Knitnut.net. Watch my life unravel...
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Posted by zoom! on April 26, 2007, at 5:19 pm |
 I went bra shopping at lunchtime today. At Eaton’s. Home to gazillions of bras.
Bra technology seems to have expanded significantly since I last bought a bra, and clearly I haven’t kept abreast of new developments.
It used to be there were just sizes: the number (the circumference of your ribcage below your breasts in inches, plus 5) and the letter (the size of your cups: the difference in inches between your chest circumference measurement below your breasts and your chest circumference measurement at breast level, converted to letters: 1 inch difference=A, 2 inches=B, etc.). That’s plenty complicated enough for me, and apparently for others too, since 85% of women wear the wrong bra size.
But now the manufacturers are throwing in all these other variables like half-sizes, racerbacks, t-shirt, balconnet, convertibles, strapless, gel straps, spa straps, foam, graduated foam, microfoam, microfiber, high tech fabrics that wick the moisture away, stretch memory fabric, undercup slings, cutaway wings, wide side wings, laminated cups, demi cups, seamless, underwire, wireless, microstitched wire substitutes, full support, medium support, padded, silicone-gel padded, gel-shaped, minimizing, maximizing, push up, side push, cleavage creating, cleavage enhancing and decollette.
I just wanted a comfortable, all-purpose bra. Apparently there is no such thing. Bra technology has simply not evolved that far.
But it has evolved to the point where women have to adopt a higher standard of bra maintenance. One of my colleagues bought a bra at La Senza the other day and the sales clerk told her not to fold it or keep it in a drawer – it must be hung up on a hanger in the closet in order to maintain its contours. She says it looks weird hanging in the closet, and it takes up more closet space than a shirt, say, because it’s so three-dimensional and sculpted and perky.
The revelation that 85% of us wear the wrong bra size has led to a burgeoning career field: professional bra fitters. They measure your breasts every which way and then recommend the right bra for you. According to an Australian study, 68% of the bras recommended by professional bra fitters don’t fit either.
The good news for manufacturers is that women are so used to wearing uncomfortable bras we have developed extremely low expectations of comfort. We complain about how uncomfortable our bras are, but we complain privately to one another rather than as consumers demanding a higher standard.
My friend Kathryn and I used to meet for a beer on Elgin Street sometimes after work. We’d slide into our booth while simultaneoulsy slipping our bras off through out sleeves and stuffing them in our purses.
“Ahhh,” we’d sigh blissfully, “that feels so good.”
Anyway. I bought a bra today. It’s not very comfortable and it’s probably the wrong size.
By the way, I stumbled across this bra size calculator and I got pretty mystifying results. It said I should be wearing a 34D. Anybody who knows me knows this can’t possibly be right. Can someone else give it a try and tell me if it works for them?
Posted by Zoom! on April 24, 2007, at 6:15 pm |
Here are some artist trading cards my computer and I have been churning out lately. They’re mostly digital collages, which I assemble and alter using Photoshop. Then I send them out into the world by snail mail, and I get really cool trading cards in return.
Black Bird Red Sky
The Thin Line (with apologies to Modigliani)
Butterfleye
Dragonfleye
The Rabbit Hole
Butterfly Garden Three
Butterfleye Goddess
A Craving for Colour
I’ve also been doing trying to do some inkjet image transfers for collage work. You have to use a very specific (and for all other purposes, inferior) printer photo paper. This paper doesn’t hold ink very well, so images printed on it can be coaxed into sliding off onto your destination surface with the help of some matte medium and a burnishing tool (which is a fancy name for the back of a spoon).
Believe it or not, there’s a very active Yahoo group – with more than 4,000 members – devoted solely to discussion of inkjet transfers. As printing technology improves, they’re finding it harder to get the kind of crappy paper that works for transfers. So if you’re looking for a get-rich-eventually scheme, buy up all the Jet Print Photo Imaging & Photo Matte paper you can find, and then sell it on Ebay when Jet Print stops making it.
Here’s a question for the artists about acrylic paint glazes. I bought a handful of single-pigment transparent Golden fluid acrylics. Should the lightest colours be on the bottom, and each subsequent layer be increasingly darker? My glazes seem pretty good for two or three layers and then they start looking like I should have stopped sooner.
