Here is the object of my affection - the most adorable Mr. Thunder from the fiber farm tour last week. Can't you see why I fell in love? Apparently he started out black (see the yarn I bought) but turned a different color after he was sheared. He was the only sheep on the farm not wearing a coat because he keeps outgrowing them.




More fiber farm photos next week. Here's another pair of socks knit in the dark. These are for DH - yarn is Cervinia Calzetteria from Smileys.

My show

Thank You, Lunettes Rouges, for remembering thatI had a show. Yes, I'm quite happy with the show, and yes, I'm too drained to give you any sort of reasonable feedback. Today is the second and last showing, so I'm still pretty busy, but I'll try to write about it tomorrow, describe it, give you some background and maybe some spectators' comments (the right ones of course :)). I might also go into the podcast adventure and post the soundtrack, though I have no idea how to do it (any help in that domain is welcome).

AAACCCKKK!!

Two nights ago I am about to get into bed and I notice a large spider on my pillow. I transfer him/her to another room but can't sleep in the heat so I take out the trash. In doing so I nearly step on a scurrying mouse. I finally get to sleep.

I wake up and go outside to water my herb garden. I inadvertently sprinkle a lizard who zooms out toward me at great speed. I jump and end up getting myself all wet. I try to figure out what creature is nesting in our rock wall behind the patio. All I ever see are chewed up cactus pieces and twigs blocking the entrance. A nearby canyon towhee gets mad at me and starts shrieking. Do towhees eat cactus? I think the nest might be rock squirrels. A friend of mine told me they carry the plague around here. Oh yippee.

I return inside and remove the dust ruffle from the bed. I figure this will keep spiders from crawling up onto my pillow. I vacuum vigorously just in case all this dust is attracting insects. Peaches is quite irritated by all the vacuuming and glares at me. I find a couple of large moths and transfer them outside. I do my yoga early because if I wait until later in the evening I'm absolutely positive something will crawl on me while I'm doing relaxation pose.

DH comes home and we have the usual "discussion" about whether or not to open the windows. I say no because then the house will be full of more bugs than usual. He says yes and finally prevails. I tell him he'd be happy living outside. We can move his chair and lamp outside and he can live happily among all the bugs and lizards and skinks and have fresh air 24 hours a day.

DH and I go outside to watch the sunset. A carpenter ant starts crawling up my leg. I notice something is digging tiny holes in the ground. The strawberries I noticed on the plants earlier in the day have disappeared. I return inside and turn on a baseball game. I start knitting socks in the dark. I go over to the computer and notice something coiled up on the floor next to the desk chair. It is dark but I can still tell what it is.


It is a dead snake.



You gotta love living in New Mexico! I don't want to know where the snake came from but I suspect he/she met his demise from one of the cats. It was just a small snake so Peaches didn't seem too perturbed.We had more garter snakes come in our last house in NM - a brand new custom built home so you'd assume the doors and windows were pretty tight. Our elderly neighbor there found a 6 foot long bull snake on her bedroom dresser. I'd probably just move out at that point.

Become a pregnant electronic musician

Lamaze is the breathing technique for pregnant women we have all seen in films and series (and some of us surely experienced). Lamaze is now also a musical instrument, that one puts on like... well, like a stomach of a pregnant woman, and pushes buttons like on an accordeon. The sounds are those of a breathing person.

The instrument as such is one thing, but I'll tell you another: I will never look at bagpipes quite the same way.

(via)

Performance art in China

Why does this article irritate me? Maybe because the article seems sponsored by all the businesses (and buisiness-like governments) moving into China recently. Try this for instance:

In the 25 years since China abandoned rote communism and embraced the idea of encouraging private enterprise...

Maybe because, in need of having "serious artists", it refers to a Wu Yu Ren as an "internationally recognized artist". I have never heard of him, so I Google-checked it. Now, this seems pretty cruel, but if Google doesn't know you, the world pretty much doesn't either. I'm sure Wu Yu Ren is an excellent artist, and now that the article is published he is internationally known, at the least. But that would be the sin of what is called a "self-realizing prophecy" on the part of the journalist.
Or maybe, because of the way performance art is portrayed in the article:

performance artists--members of the ultra avant-garde who specialize in shocking their audiences

My point is that if this is an article for people who know nothing about performance art - I sincerely doubt it can do any good. Not only is the above statement false, it corresponds to a stereotype that is cerainly no more accurate in China any more than it is anywhere else in the world.
Then again, I did put the link. That's because it is rare to find anything about what the art world actually lives like around the world. If you want to get another, deeper picture of performance art in China, try this article. I found it after writing the above. Here is what I found:

Performance art is often seen as gratuitous violence, nudity, absurdity - a naked emperor who struts only to see who will first avert her eyes, obscuring the many playful, joyful and moving performances created by some of China's most outstanding artists. Here we look beyond the gore to a performance art that embraces life.

Technorati: performance art, performance, art, contemporary art, vvoi