Drag names for knitters

OK. I'm on the Men Who Knit's website and one of the threads is asking for drag names that are related to knitting. Here are some cute ones.

Blockina DiLace

Tangela DiBalz

Tinka LaRowe

Raglana Nitzenpurl

Steeka Sltiz

Jacquardia O

Ivana Knit

Anita Stash

Nastasha Yarnova

Heather Blocklear

Ballzy Wool

Hanka Wool

Pearl (purl) Ballwinder

Knitkita Ballwinder

Lady Entrelac the Duchess of Yarnover, and her entourage of Knits of the Round Cable

Darnetta Socks

STOCKINETTA!

Lacey Cashmere

Rita Merino

Purl Slipstitch

Bunny Angora

Angora Jumper

Anne Gora

Cass Mere

Debbie Pointa Needle

Elle Wyeth

Knitasha Purl

Intarsia Gillingham

Val Paca

Knitty Carlisle

Visiting Stone House

Yesterday, several of us from Dragon's Cauldron went to visit Stone House. It was a lovely visit and has an incredible feel to it. I walked away realizing that we are very fortunate in our local community to have a place like this to retreat to if we want.

Recap of February

I told my friend Beth that I try to post a couple of times of month. Well, I posted on Feb 1st, so today I needed to post to meet that quota.

February has been a whirlwind of a month. The biggest challenge was serving on the grants committee for the City of Raleigh's Human Relations Committee. United Way has a representative on the committee and I serve that role. The hard part is that it takes almost five days (thank goodness they are spread apart three weeks) of sitting in site visits and a day of deliberation. Its not that hard it just eats time in some ways. Anyhow, it was a great process as always.

School is good. I'm enjoying my qualitative research methods class. My ethics class which was 1.5 credits ended this week. We had an interesting excercise in which we had to write a CV. Not a resume, a Curriculum Vitae. Well, that felt impossible after years of being trained to keep your resume to one page, I'm asked to put everything to paper. Yikes! It is clear I'm a practitioner and not an academic.

On the magical front, I seem to be talking with the "Lady of the Lake." She appeared in a trance piece of work, when I was doing magic with my friends Kathie and Ellen. I don't know much about the Lady, so comments are welcome.

Engaged scholarship and the Black Dragon of Justice

In October I went to the Outreach and Engagement Conference at Penn State and wrote about it here. As you might recall the research I'm doing for my dissertation is focused on research with community based partners. That project qualified me and my sponsoring professor to be a part of a study where we learn about engaged scholarship. Of course, then we are studied and have to reflect about our process. This weekend, I went to Athens, GA for a second meeting/training on engaged scholarship. Once again, engaged scholarship is one of those things that, despite its common sense, is not part of the traditional power structure of the academy. UGH!!

Here we go again. What is it?? More and more I'm discovering that the worldview I hold is one, while making common sense, is outside the traditional structures. This manifested in a discussion at the table about the fear of doing engaged scholarship because it is not helpful in promotion and tenure policies within certain universities. The doctoral students in the group are also concerned about their work being acceptable. This is fascinating because, I'm getting many opportunities to challenge structures that are rooted in hierarchy and the use of power to exclude other institutions and other ways knowledge is formed.

During my initiation in October of 2007, I had a new ally zoom into my life. The Black Dragon; the dragon of justice. One of the first places I saw this ally manifest in my life is with where I get my food and what food I buy to eat. I continue to try and buy food from the Farmer's Market and try to buy more organic food. However, as I reflect over the last weekend, it seems that this academic work of what I believe to be valuable scholarship is part of the work this dragon is calling me to do. Interesting huh??

As part of my stay in Athens I got to visit with Celeste and Mitch. Celeste has a blog. She is an avid knitter and of course we went to a local yarn shop, Main Street Yarns and Fibers. It was a shop in a lovely renovated barn. Of course I bought some beautiful yarn, including the lace weight yarn in the photo. Isn't it lovely?

525,600 minutes

This weekend I went to see RENT at the Durham Performing Arts Center. It was a remarkable show. I have to say that I was surprised at how touched I was by the show. Tears came to my eyes several times during the second act. The show does time magic. The first act is about one Christmas Eve, the second act covers the following year. The second act opens with the song, Seasons of Love and asks us "How do we measure a year?" It is a good question to ponder in this day and time. How do we measure the passing of time? Is it really minute by minute? As witches, we measure time by the change of the seasons and the cycle that this creates year after year. We notice the sunrise, the sunset a way to measure the passing of time. Buddhists say each moment, each breath, is the present, and the lyrics of the song suggest that each moment is a journey. However, the song ends by asking us "How about measuring our life by the seasons of love?" How do you measure that? In a world of war, hunger, and hate, it seems nearly impossible to measure love this way. Yet, the hope that I have felt over the past week as things in this country have changed provide us with a new way of looking at the world. It is my hope that the shift I have felt with the Inauguration of President Obama is more than just a hope and my own projection. I believe that it is real and that it can make the question of how we measure love on the global and community level a bit easier to see. In the meantime, I still have to contemplate how I measure the seasons of love in my own life. Perhaps the answer lies in the closing song of the musical, No Day but Today.