And another question: can anybody recommend a good place to take an art course? I don’t mind teaching myself, but it’s starting to look like I’m either a lousy teacher or a lousy student. I think it might be better to have a teacher who knows something about art. I’ve considered the Ottawa School of Art, but I get the feeling they take themselves pretty seriously and expect their students to bring some talent to the table. Maybe I’m wrong. Do any of you have any experience, opinions or gut feelings about that?
Posted by Zoom! on April 23, 2007, at 6:17 pm |
Ok, it’s safe to come back to KnitNut.net: There will be no more death posts for awhile. I might not be where you come for your daily dose of sunshine, but I won’t be your source of death and despair either. At least for now.
So. Did everybody go outside on the weekend? Mock Summer was glorious, especially following on the heels of that snowstorm. I went up to the Gatineaus for a hike on Sunday. I saw some practically naked people on the ski hill. Good thing the blackflies aren’t out yet.
I saw lots of birch trees on the hiking trail. Birches are my favourite tree. When I was a kid, weeping willows were my favourite tree.
 I heard more wildlife than I saw (mostly birds, including a pileated woodpecker). But we were sitting on a rock by the marshy Lac Brown, which is about 3km from the Wakefield Mill, listening to the birds and frogs, and I saw this snake.
After that we hiked back to the Wakefield Mill and went to the Earl House for that Great Canadian Tradition: the first patio beer of the year. (A tip: if you want to make that first patio beer of the year taste even better, go hiking first and don’t take any water with you.) And then we came back to my place for that other Great Canadian Tradition: the first barbecued burger of the year, with bacon and cheese and hot peppers and onions. Yum. (It was so good I had two.)
Posted by Zoom! on April 22, 2007, at 12:16 am |
I went to a memorial service for my friend’s stillborn baby yesterday. I desperately did not want to go. I tried to think of ways to rationalize not going. I went.
Her name was Angélique, and she was my friend’s daughter. She was apparently healthy and she weighed nine pounds, but she suddenly and inexplicably died just three weeks before her due date, and two days before her birth. Her mother was in labour for 16 hours, knowing that her baby had died.
It was the saddest yet sweetest memorial service I’ve ever been to. There was a reading from The Velveteen Rabbit about how love makes you real. There was a song: The Angel, by Sarah McLaughlin. There was a video memorial tribute, with photographs of her family and her pregnant mom and her ultrasound pictures, set to Eric Clapton’s song If I See You in Heaven. There was sweet Angélique, swaddled in a basket, with two stuffed puppies, surrounded by people who had fallen in love with her before she’d even been born.
Two people spoke: her grieving father and her heartbroken mother. Through their grief-choked words, what shone through was layers upon layers of intense love and profound loss. All the things they dreamt about and imagined in their daughter’s future, all the experiences that will never happen: they loved and lost all that, and more. There’s a permanent hole in their family now.
I can’t even imagine such unfathomable depths of grief. Nobody should ever have to find the strength to go through what they’re going through.
Angélique’s mother told me that they wanted this party to be beautiful, because it was the only party they would ever get to plan for her. It was profoundly beautiful. I’m glad I went.
May the longtime sun shine upon you
May all love surround you
May the pure light within you
Guide your way home
– Namaste –
Posted by zoom! on April 21, 2007, at 10:03 am |
I guess I’ve been kind of morbid lately, what with my dog and Kurt Vonnegut dying and the Dead Dave Wall and the dead guinea pig story. It’s time for a more upbeat post. Something uplifting and inspirational. Something heartwarming and joyful.
Ho hum. While we’re waiting for me to think of something like that, here are some photos of a dead nun and a dead priest. It’s pretty obvious the nun’s dead, but they actually propped the priest up in a chair and went to a lot of trouble to make him look alive.
 This is a post-mortem CDV (short for carte de visite, or visiting card, standard dimensions 2.25″ by 3.5″), which were a popular form of paper photographs in the 1800s. There are no markings on it, so I don’t know who the photographer was, who the young nun was, when the photo was taken, or what sort of nun she was. In other words, I know nothing.
 This is a post-mortem cabinet card of a priest or a cardinal or something. I suspect he was somewhat important because the photograph has this printed on the bottom: “Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1879, by E.S. Sterry, in the office of the Libraries of Congress, Washington, D.C.” On the back of the card it says “Sterry Photographer, Adams Block Cohoes.”
