Confession: I killed a panda (with scissors)

So we all know what pandas look like. Roly-poly, black-masked, adorable,  with their woolly black-and-white contrasted coat. I wouldn't get in a cage with one, but I can admire their cuddlyness from afar.

So Caitlin said to me not long ago:

Grandma.

Yes, Caitlin.

Could you knit me something?

Sure, what would you like?

Could you knit me a panda?

 

A panda? I had so many panda patterns I didn't know where to start. Most of them were plain lousy, or even frightening.

This poor guy looks as if he was run over by a truck.

But hel-lo-o-o-o-o-o:  what was this? Just about the cutest knitted panda pattern I've ever seen! And he looked easy to make. The pattern came from World of Knitted Toys by Kath Dalmeny,  a book I've used for several successful projects, such as many of the characters in my Ugly Duckling story  which I gave Erica and Lauren for their birthdays.

I showed her the pattern. "I want it! I want it!" Caitlin said, so I told her, alrighty then, I'll knit it for you.

And then.

Well, it got weird.

Then weirder.

This thing didn't look like a panda at all: more like an anteater who was a victim of Monty Python's Owl Stretching Time.

By the time I finished the body, which was knitted in one piece, I knew I was in trouble. It looked like a fat bowling pin crossed with a pig. The head had a strange point on it, and was twice the size of the body. The eye-patches were about 2" too long.

Where did I go wrong???

Trying to sew the legs on was worse: they were long, skinny and tubular, and the animal wouldn't stand up. It splayed on the floor like a disabled anteater.

I  stuffed the body, tried and tried to sculpt it into some kind of shape that wasn't totally grotesque. It didn't work. I tried to open it up so I could unravel it and salvage the wool, which was very expensive.

No dice. It wouldn't happen. I took scissors to the thing, hacking the head off so I could at least have the stuffing back.  My panda lay before me, a mass of unravelled wool and destroyed morale.

I felt like crap. Obviously I had done something very wrong, but what?

Then this morning, something happened. . .

I found an example of the same (finished) panda on a web site called Random Meanderings. This entry is for some time in 2009.

OK then. . . it's supposed to look like  a pig on stilts!

Yes. It has a definite piglet quality, with elongated limbs, as if someone had fed it growth hormone.

And it doesn't look like it would stand up, either, with those floppy legs. For the sake of comparison, let's take another look at the original, then Piggy:

So it wasn't my fault. Moreover, it looks to me as if Random Meanderings followed the pattern exactly. It wasn't bad knitting, at all. In fact it looked very neatly done, which is not such an easy thing with a larger stuffy.

But this is what she got: a "what-is-it?", which I simply could not give to Caitlin.

The only thing I could think of was that I used a yarn substitution. These patterns all call for something called DK, which is not available in Canada and which no one has even heard of in yarn shops (which don't exist any more anyway - you have to dive into sale bins at Walmart).  I used a thinner version of "worsted weight", which makes up 90% of the yarn you can get here. It varies from almost threadlike to so massively thick, it should be labelled "super bulky".

(Blogger's note. No, that's not true. The funny-looking panda was knitted with the correct yarn and STILL came out looking like an English Bull Terrier with anteater genes.)

Whew. These two could be cousins. Is that genetically possible?  Anyway, my poor trashed  anteater-panda didn't look nearly as good as this one because it had weird bumps and bulges and a lot of very visible seams. It didn't look so much like a handsome English Bull Terrior as Eeyore from Winnie-the-Pooh.

 

Let me tell you my best and worst traits:

(a) I never give up.

(b) I never give up.

I just can't. I have to try again, try to win, because failure opens up a desperate plug-hole in the bottom of my spirit, causing all my will to live to drain away.

In my life, I've had about 90% failure, so you can imagine how I feel when something like this happens.

We live in an age where we can order a pattern for a few dollars, and get it via email within the hour. I decided to gamble on Debi Birkin because I think her patterns are brilliant. I was even able to manage Piecrust the Tortoise (below), though it still doesn't look like the original picture.

I made a turtle family which I gave my daughter-in-law for her birthday. The pattern was challenging enough to be interesting, but never once felt the wrath of my scissors or the ripping-out of fibrefill guts.

