Or, you know, spin, spin, spin. A few weeks ago, Star and I made a road trip to the Palm Beaches, where I purchased a used spinning wheel. In case you wonder, yes, spinning wheels are still produced. This isn’t an antique, merely a gently used Ashford Traditional. I brought it home, and have been teaching myself to spin. Why? Why not. Actually, I wanted to spin the tzitzit for the Rose Garden tallis. Didn’t happen.

But here we have, in the golden light of my studio, my first handspun yarn.

It’s lumpy and uneven, but I love it. The roving (the stuff you feed into the wheel) came from The Yarn Wench (over there on the right in my links). That’s it on the far left in the picture, that fluffy stuff. On the far right, we have the single, or the first stuff I spun. In the middle, that’s called 2 ply, and it’s what happens when you take two singles and twist them together. It’s real yarn. Maybe even enough to knit the edge on a hat.

I haz a new addiction. Perfect for South Florida. I love my spinning wheel. I love the whir and the meditative state I can reach. Well, the theoretical meditative state I can reach. At the moment it’s more like the level of frustration I can reach. But I see it in the not too far distance.

GAH!!! I put cute little cedar balls in my sweater box. So today, I’m wearing something that smells to me like cedar cat litter. I mean, it only smells like cedar. But for some reason, that smell reminds me not of my mummy’s cedar chest, but of that organic cat litter that my cats would never use. Why this is now hard-wired into my brain, only my brain knows.

In other news, one of the folks in my neighborhood who had sported a yard sign for McCain/Palin is now sporting a hand-made sign. Black background, red letters that read: God Bless America. I thought you were supposed to keep the pointy hats and sheets in the back closet, and not on the front lawn? Maybe it isn’t racist. Maybe it’s just a sore loser who thinks that we’ve gone to the dark side? Oh. Dark. Racist. Uh, maybe it’s just a sore loser who thinks that the country has gone to the infidels? Which would be bigotry based on religion? Whatever. Bigotry is bigotry, whatever triggers the hatred and fear. Color. Religion. Politics. Country of origin.

My niece was bat mitzvah’d two weeks ago, and when she and her mom started planning this, they asked me to make her tallit. I was sooooo thrilled to do it. The Niece studies dance. She’s a member of her school’s troupe. She wanted pink. Not necessarily ballet pink, but pink. The Niece is a red head (Gorgeous red. Coppery red. With a pony tail as thick as my wrist.) She’s also tiny, and with skin like porcelain. So this was an easy call: she needed a tallit that was like English roses in the rain. I had some shrimpy-pink dupioni with an all-over embroidery of vines and flowers in old silver. And I had a length of moss-colored velvet that I wanted to use for her bag. She loved both swatches. Easy. All I had to do was put it together.

So I added some dark olive dupioni to the pile, and an embroidered sheer ribbon in soft mossy slash seafoam green that had beads, and another sequined ribbon. I had the smallest scrap of a green and orange Chinese brocade, so I tossed that on the pile of fabric, too. Some different threads in greens and pinks. Digging further into my fabric stash, I found a very Ralph Lauren sort of green/pink/apricot dupioni plaid. All I had to do was put it all together. Easy.

Off to the fabric store to see if I could find a pattern for the tallit bag, because the dozen or so patterns I have and have used just weren’t right. Found a pattern that allowed for patchwork and various fabric combinations. It even had a pocket and a zipper. So I bought a few zippers, in pinks and greens and some more embroidery threads. Easy. I had a couple of months. No worries. Just had to put it all together.

Did I mention that I’d only used velvet once before? That was for RJ’s tallit bag and it was a heavy, rust colored cotton velvet. Yummy. This green was nylon? Rayon? Something shiny and soft. No problems. I started with the tallit, and put together the stripe. I had to keep pulling back, and editing myself, because my first instinct is always that more is better and if a little bit of glitz is good, great heaping piles of it is better. One by one, the extra ribbons and embroideries got taken away. I finally ended with just the dark olive with the plaid layered over it, then the sheer ribbon over the plaid.

I laid the stripe to one side and started on the bag. And fought with it, tooth and nail for the next six weeks.

