ThreadingWater

BlueGal has found her way home to a blue state and the Democratic primary season wheezes to an end.

Celebrations abound across the Polka Belt of America.

Get your polka on, good people of the world. It’s June, and that can mean only one thing - National Accordion Awareness Month!

In celebration of all things accordion, I have a great line-up of photos for you this year. Plus, with 2008 being an election year, there’s sure to be lots of squeezing, wheezing and hot air in the atmosphere that we can try to channel into a few rousing dance steps.

So, find your best circle skirt and crinoline, then strap on your instrument for dance number one.

The Hillary

Borrow some notes from the Book of Rove songbook and find a jazzy refrain (”I have won the majority of the popular vote in the primaries.”) Doesn’t matter if it’s preposterous, simplistic or fantastical. Play it over and over and over and, if you play it long enough and often enough, it will become a Truth humming in the background.

It’s a simple dance, but be careful. The music never ends.

And a one, two, three . . .

What a mess. I may never get all the English Monkey out of the carpet. And, what’s with the underpants I found in the ice bucket? People, you weren’t even supposed to be wearing underpants. Keffiyehs ONLY.

Nevermind.

With the weekend fast slipping away, it was time to really immerse myself in the blues. The real blues. Indigo, baby. Armed with three yards of washed, unbleached muslin and a small silk scarf, I set out to mess around with indigo dye and kakishibui , just to see what might happen.

Check it out.

Properly prepared, the indigo dye pot looks like a witch’s cauldron. The top is dark blue, bubbly and scummy where the dye meets the oxygen in the air. The water beneath, however, is a clear, limey green color.

I prepared the muslin for the dye pot while it was still damp from washing to remove any sizing in the fabric. Adopting a shibori technique, I bound Lake Superior stones into the fabric and secured them with copper wire. Then, I accordion-pleated the whole thing together, wrapped it with more wire and ended up with this bundle to dip into the indigo.

Here is the bundle after about ten minutes, being lifted out of the pot. You can see that the initial color is more green than blue. It is the exposure to the air that will turn the dye blue.

Oxidation has taken place in this picture where I am in the process of unwrapping the stones.

Here is the entire piece of fabric stretched out to dry before I retie it for a dip into a bath of kakishibui.

The kakishibui coats the fabric (it is not a dye so it doesn’t penetrate the fibers) with a pinkish-brown color that will darken over time. It also deepens the indigo hues.

I couldn’t be happier, even with underpants in my ice bucket.

For you, Dr. Z.

It’s a BYOK party in my Rumpus Room tonight. GH is out of town so I fixed this great dish to pass.

Only a few hours until party time. Must check the American Woman’s Cookbook for guidance on entertaining in the Rumpus Room.

All Rumpus Room parties are of the most informal type and the menus planned should reflect this spirit. Picnic menus serve best: hamburgers and wieners on rolls, small steaks, chops and bacon, sandwiches, whole pickles, radishes, tomatoes, olives, deviled eggs, whole fruit, doughnuts and cider, beer, lemonade or ginger ale.

If there is a fireplace, use it for the camp cookery children enjoy on hikes - potatoes, sweet potatoes, whole eggs or onions done in the hot ashes. Clever boys and their fathers will be able to manage more complicated things.

Entertainment takes the form of games.

Oh, heavens! Keffiyehs and doughnuts? no no no . . . And, where on earth will I find clever boys and their fathers to handle “more complicated things?” Something like this, perhaps?

Yum.

I’ll be wearing nothing BUT my keffiyeh and my new Jimmy Choos. Who needs games?

The Michelle-Malkin-Dunkin-Donut-Rachel-Ray-Kaffiyeh story is the trifecta of blogaliciousness. I am totally working on a knitted kaffiyeh scarf pattern to promote on ravelry.

I’m not a fan of Malkin, Rachel Ray or Dunkin’ Donuts for that matter (the hideous missing “g” offends every English major neuron in my body). But, the kaffiyeh? Ultimate chic.

The underlying humor here is that kaffiyehs don’t kill people, donuts do. In fact, I’m willing to bet that donuts are responsible for more American deaths than Middle Eastern terrorists.

Donuts - better than seventy-two virgins, especially if they’re frosted.

In a blog post that should be dripping with ironic exposition but, sadly, is not - former fake reporter Jeff Gannon (not his real name, btw, to add even more incredible layers of irony to this riotous salad) has this to say about the (morally bankrupt) former White House press secretary Scott McClellan and his newfound “come to Jesus” revelations:

By his own admission, McClellan either perpetrated a fraud behind the podium or has done so with this book. Whichever the case, Scott McClellan’s credibility is zero.

However, something as “trivial” as credibility will not stop the rabid liberal media from accepting McClellan’s words as gospel – because it represents the “truth” they desire. The media mavens who once characterized McClellan as a clueless dunce at the bottom of the information totem have miraculously transformed him into a central figure in the decision-making process. So much for their credibility.

While I was attending the daily White House press briefings, most reporters, including me, complained that McClellan rarely strayed from his talking points to provide substantive information.

Jeff Gannon. Writing about credibility.

Priceless.

