Not Wasting Time, Oh No

A “Difficult Sheep” illustrated by Sarah Rosedahl

No, no, I’m not wasting time coloring in a coloring book, I’m LEARNING about COLOR THEORY. Here I am appyling principles of dark/medium/light value, with little to no attention to hue. On the left we end up with a very interesting combo which I like and never would have thought to put together on purpose! On the right we examine using all one hue in different values.

Ta Da!

The “winter project” is really hardly late at all, given how it looks outside.

To recap.

The warp was yarn purchased at the Sheep & Wool Fair in the fall, and dyed by me in blue & green using Greener Shades.

The weft is handspun, obviously spun by me, 100% home-processed mohair, and also dyed by me. Part of it is the same blue & green as the warp, and part is a rusty color inspired by the “red dog” baby bison we saw in Yellowstone last year. The green was inspired by the sagebrush and the blue was inspired by the sky.

It was woven on my little toy rigid heddle loom in my favorite pattern – I’ve used this pattern a lot. I like it because, viewed at the right angle, what you see is slightly 3-D diamonds formed by the warp threads. Not the angle captured here.

When I saw how very subtle the blue and green were together, at first I was unhappy. “Why did I even waste my time making these stripes nobody is going to notice?” But turns out they are just noticeable enough.

Book Corner 2024.15

Tomorrow, & Tomorrow, & Tomorrow

by Gabrielle Zevin

I’ll try to alternate my positive and negative comments, because I don’t want to give the impression that either should necessarily be given more weight, because as of yet I’m not sure myself how I would weigh them…

But first and foremost: it’s a novel about a STEM field. Always a YAY. Not only that, but it’s in large part about a WOMAN in STEM. A woman programmer, no less. Hallelujah!

Next: it was too long. It didn’t help that I read it on Kindle where you don’t get a physical sense of how much more you have to read. I kept feeling, “SURELY it ends here, right?” And it never did. There were so many spots where she could have ended it well.

Great characters. Semi-SPOILER in this paragraph. Marx was such an absolute doll. Too much so? Perhaps he should have been given a rough edge or two. But some people really are dolls. The way his life ended was very moving.

OTOH, Sadie. Sadie was such an absolute (expletive) to Sam! After they moved to California and she decided for some reason he wasn’t really her friend? Where did this even come from? It was awful, her always giving him this crap, “Oh you just want to take credit,” “Oh you just don’t think I can do it do you,” when he so obviously, OBVIOUSLY wasn’t like that. And finally her, “Just leave me alone” ultimatum – even when he started playing a public game with her? When she finds out it’s him, “OH I told you to leave me alone!” I mean Jeez, he’s just playing a game with you. She was just a plain and total (expletive).

Sam was the main character and he felt just a little incoherent at times. Awkward, yet a master showman at conferences? But then, some people really are incoherent. I’ll take this kind of strange complexity over one-dimensional characters any day.

I didn’t really like the pregnancy and baby plot development, because I never do; but at least they didn’t make the kid a main character with a bratty personality that I was supposed to find adorable. But peeve: When these obviously brilliant STEM-focused women in novels, women who obviously have the kinds of brains that are attuned to details and planning, discover, Wow! They’re suddenly pregnant! How did THAT happen? Oh well! It was the same in the abominable LESSONS IN CHEMISTRY. You just accept this plot development, that the woman let herself get pregnant, and what’s annoying is the story DOESN’T EVEN GO INTO which method of birth control she was using failed and how this actually happened. They just treat it like, ha ha of course these things happen! I’m not saying they don’t happen, I’m a walking-around accident myself, but I am saying that intelligent grown-ups like these characters are painted to be take STEPS to make sure as much as possible that they don’t happen, and the novel should at least in passing talk about what steps failed and how they screwed up, and they don’t even mention it. We know this baby wasn’t planned because she and Marx consider abortion; so tell me how the plans went awry.

I guess my final comment is: I can’t see Magic Eye pictures either. I was a little annoyed that at the end, Sam finally saw a Magic Eye picture just by virtue of Sadie on the phone with him saying “My 4-year-old can see them so I’m going to stay on the phone with you until you do!” Yeah, it doesn’t work that way. Some of us cannot see them. I read in the end notes that the author didn’t used to be able to see them either, but now she can. I guess someone got on the phone with her and berated her into seeing them too, because vision works that way.

I want to end as I began, by reiterating that I really do love books about women in STEM. Thank you!

How Does It Feeeeeeeeeel

Stop Asking Kids (and everyone else) How They Feel

Well worth reading.

“Asking somebody ‘how are you feeling?’ is inducing negative feelings. You shouldn’t do that,” said Michael Linden, an expert in mood disorders and a professor of psychiatry at the Charité University Hospital in Berlin. Why? “Nobody feels great,” he explained. “Never, never ever. Sit in the bus and look at the people opposite from you. They don’t look happy. Happiness is not the emotion of the day.”

(Stop laughing because he’s German.)

I learned this from Laverne’s Pop on LAVERNE AND SHIRLEY a long time ago. NOBODY’S HAPPY!!!!

Whew, that’s a relief.

Seriously, the point of the article is to stop with the emotional check-ins. They never once use the word “mindfulness”, but it certain feels to me like a refutation, and a sorely needed one. Maybe not for everyone all the time. Maybe mindfulness works for you and that’s OK!

But some of us are systems thinkers, which is an excellent strategy, both for achieving goals and for sprouting happiness as an unintended byproduct.

Weight Watchers makes a perfect case study for what is meant by systems thinkers. Say you join WW with a typical goal. “My goal is to weight 120 pounds. And I will achieve it by following this diet whereby I eat 28 points a day, until I weight 120 pounds.” Then every single day you are on the diet, you fail. You haven’t reached your goal.

Say you join WW with this attitude. “My goal is to eat 28 points a day every day until I weigh 120 pounds.” Then every single day you are on the diet, YOU WIN. You ate 28 points that day? You win. You’re a success.

I maintain the latter person is more likely to reach 120 pounds. I maintain the latter person will be ‘happier’, though happiness was by no means the goal. I maintain the latter person will also be healthier even if 120 pounds never happens, because the first person will eventually quit, but the latter person will be having so much fun being a success every day.

Some of us just fit into systems thinking like a groove. I realize it’s not for everyone at all times. But you never hear about it out there in popularland. You hear about mindfulness CONSTANTLY. Screw mindfulness.

Book Corner 2024.14

The End of Race Politics

by Coleman Hughes

I wish this book had come out before my book club did HOW TO BE AN ANTI-RACIST. I knew ANTI-RACIST didn’t sit well with me, I still think that color-blindness should be the goal. The argument for anti-racism seems to be: We tried color-blindness, it doesn’t work, look at all the problems we still have! But you’re ALWAYS going to have problems. You don’t give up working towards the goal, if the goal is worthy, and what could be more worthy than living up to our nation’s promise and treating all of our fellow human beings equally!

It’s like complaining that even with umbrellas, even with raincoats, even with very good weather forecasts, people still sometimes get wet… so you argue to do away with umbrellas and raincoats.