You are what you eat.

I have a very complicated relationship with food. It's complicated in the way that I love most food, but it doesn't love me back. It's difficult to enjoy eating something when there is at least one allegedly sound study telling me that it means to brutally kill me in my sleep.

I don't believe in food science. That is, I don't believe that it wants to make me healthy, beautiful, and have a greater quality of life. Maybe one out of 50 studies does, but I don't have the resources or the desire to figure out which one. Is eating fat making me fat? Is eating carbs? Will Atkins make me sick? Is meat (and other animal products) the root of all evil?

The answer is simply, I don't know.

I have taken a completely different approach to what I will eat - and how. It's not radical. It's not innovative. It relies on principles that I don't think will ever be outdated.

Rule one - back to basics. I am taking all processed and packaged foods completely out of my diet. I have grown increasingly wary in the past few years of ingredients that I can't pronounce on labels of food that seems simple and straightforward. What worries me more than that, though, is that I don't know what it is, where it came from, what it's role as an ingredient is, and what it will do once it's in my body. I am lucky enough to have a fiance that's a great cook, and with one exception I don't think I will even notice the absence of said foods from our rotation.

What I will miss: cold cereal. It's the easiest and one of the most delicious meals you can have first thing in the morning, not to mention it requires zero effort. My solution to this is organic hot cereal. I know it comes in a package, but with certain brands you can have stuff that is minimally processed and maximally delicious.

Why it will be easy: we are also lucky enough to have made the investments necessary to home make almost any food imaginable, and have self dincipline enough to just say no to foods that are overprocessed or just bad. We have a blender, crock pot, a Kitchenaid stand mixer, and a bread machine. I'm hoping to get the grain mill and the pasta press attachments for the mixer from our registry, then I'll be able to have greater control over the staples of food.

Rule two - organic food. This is an at will rule, and I will be perfectly honest: I can't afford to have a completely organic diet. The reason I would want to is not altruistic - the fact that it's better for the planet is a nice bonus though. The real reason is that certified organic food is also not genetically modified. This also ties in with rule one - a package of any processed food won't say if any of it came from a GMO.

So for now I will sum it up as follows - the grand rule is that if I must eat any packaged or processed food, it should be minimally processed AND organic, until I have the means to buy all organic all the time.

I don't think that anyone can say that eating a pop tart is better than a slice of whole wheat home made toast and an apple.

Something new

I made a small monetary investment and home-printed my first shirt today. My requirement was only that it say "Ren fest junkie" and have a ren-fest related image. My creative process was simple - the one staple of renaissance fairs everywhere that people that have never been to one would recognize (in my opinion) is a turkey leg. I got the idea of a defiant "viva la resistance" type fist holding one up as the focal point. I thought it would be funny. To me it said "through all other hardships is life, we must persevere for the sake of turkey legs!" Anyway. One disembodied arm wasn't quite cutting it, so I added two more, one with a sword, one with a beer, both also staples of any good ren fest.
The text was a pain to figure out, but I went with a serif font in all caps, and it worked out well. Here is an important point to anyone that wants to make their own shirt: make your first couple of designs in such a way that accidentally printing them slightly crooked won't ruin it. For me - I made my text arched and then angled it a bit. Even if my whole print turned out to be off by a few degrees, you couldn't tell the difference and it certainly wouldn't constitute a flaw.
I put the whole thing together in Photoshop, then printed out a copy on regular printer paper.
Next, tape this and a piece of freezer paper (plastic side down) to your cutting mat. Get yourself a nice pointy xacto knife and go to town. It took me about an hour and a half to design the picture, maybe a week to procrastinate, then two hours to cut it. I made slight alterations to my lines as I cut them, to eliminate having loose pieces. I had to have a few of them anyway (the center of the R, among others), but the fewer the better. Press the freezer paper to your shirt with a hot iron - it sticks!
I was nervous as to how this would work out. Many things could have gone wrong - the little loose pieces getting dislodged as I applied the ink, bleeding under the edges, etc. I needn't have worried! It went off without a hitch. I used a small stiff brush to apply the ink, and was able to achieve a great level of detail with great sharpness! It looks MUCH better than some shirts I've seen made by spray painting over a cardstock cutout. Anyway - here it is!

Laminaria

http://www.ravelry.com/projects/p4r4n0i4/laminaria

Laceweight bamboo singles spun into the shawl. I have no idea the yardage it took, because I was so impatient, I'd knit up what I'd spun right away. I got the 4 oz bump of fiber at the Finger Lakes fiber fest 2008. It is a discontinued fiber, as the lady told me when I came to her booth at Rhinebeck 2008, they had issues with the dyeing process. Truth be told, the water was still blue after 2-3 rinses.

