Monday, August 31, 2009
Someday You Will Find Me ..
... caught beneath the landslide.
I'm still here, poppets, it's just been mad. You see, I've been fighting in the trenches.
A few days ago my home was invaded. Nonono, not by the dreaded m*ths, or even worse the dreaded relatives. No, we've been attacked by fruit flies.
We have no fruit, and yet the flies seem to be in no way discouraged by this and are flitting about merrily all over my house; even in rooms where there is not now and never has been any food.
It's quite festive. No, really. If I did drugs it would even be amusing, however I do not and therefore it isn't.
I'm beginning to suspect that they think that I'm applauding them, as my leaping about and clapping has produced a very disappointing number of tiny corpses. My only hope is to have "Fruit Fly Whapping" declared an official Olympic sport.
And if it is, baby, you can bet that Team Lapin will be there, clapping for Canada.
Tales of the Summit, Gibsons and the impending Oregon Flock and Fiber (which I am doing mainly because if you say it really fast it sounds dirty and I'm secretly a 12-year-old boy) are being written as we speak. Look for a "real" post tomorrow.
You may not find one, but I encourage you to look anyhow.
And now ... I hear the wild fruit fly calling my name -- TTFN and all that.
Thursday, August 20, 2009
The View From The Top
Or perhaps from the Summit.
I guess I've had long enough to process some of the Sock Summit thingie and it's time to post about it -- but where does one start?
The experience of a vendor is vastly different from that of an attendee. This is not to say that I have anything bad at all to say about it. Much to the contrary, this was one of the most amazing events I've had the privilege to participate in, and I owe y'all a report.
The problem right now is that I've been living on caffeine, no sleep, and the scraps of food gleaned from the kitchen floor for several days now. I leave on Saturday morning at half-past sparrowfart for Gibson's Fibre Fest. I am, as usual, in no way prepared.
I've been up for 26 hours straight right now, dyeing and ... oh hell, I must have been doing other shit but it doesn't come to mind right now. My kitchen is mostly clean so I must have done that too.
I'm as crazy as a sack of hamsters on crack. The good kind of crazy; the Summit kicked the rest of the bad crazy out of me, bigtime and I want to share it, in fact I need to.
But right now, as I sit here, covered in dye and sweat, I really can't do the experience justice. And also too if I don't go to bed I'm going to start barfing up lungs or something.
There's a lot to do tomorrow (well duh) but I'm back on Sunday.
I promise ... on Sunday I shall tell you of the vending, the spending, and most importantly of the mending.
Until then ... knit a sock for me, I'll be back for breakfast*
*extra points to anyone who gets the reference
Sunday, August 16, 2009
Love Me
As many of you know, my dear friend Dr. Mel has a wonderful little dog named Tuck. Tuck's a good boy but he had a really bad start in life (puppy mill, vile, arrests, etc.) and he needs a good deal of medical attention.
Next week Tuck's going to have some major diagnostic work done to see if they can get to the bottom of his recurrent respiratory infections. Major as in a major amount of $.
To try to offset some of the costs, Dr. Mel has set up a Zazzle Store.
Y'all need magnets and T-shirts and mugs, don't you? If not for me or for Mel, do it for this little face:
You know you want to (I did).
Friday, August 14, 2009
Over The Hills and Far Away
Well, I've been back a few days and have had time to draw a breath or two so it's time to leap back into the world.
The first day I got home, well, there had been a misunderstanding. My father sat by the phone all day waiting for me to call so he could come pick me up (I have absolutely no recollection of any such arrangement), Barb went well out of her way to return me to my abode and then I ran about feeling guilty and apologizing to everyone in sight while trying to peel the nine-year-old limpet that was my daughter off of my leg.
And then Little Miss I Only Sleep Four Hours A Night (that's me) went to bed. And stayed there. For fifteen hours. I think they might have thought I was dead.
I've had a few days to regroup and I have learned a number of things.
