Eleven Questions For A Friday

Oonah over at Parallel Oonahverse passed this blog meme on to me. I'm tossing it out there for anyone who wants to respond on their blog - or in the comments here. If you want to see more answers, Kathleen at One Minnesota Writer also played with the meme. 

1. If you could be any type of animal, what would you be and why?

I would be a bird. Not only could I soar away from any potential problems, but I could also change my perspective on things with a flick of my wings. If I was really brave I'd be a bar-headed goose and fly over the Himalayas. Or maybe an owl and cruise the world at night. Or perhaps just a chickadee and hang upside down around birdfeeders.  

2. Is there anything you collect? If so, what?

Besides books? Baseball cards, yarn, fleece and knitting needles, kitchen appliances and Corgi paraphernalia. 

3. What is the overall goal of your blog?

Life on the Periphery is there to collect my thoughts, occasionally showcase some artwork, and to provide a jumping off point for places unknown.  

4. How do you feel in big crowds of people?

Usually I just feel short.

Depends on the crowd and their intent, but I'd rather put up with crowds of a hundred or less, although I will deal with 40,000 people or so to watch a baseball game. 

5. Mobile phones (cell phones) - what's your opinion of them?

I love my cell phone. It keeps me amused when I have to wait, and it's useful for texting my kids - their preferred method of communication. It's like having my computer with me wherever I go. It has an awesome flashlight feature that helps me find the keyhole in my door at night. It wakes me in the morning or I'd be late for work. I can attempt to keep myself on track with the calendar feature. I can read books on it. And when I tire of it all, I can just turn it off. What's not to like?

6. If you could decorate your home in any style, what would that be?

Frank Lloyd Wright Prairie Style.

http://www.westcotthouse.org/prairie_style.html

Of course I'd need a new house to implement Prairie Style...

7. Do you believe in extraterrestrials?

Sure. It's pretty arrogant to assume we are the only lifeforms in the universe. Besides, I'm a science fiction fan. I've long embraced the possibility. Now the only question is War of the World aliens, or ET aliens?

8. If you could meet any mythological creature, what would it be and why?

The Moirai or Three Fates. (Clotho - spins the thread of life, Lachesis - measures the thread of life, Atropos - cuts of the thread of life) In Greek mythology the Moirai controlled the threads of life from birth to death for everyone, gods included. They represented destiny, and who wouldn't want a chance to talk with destiny? 

Otherwise, Cerberus - as long as the three heads are Corgis.

9. Would you rather stay busy or have a lot of free time? Why?

Yes. - At work I'd rather stay busy so time passes quicker, and at home I'd rather have lots of free time so I can work on art and writing projects. 

10. If you would have a chance to travel to the moon, would you do it?

Of course. I love space related stuff and reading books like "Failure Is Not An Option", "Apollo 13", and "Riding Rockets".  I remember being allowed to stay up late to watch Neil Armstrong walk on the moon. That had to have some influence on my love of outer space. 

Neil Armstrong quote - "I think we're going to the moon because it's in the nature of the human being to face challenges. It's by the nature of his deep inner soul ... we're required to do these things just as salmon swim upstream."

11. What music album are you still frequently listening to now that you also listened to years ago?

David Bromberg's "How Late'll Ya Play 'Til?" (1976) and "Reckless Abandon" (1977)

Mrs. Delions Lament

Link to Wikipedia article David Bromberg

Also Bruce Cockburn's "Dancing in the Dragon's Jaws" (1979)

Creation Dream

Link to Wikipedia article Bruce Cockburn

That's my Fragment Friday in question form. 

Kreativ Blogger Award

Carla, over at Carla Nayland Historical Fiction bludgeoned me with this colorful award. As with all bling, it comes with strings, namely some play along questions. So here they are, in no particularly coherent order . . .





List 7 of your favourite things.

• paper - forms:art papers with all their wondrous weights and textures, books, and Post-it® notes – savior of the absentminded.

• dogs - The only beings that worship me as their god. Please don't tell them I'm not omnipotent.

• the Internet - Instant gratification for the terminally curious. I want to bake the inventor of Google Earth a cake for allowing me to see what's parked in my British friend's driveway. (Hi Oonah!)

• Wool and wooly things - From alpaca fleece to Rambouillet roving to yak yarn and everything in between.

• National Forests and Parks - Legal trespassing on spectacular scenery, and source of inspiration for poetic and theological treatises.

• Poetry - Saving my sanity stanza by stanza, line by line, rhyme by rhyme.

• Mythology, sociology, theology, and physics – The cause of inner dichotomy since the dawn of time.

List 7 of your favourite activities.

• hiking/walking meditations - AKA wandering aimlessly/purposefully through vast uncharted (by me) areas of wilderness in a never ending quest for inspiration/spiritual enlightenment, and a nagging obsession with Man vs. Wild – note to self, bring plenty of power bars, since eating bugs/snakes/yak eyeballs is out of the question.
  

• Spinning/knitting/dyeing wool - OR 101 things to do with a sheep fleece. What? Everyone doesn't like making their clothes from the animal up? Yes, I have a loom too. Don't come whining to me for a loincloth when the zombie apocalypse hits. Plan ahead.

• Printmaking/drawing/graphic design – See zombie apocalypse. Your only news and cartoons will come from me. Reduced to bare essentials and printed with the finest ink and papers harvested from the undead.

• Reading/writing poetry and other fiction – I want to create an earworm so insidious schoolchildren 200 years from now will be belting out my verses instead of "The Midnight Ride Of Paul Revere" or "Casey At The Bat". A really annoying rap song would be quicker, but I do have standards.

