Leland hipped me to the reproduction of the Parthenon in Nashville. (He was hipped by a certain Entelechy girl some time ago; alas, I missed it.)

So, upon my arrival in Nashville next week, my first stop will be a visit to the missus:

Apparently, our Lady of Wisdom here is the largest indoor statue in the world - 42 feet! Gilded, no less.

I’ll try not to pass out…

I had this big post on arena rock all scribbled out here on an index card (Levenger, of course). Spontaneously came to me earlier this evening, after Bee sent me some “Dust In The Wind” on YouTube. Okay, so maybe it wasn’t so spontaneous, then. Whatever.

But you know what? I’m not gonna post it. Like the arena rock era itself, the moment has passed. However, Shannon’s classic TMCM Journey / Steve Perry sequence is immortal, in my memory as well as my heart, so I’ll leave you with that.

It’s been a blurry two weeks. So blurry that I’m reaching out for arena rock. But it’s a good kind of blurry. Lots of writing, both paid and to-be-sold-later and to-be-given-to-patient-artists things. Slow going, but making progress.

Watched GARDEN STATE. Twice. Was charmed. Working my way through Christmas gifts. That’s knitted Christmas gifts, don’t you know. And speaking of which, let me introduce you to the BEST YARN STORE EVER:

Brooklyn General Store

Because I don’t have enough hobbies in my life (actually, for much more Deep and Meaningful for Art and Craft and Witchery reasons, but I won’t carry on about all that at 2:30 am), I’ve decided to give in and spin. As in, spinning. As in, make my own yarn.

Yes. I know. Don’t start with me.

You’re probably not going to believe this, but Leland has been gently pushing the big wheel thing on me for a couple of years now. Like comics, I’ve resisted due to time and, now, disposable income restraints. But, like comics, my resistance slowly wore down, then snapped. The fact that one of the coven girls is a spinning freak master didn’t help.

So off I went to get a drop spindle. Small steps, all that.

“You have to go to Williamsburg,” the Coven Spinning Freak said. “Williamsburg is the only place that carries drop spindles.”

“Oh, geez,” I said. “At least I can hit up Trader Joe’s on the way home.”

But it was not to be. I don’t know how I found Brooklyn General online, but I thought, “Hrm. Red Hook. Yarn. I love Red Hook, I love yarn.” And I waylaid myself to what has turned out to be the biggest, baddest craft joint this side of my beloved Great White North. (And there are a lot of badass craft joints up there, lemme tell ya.) I mean, short of P& S Fabrics on Lower Broadway, may she rest in peace.

Fabric. Notions. Buttons. Ribbon. Patterns. Of course, yarn. Notebooks, for crying out loud. Brittany double-pointed sock needles (which are the best needles in the world for reducing hats because they’re shorter and thereby less sticky-outy-pain-in-the-ass). And — the most precious resource of all for crafters here in the city — space, and lots of it.

Oh yeah. And they had drop spindles and roving, thus saving me a trip to Williamsburg. So I called up the Coven Spinning Freak and I squee’ed. I wish I could show Midori this place because she would absolutely keel over.

Coven Spinning Freak taught me how to use my spindle the next day. My yarn was pretty sad, but I’m told it was exceptionally non-misshapen for a first outing. I was fairly patient with it all around until we got to the Andean Plying thing, whereby I wanted to cry. (OK, so not really. But I don’t have the brain cells for these kinds of shenanigans right now!)

Speaking of all things witchy, I was delighted to discover that Judy, founder of my tradition, has a substantial Wikipedia entry. That’s good fun. If you look real close, you can spot a picture of Judy and I on my bookshelves.

The yarn store could be really bad for my productivity, what with being a short subway ride and my favorite Brooklyn nabe and right next to an excellent pizza joint and the Best Yarn Store Ever and all.

Speaking of which, I’m not getting anything done on my script at this point, so I think I might as well go watch a few more arena rock clips and hit the hay.

So, as I mentioned a few days ago, last week I got to spend a day with the lovely Midori Snyder in her new Tucson digs. It was surreal and amazing. Amazing because Midori is great fun and I love talking with her. Surreal because… because there are prickly pear cactus covering any and all free ground in Tucson and I am still not over it. And I was sitting here nursing my chicken noodle soup thinking about how I’m just not over them cacti, and how I would never, ever like to fall on one, and it occurred to me that I’ve not yet mentioned Midori’s new blog:

In the Labyrinth

Midori has this knack for finding the coolest stuff on the Internet. We spent a couple of hours ooh’ing and ahh’ing over things like this, this, and oh yeah - this. And I know I’m forgetting a bunch.

Be sure to check out the links on the sidebar, that’s all I’m sayin’. And her short pieces, and essays!

I’m fighting a cold today. Leland implored me to take a sick day, but with all I’ve got due, it’s just not happening. So he went off about bought me some good ‘ol Campbell’s condensed chicken noodle, which was not only a sweet gesture, but a delightful throwback to 1984 or so. Except the noodles weren’t long & skinny! They’re short & flippy! This just isn’t right.

Leland was sick earlier in the week. I was feeling okay yesterday afternoon, but of course I thought I’d better take some precautions. You know, “just in case”… so I had some echinacea, then some Airborne, then some Vitamin C, and a zinc lozenge, and… whaddaya know, I didn’t feel so hot.

Time for a nap.

Mary Oliver in today’s Writers Almanac (permalink — scroll down to Saturday, Oct 20):

“I think there isn’t anything in this world I don’t
admire. If there is, I don’t know what it is. I
haven’t met it yet. Nor expect to.”

