Whew am I ever back-blogged... I've been up to my ears in pre-show stuff, which is all moving along in a sort of densely detailed way. I'm trying to clear the decks of admin stuff so I can focus on the sound installation, since I've never done one before & I have no idea what I'm doing! Well, that's not entirely true, but I do feel like I'm going way out on a limb with this sound thing. We shall see what I manage to come up with. Confidence-inspiring, ain't I?

So, considering how devoted I've been to Agnes Martin, it's interesting that I feel so little sadness at her passing. I think there are big clues in this reaction, about the fullness & spiritual quality of her life & work. How can I be sad when she clearly gave everything, both to herself & to the world? Just looking at one of her paintings saturates me with the most wonderful sense of the sublime. There is so much abundance in each work. Even though I can't claim to know (since I never even met her), I suspect that she died with no regrets, no sense of unfulfilled potential, none of the stuff that makes death a sad thing. A role model till the very end.

Well. Way on the other side of things, you could almost say in the anti-sublime, I'm still wigged out about the tsunami aftermath. I have a bad, bad feeling about how high the death toll is going to go. I heard on the news that the earth is now actually spinning faster & wobblier because of that quake! A day is now 3 milliseconds shorter! That is so totally bizarre to me.

Now I gotta go do stuff. I haven't had any time to knit! Dang.

More earthquake/tsunami stuff: I just made a donation to Doctors Without Borders & encourage everyone to follow suit. If you want to pick out another organization more suited to your particular sensibility, check out the list. The magnitude of need over there right now is mind-boggling, as is this animation of the wave.

So sad about the earthquake in the Indian Ocean. It's the biggest earthquake that's happened in my whole life! How scary... I can't believe how many people are dead from the tsunamis. However, even with a tragedy of this scale, I am able to temper my shock with a small infusion of geeky pleasure: Meigan told me she gets USGS email notification of quakes over a certain magnitude. Hey, I wanna sign up too!

Sorry, but the most exciting developments lately are still in the knitting realm. I successfully made a pair of cabled wristwarmers, which is my first-ever self-designed knitting project (scarves don't count)! I'm quite proud of myself. As for the upcoming extravaganza o' Chinese restaurant photos, the postcard is at the printers. (Yes, I do recommend them. This is my fifth postcard order with them. Nuff said.)

It's not like me to link to a schmancy clothing catalog, but there's a good (knitting) reason for it: egg hats! I had torn off this cover & saved it several weeks ago & just now decided to see if I could knit an egg hat for the entertainment of our household. Talk about your easy, fun & fast knitting projects! You can put on some eggs to hard boil & knit the hat while they're cooking.

[Warning: knitting instructions ahead. If you're in this for the Chinese restaurants, go look at some other part of the blog or the rest of my website.]

Indigo's egg hat
Using worsted weight yarn & #8 dp needles, work 3-stitch I-cord for around 1/2" or 3/4". Then put 1 stitch each on 3 dp needles. The whole hat is stockinette, so from here you just increase 1 st per needle for a round, then knit for a round or 2, then increase another st per needle, &c. &c. until you end up w/ 7 sts per needle (21 total). Then *k1, p1, k1* for a round. Then bind off in pattern, et voila! Your egg hat. Dress your egg & hide it in the fridge for some unwitting family member to discover. Silly, silly, silly!

The first few creased blossoms of my paperwhites have emerged. The bulbs were very eager this year, maybe because I bought them kind of late. While the green shoots were still only a few inches tall, pointy pods of blooms could be seen enthusiastically pushing up between the leaves. Now that the flowers are just barely open, they're just as eagerly exuding their amazing fragrance. Makes December worth it. Let the aromatherapy begin!

If not for my network of diligent spies, I wouldn've known that Evening Magazine appears to be running my segment again tonight. & if not for that, I wouldn've known that they use those segments over & over again! Isn't that cheating? I mean, print magazines don't run the same story over again, do they? Mind you, I'm not complaining or anything. If it gets more people to send me menus, that's fine with me. What's that you say? "Wouldn've" isn't a legitimate contraction? Tough.

I do believe a good time was had by all at Pamela Z's CD release party. What I always love about seeing Ms. Z perform (other than her amazing music, of course) is how much fun she obviously has doing it. Her illustrious pals who performed last night were clearly having a lot of fun too. Even though I was so totally tired that I had a moment of serious doubt before getting on the bridge to go, I was just as happy as a clam once there, even sitting on the floor. The proceedings gave me a much-needed shot of inspiration to work on the sound portion of my upcoming show. Not that I dare to compare myself with any of these folks; I am a mere sound baby (& no musician at all), but babies learn to talk by being talked to, so why not listen to the best? (& peek at all their geek-heaven equipment, too?) Anyway, go buy that thang!

Un-blogworthy activities continue behind the scenes here in Indigolandia. But I can report that the show is shaping up & so is the catalog. I think it's safe to announce (Mercury retrograde & all) that Imogene Lim will be writing the essay for the catalog. I'm so happy that my first choice writer said yes! The opening will be the first Thursday of February, that's the 3rd, at 5:30pm, & the show will be up till the end of March.

I have been (temporarily) liberated from film-scanning hell & am now plotting & scheming about a giant cable that I want to knit. I know, it doesn't look giant on that page, but when you're using Rowan Big Wool it gets pretty... big. At least that's what I'm hoping. Don't ask me how I got to be such a size queen with the cables.

It happened last year, & it's happening again: in the wintertime the Chinese restaurant project blog magically transforms into a knitting blog. I can't help it! It's not like I'm not doing tons of work on the Chinese restaurants, because I am, it's just that there's not a whole lot to say about it. Unless you want to read more complaints about dust on the negatives. (I must say my new Wacom tablet is saving my ass, I mean, my wrist. Why did I wait this long? Thanks again, Creative Work Fund!) In the meantime, I finished one of a pair of Nearly Gloves last night & am trying to restrain myself from making the other one until after I finish de-speckling the rest of my restaurant images. These babies (the fingerless gloves, not the images) knit up really fast & fun! Last night while binding off the edge I was worrying out loud about how much stuff I have to do, whereupon Donna diagnosed: "You're in Deep Procrastination!" Hey, a girl needs something to do while waiting for Photoshop to read those enormous TIFFs.