You may have seen the D-O-G here and there, and he has even posted here, but today i’d like to talk a little about the D-O-G.

About 12 years ago, or so i am told, SOP was living in a house with a bunch of friends. One day, up in the Uinta Mountains, he saw a red fox running across the road. He quickly realized it was not a fox, however, but a red heeler puppy. He took the puppy home and he and one of his roommates, SS, became its parents, naming it ‘dogie’ (tons of creative energy in that house, actually).

A couple of years ago, Dogie ruptured a disk in his back. The fragments were removed in surgery, but since that time his back legs have become quite weak. Our walks are now down to about a mile at a time maximum, and Dogie is quite upset about it. He drags his hind feet now and the nails are worn down to the paw, but as i looked at his paws the other night i noticed it has gone beyond the nails, he is now wearing into his feet. So, we are looking at shoes for the D-O-G. Most dog shoes seem to be designed as a way of shaming your friend into oblivion. For instance,i think dogie might hate me for the rest of his days if we ever put him in these or these. These however look like they might give him the coverage he needs without the bulk of these. Expensive, though, so we are hoping to be able to try a pair on him first. He may still hate us for putting them on him, but if he can walk without pain i think it will be worth it.

let no finished sweater be without a beer:

with as much as this sweater has aged, perhaps i should be holding wine instead

the above picture is fairly true to the color, but this all natural wool from Beaverslide Dry Goods also has hints of brown in it, as exhibited in the evening sun.

and that collar i was worried about?

lies fairly flat

Pattern: Celtic Dreams by Beth Brown Reinsel
Knit in the round from the top down. Tres cool.
Wool: Natural Dark Grey Heather from Beaverslide
Needles: Addi Turbos size 4.0mm. I don’t usually like turbos, but i had them on hand and i got gauge with them, so there you have it.
Modifications: Drastically changed the neckline. The original has a garter stitch band which i didn’t like. Any other mods were due to mistakes i made.

Anyone want ~150yds of the wool from this sweater? Just let me know. Also, if anyone would like the pattern book, let me know as well. It’s a bit marked up, but you can still read it.

don’t you love when you login to your server to do a little maintenance and you are greeted with something like this:

well, sure, OK!

there are some photographers in the local scene who do a lot of nudes. I love figurative work, when done interestingly, but the main purpose of some of these images seems not to be the figure, but having a naked woman in the image. I can’t exactly explain why i feel this, but often the figure appears to have been an after thought, or perhaps it is the environment that is the afterthought? In any case, they feel contrived to me. Stuck in my mind were some images from a recent series done out at the great salt lake. One with a woman with her back towards the camera, her head and shoulders draped in a scarf, holding a clay water jug. Others of women, again with their backs towards the cameras, with large parasols covering their body to the waist. Technically, many of these photographs are fabulous. Artistically, they do little for me. Not that i am an expert, but i am opinionated.

And so, in a conversation with sop about a year ago - a conversation about the single-gendered nature of nudes in the area and the lack of humor in art in the area, etc. - i said this: “It would be so fun to go out to the lake and shoot some male figures. Get one of those plastic umbrellas, the half-dome ones they have for kids, and just play… Oh! and then maybe one of those 5-gallon emergency water jugs and …” Before i finished the sentence, i had a model.

Four weekends ago we went out to the lake.

Three weekends ago i developed the film.

The weekend before last i started printing.

Last friday i picked up my matts and realized i needed to print larger.

Friday night i printed larger.

Saturday i toned.

I am not sure i am achieving quite what i wanted yet, but for now i am out of time. Saturday and Sunday were the submission dates for a juried exhibition that only comes about every three years. After framing sunday morning, i went down to find the museum closed. Apparently the printed material had an error, the submission dates were Friday and Saturday - no Sunday.

And yet there was hope - a note on the door : “If you are here to submit artwork, please call our office on Monday.”

SOP took our work down today, they were accomodating as the mistake was theirs, and the images are being juried as i type.

Not sure if they will be viewed in the spirit in which they were intended, or even if they are if any will be accepted. But that is okay, if nothing else, they have made me laugh… And there is another show accepting submissions this friday anyway.

are corsets vestal, or the opposite thereof?

In any case, the vest is done, with ribbing resembling a vestal corset if there ever was one.

you might notice the new fridge in the background

pattern: based off the v-neck vest pattern in Ann Budd’s Handy Book of Patterns thanks to thuy.
yarn: Brown Sheep Worsted - leftovers from many felted slippers
needles: various, size 4.0mm