You probably won’t hear this news on your local radio, nor read it in your newspaper. Blogs - even good lefty ones - have also been largely silent. A great force of nature, truth and integrity passed out of our collective lives this past weekend with the death of Bruce “Utah” Phillips.

Back when a healthy folk music scene still existed, Utah Phillips passed through my town every couple of years and performed at a small venue called “The Blue River Cafe.” Beyond the music of labor organizing songs and folk tunes he had written and gathered in his cross-country travels, Utah Phillips instructed green young’uns like myself in our country’s labor movement history. He was the real deal. Genuine. A card-carrying Industrial Workers of the World “Wobbly.” A true American patriot and hero.

Then, a couple of years ago, I had the honor of meeting Utah Phillips in person thanks to the long friendship between him and Greatest Husband. I was nervous, as I tend to be when meeting people for the first time, and especially so because I had admired him for so long as a performer and political activist. I needn’t have been. As soon as he discovered my family’s working-class, home-town roots, the conversation flowed and I was fairly astonished at how much he knew about my city’s political and immigrant history.

We met one more time a year ago, and made plans for him and his lovely wife Joanna to stay at our home this spring. His declining health prevented that visit from taking place.

There’s a good biography and video of Utah Phillips performing at a festival one year ago. Check it out. And, while I don’t believe in any sort of afterlife, I have a hard time believing that a force as gigantic as Bruce “Utah” Phillips can exit this world all at once. His formidable energy is still out there. I feel it.

Holy buckets! You just KNEW this was going to bring me out of blog seclusion.

I’ve sorely missed my old friend, Scott McClellan and can barely believe it’s been two years since he left the White House. Oh, sure, Tony Snow and Dana Perino have had their bloggable moments, but it was Scotty who could be depended upon for blog inspiration. Slow day at the blog post screen? Hell. Just skip on over to the official White House website for a transcript of the day’s press briefing - the well of sycophant word-twisting that never ran dry.

Now Scotty’s back with a tell-all book about his years as press secretary. According to the book, President Bush “is depicted as an out-of-touch leader, operating in a political bubble, who has stubbornly refused to admit mistakes.” He devotes an entire chapter to “Selling the War,” wherein “he alleges that the administration repeatedly shaded the truth and that Bush ‘managed the crisis in a way that almost guaranteed that the use of force would become the only feasible option.’”

In short, Scotty provides us with the “big reveal” in which he finally comes around to saying what the rest of us have known since 2000 about Bush, Cheney, Rove, Libby, Rice, Rumsfeld and all the rest of the White House criminals.

Scott McClellan, you are an ass.

While you were worried about your personal reputation during the Plame-gate affair, you should have been worried about the administration’s dissembling of our Constitutional rights. While you perceived that the run up to the war in Iraq was being deliberately manipulated by the President and his advisors so that “the use of force would become the only feasible option,” you should have been worried about the inevitable loss of American and Iraqi lives, about shattered families, children made orphans, about widows and widowers.

Claiming there’s a “Culture of Deception” in Washington does not distance you from responsibility. When your revelations could have done some good, you said nothing. You were, in fact, the bloviating master of saying nothing for three long years.

Nothing has changed.

I get a little screwy. I do things I would never usually think of doing, like stealing blooms from the neighbors’ lilac in the dead of night. Like not being satisfied with having FIVE lilac bushes of my very own. Like dreaming I’m swimming in them. Once, I even ate them. True.

At this time of year, I carry a pair of garden shears in my car. I cruise the streets looking for untended, abandoned bushes and fill the back seat of the car with their blooms. Then I drive home with all the windows shut just to overdose on the scent.

I lust for lilacs in the most elemental, animalistic and immoral way. I lust for lilacs in a way that violates every deadly sin (or, might violate if given half a chance).

Am I alone here?

17.mai is Constitution Day in Norway, marking the country’s independence from Sweden. Celebrations begin at sunrise in every town, village and city throughout the country with parades, speeches, picnics and music, often lasting late into the night. Women, men and children dress in their traditional costumes, or bunad, the design of which is based upon one’s region of birth.

The tradition of the bunad arose around the same time as Norway’s independence and emergence as a country in the early 1800’s. Each region of the country was encouraged to incorporate their local needle arts and metalworking traditions into the design of a unique dress costume as a method of fostering a national culture and identification after the country’s long period of occupation by various countries and invaders.

It worked.

The bunad today is unchanged from its original, officially adopted design, thanks in large part to what many Norwegians refer to as “the bunad police,” a group of officials in each region of the country who certify the authenticity of every bunad made. And, not only does one have to have their costume “certified” but the individual themselves must prove that they are entitled to wear a particular region’s bunad which is based on maternal lineage and one’s own place of birth.

The making of one’s bunad is traditionally done entirely by hand, and supervised by the “bunad police” every step of the way. It may take years for a young woman or (increasingly) man to complete their costume. It’s expensive, time consuming and requires considerable skill with a needle and thread.

friends Line and Arnfinn, 17.mai 2004 (Arnfinn made the striking bunad he is wearing)

Once complete, the bunad is worn on 17.mai (of course) and also for other special days and ceremonial events such as weddings.

Gratulerer med dagen! til alle Norge.