Great Bustard (Otis Tarda), Males Displaying, Family Otididae, Order Otidiformes, NE China

Owl Guitar Picks : acid-etched bronze.

Eurasian Red Squirrel/ekorre. Värmland, Sweden (April 25, 2021).

Spangle-cheeked Tanager

javier.chaves.photography

spent some time this afternoon attempting to restart the sock project i ragequit in march, which was frankly a major triumph purely on the Overcoming Psychological Inertia front, even though in practical terms i didn't really get much forrarder?

for context: i taught myself how to knit in like january and knit one (1) thing, which was a giant neon cowl with giant yarn on giant circular needles, and then was like, ok well i have one million hats so. maybe not one of those next, even though it wld otherwise probably be logical. …sox r also basically tubes, right? which was, uh, a pretty hubristic leap in difficulty—i mean, 'tinier' isn't really conceptually more complicated, and in theory dpns are just, like, if a circular needle were segmented instead; but in practice 'tinier' is trickier and more stressful, for me at this stage in my knitting non-career anyway, and dpns are. very extremely not my friend so far.

i of course haven't been helping myself by attempting to do an italian tubular cast-on, which in fairness to me i didn't actually find prohibitively difficult to do flat when i originally tested it; but since it starts out as just, like, a series of twists that aren't actually locked in until a row or three down the line, i wasn't confident that the stitches wouldn't just unravel on me if i twisted the dpns the wrong way while attempting to get set up…

anyway i do think i learned some things today and tomorrow [or maybe more realistically friday, bc tomorrow i gotta play chauffeur] will be another day, on which i will perhaps have more success! hoping at that point to arrive at an understanding of esoterica like 'how to arrange the needles that form the tube relative to one another' (i think it shouldn't actually matter which ones top, but i sure felt today like i was Doing It Wrong, lol) and 'how the fifth needle actually interacts with the other ones in order to, you know, actually knit anything…' :)

tfw you're concerned that you might have been a little gauche, but unfortunately, seeking reassurance abt it would… also be gauche…

OH my god i just spent. literal HOURS cleaning out the fridge and dutifully emptying out even the extremely gross forgotten containers of things into the compost instead of just trashing them unopened. (i have adhd. i don't want to talk about the chicken. it was a bad time.)

anyway yes any other approach would have eaten at me so do i really deserve praise when ultimately i was just saving myself from the bitter reproaches of my own conscience. probably not. however i still want one gajillion neon star stickers because like. HOW conscientious of me. HOW viscerally gross a task. ugh. augh. etc.

AND then i changed the slipcovers on my armchair and started a load of laundry before flopping so. in conclusion i am positively WREATHED with the odor of sanctity atm and i'm making a post about it bc unfortunately due to the aforementioned faulty brain wiring i have a hard time accessing the appropriate Triumphantly Accomplished reward-feeling, so. public self-praise it is!

And here it is: the bluethroat in all its glory.

also i've been mainlining patricia moyes' henry tibbett mysteries which are like. generally solid-enough if not brilliant entries in the Classic British Mystery Canon if you like that sort of thing, with of course the usual disclaimers about homophobia, sexism, &c: notably there's also one book with a minor trans character! and a Helpful Explanation about how her husband doesn't feel at all strange about her being trans because she's so obviously ~naturally feminine~ and being trans is Totally Separate from being gay—not, to be clear, in the way we'd actually agree with, that like, one is sexuality and the other gender; but rather in a way where 'it always leads to misery if a transsexual experiments with homosexuality.' [me at this juncture staring into the camera & thinking abt all the gleeful gay trans people on tumblr.] anyway to me this was ultimately less offensive than it was laughable, though of course ymmv! however there was also one with a butch character, and that one made me rather sadder and also got me thinking again about how stupid trans infighting is, because you can't actually separate homophobia from transphobia from misogyny—

[H]e saw a massive and somewhat formidable figure making its way across the lawn from the direction of the greenhouse. It was impossible at this distance to tell if the newcomer was male or female—the cropped grey hair, the weather-beaten features, the corduroy knee-breeches and open-necked shirt were appropriate to either sex. Even the voice was ambiguous. […] At close quarters, Henry was surprised to see that the mannish face was coated with a thick layer of pancake make-up, in a grotesque parody of femininity.

and

Facing her, with their backs to the door, were two masculine back-views, both wearing dinner jackets. As they turned to greet the newcomers, Henry was not at all surprised to see that one of them was Dolly, nattily dressed in evening wear, complete with taped-seam trousers, a frilled white shirt and a black bow tie. […] Dolly stood in the doorway, lumpish and unhappy in her ridiculous dinner jacket…

like. the feminine-coded aspects of her presentation are 'grotesque.' the masculine aspects are 'ridiculous.' she can't win! and like. the character is a butch who was almost certainly assigned female at birth, but the narrative critiques her in these ways that are unavoidably deeply transmisogynistic—i mean, that line about her made-up 'mannish face' being 'a grotesque parody of femininity'?? yikes.

anyway. just wild in light of this to be aware of how many trans bloggers on here are fighting one another abt which of us are Really Oppressed. like. is dolly ~transmisogyny-exempt~? what about the trans woman from the other book, who's treated entirely respectfully by the narrative and by the characters—but also can't access her inheritance, because claiming it would require her to out herself…? i just don't understand any analysis that comes to any conclusion besides 'these are all different heads of the same vicious hydra, and many of us may face the same attack at different times; the answer is mutual solidarity and united resistance.'

what is your eye color. what is your favorite color. what is the color that appears most frequently in your wardrobe. what color is your favorite blanket. what color is your water bottle.

the brass ring of unimaginable swag, 2025