Karen

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Posts by Karen Kaminski:

Friday Links

By in Friday Unrelated Information

1. Would you like to see every Bob Ross painting ever done, with links to the show where he paints it? I thought so.

2. Here is Mona Eltahawy talking about grief literacy, in a post-pandemic sense and also just in general.

People in a grief literate society would understand and accept differences in grieving styles, in terms of gender, race, and culture, and they would feel comfortable to talk about their own loss experiences and to ask about loss experiences of others, instead of avoiding the subject or showing discomfort.

 

3. Yep:

“aaall right”

Yes Please

By in Uncategorized

Maybe unsurprisingly, taking a long weekend off work did not actually make me more willing to go back to work today. I’ve been reading (and posting) a lot about burnout and the effects of the pandemic, so this Charlie Warzel newsletter, in which he argues for companies enacting a lighter workload for the summer seems like a brilliant idea. From It’s Time for a Summer Slowdown:

All of us are emerging from the darkest days of the pandemic with a good deal of unprocessed trauma and a bone deep fatigue. It’s been described as burnout or hitting the pandemic wall. Some of it is the result of existential depression, and some of it is a sense of isolation or languishing. Organizations have tried to acknowledge the difficulty of the moment — while also expecting their employees to continue working, with little to no fluctuation in actual productivity.

…The last year of remote work has required a concerted effort to ignore the giant Covid-shaped elephant in the room. There were very, very few formalized HR policies to address the dull ennui of extended quarantine or the particular type of anxiety that accompanies a year of worrying a grocery store run could leave you or a loved one in the ICU. And so privileged remote workers labored (safely) on, through exposure scares and terrifying push notifications and attempted coups and insurrections. There was work to do — and very little else.

But for those who’ve been vaccinated, components of pre-pandemic life are returning: hugs, extended family, indoor dining, and all kinds of glorious, time-wasting bullshit. In other words, perfect excuses, after 15 months of isolation, to not be productive.

 

Swimwear Roundup: Ready For Some Hot Springs

By in sewing, Tuesday Project Roundup

Even though I was “meh” about my swimsuit, I finished it up–and added a rash guard for Doc as well. Can you tell I’m really excited for any type of water vacation, even if it’s just half a day in some hot springs?

When I tried on the swimsuit again, I liked it more. Wearing the waistband of the bottoms unfolded makes them super high waited (plus they have POCKETS, which are hard to see here). The halter cut and the palm print on the top add to the retro vibes. (Neon performance knit from Fabric.com; palm print scraps from deep stash.)

For Doc, I tried out the Fehr Trade Surf to Summit Rash Guard, which I can’t recommend. It makes a decent finished product, but the pattern was missing notches and the sizing is super limited. I used performance Lycra from Joann and some football mesh from a Fashion Fabrics Club order. I had to add cuffs since I forgot to lengthen the sleeves for him, and I added a zip pocket across the low back because who doesn’t want a pocket?

That cover stitch machine keeps proving itself to be a good investment–putting on the elastic in my suit was so easy and all the seams on Doc’s guard got a nice topstitch.

We’re wearing it all today to see how it does in the water. Hot springs, here we come!

Friday Links

By in Friday Unrelated Information

1. Has this felt like the longest week ever? I can barely make words go on the page, I haven’t sewn anything, the weather is beautiful but I just sit inside… hopefully a long weekend will help. Also, this is good to remember:

2. A year of quiet collective trauma notwithstanding, it’s been nice to realize that I’m vaccinated and can do things like go to dinner again. I’m meeting a friend for lunch today and meeting her nine-month-old baby (Little Loaf) for the first time!

3. And as we all emerge from our shells into the world this summer, let’s remember CicadaBro:

AWW YEAAAH!

Swole Talk

By in swole

It’s been max week at the gym this week. On Monday, I didn’t try for a squat max since we were focused on front squats and front squats can go straight to hell (still figuring out what to do with my long arms there). On Tuesday, I tried for a bench max but ended up missing my old max by two pounds, since my elbow decided to start hurting. But TODAY, it was deadlift max and I got a new one–210 pounds!

Lifting has been such an exercise in patience for me. After the first few months of beginner gains, my progress slowed (as it does) and it was really hard for me to accept that I might be at my current bench max for years (I have been!), that it might take me another three years to actually do a pullup, that my age is also kind of fighting me even as I get more gains.

