Old.

I've been looking through old pictures. I kind of can't fathom the fact that I've existed for almost two decades and have been seeking out proof that I've actually been around that long. It's true. Sightings of me date back to almost the seventh century. I mean 1989.

Just look - this is me and my Mermy, in our house shortly before it was our house but after it was her house, I think. Confused? Yes, you are.


Here's me in the backyard as a bebeh:


I don't know where that bathing suit went. I should go dig it up one of these days and see if it still fits.

Here I am as a Shaker:



Katie and I in 1998, or thereabouts:


Same year:


The year after, with Katie (I like to remember - or imagine? - that the first picture here was taken last, after 209832 pictures similar to the second one, when one of our mothers was like, "Can we please have one NORMAL picture?" And then they got the picture below, and were like, "Good enough"):



And no, our faces didn't stay that way. Here we are last Christmas.


We grew up to be such nice young hipsters.

Yay.

We're back into sweater season. My life is in harmony again. I am wearing my Ostara cardigan (the spot on my shirt is from the camera ... not my shirt):



... and I just discovered THESE:


KNITTED EFFING CHICKENS! How much I can haz them? I can haz them very much. I can haz the big white one and call it my Teto and sleep with it at night, because Teto and a big soft chicken are basically the same thing. I mean, look:



Big Furry Chicken Cat in her nest.

GOD IT IS HOT.

God it is hot. I'm not sure what else I can say about that. I had to break out my blue nightgown-I-mean-dress. And I have to lug around a sweater for the rabid air conditioning in the art building ... plus there's my crazy humidity hair. We are all SUFFERING here. And by "We are all suffering," I mean that I'm suffering while everyone else seems to be enjoying lying out on the lawn.



But hey, at least I don't have swine flu, right? [Knocks on wood violently.] You shouldn't worry about swine flu, you know. There are only two possibilities for what will happen with it. First possibility: like avian flu, SARS, E. coli, and EBOLA!!!!!!!, it will soon blow over* and we will forget all about it until the next We're All Gonna Die Disease pops up. Second possibility: We're all gonna die.

Or I guess a third possibility would lie somewhere in between those two. But I don't like that idea, so I'm going to pretend I didn't think of it.


*Of course, by "blow over" I mean it killed a bunch of people and then stopped killing people long enough for us to stop caring about it.

Heisann.

Sorry I've been so absent lately. I've been writing, mostly. It's Flannery's fault. She recommended that I write two hours a day at the same time, in the same place. Yes, she told this to me personally. And no, I don't do everything Flannery tells me to do. I haven't converted to Catholicism, for one thing.

I have been enjoying the spring, but not the weather. It's a leeetle too hot for me. What I like is the pretty, pretty flowers (yes, "pretty, pretty flowers" is the best I can do; I already did my writing for today):


Which are kind of the same color of this sock I'm knitting.


I've also been experimenting with the Scarf. I got the Scarf for Christmas and I love it much. It is very good for the purpose of headbands and making me into a bandit.

Printmaking show.

Afterwards my family and I went out for dinner. This is me with my mommy:

Debutante.

Today my new cardigan made its official debut. That is, I wore it for the first time outside and everything. It's kind of a bad day for it - the rain and all - but my printmaking show is today and I wanted to, so, yeah.

It's been very difficult to get good pictures of anything the last few days. This is the best I was able to get:

Sheep sheep sheep.

On Sunday, my parents and I went on a trip to see where yarn comes from.


Apparently, it all comes from the 17th century. Who knew?

Before we get to any sheep, I have to tell you about the goose. It was sitting on its nest, and when we came near it kept quacking at us as if to say, "Move it along, d-bags, there's nothing to see here."


And then there was the house. I would pay one trillion million dollars to live in that house. Just to live in it. I'd live in the closet if that's all that they had. I don't think it has any closets, but you get what I mean. I'd pay a trillion dollars to live across from that house so that I could look at it every day. Just look at those shutters. My God.





Swoon!

Anyway, then we saw 509824 sheep. They had lots and lots of bebehs. It was adorable.


One bebeh wanted to eat its mother.


Another bebeh was very interested in me. Look at its widdle face.


Speaking of bebehs, there was also a calf. It liked to lick.


We got to see them dye the yarn like they did in the 17th century. It was pretty cool.

Ostara.

My garter yoke cardigan, a.k.a. Ostara, is done! And now it has (semi-decent) pictures! Take a look:





It took twenty days to complete. It's the best-fitting sweater I've ever known. Also, it's really, really soft.

And the buttons cost more than the yarn. I know I said that already, but I thought I'd say it again.

FLANNERY!

I'm reading Brad Gooch's Flannery: A Life of Flannery O'Connor (she had more than one?!), and it's good. I only have one issue with it so far; you see, college-age-Flannery was a cartoonist, and while Gooch describes, like, 359834 of her cartoons, he doesn't actually include any of them in the book. The frick? Are they copyrighted or something? Were they all damaged in a tragic lye-blinding incident gone wrong? Can a lye-blinding incident, in fact, go "right?"


To find the answer, I searched the interwebs, of course. Interestingly, a search in Google images for "Flannery O'Connor cartoons" will get you my picture, among other not very useful things. Huh.

Regular Google was more helpful. I found these from this blog:

"I don't enjoy looking at these old pictures either, but it doesn't hurt my reputation for people to think I'm a lover of fine arts."

Take a good look at the signature on the first cartoon. It's "MFOC," that is, Mary Flannery O'Connor, but what's more, it's a chicken. See it? Because FLANNERY O'CONNOR FREAKING LOVED CHICKENS.

I found this from a page on the GSCW (Georgia State College for Women, where Flannery went) library website; it was the inner cover of the 1945 yearbook:


The picture depicts the GSCW campus during Flannery's years there, when it housed a small population of female undergrads or "Jessies" and half a billion WAVES (Women Accepted for Volunteer Emergency Service) in training.

... and that's pretty much it. No word on where the rest of these cartoons have gone. I only can assume that they were taken into the woods and shot, along with their babies and small children.