So now, probably stupidly, I will essay to waste still more money on still more black-and-white wool to try to make Ping Pong Panda. If he turns out at all, he'll be more of a cuddly teddy than a stand-up panda (who never stood up anyway).  But hey - if all else fails, I'll still have that tiny blue sweater. 

(Coda: I found this entry on a site called Stream of Consciousness, dated sometime in 2005. Makes me feel even better, because this panda is a lot closer to the original photo and the knitter STILL doesn't like the result.)

Monday, January 24, 2005

I received The World of Knitted Toys for Christmas. I decided to try a panda bear. It knitted up quickly, but finishing took forever. For me, finishing stuff is not nearly as fun as knitting. Oh well, I'm not terribly pleased with the end product. The corners are too square. And his legs seem awfully long. Maybe next time I'll try something with fewer parts.

Here's the funny looking Panda:

Please. . . don't ask!

How Woody Allen stole Manhattan, Part 2

Can you see T. C. and the gang strolling down the street?

How Woody Allen stole Manhattan, Part 1

OK! It's Monday morning and time for your assignment.

I've been wondering about some things - specifically, about Top Cat, that cult classic cartoon series which ran ever-so-briefly in 1961. Only 30 episodes were ever made, possibly because the characters were all petty criminals with no moral compass whatsoever. Not a good influence on the kiddies.

Watching these again on a Classic Toons channel, I'm finding them hugely entertaining. But there are certain things that make the back of my neck prickle.

My fave character in the Gang of Six, then as now, is Choo-Choo. When I looked up Top Cat in Wikipedia, an entire entry was devoted to the different characters. Here's what it said about Choo-Choo:

Choo-Choo

Choo-Choo, nicknamed Chooch to TC and the gang, is enthusiastic and devoted to TC even when he’s clueless as to what he’s doing. He is a pink cat with a white long-sleeve turtle-neck shirt, he is the tallest of the alley gang cats and often is depicted with the eyes of a Siamese cat. He lives at the fire house as the fire house cat as seen in one episode "Hawaii Here We Come". Choo-Choo is apparently a very skilled poker player, as stated by Top Cat in the episode "The Golden Fleecing". He had a couple of love crushes "Choo-Choo's Romance" and "Choo-Choo Goes Gaga-Gaga", however unlike Fancy-Fancy or Top Cat, Choo-Choo has no courage talking to girls. When he talks, his voice sounds like Woody Allen. In the movie, his voice is a bit narrow and higher and he plays bingo at a retirement. He is voiced by Marvin Kaplan and Jason Harris in the movie.

Yes. Choo-Choo is definitely the best cat, if not the "top" cat. The Woody Allen connection is a little strange however: how many people knew about him then? He was likely doing standup, and maybe he'd been on Ed Sullivan or something, but I don't think he'd been in any movies. But for some reason, Hanna-Barbera wanted a likeness of his voice, maybe for its fundamental New York-ness.

Anyway, concerning the above clip: you have to watch a specific portion, 1:09 to 1:22. It's very New Yorky, full of the funk and babble of the city and its ramshackle urban skyline. But just listen to the music! Doesn't it remind you of something, perhaps a cartoon take on Rhapsody in Blue?

Now watch the beginning of the clip from Manhattan, the first thirty seconds or so. Compare and contrast.

Jesus, I can't believe how similar they are! When Woody begins to narrate, it's like we're hearing Choo-Choo resurrected from the Hanna-Barbera vaults.

I can't help but think that Woody unconsciously borrowed from this cartoon when making Manhattan. This is only one of many episodes that opened in a similar way. I mean. . . with a character in it who was supposed to be him. . .

It's just odd, is all, like so many wonderful things in this not-so-wonderful world.

 

Dear Sir or Madam, will you read my book

    It took me years to write, will you take a look

Order The Glass Character from:

Amazon
http://www.amazon.com/-/e/B001K7NGDA

Barnes & Noble

http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/the-glass-character-margaret-gunning/1117863913?ean=9781927068885

Thistledown Press

http://www.thistledownpress.com/html/search/genre/Fiction/the_glass_character_p580.cfm

Chapters/Indigo
http://www.chapters.indigo.ca/books/the-glass-character/9781927068885-item.html?ikwid=the%

Alive but alone

I cannot imagine the provenance of this, though I do remember carefully cutting it out of TV Guide sometime in the late '90s, putting it in a book, and forgetting about it. Then, much later, rediscovering it by accident and scanning it.