Holy, holy holy, it’s Anne Briggs on YouTube.

Longtime readers will know that, like many a mainstay and folk pioneer (not that I’m comparing myself in that way, mind), Anne is one of my muses. She wasn’t on the scene for very long and footage of her is very, very rare. But sure enough, there she is — greeted on the couch by Louis Killen and then some impassioned banter with… oh geez, I can never tell those two dudes in the early Watersons apart… I think that’s Mike Waterson (someone help me out, if ya know).

I was stunned and drooling, but not for long, for there was much, much more to distract me. Apparently YouTube is just a veritable treasure trove of old skool British Isles folk clips. We have more Watersons (here’s a great performance of “Hal-An-Tow” — ELLEN KUSHER! I’m looking at you ’cause you turned me on to this album) and there’s a plethora of cool old Pentangle, including “Let No Man Steal Your Thyme”, “Wedding Dress” and — hang on to your 60’s medievalist Arthurian britches — “Hunting Song”.

Dang, that Jaqui McShee is just riveting. Reminds me of this cool girl I know, but I’m not gonna say who because she reads this.

Now, that last one may be a little hard for some of you to take. I totally understand. However, I’d just like to state for the record that Bert Jansch, in addition to being a bitchin’ guitarist gift from the Otherworld, was actually pretty hot back then. But I really don’t know what’s going on there. I do love how he calls it “a thirteenth century rock and roll song.” I don’t know if they wrote it or not, but, despite the glockenspiel, “Hunting Song” is in my personal top 10 favorite folk songs, hands down (lyrics, influences demystified and trivia here).

Lastly, I’ll leave you with a video of Richard Thompson singing “Beeswing,” a song supposedly inspired by/based on Anne. That’s how the legend goes; however, the story also goes that he only met her twice, and that both times she was “drunk and unconscious.” Whatever the case may be, it’s a beautiful song and well worth listening to. Fair warning: it is emotional; in fact, so emotional that one YouTube viewer has commented, “What a song. It makes me weep every time I hear it, and that’s a lot of weeping.”

Anyway, on the Annie tip, her Wikipedia entry is a good source for the basics — while it’s still up, anyway.

Poked my head up from a flurry of last-minute copywriting shenanigans before we skedaddle out of town and discovered the coolest title of a YA book ever:

“I Rode A Horse of Milk White Jade”

Ok, so maybe the “ever” is a matter of opinion. And I’ve been known to change my mind a time or two. But y’know! And it looks great.

In other news, I do believe I’m taking Midori’s “Hannah’s Garden” with us for a re-read while we’re gone.

I have a serious amount of shtuff to get done before said skedaddling (sorry). And yet, there I went, drinking THREE CUPS of Leland’s coffee this morning. What was I thinking?

Here, have a plush portable Underwood…

The Weekly World News is shutting down?

I, like some staffers, suspect a cover-up.

Edited to add: I’d better get Ed Anger’s book while it’s still available for .02.

Just finished a tasty, easy Sunday chicken dinner and thought I’d post a few links to my favorite indie jewelry digs, since they’ve been piling up. The Internet is a dangerous place for those of us with the baubles weakness.

First, we’ve got the Valentine’s Day jewelry section of IndieFixx.com. Yes, Valentine’s Day may be over now, but whaddayaknoo… I could shop for it all year.

Then we have Blue-Lulu.com, as seen in the latest issue of N.E.E.T. That scissors necklace keeps callin’ me and callin’ me.

Maize Hutton remains one of my favorite indie jewelry designers. I recently bought one of the vintage inital necklaces (the letter “E”, of course) after admiring them for, oh, about two years. (Whoa! Looks like the price went up considerably. Ah well, it’s way worth it for handcrafted sterling silver work.)

In other news, my days with nary a single Parrish Relics piece are numbered. (An Endicott fave, don’t you know.)

I proudly own one of Ari’s decoupage shell pendants (though none of those what are pictured here — I nabbed my rabbit from her first batch). You can check out more of her lusciousness at The Dreaming Place.

At our last World Fantasy (2005), someone in the dealer’s room brought along a few choice beads from Green Girl Studios. I bought… about half of them? Something like that.

Bethany Cooper has one of the most successful Etsy shops around. It’s not hard to see why (hello, repeat customer, hello).

Ah, the frugal life of a fledgling freelancer being what it is, I really can’t throw down the dough for such things right now, as much as I would like to. However. Next time my ship comes in? Kimberly Baker gets my money. Observe: oooh, lah and lah.

Okay, maybe not all at once. But, y’know.

Speaking of adornment, there is a new tattoo on the horizon… sometime in April. This one will be… harder to hide, shall we say, than the other two.

Here I am, checking in from Maine after almost a week, and what am I doing? Posting about Levenger’s latest office supplies. I’ve been a big fan of their ingenious letter and legal pads for a few years; now they’ve come up with two new styles:

Viz pads on the left, storyboards to the right. I wouldn’t know what to do with the isometric kind, but I’m sure that someone reading this will…

Maine is cold. Really cold. But I just spent two days with my girl Bee, who remains the prettiest thing on two legs. Ate really well, hung out with her cool friends/roommate and snuggled with Laverne and Shirley, her two tiger/mackerel kitties. We braved a trip to the yarn store, but it was closed.

Oddly, the cold is what brings back the most memories. It’s the kind that seeps through your jeans and makes it impossible to walk. Except that I’ve spent many a walk walking in it.

I’ll be out and about a bit taking pictures and things; I’ve started a Flickr set that will grow over the next few days.

Look closer:

Closer…

The quote appears to be a snidge inexact, but, y’know.