So we know the approximate date of this photograph, and the photographer, Sterry, who worked in New York.
 How do we know the priest is dead? Check out the stick wedged between his chin and chest. Dead giveaway.
If anybody can shed any more light on either of these photographs, please let me know. I would very much like to know who these people were.
I wonder if the dead priest’s name was Dave…
Posted by Zoom! on April 18, 2007, at 8:55 pm |
My son’s father used to have a Dead Dave Wall. Perhaps he still does; I haven’t visited for awhile. But back in the olden days when we lived together, it was what you’d call the Focal Point in our apartment.
He didn’t set out to create a Dead Dave Wall, it just turned out that way.
It all started before I met him. His best friend, Dave, died of a drug overdose. John, being the sentimental guy he is, had his favourite photo of Dave blown up to poster size and put it in a frame. It was nice. A giant sepia-toned Dave relaxing with a book in a comfy chair, hanging over our couch. Then another friend named Dave died, so John stuck a photo of him in a frame and hung it on the wall next to the first Dead Dave. A couple of years later, another one died.
One Dave is just a Dave, two Daves are just a couple of Daves, but once you have three Dead Daves, you’ve got a collection happening. And John had very strong collector instincts.
The surviving Daves were starting to get a little uneasy about the whole thing.
“Someday,” John would say grandly when one of them would visit, “You’ll be on this wall.”
And then he would pull out the old Canon AE1 and snap a picture of them.
Dave M died slowly of liver disease: John got lots of good pictures of him in advance. Dave S died very suddenly in a drunk driving accident, so John wasn’t as well prepared. This Dave had managed to get his hand between his face and John’s camera every time he visited. He thought he would somehow be safe if John never captured him on film. However, I happened to have a photo of him and his pregnant girlfriend standing on the front porch, so John had the photo lab remove her and blow him up. Into a frame and onto the wall he went.
By this time, there weren’t many Daves left. Most of them had died, and the few who remained kind of drifted away, maybe in the interests of self-preservation. Just as well, John said, because the wall was full.
He collects stamps now.
Posted by Zoom! on April 16, 2007, at 11:03 pm |
My little sister is an actual artist with formal training and everything. To her, life is art: all the world’s a canvas, and everything in it is art supplies. She wastes nothing. She has even been known to create art with menstrual blood and dead people’s ashes.
She’s an actual witch too. She’s a wicca witch, not a wicked witch, but she can be a little spooky at times.
She’s pregnant with her fourth child now. She homebirths them with midwives, so sometimes I get to watch. Nobody got to watch the last one though, because she was only in labour for 20 minutes. Just time enough for a twinge, a phone call, three contractions and a delivery. By the time we all got there (me, my mom, her other kids, her friends, the midwives, the neighbours, her ex, the ambulance attendants, etc.), she was sitting in bed holding a newborn baby who was still attached by the umbilical cord.
Speaking of umbilical cords, she kept the placentas of her children in ice cream containers in her freezer for years. She was going to “do” something with them, but you know how it is. One year rolls into the next, you keep finding yourself pregnant, and the next thing you know you’ve got a freezer full of placentas. Anyway, she finally got rid of them when her 13-year-old had a friend over who tried to help himself to some strawberry ice cream.
“Don’t eat that,” her son said, “It’s my placenta.”
Speaking of freezers, she kept a guinea pig in her freezer along with the placenta collection. Her five-year-old got to bring home the class pet for the weekend, and – well, it’s kind of tragic really – the guinea pig had a very short weekend. She had decided it should go to her ex-husband’s house for its own safety, so she left the cage on the dining room table while she made room in the car for it. When she came back in, she saw the carnage, freaked out, retrieved what was left of the guinea pig from the huskies, put it in the freezer, and formulated a plan. The plan involved a carefully crafted lie, a nearly identical guinea pig for the kindergarten class, and some sort of spiritual ceremony for the guinea pig in the springtime.
But you know how it is, life just kind of takes over and next thing you know it’s winter again and you still have a dead guinea pig in your freezer.
There’s lots more I could tell you about my little sister, but someday she might stumble across my blog so I’d better not. It’s bad luck to piss a witch off.
Posted by Zoom! on April 16, 2007, at 8:29 am |
My weekend was sweet.