I cannot imagine what sort of TV show this would advertise.

What happened is, I was photoshopping some pictures, my finger slipped, and suddenly all the photos in the file just vanished.  In the same instant a new file popped up, or should I say a very old one, pictures from the deep past that I had long ago given up for dead. I had either misfiled them, or they had disappeared into another dimension.

Et voila. Somehow, for some reason, they popped back through the portal into the Now. This picture, which I sometimes wondered about and was beginning to treat like someone who was lost in a war, was back in my hands.

Perhaps everything does happen at once, the past is really the present, and Einstein is looking at us all with his enigmatic little smile. I can't figure out the huge-eyed forlorn boy puppet holding the awful grimacing mask, his skeletal wooden joints

and threadbare clothing.

Who does he think he is? Who is he trying to be? And why is he back here looking at me now?

Dark night: thoughts on the Colorado massacre

Like a lot of people, I find I can't live - can't go about my day-to-day activities and try to enjoy life - if I'm paralyzed with grief, horror and fear. At the same time, how can I NOT feel this, and feel deeply for the survivors who are reeling with shock and disbelief?

It COULD happen to me, or to you. We don't have special protection, even if we believe in "God" or "the angels".  It's NOT "a movie" or "part of the show". Those AREN'T "firecrackers", but gunshots! Gunshots that kill people.


Do you still think everything happens for a reason? Then tell me, explain to me: what was the reason for this?

I get sad and melancholy and I don’t know how else to feel when the news is so horrendous. In a sense, you have to just push it away. It’s not good mental health to practice so much denial, and it’s not honest either, but what else can you do, not go out because you’re afraid you’ll be gunned down? I don’t care about me, though I’d rather be cleanly killed than be like Gabby Gifford who is now reduced to a bewildered, childlike state.

It’s my loved ones I worry about. All the time, really. I worry about apocalypse of some sort. The weather, world climate, which is already deteriorating alarmingly, fire and flood, drought and snowstorm occurring where/when they shouldn't be, and I wonder what I am leaving for my grandchildren and their children, if they even have a chance to exist. And/or terrorism spreading like an evil ugly cancer, ultimate weapons, what they used to call “germ warfare” that would knock out so many people, there’d be no one left to try to cure it.

I know these are worst-case scenarios and the stuff of science fiction and  movies/books about the horror of dystopia, but still, did anyone anticipate 9-11? I don’t see how anyone could have, and that's what alarms the shit out of me. It was just a taste of what terrorists might do to us. If it happens again on a mass scale, of course it would be all-out nuclear war and the end of everything.

We can’t think about this, of course, but there is a cost to repressing it all the time. If you talk about it and openly express fear about it, you’re seen as a sort of party-pooper who doesn’t know how to have a good time (text-text-text, tweet-tweet-tweet!). I asked Bill once, “what’s IN all these texts? What are people texting about?” Bill said, “NOTHING.” And I think he’s right. They have no content, so all they are is a sort of mutual narcissism and a smokescreen insulating people from their feelings.  

Myself, I lasted about two seconds on Facebook because every time I tried to post anything serious, all I got was dead silence, or a nasty jibe meant to send up my comment or minimize it with a joke. I felt like I was eight years old and being ostracized on the playground once again.

I'm not in a personal crisis now, my life is stable if a little dull, and in many ways I am blessed beyond measure.  But that doesn’t mean I have no problems. Is it normal to have problems? People pretend they don’t. But all these sick evil people are emerging who think it’s OK to randomly murder strangers, even children. Meanwhile people say things like, “I thought it was part of the show.” During 9-11, people repeatedly said, “It looked like a movie.” Do we know the difference any more?

With all this emphasis on "social networking", we're increasingly wearing masks and becoming anyone we want to be. It's fun for a while, then an awful barrenness steals in and begins to eat away at the core, the very foundation of your soul. And for the most part, you're not even consciously aware of it. Everyone's doing it, after all, so it must be OK.