1. That thing in the kitchen upon which I heat water so I can dye yarn -- did y'all know it can be used for heating food, too?
2. The natual colour of my hands is not magenta. Neither is it navy, scarlet, purple, chartreuse or lavender. They're actually quite boring.
#. When I am out of town, my family reverts back to its wild state. I can only assume they were living on Cheetos and Dr. Pepper as, apart from a couple of lonely rice cakes and half a box of granola bars, there was nothing resembling food in the house. I had left money in the bank in case they ran out of anything but apparently I'm the only one who can work something as high-tech as feet to get to the grocery store (our car is deceased and cannot be resurrected but it's only a mile each way to walk. It's not like we trek in from Irkutsk or something). Not that I'm bitter.
(((. Apparently whilst not eating anything but Cheetos and Dr. Pepper my family managed to dirty every dish in the house and leave them all awaiting my return. Some for the entire five days. Now that I have recovered my strength There Will Be Words (yeah, I know I've been complaining for years but I've really had enough of this shit).
b. It's completely reasonable, after having spent an utterly exhausting week on your feet Amongst Your People, to schedule another Fibre Fest in um, eight days or something. (If you're around, pop in and say "hi". I'll be there only one day, Saturday the 22nd, in the Artisan's Market rather than the Merchant Market. Not that I'm all artisany and stuff but that's where they had room.)
To clarify: I didn't schedule the fest, I scheduled my attendance thereat.
*&#. If you happen to decide to ship your yarn back from another country, and if you need that yarn for another fest in aah, actually 7 days, that yarn will not be delivered to your home, even if you spent $45us to ship it home, and you will therefore have to heat up that food-heating device and dye some more yarn just in case. Whilst also felting soap and figuring out transportation (see note re: deceased vehicle above -- but I think I'm getting another this weekend).
I have many, many things to say about the Sock Summit now that I have had time to ponder. I don't have so much in the way of photos seeing my laptop and camera still refuse to talk to each other, but I'm pretty sure there will be some on other blogs -- I'll link as I find them.
For now, I'm going to go wash more dishes (I know, shut up) and then put some food on top of that warming device and see if I can't come up with something edible.
More tomorrow.
Friday, August 07, 2009
Summit Wicked This Way Comes
Intrepid Reporter Rabbitch here, on-site at the Sock Summit in Portland, Oregon.
I'm here to tell you that the crowds are amazing, the yarns are exquisite, and the
We've completed the first full day of the marketplace and I've got to say that my estimate of "not enough yarn" in my booth has been escalated to full panic mode and is now hovering somewhere in the realm of "almost no fucking yarn at all, what was I thinking, was crack free that week?"
That being said, it's good to be back in the game again. Meeting old friends, making new ones, working on my wicked skeining muscles (no rilly, I'm getting frightening, anyone want to arm-wrestle for a beer?) and spending time Amongst My People is something I missed far more than I knew during The Year And A Half Of Madness and Advanced Twattery.
Last night's opening ceremonies were wonderful. I was amazed that I was in the same room as Cat Bordhi, Nancy Bush, Sivia Harding and Barbara Freaking Walker (no, srsly, can you imagine?) and managed to avoid peeing on my own feet like some overexcited chihuahua at a cocktail party.
Stephanie's speech was eloquent and moving, however I feel it is my duty as a reporter to touch on a point that she (perhaps even deliberately) declined to mention.
The speech held many glowing tributes to community, respect, creativity, camaraderie and so on, however, I think it was perhaps facile of her to omit mention of the real point of all of this.
The same focal point of any conference worth its salt.
That being, of course, hookers and blow.
I feel that, although painful, it is my obligation to expose the seamier side of a large gathering of this sort. With miscreants such as Farm Witch, The Tsock Tsarina, Jen VanCalcar, Pam Mann and myself in attendance, how could it be anything but a teeming cauldron of moral turpitude?
The hour grows late and I need to take my brightly-painted little self off to bed (red on the left fingernails, black on the right, red on my right knee ... just don't ask) however rest assured that I shall check in again as soon as can be with proper linkage, perhaps some photographs, and an update on the skulduggery going on behind the scenes (and perhaps under the table in my booth) around here.
For now ... keep your powder dry* and your chins** up. If you know what I mean -- and I think you do.
*dye powder, you freaks. It's no good if it gets wet.
**this is in no way meant to imply that any of my readers has more than one chin.
Tuesday, August 04, 2009
Oh Looosy! You've Got Some Skeining To Do!
Well, here we are on Sock Summit Eve.
Isn't it cool? Isn't it nifty? Are you excited?
Are you having a nervous breakdown? I certainly am. In fact I'm having two; they're small.
Am I the only "artiste" who has realized that there is no possible way she has enough yarn and although she is sure to return home with every single skein unsold, and also although she is leaving town (and in fact country) in eight hours, she Must Dye More Yarn?
I thought so. It is all about me, after all.
So yeah, I've got about half as much yarn as I'd hoped to do, and maybe 25% of the soap I'd hoped to felt. I'm losing it completely. I have shipped three large boxes of yarn to Big Alice. All three of those boxes have arrived in Portland, to be delivered tomorrow and the fourth box I shipped, which is full of felted soap and handmade lavender sachets, was deposited on her porch early this evening.
(Don't you just love this interwebs thing? I've never met the woman and have happily shipped x-number-of-dollars worth of product to her without a second thought. She told me earlier tonight she was secretly selling it all on eBay before I get there.)
In fact if you know where she lives you can likely run over and steal all of my yarn tomorrow morning and then I can just buy some beer and turn around and drive back home and stop pretending I'm a yarnista. That would work quite well for me, Thanks In Advance.
My father, who has by his actions greatly ameliorated much of the animosity I feel towards him on a regular basis, is picking me up at oh-dark-45 (did you know there was a 6:45 in the morning? Who invented that, FFS?) and is driving me out to Abbotsford where I will meet my partner in crime, Barb, from Wild Geese Fibres and we will head to the border, where we shall either sail right through (as I did the other day with my lovely brand-new passport) or sit there for fourteen hours explaining to them that we're knitting afghans, not Afghans (this is not to imply that there is anything wrong with Afghans, I just can't knit one), and that we are more to be pitied than feared and that we really are going to a knitting conference and we should be let through before we start crying.
I'm taking my trusty new (to me, although really quite old) laptop and will attempt to blog throughout the madness. That is, if I can get it to talk to either of my cameras or my thumb drive (which I seem to have lost anyhow so it's a moot point really).
So if you're going to the Summit, come visit us. If we make it through the border we'll be there bright-eyed and bushy-tailed in Booth 729, either with far too much yarn or none at all.
There will also be some of my yarn over at the Yarny Goodness booth (#417). Stop by and say "hey" to my girl Pam. You'll be able to recognize her quite easily; she'll be the vendor pretty much covered with my drool the entire show, seeing she's one of The Best People Evar and also she's willing to let me smooch on her on a regular basis.
I'm also apparently making an appearance in the Color Me Crazy booth on Saturday morning at 11:30. I have no idea what I'm doing there; you can't exactly demo dyeing and I don't think I have anything interesting to say, but I'll be sure to stutter and turn red and maybe fall over my own feet (I'm socially inept). Come watch, it'll be fun, and it'll be cool to tell the grandkids about the time you saw a woman spontaneously combust.
No srsly, how often do you get to see that?
And now I'm going to check my emails, see what the heck I promised to the good folks organizing the Summit in the way of door prizes and auction things (I'm praying madly that I've already dyed it), pack the rest of this yarn, admit to myself that the time has come for me to stop this and then maybe felt ten more soaps, drink two beers and fall on my head for three or four hours of sleep.
See you there!