I machine basted. I pinned everything with great, long quilting pins, every inch. The fabric shifted when I sewed. I ripped it all out and tried hand basting, and the quilting pins. The fabric shifted when I sewed. I ripped it all out and tried a walking foot. But first, I had adventures in my sewing room wherein it took me hours to tear my studio apart and find the foot and others where the tension on my machine needed hours of tweaking to get the stitches to hold firm.I found the foot and… the fabric shifted when I sewed. I ripped it all out and tried hand sewing. The fabric shifted when I sewed. I ripped it all out and tried any number of combinations of all of the above. The fabric shifted when I sewed. I ripped it all out and then all of my hair out. I drank. I smoked cigarettes. I thought about it some more. I tried a steam-set bonding tape. It flattened the velvet and didn’t hold the fabric together when I tried to sew it.  But then I discovered that the zipper and the gusset just wouldn’t set in correctly. I bought shorter zippers and re-drafted the pattern. Repeat most of the steps above regarding hair pulling, drinking and smoking. I had to go to a funeral, and lost work days. I cried on a stranger on the train whom I know to be a sewer. She suggested tissue paper between the layers. It worked.

I tied the knots on the tzittzit at midnight on the Thursday before the Saturday service. It was perfect. My niece was perfect. Happy endings all around.

Those wonderful folks at MoveOn.org are handing out free Shepard Fairey stickers to commemorate the great events of Tuesday. I ordered mine. Go ahead and order yours. The numbers are flying by faster than the digits on a gas pump filling up a Hummer.

Sometimes, you just need puppies.

And doesn’t the air smell fresh? Isn’t the sky blue and clear? Isn’t it a glorious day in our America? You know the one: the non-fear-mongering, non-hate-mongering, color-blind and intelligent America? The only thing that has taken some of the shine out of my eyes this morning is that my state (which voted blue for the first time since Johnson) also chose to legislate hatred and bigotry under the guise of “marriage protection”. Self-righteous zealots.

Last night as we were toasting the end of our national nightmare known as the Bush presidency, MJ said: “they left us a burning, sinking hulk of a ship of state, but damn it, it’s OUR ship now.” And we drank to that. The scene outside of the White House was a shock to me. Was that a spontaneous demonstration? Was it only my imagination that had the crowd illuminated by burning torches, and were there really buckets of hot tar, barrels of feathers and a large rail? Star (who is in HR) asked if it would be possible for Bush to take an early retirement? Could he join the DROP? (deferred retirement option program).

We all sat and watched as John McCain gave a gracious and seemingly genuine concession speech. And then we all agreed that the man who delivered that was not the same man who had run the dirtiest, slimiest campaign in modern civilization. The John McCain who conceded was the John McCain who ran in 2000 and was destroyed by that same slime-slinging. That man was one that all of us die-hard Yellow Dog Democrats agreed, we could have lived with and respected had he won against the Shrub. But he didn’t and then he sold his soul to the evil overlords in an attempt to get to the White House.

We all watched and speculated as to why Palin was only shown from behind. And then we saw her from the front: squinchy little puss face. I wonder what she was thinking, since she had gone on record with her belief that the election was in the hands of God, whose will would be revealed and that she knew that it was the will of God that she and Johnny Maverick would steer us all to the Rapture. Was she wrestling with her God? Was she considering that maybe a shotgun wedding would not be in Bristol’s future, after all? Was she just peeved that Johnny wasn’t letting her speak, which she clearly was expecting? And what was that murderous look on the face of the First Dude? Was he thinking about what a waste of time it was to be wearing that fancy suit, when he could just be in a flannel shirt and jeans back in the family chopper shooting wolves? Or was he considering the possibilities of a hunting trip with Dick Cheney?

Finally it was our generation’s moment of Camelot, and Barack Obama came out to thank his supporters, and his machine and his people. Who are his people? All of us Americans, whether the bitter and failed right wants to be or not. All that gloating back in 2000 that we whiney liberals should just suck it up, that’s coming back to bite their collective asses, non? Our president-elect called on us all to do the right thing, to accept that this will be a hard fight to bring America back to glory. He told us that we will all be required to sacrifice. And all of us in my living room nodded and said yes, yes we will.

It was a moment or ten of brilliant and impassioned oratory, delivered by a man who can think and reason. My campaign button (Return complete sentences to the White House) seemed even more fitting. What a wonderful speech. What a wonderful contrast to the inarticulate chimp and his demonic overlord that we’ve suffered under for the past eight years.

I repeat: Is this not a beautiful day? How soon can we start with the war crimes trials?