The KnitKnit Launch

It's been a week now and I'm just coming down from my trip to New York from the launch of Sabrina Gschwandtner's book, KnitKnit: Profiles and Project's from Knitting's New Wave. More commentary is coming but enjoy the photos of contributor Jim Drain's work in the meantime.

Communist Kitsch

In Milan Kundera's Unbearable Lightness of Being the character of Sabina, an Czech artist who emmigrates to Switzerland following the Prague Spring is celebrated for defying socialisim. Yet Sabina claims that her "enemy [as an artist] isn't communism, it's kitsch." After a week in Cuba I see what she means by kitsch--in particular communist kitsch. The public murals of Jose Marti, Che, Fidel and Raul really became overbearing after a while. (Not unlike the Chinese propaganda poster art of my Beijing excursion in the 1980s)

The ST however, discovered after a 10 hour walk through Habana

that there is real art to be found and it's everywhere!

"Kitsch? I thought you said 'cat.'"

What I Did On My Summer Vacation

To be real I didn't have one. Life sucked the summer of 2007. We did get away to Cuba, where no one ever goes in August and had a blast--except that I absolutely hated resort life in Varedero. I can't believe that there are people in the world who pay thousands of dollars to sit on a beach, drink rum and do nothing. After the first day I'd had enough. Fortunately Habana was two hours away. I've now been back 2 weeks and worked the last 10 days straight. But I'm not resentful or anything.

I knew something was wrong when I got to the resort and found towel art

Luckily there was rum...

and little tiny sea creatures for the IGT to play with

but it wasn't enough and we went looking for something more fun

"This is fun!"

In the U.S. "It's Pimp My Ride" But In Cuba It's Fix My Lada

The RAWD-D Mobile

After weeks and weeks of trying to knit a new door the Uber Volvo out of hideous acrylic yarn I finally threw in the towel. I didn't have the right gauge or a metal frame plus Blog Mistress Kat pointed out that the door would not be fire proof nor conform to Ministry of Transport Regs.

The B & C in the meantime, started watching that MTV reality series "Pimp My Ride" and got inspired.

Six weeks later I came home to a "tarted up" Volvo. Sure it still big, boxy and boring but it has a whole new sound system, tower brace, tinted windows, lowering springs, GPS, brushed steel trim and an air intake system that makes it go vroom, vroom even at low speeds. Apparently new rims with mag wheels are on the way. The B & C whose first name is Roddy, even (briefly) considered ordering vanity plates that say RAWD-D (the ST's idea). I hope this isn't the start of a midlife crisis or something. Maybe I should knit a red lace garter or pair of fuzzy dice to go on the rear window mirror or something.

Shortly after this transformation we went to Cuba where we got to watch a whole new reality series called "Fix My Lada" it's playing all over the country. On city streets, country roads and highways Ladas of every shape size and colour are being fixed. Some Cubans can even be spotted cannibalizing parts from their car to put into a comrade's as they putt -putt along.

The Communist Youth League in Habana has a whole fleet of Ladas in really loud psychedelic from the 1970s some with bumper stickers that read "The fast and the furious." (My long held belief that the leftists are without irony is now shattered.)


I don't know what this is but it is NOT a fixed Lada, it's likely some American Monstrosity from the 195os

Dora Got Married, I Went to High Tea and Now Cuba Si!

After months and months of being overworked I'm finally getting my elusive two week vacation. I spent the first day of it helping my much loved friend Dora Nipp whom my children refer to as "Auntie Hardliner" marry the wonderful Lorne Foster whom the B & C refers to as a "Cool Dude" and I think of as a fab academic. After years of planning rallies and protests with Dora (where we would shout "No Justice, No Peace" for hours on end into a bull-horn while marching up University Avenue) it was so good to be able to help out with a wedding. The only disaster if you can call it that was the sound system failed and we were forced to pull out the bull-horns for the "I dos." It figures, this was after all Dora.

The reception though was something else. What do you get when you get a 4th generation Chinese-Canadian ethnologist, filmmaker and lawyer together with a Black Canadian educator, scholar and community activist with roots going back to the United Empire Loyals and the Underground Railway? A BIG, LOUD AND COLOURFUL PARTY at the Ontario Multicultural History Society.

The next day I followed that party with another by going uptown for high tea at Alterknit Cafe where I nursed my sushi and white chocolate, raspberry mousse cake hangover with even more indecent savouries and a white chocolate mango pudding. I did however, stay on my yarn diet.

Now we are off to Cuba, where I will sit on the beach and wait for hurricanes while the Surly Teen communes with the spirit of Che and the Imperious Goth Tween practices being a dictator by telling all the boys hanging around the hotel pool what to do. Cuba Si!

The Surly Teen Still Acknowledges I'm His Mum

After months of complaining to anyone who will listen about my son's generally annoying adolescent behaviour which is manifesting itself as what the Globe and Mail's Jan Wong calls "monotheistic Marxism" I have evidence that he doesn't hate me as much as he claims he does. (Well actually he doesn't he just calls me a latte leftist--a label I somewhat resemble but he distains. Mind you he calls his father a capitalist, which is a real insult. I find this all rather unfair on his part as his father is a Corporate Social Responsibility Specialist so that technically at least makes him an oxymoron.) This past week after attending his regular Leftist Youth Group meeting, which I understand is a lot less interested in discussing how to be"gauche" as much as they are into integrating a gender analysis into their work (a.k.a. meeting girls who will hang out with them--I think the members are all young straight men) he looked up a "protest blog", found this pic and forwarded it to me with a note that had both Xs and Os on it which I hope means that despite all his recalcitrance he really does still love me! Now if only he would accept Revolutionary Knitting Circle founder Grant Neufeld as a comarade in arms, I'll be happy.

When the going gets tough....

The tough get rough right? Well maybe not, sometimes we turn into wimps. When I had breast cancer I thought it was the end of the world then my friends and family rallied around me and I managed to pull myself out my snivelling self-pity.

Now that I am almost a survivor (I'm in my 4th year) I find myself often at loose ends and feeling quite conflicted about life the universe and everything. I'M ALIVE and it feels GOOD but at the same time I am ground down by minutiae of life. If one more person at work yells at me about something...if the IGT and the ST hate yet another lunch I got up at 6:00am to pack them...if the B & C has one more unscheduled business trip and can't find any clean shirts... Surely there is more to life than all these monotonous tasks? Shouldn't life have a higher purpose, like enlightenment, fulfillment, and liberation?

Well according to "three wise peeps" it does. My new friend Two Iguana glass--a stained glass artist in Colorado, who makes beautiful ojects d'art, told me that we are all enlightenment if we just take the time to stop, look and listen to what is around you and to pay attention to important details like the "wee wee beasties"--dragonflies, butterflies and ladybugs--who share our earth. The Wooley Mammoth, meanwhile, shows over and over again that fulfillment does not always come from a trip to the LYS or Lululemon but from just being there for your family and friends while the Neurotic Id ("You think you're suffering? Now I'm suffering!) reminds me at 9:00pm every Wednesday night (when I work late) that liberation can come from a weekly late night (veggie) sushi run as well as a lifetime of following the Buddha's 8-fold path.