But deadlifts are “my” lift, the one where long-limbed people actually have an advantage (unlike squat and bench) and I’ve been working hard on my form. So I’m really proud of this! I left the gym this morning feeling the most accomplished I have in…6 months? Longer?

I’m so glad I picked up this hobby. I love being strong but I love being a beginner at something just as much.

 

 

Wednesday Poem

By in poems

To be completely honest, educating myself about what’s going on in Israel/Palestine has felt like too much lately. My privilege whispers, “But you’re working on being anti-racist! You’re calling out misogyny! You’re getting your head around prison abolition and Asian-American fetishization and doing your own work in therapy and isn’t that all enough?” But the thing about intersectionality (and just being a good human) is–you gotta care about it all. And caring also means learning. So I will start.

This poem was in Laura Olin’s newsletter two weeks ago and it shook me. You don’t need to know the history of the West Bank or the origins of the conflict to feel the panic at the end: “It doesn’t matter/ that 58 seconds isn’t long enough/ to find your wedding album/ or your son’s favorite blanket”. You don’t need to know a lot to know that bombing civilians is wrong.

 

Running Orders
By Lena Khalaf Tuffaha

They call us now,
before they drop the bombs.
The phone rings
and someone who knows my first name
calls and says in perfect Arabic
“This is David.”
And in my stupor of sonic booms and glass-shattering symphonies
still smashing around in my head
I think, Do I know any Davids in Gaza?
They call us now to say
Run.
You have 58 seconds from the end of this message.
Your house is next.
They think of it as some kind of
war-time courtesy.
It doesn’t matter that
there is nowhere to run to.
It means nothing that the borders are closed
and your papers are worthless
and mark you only for a life sentence
in this prison by the sea
and the alleyways are narrow
and there are more human lives
packed one against the other
more than any other place on earth
Just run.
We aren’t trying to kill you.
It doesn’t matter that
you can’t call us back to tell us
the people we claim to want aren’t in your house
that there’s no one here
except you and your children
who were cheering for Argentina
sharing the last loaf of bread for this week
counting candles left in case the power goes out.
It doesn’t matter that you have children.
You live in the wrong place
and now is your chance to run
to nowhere.
It doesn’t matter
that 58 seconds isn’t long enough
to find your wedding album
or your son’s favorite blanket
or your daughter’s almost completed college application
or your shoes
or to gather everyone in the house.
It doesn’t matter what you had planned.
It doesn’t matter who you are.
Prove you’re human.
Prove you stand on two legs.
Run.

Sewjo: Here And Gone Again

By in sewing

We’re going to try another day trip to the hot springs over Memorial Day weekend so I thought, “Why not make a new suit for it?”  I’ve had a bunch of swim fabric sitting in my stash ever since we planned to go to Hawaii in early 2020 (sob) so I used some to test a new pattern.

I got started and had all my sewjo back!

And then I didn’t like the fit of either the top or bottom (a rare Greenstyle miss?) and I didn’t like them together at all. I think part of it is that I’m trying to force a match between the palm print and the neon, plus I could have cut the top a hair smaller. I might still give it a try in the water just to see if it’s worth making again with some tweaks–but that sure was a sad-trombone finish to some momentary sewing excitement.

I have a rash guard cut out for Doc (see above, so much swim fabric; someday we’ll make it to Hawaii) so maybe I can dive into that and recover the elusive sewjo yet again.

Happy Birthday, Bob Dylan

By in Uncategorized

He is 80 today and, while I haven’t listened to much of his stuff past Time Out of Mind, I still remember hearing “Desolation Row” on the local radio station in my late teens and thinking, “Wait, what is this?”

Here’s part of it synced to a live recording and here’s all 11 minutes of its glorious weirdness.

Friday Links

By in Friday Unrelated Information

1. A Helena Fitzgerald essay for you to while away some time on a Friday: Here Is The CDC’s New List of Activities in Which Fully Vaccinated People Can Engage Without Masks

Looking at old photos of yourself and not understanding how you could have felt so ugly when you were so obviously beautiful and then not applying this lesson to the present at all.

Adding clothes or home goods or candles or jewelry or fancy cookware or any number of other items that you will without question never in a million years actually buy to an online cart, and then abandoning those carts and leaving the tabs open and finding them still open much later, hanging around like these little ghosts of all the wholly different people whom for a minute you imagined you could buy your way into being.

2. Gym Instagram making it personal:

3. Mental health/artist Instagram with a reminder:

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