"Liquor & Reptiles"

This week we got a mix, a photo essay, and some updates on the current fiber death work piece. Let’s jump in, because I talk too much.

Mix — 90s forever and ever

It’s been too long since I made a mix. I think its dumb that I have been putting the mix behind the paywall, so its upfront today. This week, while riding juniper to her sports camp, I had this absolute desire to listen to 90s music. Not out of the most recent generations need to find something real. No, it was a yearning for sounds that defined me. Somehow, Shirley Ann Manson’s, lead singer of garbage, singing, “pour your misery down on me,” is still tremendously relevant for the times we live in. Turns out, as much as technology, economics, and politics change, our culture still needs that same emotionality-soaked art that our hyper-capitalist simulation is trying to make a commodity out of. This 36-song mix somehow weaves a yarn through Hootie and the Blowfish, Smashing Pumpkins, Tool, Death, Nas, Portishead, and Sigur Ros. Some of the tracks are hits from the era. Others are hit adjacent. In almost all cases, they were songs that defined my radio, cassette, and cd listening during my adolescence. Enjoy the raw emotion that the 90s captured. Yes, I’m old.

As always, I think I get the most out of these mixes. I listen to them all the time as if I have them on a cassette mixtape. I hope you enjoy it too.

“Liquor & Reptiles” — a Photo Essay

This is a photo essay on my first attempt to ride from house out to Golden, CO, which is about 20-25 miles depending on your route. The specific route I rode took me past Crown Point Cemetery, where I saw someone doing a ritual for their loved one; down the clear creek right past the coors brewing facility, and right into golden and clear creek canyon. It was 48 miles of naked, mundane adventure.

Workshop Notes — Carding and Spinning Magic

I did it. I finally skeined off the chocolate brown shetland onto the niddy noddy and started working through the blended yarn. Here are some photos of various stages of that process to create the yarn that will serve as the transition from the chocolate brown to white. The first photo shows the difference in the raw chocolate and white fiber with the blended rolag in the middle

This second picture then shows how those three fibers look spun up.

You can see quite a difference between the three. Now, I would like to do one more gradient of less brown and more white so the ombre effect we are going for is even more subtle. This would include putting more white on the carders than brown. In short, I would just put three lengths of white on the handcarders instead of two (as was done with this recent batch of roving.

I have been thinking a lot about the why I want to do this blending. Now, bare with me, I know I promised to not talk much this week, but I want to make this one point. When doing fiber death work, it’s important to let the form of the design to follow its function. If we hope our memorial cloth to bring about feelings of ease in grief, we should avoid jagged, abrupt changes. Everything about grief is fluid and it’s passage is not marked by some abrupt end point. No, grief flows, shifts, blends its way into the rest of your life. Consequently, I felt it important to do that with this piece as well.

That’s all, dear readers. Thanks for your support. I hope you and yours are safe and sound.

Best,

James