 Saturday was the PPRA’s Dessert Party: we sold about 157,500 calories and raised $852. Lots of people showed up and ate heartily and enjoyed themselves thoroughly, including the ancient Italian klepto who wolfed down 17 desserts. I’d show you a picture of her, but my ethics prevent it. Instead, here’s a picture of the cutest little dessert eaters I’ve ever seen.
My lop-sided cake (which I subsequently renamed the Dr. Seuss cake) sold out early! Now I know the dessert part isn’t about competitive baking, but I was very pleased. In 2005 I made banana bread and there was lots left over. I mean, who’s going to choose banana bread among hundreds of more exotic desserts?
 I resolved then that this year I would make something with visual appeal, something that would stand up and dance and sing out to little kids. Hence, the chocolate layer cake with Smarties embedded in it. Interestingly it sold out before any kids even got there. Maybe it was because every time someone looked at it, I immediately piped up proudly with “I made it myself!” so they felt obliged to choose it. At any rate, it was gone in the first half hour and I was inordinately pleased with myself.
As for me, I ate ginger-pear pound cake, a slice of this cool cherry thing that MP Paul Dewar made, a piece of my Dr. Seuss cake, and a Jello Jiggler.
But that wasn’t the end of my sweet weekend.
Sunday I went to the Hershey Chocoate Factory in Smiths Falls, stopping first at Tim Horton’s for a Boston Cream donut.
Here are a few things you might not know about Hersheys.
- Milton Hershey’s middle name was Snavely.
- The Hershey’s Kiss is 100 years old this year!
- Milton Snavely Hershey died in 1945 in the very same room in which he was born, even though his family sold the house when he was very young and moved frequently.
- He put money into housing, parks, education and recreation in the communities in which he built chocolate factories.
- Hersheys is the largest employer in Smiths Falls: 500 workers and their families depend on it.
- “He always placed the quality of his product and the well-being of his workers ahead of profits.”
- Hershey’s will be shutting down its Smiths Falls factory in 2008, as part of a global profits-maximizing strategy.
And so it goes.
 We took the factory tour up on the observation decks. Since it was the weekend, the factory wasn’t operating, but it was still interesting. There were signs everywhere saying photography was strictly prohibited, so this is an illegal photograph. Don’t tell.
 One of my favourite things was the vintage packaging displays. This is one of them. Do you recognize any of these candy boxes? If so, you might be old.
I failed this test.
We left the factory with a big bar of dark chocolate, chocolate covered raisins and red Twizzlers, the perfect way to cap off a very sweet weekend.
Today I’m waddling.
Posted by Zoom! on April 15, 2007, at 7:07 am |
 Poor little guys in their gigantic lace doilies.
This cabinet card photograph was most likely taken in the 1880s.
“The large collars for both boys and girls continue in favor, and are made in every style, plain and shirred rounded or square.” (Demarest’s Mirror of Fashion, June 1882, as quoted in Dressed for the Photographer, by Joan Severa, 1995).
You know, all we have to do is look back at the history of fashion to understand why we should avoid fashion trends. You don’t even have to go back that far – just find a copy of the Sears catalogue from the year you were fifteen. You’ll cringe.
 Even though their momma dressed them funny, these two little Nova Scotian guys look awfully cute. This is actually a pretty unusual cabinet card. It’s the only one I’ve seen of little boys in nighties showing a little leg. In fact, it’s the only one I’ve seen of anyone wearing pyjamas. Usually people got all gussied up for the photographer. This photograph has a contemporary feel to it, right down to their bare Victorian feet, so I’m guessing their momma was ahead of her time.
(The photograph was taken by Lewis Rice in Windsor, Nova Scotia, probably around 1900.)
Posted by Zoom! on April 14, 2007, at 7:41 am |
1) There is a right-side-up and an upside-down to your oven rack. That bar that goes across the centre of the rack should be facing down, rather than facing up where it will create a bump across the middle of your oven rack.
 2) If you ever bake a layer cake and one of the layers comes out lopsided because it was sitting on the bar of your upside-down oven rack, don’t think you can hide it underneath the perfect layer and fill in the gap with extra icing. It doesn’t work. Put the lopsided layer on top.
The PPRA Dessert Party is today. Come check out my Leaning Tower of Cake!
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I went bra shopping at lunchtime today. At Eaton’s. Home to gazillions of bras. 
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