• Mad Scientist – otherwise known as cooking. I almost never make a recipe the same way twice. Usually because I've lost the recipe, or forgot to write it down while creating a new dish. ADHD Rule of Cooking: If it has more than 7 ingredients, it probably didn't need those extra ones anyhow. Better off leaving them out, no one will miss them.

• Philosophical Discourse. Name the topic. AKA Will argue for coffee, with coffee, over coffee, about coffee.

• Home Repair – It's my house - if I want my living room to be burnt orange, I can do that. What's not to like?

List 7 things no-one knows about you.

• I once spent 4 months in the jungles of Honduras learning: The velocity of a fist size beetle determines how badly the windshield will get broken. If you accidentally kill a chicken, villagers will take the equivalent of $2.50 in compensation. Plus the dead chicken. Toenails do grow back from jungle rot. Eventually.

• I can sing the Canadian National Anthem in both English and French. Yes, we had a minor league hockey team in my hometown, why do you ask??

• If I had to do it over again, I'd be a physicist of some sort. Astro or quantum. Oh, and I'd pay more attention in math class.

• I took a train trip from Siena, Italy to Amsterdam by myself one weekend just to go to the Vincent Van Gogh museum. I also went to the Rijksmuseum and Stedelijk Museum, back to UNISI just in time to take an art history test. Van Gogh wasn't on it…

• My eldest child and I have the exact same birthmark, in the exact same place.

• There is rap music on my iPod.

• I originally wanted to fly UH-60 Black Hawks in the Army. Instead of going up, in the air, they thought I'd be happier blowing things up, in the air. Go figure.

Pass the award on to 7 others.

• Since, as Anonymous always reminds me, I don't have seven friends, the award is up for grabs. Just follow the loose-goose rules and let the rest of us know you played, so we can go read all about YOU.

Kool Aid Dyes

No, I didn't kill off the Kool-Aid character, even if he is an annoying pest. They said jolly, fun-loving beverage provider (1), I say slightly psychopathic mascot with ice cubes for brains. If he's so great, why'd he have to change his name from "Pitcher Man"? Was it some FBI protective custody thing? Did all that citric acid do someone in? Or just contribute to the slightly sour expression of elementary teachers everywhere?

I like dyeing yarn with Kool-Aid, it's fairly quick and easy, and everything smells good in the end. I do it in the microwave, what could be simpler? I dyed small batches with straight color the first time, then it was anything goes. Yes, I do follow directions on things, particularly recipes at least the first time. After that, everything is open to tinkering. Which explains some of my spectacular sourdough bread failures the past few weeks. You can only push the envelope so far, before it all turns to brick bread.

For once in my life I appreciated taking color theory in college art classes. It allowed me to start with this:

and eventually end up with these:

Summer Waters


Big Horn Meadow


Berry Picking

Wyoming Summer


Wyoming Fourth


Wyoming Autumn


Byzantine Necklace


Wyoming Spring

I found a neat FAQ that lists all kinds of things you can add Kool-Aid to or make with it. (Besides a tongue staining beverage). The only frustrating thing about dyeing with Kool-Aid is that many times the more interesting flavors - in terms of color- are discontinued. So if you see someone in the grocery buying 50 packets of Kool-Aid at a time, they may not be running a daycare, but rather hording against a discontinued item that leaves them without an easy way to obtain the perfect green of a spring morning. Cake decorating gels, Easter egg dyes, they're all fair game for experimentation. "Just buy Jacquard acid dyes from any respectable fiber arts company" you say? "They come in every color, and even have directions."

Well, what's the fun in that??

Washing My Blues Away

I think the gnomes stole some color from my felting project. I knitted a bag, it had lovely shades of blues and pinks- Exhibit A

Then I machine felted it and all the color faded into Exhibit B, the Gnome-napped version.

Gnomes, I’m telling you.

Then again, it was a ball of wool yarn from my stash that I am foggy on the origins of. All I know is it was 100% wool, I started a pair of socks with it, didn’t like them, frogged the yarn to oblivion, then decided to felt the thing into a bag. I'm really glad they didn't continue on to be faded out socks.

What? Did I test a swatch to see what would happen? Uh… no. Why would I do that? To know what would happen in the wash, you say? Hmm, you may have a point there. Ah well, I wasn’t happy with the yarn anyhow.

Then there was this bag, Exhibit C,

Knit with Caron Felt-It in Adobe color.

It behaved exactly like it was supposed to. Of course it felted a bit smaller than it should have, probably because someone got caught up reading a book leaning on the washing machine and let the bag agitate a might too long… It still works as a large clutch. The bag is about 14 inches by 8 inches. I made some i-cord out of sock yarn for a handle, it doesn’t match, but stuff like that never bothers me. I knit fraternal socks, sometimes distant cousin socks, and still wear them.

I went through my polymer clay buttons and lined up some possibilites. Of course, I may have to make one just for the bag, because in the 200+ buttons I have, I can't find one I really like. (Yes, I make buttons for handknits. Because I don't have enough hobbies) Flimsy excuse to play with polymer clay, but I'll take it. Ignore the lopsidedness, they really are round - unless they were square- I was lazy and put the buttons on the scanner instead of making a paper tent and photographing them properly, so I tried to clean them up in Photoshop and just chewed along the edges. But you get the idea. At least I wasn't standing on a bucket like I did to photograph the bags. The trials of being short...

These are the prime button candidates until I make more.

So what was the Bag pattern? Uh, the Wing-It pattern. You know, knit until it looks right, jury-rig the sides and sew the whole thing together. I measure if held at gun point; otherwise I just eyeball the whole thing. I guess that makes me a process knitter, (or an ADD process knitter). I can make something following pattern directions once, after that, well, wouldn’t this part look better longer? And what if I change this piece and swap these out…

I cook like that too. As several of my favorite philosophers have observed, “Sometimes it’s better to travel than to arrive.”