I *was* going to post a "what I've been up to for the past year" kind of post - started it a couple times, actually - and then I realized how pointless that really is, because the one person who's still reading me from a year ago already knows everything I was going to say. The rest of you would have absolutely no idea what I'm talking about. So... a totally fresh start it is!
I got the best package in the mail today: a couple jars of sour cherry jam, from my friends Carly and Art. Well, backing up, a couple weeks ago, Adam and I went strawberry picking - and the next logical thing to do was make a ton of jam. Art saw my pictures on flickr and asked if I'd consider a trade; they'd just gone cherry-picking, and made a ton of jam themselves. I feel bad that I didn't mail out my end of the trade till today - it's actually really difficult for me to get to the post office - but hopefully they'll forgive me when they see what I stuck in the box other than strawberry-rhubarb. (Blackberry-lime and cherry-pomegranate, if you must know.)
I haven't been doing a lot of knitting. It's not that I don't have time or energy, or even the desire - I just don't have the motivation. My Ravelry queue is now 7 pages long and I wish I had some magical way of knitting everything, because it's all stuff I really want. I just can't bring myself to do the work right now.
The really curious thing is that people have kept adding me for the past year, despite the fact that I haven't been updating. I'm not sure what's up with that, but... um... hi? :)
It looks like a lot of my "old" readers over here are gone, but I think I might explore the site again, see what's changed in the past year. I need another blog like I need a hole in the head. Like that's ever stopped me before!
I'm flipping through an old (Summer 2006) issue of knit.1, and I see this. (It's easier to see in the original, but work with me here.)
That's my womb!
So I read the article, and sure enough:
Knitting "with a twist" was on display in January at the Assemble Gallery in Cleveland, where Shannon Okey, author of the Knitgrrl series and several forthcoming fiber arts books, curated a show featuring alternative textile artists....
In the Alt Fiber show, dozens of
MK Carroll's knitted Womb patterns, first published on knitty.com, were
displayed loose on pedestals. Originally knit by members of the Wombs
on Washington project to be placed on the steps of the Supreme Court as
a statement about choice, the "wombs" invited viewer involvement.
etc.
I did make my womb, in screaming-bright blaze orange with a handmade "button", for Wombs on Washington, ages ago. I always wondered what ever happened to it. Now I know. Well, kinda... I mean, that was over a year ago, and I don't know the final resting place of the exhibit. But still.
It's not even the first time I've been in a magazine, but it's still kinda neat. :)
Hey, did you know I rock?
I - or my knitted shoes, at least - made the Craftzine.com blog!
No, it really doesn't take much to make my day, haha.
(Although, admittedly, I'm already on a high because it's 60 degrees here, and I just got done eating my lunch outside, on the deck, in the sun, in a t-shirt. Dude, that's enough to make anybody's day, when you're coming off of 52 hours straight of rain and sleet.)
Now I'm wishing I hadn't used such a grungy damn pair of flipflops for those things, but I had no idea that people would like them so much.
Should I point out that they spelled my name wrong?
Thanks to everyone who left comments on my last post, or favorited it, or whathaveyou. I'm genuinely (pleasantly!) surprised. I was really just declaring my own independence from fascist beauty standards... the support was a completely unexpected bonus. Thank you!
Switching gears entirely, I've been crazy busy putting yarn up on my Etsy store... crazy busy only because, for a little while there, it was literally selling as fast as I could get it dyed and listed. Nuts! :) So now I'm on the hunt for a good wholesale source for dyeable/natural wool yarn, because I've almost burned through that entire stash of merino already. I will order more from the same company for now, but they're not a reliable source - once they sell out of it, they won't have it again, so I really need to find some alternates. I'd also like to dye yarn that isn't worsted.
For the record, I am 195 and 5'2". I am fat.
Like Joy, my quality of life has not suffered because I'm fat. I've been married twice (and the divorces had nothing to do with my fatness). I've had boyfriends and lovers like whoa - a few times, several at a time, men fighting for my attention like I was Angelina Jolie or something. I've had decent jobs. I've had - and still have - some of the best friends a girl could want, and who have always involved me in their major life events (like weddings), regardless of my size. I go hiking, and camping, and scramble all over the place in hard-to-get-to places to take pictures of nature's beauty. I've traveled. In fact, my size hasn't stopped me from doing anything that I've wanted to do. I could go on and on, but the point is this: how much of this happened when I was thin?
None of it.
More and more, I'm finding myself not just accepting my size, but liking it. I take up space. (And indeed, a thin friend, some time ago, said that she wished she took up more space, making a bigger impression on the world around her.) I'm a big, colorful presence, and you. will. notice. me. Do I think I'm perfect? Not quite there yet, but I'm working on it. That's honest. So is this: not everyone who's fat is trying desperately to get thin!
Furthermore, I find it extremely insulting when people talk smack about a woman who's fat, in my presence, and then backpedal when I call them on it, saying, "Well, you're not fat!" I'm not fat? Are you blind? Do you really think I'm that stupid? What kind of idiot are you?
A lot of us, us fat women, don't point that out because we're fishing for compliments.
We point it out because we want you to think about what you're saying, and stop being such a goddamn jerk.
Fat doesn't equal lazy, or stupid, or unlovable, or white trash, or whatever. It's an adjective. All it means is that I don't fit into some people's narrow little minds.
Just when you thought my mad cooking skillz just couldn't get any more awesome...
That's right, people. Steak and Potato Pizza.