Constant shallow tweeting, texting and phoning about nothing drowns out the drone of horror in the background, the sound of those awful air-raid sirens I used to hear as a kid (supposedly, just being tested out, but tested out far more often during the Cuban Missile Crisis and at other points when the nuclear clock stood at a few seconds to midnight).

I never used to hear about random shooters when I was younger: did you? Did you hear about events like this, or Columbine, or people just randomly opening fire in mall food fairs?

Why is this happening now, when it never used to happen before? Though there is a tremendous amount of denial about this subject, in many ways our world teeters on the brink. Brink of what? Climate meltdown, terrorism on a scale so massive it's beyond our capacity to grasp - and, the thing no one talks about any more, vast, even grotesque overpopulation.

Being crowded together far beyond the carrying capacity of the planet, a planet we have poisoned grievously and choked with vast islands of dead computers and other forms of plastic that will never degrade, has done something to us. It's cooking up a huge vat of collective stress, the kind of stress that can explode alarmingly in a susceptible person. I have a theory about why so many people are becoming grossly obese: it goes beyond the ubiquity of junk food in seemingly every store. Cramming a chocolate bar in your mouth helps you push down that low-grade vibration of anxiety about our survival as a species.

Try to project all the problems we have in the world to fifty years from now. I am afraid to. I just don't see how we will be able to stop the juggernaut, the relentless progression of a destruction we set in motion ourselves, mostly through thoughtlessness and greed.

We treat these horrendous fires and floods as if they came out of nowhere, but I see it as the planet hitting back, finally unable to stand any more abuse. We HAVE changed the world climate, folks - irrevocably, and not for the better. I am afraid that these feeble attempts to reduce our "carbon footprint" is too little, too late.

But we are awfully good at numbing ourselves to the truth, whether with drugs, food, or an obsession with technology you can hold in one hand like an ice cream cone.

If a lonely, isolated, socially-deprived person with a fascination with weaponry begins to entertain an idea - an awful idea - what will stop him? He won't talk to a friend about it because he doesn't have any friends. ("He kept mostly to himself" has become almost a cliche in these situations.)  Friends aren't people any more - they're Facebook pages and "tweets". (And I think it's no accident that the inventor of this strange form of non-communication named it after the sound a silly, superficial, bird-brained creature.)

Every time something like this happens, authorities are quick to tell the public that it was an "isolated case", just one disturbed nut case whose mental illness had nothing to do with the rest of us or the alienated, anxiety-ridden, sick world we live in. That makes everyone feel better for a while. Doesn't it?

I don't know what to do about all this. It's as if I'm expected to care, but not care, or at least not care very much. I can't prevent another dark night, have no idea how to start. But the profound social isolation and alienation that gave rise to this horrific act affects all of us, without exception. 

So we don't know how to feel. We don't know how to go on. "We thought it was part of the show," the survivors said.

And in an awful kind of way, maybe it was.

Crazy cats: nutty, funny cat gifs!

Flipper never had it so good. Interspecies romance at its finest. (Let's not get into animal hybrids here: catphin? Dolphat?)

Ohhhhhhhhh. . . yeahhhhhhhhh.

Feladdin and his flying litterbox!

Something tells me these two were trained. At least poor Doggie fell on something soft.

This is a classic. But I can't quite figure it out! Looks like an endless loop of sliding kittens.

Without a doubt, THE cutest cat gif to date. But there's always next week.

 

Dear Sir or Madam, will you read my book

    It took me years to write, will you take a look

Order The Glass Character from:

Amazon
http://www.amazon.com/-/e/B001K7NGDA

Barnes & Noble

http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/the-glass-character-margaret-gunning/1117863913?ean=9781927068885

Thistledown Press

http://www.thistledownpress.com/html/search/genre/Fiction/the_glass_character_p580.cfm

Chapters/Indigo
http://www.chapters.indigo.ca/books/the-glass-character/9781927068885-item.html?ikwid=the%

Don Draper and the shifty scientist

There's nothing I love more than old ads (except maybe old cartoons), and this one just reached out and grabbed me. Pure sixties nostalgia, sleek and sophisticated, which of course reminds me of my all-time-favorite TV series. . .

