PunkconformityLife, history, and the pursuit of knitting.

Sunday, September 14, 2008

Crafty Links

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It was only a matter of time before my mom and her fiber-mania finally got to me. I suppose I should be thrilled I held out the four or five years I lasted, but now things have gotten crazy. In my free time (admittedly slim as it is), I check knitting websites and etsy instead of the music and fiction sites I used to look at. So, here are some of my current favorite crafty-type links.

The AntiCraft. It's Knitty for anarchists! or southern non-conformist psuedo-punks. Whatever. It's still like it was made for me. Skulls, knitting, and spicy food, what more do you want out of a website? I'm currently working on Eternemente, and will probably be making several other projects from the site over the next few months.

Whedoncraft. People inspired by the Joss-verses make stuff and then post about it. You can knit your own Firefly or get a WWBD (What would Buffy do?) shirt. Tell me your life wasn't missing something before this. (don't ask where I found the site, I honestly couldn't tell you how I got there...)

Lime'n'Violet Daily. Their podcasts get super annoying, but their blog has all kinds of nifty knitting-related stuff, like free patterns and Etsy of the week links.

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Speaking of Etsy, here are some of my favorite things I've discovered on that site:

Glowworm and Virgen de Guadalupe stitch markers. I'd probably be more inclined to use the damn things if they were all this cute.

Pretty dyed roving. I link to this not because I want to knit with yarn made from it, but because I want to dye my hair those colors very badly.

Fort Awesome Studios. He does really cool interpretations of Nintendo characters, and the word-geek in me loves that he does it on old textbooks.

ShySiren. Jewelry-makers out of Charlotte. If I weren't a broke Grad Student, they would be getting a lot more of my money.

And finally, WoolandWood. It's my mom's etsy, and she's got some Christmas bags up, along with a couple of our stuffed animals.

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I have ideas for all this yarn I want to dye, inspired by things like Babylonian mosaics and Straylight Run songs, but dying yarn is teh suck, so for now I'm just keeping notes of my ideas. I'll post pictures if I ever do manage to make it happen.
Sunday, September 7, 2008

"You're not made for this"

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This summer did not go exactly according to plan. It was fine up until the middle of July, when my kidneys all of a sudden decided that they hated me and wanted me to die, but after that point, everything sort of fell apart. I've never experienced anything quite like that before, where you're so wrapped up in the thing that's going wrong inside you that you just can't muster the energy to answer the phone, let alone go out and be friendly. There were times this summer when even answering a text message seemed too much. Having your organs revolt really turns your attention inward. I have a new appreciation for why Jeremy was such an ass for all those months; when you feel like that, you just want to be left alone, for people to understand that you're sick, dammit, you can't handle being social right now. But then I feel guilty, because I recognize how very lucky I am to have the awesome friends I have, and there's only so long people can tolerate that kind of behavior and still remain your friend. But I just wanted to put it out there that it wasn't intentional, and I ignored pretty much everybody equally. I even ended up not going to the Hush Sound/Cab show, which was supposed to be the highlight of my summer, that's how horrible I felt.

I am trying to grow up this semester, in all senses of the word. I'm accepting certain truths, including the one about me deserving better than what I've received from the boys I've dated. I'm cooking dinner every night and balancing my own checkbook . I'm getting all my work done early enough in the week that I can take Sunday off, and I'm not partying every night. I'm exercising (when I'm not feeling nauseous, anyway), and making sure I take my vitamins every morning.

I've also had to come to terms with the fact that my dream of doing something in the music industry has to die. It's time to grow up. I'm twenty-three, not nineteen, and if I'm honest with myself, I was never really going to be that girl. So it's time to be realistic about things, and recognize that when I finish Grad school, I'm going to get a real job and have a real life, and I'm going to be okay with that. Music is always going to be a vital part of my life, but I can't structure my life around it any more. Which is painful to have to admit. I actually thought it would hurt more, to be honest, the day the expiration date came on my childhood dreams. But the truth is, it's okay, because now there's so much more in my life than just those dreams. It's easier knowing that so many of my friends are going through this at the same time and making the same decisions - Cade quit the band, Jon's gone off to work as a sound-guy, Ryan's going back to school. It's the time for quarter-life crises, and we're trying to be thoughtful in our choices. I'm not going to treat this like all the rest of my relationships and cling to it long after it's died; I love music wholeheartedly, but I'm meant for something else.

There's still a tiny, redheaded man in Chicago that owns my heart, though. Every damn time, Patrick gets to me, despite politics, mediocre lyrics, and Pete. Folie a Deux is going to be awesome, and I don't even care what that says about me.

What I'm Listening to: "I'm Actual" by the Format