why. The next big packing task will be the kitchen and then the studio. All the same, we have two weekends left to get it all done.