Of course I had gotten way too far into it before I read any of the mods that other Ravelers have done to it, such as knittitg all stars, one blossom, then the edging; or going right into blossoms without any of the stars. If I knit it again (which I won't, one is plenty for me) I would do either one of those things. My advice to someone looking to knit this shawl is to look at the project gallery - you might find one modification that you prefer much better.

Of course since I did not measure my yardage, I ran out of yarn. I had knitted all the way through the edging 1 chart, and had literally only yards left. I said, screw it, and just bound off. I have to say I almost cried when I bound off, thinking it was going to be really ugly, after all that work that I put in (those stars are no joke). But instead of doing something rash that I would regret - I blocked it - and BEHOLD!
And yes, I do have a blouse that matches EXACTLY. Saw it at Banana last Christmas and no way was I passing it up.

9/12

Here's what happened, more or less:

Tu and I are at a T-split in a brownish-school or hospital resembling hallway. We're near the entrance. I'm trying to hide from something, and I go into a hall closet that has a door like a bathroom stall - doesn't reach top or bottom. Tu is outside and he is whispering to me, maybe he's trying to get me to come out, maybe to let him in, but a man walks by and jabs him in the shoulder with a tiny hypodermic needle he holds in the palm of his hand and Tu drops like a sack of bricks. The man walks away and the door shrinks - it's now only a foot wide plank across my waist - impossible to hide behind.
I step over Tu, put a smile on my face and walk deeper into the building. The man from before is right around the corner. He is a lot taller than me, older, powerfully built. I take his arm and he walks me deeper still, explaining vague and probably less than truthful things about the building. I make intelligent sounding conversation in a sexy voice. He'll probably kill me very soon, sooner if I try to run, but maybe later if I act nice. A very, very long ways down a deserted, moldy, and unlit hallway, we take a right hand turn into an open area set with some tables. It's impossible to tell whether its in or out of doors because the round table has an umbrella, but the windows that show the dark outside (it's overcast) are closed, and there are no doors.
Another man waits for us. He hands me a clipboard with a form on in. I guess I came here originally looking for a job. They take turns describing what they do and how they make the world a better place in the most generic terms. I lose my patience. I don't see why they're dragging this out, I know what's going to happen and so do they. I say "Don't give me this 'make the world a better place' crap. What do you actually DO? Like, make good things, or kill... bad things?"
They look at each other. Then they decide the orientation is over. They leave me. I walk leisurely around the area, figuring if I wasn't supposed to, they'd have told me. They do tell me they'll be back soon before they leave. I have an urge to go back to the table. I walk almost up to the corner where I'm supposed to turn right, but I have an armful of little balls of yarn. I'm dropping them everywhere. I say "Hey guys, can I get a little help here?" As I bend down to pick one up, I see a nurse standing behind the wall. She's waiting for me. Before I can react, she jabs me in the shoulder with a little needle. I black out.
I come to instantly (to me). Everything is blurry. I throw up repeatedly. I can't think, except to do what I'm told. I'm taken to another room by the nurse and the first man. I black out. I come to in the room that I was being taken to. I can't think. I throw up. The room is a sizeable rectangle, where a corner is being taken up by a counter, or a bar. A girl I know is siting at the bar. Her hair is long and is shimmering in all colors of the rainbow. Another girl I know is petting her hair. I know she's like me because there is an expression of mindless glee on her face. They both hate me, because I'm new. The girl that's like me can't hate me because we're equals. The other girl is an overseer.
Our first task, which the boss lets the other girl choose, is to draw ourselves as animals, to see who can do it better. The room is littered with bright plastic toys and other knick knacks. I throw up. I can't really stand up, so the other girl comes to me. We each draw a picture with an ostrich, elephant, teddy bear, and a fourth animal I don't remember. Hers is judged to be better, but I have a feeling that I lost just cause I'm new. As a punishment, I have to eat "cereal". The girl with the rainbow hair brings out a bowl of soap flakes that she sprays generously with Windex. She puts it in front of me and I take the spoon.

I wake up.

Legwarmers

The weather here has been nothing short of fabulous. It has been getting cooler every day and the nights are positively crisp. This has me brimming with excitement about fall and knitting away like crazy.

I bought a 4 oz bump of superwash merino online recently. It was the slightly acid-neon- found nowhere in nature color combo that drew me in. I spun n-ply fingering weight out of it on my spindle. The legwarmers took about 360 yards, and I have some yarn and a chunk of the sliver left over. So, I guess I'd have no problems getting 400 yards+ from a 4 oz lot in the future. Good. Anyway, here they are: