Author: christinestaffa

My life's journey has taken me from the streets of New York, up the Hudson Valley, to a little goat farm under Vermont's highest mountain.

Occurs to Me

My m-i-l has all her marbles.

She has excellent physical health, with the exception of a broken bone.

Which has received top-tier medical attention.

And is healing.

Broken bones being one of the things that medical science has a proven track record of being able to understand and fix.

She even has a good amount of money saved.

She has not one but two phones at her disposal, and a new tablet.

And a list of useful phone numbers given to her by a social worker.

Really, is there anything I “have” to do here? Or even should? Besides provide loving support?

Yarny Yarn

I got enough of this to allegedly make a sweater. It’s 42% “Superkid” Mohair, 40% Nylon, 18% Merino Wool “Extrafine”.

“Superkid” may or may not mean what we in the biz call “first clip.”

Or it may mean a kid like my baby Ramona, who is so super!

Book Corner 2021.60

From Fiber to Fabric

by Harriet Hargrave

I’m not a quilter, in any sense; but I’m wildly interested in textile production.

Who knew? “Prior to the invention of air conditioning & humidity control, only the New Bedford & Providence, Rhode Island, locations had the proper humidity conditions for cotton yarn spinning.” I did have a sense of this, having this year read a whole book about air conditioning; but I didn’t know matters were this precise.

Who knew? “Greige goods (pronounced ‘gray goods’) are unfinished fabrics in their raw state.” Muslin is, often, essentially, greige good. I love the term; I love the thought of those simple raw fabrics – and I love the pictures, lots of pictures in the book of factories and machines and fabric being processed.

Processed, processed, processed! They do SO much to cotton fabric, it’s a wonder how humanity comes up with these things. Singeing! Sizing! Desizing! Bleaching! Mercerizing! Not to mention the dyeing. Oh, the dyeing!

This is mainly a book geared towards choosing better materials for quilting, and was vaguely interesting on its own terms; but obviously I was in it for the big picture, as I usually am.

Side note on the big picture. I received Oliver Burkeman e-newsletter today, and the theme is redefining interruption. Zen teaching: nothing obstructs the activity of anything else.

The Problems, You Will Always Have with You

Have I gone on already about how we should count our problems rather than our blessings? From this year’s Best Book Ever, 4000 Weeks, comes the idea of how we often get upset not only at our problems themselves, but somehow, at the mere fact that we have problems at all. We shouldn’t be having problems! Life should be problem-free! If you have a problem, what’s your problem?

The problems, though, you will always have with you.

Suppose, then, every day you listed your top 3 problems. Day after day, you’d see, there’d be no trouble coming up with 3 problems. You’ll always have 3 problems to list. It’s just a matter of what they are.

This way maybe you’ll stop getting upset about having problems.

Book Corner 2021.59

The Every

by Dave Eggers

A sequel to The Circle, which I also loved. The Every is a fictional mash-up of Google and Amazon. Characters Delaney & Wes attempt to overthrow the powerful Every from within, by proposing ever more outlandish and horrifying apps, in the hopes that one, finally, will cross the line and be so repulsive as to turn public opinion against the Every once and for all. They start with AuthentiFriend, which will gauge how authentic your friendships are by gauging your friends’ behavior during your conversations. Then there’s Satisfied?, the app that will tell you whether you enjoyed what you just ate. Building on that, Happy Now? will tell you in real time whether you’re happy. Did I? will tell you whether you had an orgasm.

The problem is, no matter ridiculous the app, people love it.

Kerpow!, an app to encourage spontaneity. Thinking of You, which will send a brief message to each of your contacts twice a day, stating, you guessed it, “Thinking of you.” Show Your Love publicizes all messages of love, greeting, etc. so as to count and compare your count to others. Were They? will tell you whether your parents were any good. Departy notifies you of the death of anyone in your network. PassionProject will tell you your passion. “People found it enormously helpful.”

Takes a Village allows you to track, film, and shame children for their misdeeds. FictFix takes old novels and “fixes” them, making protagonists more likeable, updating terminology, etc. ShouldEye asks the general public for an opinion on any decision you have to make.

Super funny-scary stuff.