Et voila. This took very little photoshopping, was the exact size and head angle, and had a similar attitude of kibuki-like enigma. Don's in a little more contemplative mood than our "scientist and educator", who has the shiftyiness of someone who's about to blow up Cleveland. But they are oh-so-the-same: the skyscraper background, the clean boxes full of statistics giving the whole thing an air of - what? Of not-rotting-your-body-out-with-horrendous-cancerous-tumors-that-kill-you-before-you're-40?

Don's particular about his Luckys, but for the sake of the ad he must have been persuaded to switch. Now, wouldn't that be something - Don actually DOING ads? Posing for ads, I mean? Isn't he perfect? Isn't he the most amazing - I mean, he's the kind of guy who just smells good. Nothing more to say about it.

Half-alive in the barren land of publication

This isn't the clip, oh no, this isn't the clip  I wanted at all. If you've ever watched this big lumbering thing on TV - and for some reason I do, every year at Easter time, even though the story of Moses has nothing whatsoever to do with Easter - you'll know that the good part comes AFTER this scene. In which Moses crawls on his belly on the scorching sand, while Cecil B. deMille says stuff like "pitiless days, forlorn nights, only the scorpion and the cobra for his companions", while it just gets better and better as Moses squeezes his wineskin or whatever-it-is (canteen?) into his mouth for the very last drop of water. Then he sort of collapses and all these women come after him, but we won't be bothered with that.

In short, it's about an ordeal in the wilderness, a test of endurance and faith.

It's also all about a certain email I received today, a certain message, not a surprise, mind you, the only surprise was in the timing, but the timing was quite a surprise, yes, quite a surprise indeed.

For it was a rejection of a manuscript I submitted to a literary press, oh, some time ago.

Try JANUARY 2011.

Yes. That is how long it took to get my "no". In the interim I made several inquiries, mainly because I had been wildly excited when they expressed interest in seeing my work.

They asked for it. They asked for ME!

Then came the trek, the miserable trek, the long and miserable trek that nearly dried up my brain, let alone my hope.

This was the biggest press who had ever shown serious interest in me. Maybe it would work out! All I had to do was deliver the manuscript in person (none of this electronic nonsense, no sir, and who trusts the mail anyway?) across 20,000 miles of uninhabitable desert. Sounded fine to me. I love hot climates. 

But just in case, I wrapped one of those thingies around my head to keep the sand out of my ears.

The desert was pitiless, my friend, just like Moses' Land o' Cobras and o' Scorpions. It was a long hard ride as I tried to balance myself between reality
and hope. 

Pretty damn hot out there, but luckily Fulton the Camel was more than willing to carry the immense burden of paper (all 12,000 pages).

Along the way, Omar and I met some pretty weird types who had been out in the sun too long. This guy who forgot his clothes, and speaking of Moses, there was this guy who was looking at a burning BOOK!

My horse got tired after a while, so I had to find a suitable mount. He moved kind of slow, but didn't seem to mind the heat.

What can I say? Shit's shit. It took nine months to deliver the thing there, and nine months to get home again. Exactly a year and a half.

That's two pregnancies, back-to-back.

Why was I so surprised when the answer was "no"?

I wasn't. Surprised, I mean. Just devastated. Nothing like a hard punch in the gut after two pregnancies' worth of hope.

I mean, don't we all know it's better to rip the bandaid off fast? Must it be stretched out to a year and a half?

The only good thing is that I made a new friend, and he hasn't eaten me yet, maybe because he's made out of some alloy or something.  And Abu ben Adam (may his tribe increase!) has become my best bud, even though he insists on borrowing my lipstick and sunglasses.

I may make fun of all this, because it's the only way I can keep profound depression at bay and try to stifle the dreams I've nurtured for more than fifty years. It sort of works. No it doesn't, but the really stupid thing is, I haven't given up hope even though I KNOW I should have, long long ago.

Meanwhile, my manuscript, fading from yellow to brown and lying perfectly camouflaged in the desert, awaits discovery and spectacular success in the publishing world. . . after I die.