paperandglue.net

This week I finally buckled down and started to teach myself to crochet. Now, I’ve crocheted for years, but only on an intuitive level — I didn’t know many stitches and I couldn’t read patterns. The siren call of the granny square was too much to resist. My pledge to refrain from purchasing new craft supplies this year and work through my stashes instead has propelled me in the direction of the ultimate stash-buster.

Above is a photo of some of my early progress. Given the limited size of the granny square, I decided it was wasn’t worth the effort to frog the early products, and thus I can illustrate my progress. Misshapes are quite c

She’s the oft-misunderstood, oft-hyperbolized neo-folk darling who defies categorization due to her unconventional instrumentation (harp), more unconventional voice (squeaky) and still more unconventional disregard for standard pop/rock song structure and subject matter. Her first album, The Milk-Eyed Mender, was a compendium of short songs about yarn, seashells, devotion, regret, and imagination. Her second album, Ys, was a five-song collection where the shortest track clocked in at 7:17 and the longest at 16:53, each of them reveling in a rich orchestral background produced by Townes Van Zandt, each of them long enough to fully develop Newsom’s poetic ideas, against a landscape of leafless trees, talking circus animals, and astronomy lessons.

Now we get Have One On Me, billed as a triple album (available in LP and CD), out today on the label that’s been with her from the start, Drag City. Earlier this month, three tracks were prereleased on the Drag City site, and they were awesome (“‘81,” “Good Intentions Paving Company,” and “Kingfisher”). I especially loved “Good Intentions Paving Company” for its soulful edge, with the trademark piano riffs, backing vocals and organ of a previous era.

I’ve had a while to come to grips with the fact that Joanna Newsom is going to be super famous, now. I’m OK with that, though I’m not looking forward to the expanding criticism she’ll face for things like her visibility in the fashion industry or her famous comedian boyfriend. When people come across a young, prodigious musician early in her career, they tend to make her in the image they want, and they want her to stay twee and nubile and childlike. Joanna Newsom doesn’t owe us anything.

You can listen to Have One on Me in its entirety on NPR Music. It’s not usually my style, but in Ms. Newsom’s case, I’m waiting until I have the artifact in my hand, after a trip to my neighbourhood record store.

>>> dragcity.com

Cross-posted to stylusmagazine.ca

So, Stacey was over last night and we were working on stuff, stuff which diverted into an impromptu creative writing exercise that created an imagined controversial and religious-themed southern Manitoba art installation, and thus, an imagined Mennonite name. Stacey told me about how her mom went to high school in Winkler and was the only non-Mennonite in her class. This personal history blossomed into a present-day game where our friend Cam would play a game with her called Shout Mennonite Names!, getting her to announce random Mennonite-sounding names (first and last) on request.

Naturally, this game took on a life of its own. That life included Cam’s boyfriend, Steven Cochrane, making a generator website of the same name.

The site came about in February of 2009 when my boyfriend (who lives in Winnipeg), told me about a game that some of his friends had devised, in which players take turns shouting plausible-sounding Mennonite names at one another. I can only assume that they came up with this in February of another year, when the Winter Crazies were at their peak.

Not being from Manitoba (or, indeed, any other place with an unusually high concentration of Mennonites), my own knowledge of Mennonite nomenclature was far less intimate and far less ingrained than that of the company I keep. I could muster a “Menno Wiebe!” or a “Harry Dyck!” but after that I was more or less tapped out. Still, I wanted to play along, so I wrote a simple PHP script that would randomly combine entries from two lists of common Mennonite given and family names.

The above is from the “What?” section of the site — be sure to read it, because Steven’s work is done with due dillegence and references. He’s got sources.

I myself am not Mennonite, though my ancestors literally lived in villages neighbouring Mennonite ones in Russia. Close, but no cigar. In modern-day Manitoba, being Mennonite is no longer necessarily a religious affiliation — it’s an ethnic one, though of course the Mennonite religion is still alive and well, with several denominations and hundreds of churches in our province alone. I’m trying to quantify why a site like this is so fundamentally entertaining, but I can’t. Maybe it’s just that I’ve grown up in a place where the name “Dyck” (pronounced “dick”) is so commonplace as to not be worth a snicker, where two people named “Friesen” can get married and no one assumes they’re anything but very distantly related. It’s a peculiarity of Manitoba, and I enjoy it.

My pal Mama Cutsworth is a DJ who also has crafty tendencies. “Drop the Needle” is a name she hatched years ago, but now she’s got the event to go with the moniker — a monthly series of music + craft nights at the Lo Pub!

This is the second installment. Unfortunately, I was out of town for the first (though, to be fair, so was Mama C — it was a very last-minute thing she threw together before taking off for NYC for a holiday), but we’re both back in full action for Drop the Needle: the Book-Binding Badge.

Chantale Maynard will drop the book-binding knowledge; I will curate a special set of craft-related music.

Here are the details per Mama C:

Drop the Needle is Winnipeg’s new monthly crafting and DJ party at the Lo Pub!!!!!

This month, learn how to make hand-bound books with paper, needles and thread with artist Chantale Maynard while Mama Cutsworth plays the night’s soundtrack! We’ll have a curated music set with Jenny from CKUW’s The Book of Right-On at 7:30!

We kick off each party around 7pm and feature a mini workshop with a local artist between 8 and 9. Live DJing begins a bit later, dancing and prizes topping off the night!

Bring your friends and your own projects to work on too – any form of handicraft is welcome! Embroidery! Collage! Puppet making! We’ll have desk lamps on most tables to light your crafting. For this workshop, we will provide some materials, but we will send out a note to all attending soon regarding materials.

SUNDAY, February 21st
Lo Pub, 330 Kennedy street
Doors are at 7, the workshop begins shortly after.
Admission is 5 dollars.

Drop The Needle is brought to you by Mama Cutsworth, Kerri-Lynn Reeves, Sew Dandee, MAWA, Kustom Kulture and UMFM 101.5

If you have a business that is interested in sponsoring future Drop The Needles or have a crafty prize to donate, contact sarah at mamacutsworth.com

>>> Facebook event

>>>mamacutsworth.com

>>>thebookofrighton.com

I love Valentine’s Day. I’m one of those people who embraces the holiday as a celebration of sweetness and love in all its forms. I’m spending today with family and friends. We will eat our traditional Valentine’s dessert — cream puffs The are deceptively simple to make (though we make them only once a year. Mom and I are even test-driving a gluten-free recipe in addition to making our traditional variety.

Squirrel Valentine

valentimes  by day at a glance

Martha Stewart Soap

All You Need Is Love by JoshuaRaymund

My Owl Barn

Sunday is for riverwalking. Ruth, Mel, Epiphanie and I tromped down the riverbank and off to the Forks. Along the way, we checked out some of the new Warming Shacks, functional art installations that are new since our last trip down the Assiniboine. They’re great! And, as I see it, a good first step toward Art Shanties in the vein of Medicine Lake.

The river and the Forks weren’t as busy as they were last time, probably due to the clouded-over sky and the fact that it was actively snowing.