Monday, April 25, 2011

Beautiful and Depressing

Someone posted the link below on a list I read:

Which shows a truly magnificaent ornithopter in flight.  I looked further down the page and spotted the Air Jelly:


And then I wrote this to the list:

I have to tell you that my response is two-fold -- first of all, I am charmed and inspired.


My other response is to want to weep and then visit every single ueber-fanatical fundamentalist church, the US congress, and the RNC headquarters and beat every last son-of-a-b*tch into jelly with a sledgehammer for letting their greed, selfishness, resistance to science, and complete, overwhelming lack of true vision deprive us of being the ones to produce things as beautiful and inspiring on a regular basis. I don't begrudge it to Germany, but I am soul-stressingly sad that we don't do this kind of thing any more, or often, because we have dismantled everything that would have made it possible -- from a national sense of wonder about natural science to an education system that would prepare our children to create magnificent things, and we can't even seem to find it in ourselves to tell ourselves the truth anymore. It crushes me. It f*cking crushes me.

My husband and I would have given our eye teeth and then some, to be a part of that in our younger days. Our children, despite brains and dreams, have little chance, due to shitty preparation and an even shittier political (ie funding and infrastructural support) climate, of being able to participate in the genesis of mechanical/technical wonders.

Where's my goddamned sledgehammer?



Sunday, April 24, 2011

Stashbusting Continues

I have picked up the crochet hook in order to bust some more stash.  Here's a circular shawl, the pattern for which is here

Done in discontinued Lion Bran AlPaKa, about 12 skeins 50 grams each.  Works up quickly and busts the stash.

Then I looked in my basket, shown in a prior post, and noticed that I had a lot of ugly yarn ends -- they looked fine as accents for whatever I used them for, but they were murky or boring or just butt ugly all on their own and even lumped together in a basket.  So, they had to turn into something.  Something masculine, given the general dark tones.  So here is my mostly wool Butt Ugly Granny Square Afghan:

Strangely, or maybe not, one of my sons has already declared it "Awesome".  I did include 3 50 gram skeins of Herrschner's house brand black acrylic and 2 100 gram skeins of black Encore in the finishing, but for washing and warmth purposes, it's still (Butt Ugly) wool.

I am currently working on one with what seems to me to have the charm of a bulldog puppy -- a little ugly but cute, with screaming red, bowling alley gold, and a nice mocha (of which I am a couple skeins short for a sweater, but there's enough for edging each square), which might turn out comparatively presentable.

Yes, the J sized hook is getting a workout, but the stash is noticeably diminishing!