Alas, I can't take credit for such a brilliant idea - the actual full recipe is in the latest issue of Better Homes & Gardens. I had leftovers to use, so I didn't exactly follow the recipe, though. It's homemade pizza dough, topped with a ton of mozzarella, sliced pan-seared steak, herb-roasted red-skinned potatoes, roasted onions and garlic, drizzled with a tiny bit of olive oil, and topped with rosemary and sea salt. Was it good? Oh hell yeah.
(Although, admittedly, I only had a bite - between the red meat and the cheese, this is an IBS'er's nightmare. But the bite I had was quite tasty, and Adam thoroughly enjoyed it. Score!)
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EDIT: The original recipe was requested, I don't have a certain someone's email, and so I'm just posting it here. Enjoy!
2 medium potatoes, scrubbed and cut in 1" pieces
1 cup water
12 oz beef ribeye steak, trimmed of fat and cut in 1" pieces
4-6 cloves garlic, minced
1 tbsp olive oil
1 13.8-oz pkg refrigerated pizza dough
1 8-oz pkg pizza cheese or mozzarella
2-3 tsp snipped fresh rosemary, or 1 tsp dried, crushed
1/3 cup small slivers red onion
Cracked black pepper (optional)
Kosher or sea salt (optional)
Olive oil (optional)
Preheat oven to 425. In skillet, combine potatoes and water. Bring to boil, reduce heat, and simmer covered, 10 minutes or until tender; drain and set aside. Wipe skillet clean, then cook steak and garlic in hot oil over medium-high heat for 4-5 minutes, or until steak is browned on all sides, stirring occasionally. Remove from heat and set aside.
Unroll pizza dough onto greased large baking sheet, press out to 16x11-inch oval. Build up edges if desired. Bake 8-10 minutes or until golden. Sprinkle with 1 1/2 cups cheese, then potatoes and beef, then remaining cheese and rosemary. Bake 10 to 12 minutes or until cheese is melted. Sprinkle with onion, pepper, salt, and drizzle with olive oil. Serves 4.
"We have bigger houses but smaller families:
We have more degrees but less sense;
more knowledge but less judgements;
more experts but more problems;
more medicines, but less healthiness.
We've been all the way to the moon and back,
but we have trouble crossing the street
to meet the new neighbour.
We build more computers
to hold more information,
to produce more copies than ever,
but we have less communication.
We have become long on quantity
but short on quality.
These are times of fast foods,
but slow digestion;
tall man, but short character;
steep profits, but shallow relationships.
It is time when there is much in the window
but nothing in the room."
- Dalai Lama
Pardon me while I think out loud.
Thanks to Ms. sugar shock, I'm completely hooked on the idea of Square Foot Gardening. It's not that we don't have the room in our yard for a traditional garden... it's that we only get full sun on one side of the house, and naturally, that's the least accessible part of the yard, if you were planning a traditional tilled-and-planted-in-rows garden. I think that if I transplant the few flowers I have over there - hostas, which will thrive just as well in shady parts of the yard - I'll be able to plant a garden with decent yield in just the space that those few plants take up now.
The box won't be 4' x 4' - it'll be more like 2' x 10' - but I think that will be manageable. I can easily reach across 2' to tend to the plants in the back.
I will be very interested to see how my yields are. It won't take much to be an improvement over last year's garden, but I have years of traditional gardening behind me... some of them very impressive, too, like the year my then-husband and I had a literal forest of 6-foot-tall tomato plants.
Anyway, so now the fun part: deciding what to plant. Tomatoes are a given. I was planning on a lot of squashes of various kinds, but those are sprawling plants - maybe best not in the box, but they grew fine for me last year in the shady part of the yard. I can't eat peppers, but Adam enjoys them, so maybe some of those. Scallions, for sure. Lettuces, definitely. Oh, and cucumbers - lots of cucumbers of the pickling variety. I'm not sure what else.
Anyone else dreaming of digging in the dirt during these freezing-cold January days?
You must have been a fashion victim at least once in your life. What hideous blunder did you commit?
Submitted by Tina.
I was a tween and teen in the mid-to-late '80s through the early '90s. Really, that should be 'nuff said - I was basically one big living and breathing fashion blunder. Then again, we all were, I guess.
- BIG HAIR.
- Acid-washed jeans. Bonus points for rolling them up and cuffing them short.
- Linebacker shoulder pads... supposedly this balanced out our hips and made us all look thinner, but we really all looked like David Byrne in the big suit in Stop Making Sense.
- That horrible '80s teal color - a flat medium tone, more green than blue - the second-worst color for someone with my coloring to wear (the worst being mustard yellow, which, thankfully, I had the good sense to avoid).
- Hugely oversized t-shirts over leggings. It was preached that this was the best way to manage a chubby/plus-sized body - cover it with fabric, hide all the lumps and bumps. I looked like a walking flour sack.
- Jelly shoes. Who the hell ever thought that plastic shoes that turned into major slipping hazards as soon as they got even the tiniest bit wet was a GOOD idea??
- Turquoise eyeliner and frosted-baby-pink lipstick!
Thankfully, by the time I was a senior in high school, it was all about grunge. By then, I was going to school in mini skirts with tights and boots, a plain shirt, and dad's flannels thrown over top. Hell, I still like that look, 15 years later.
I should note that I still wear stupid stuff, but I do it intentionally now. I have no delusions that I either look fiiiiiine or am incredibly chic.
I still rock the turquoise eyeliner.
