celaeno

this silver plated tea service (thrifted, $25) has been sitting on my cabinet for a while. it was completely tarnished when i got it and certainly hasn't been getting less tarnished over the last year or two. in a fit of very boring inspiration while dusting i decided to make polishing it up my useful little project for this week ("useful projects", usually cleaning something small and random, help me feel accomplished and less sad in the winter). also while i appreciate the gothic decadence of tarnished silver i think i'm more likely to use something that's bright and clean-looking.

for whatever reason it came with a second creamer, clearly from a different set. i started with polishing that one since it's less ornamented. i'm not using any of the dips or questionable DIY treatments since they might damage the plate more than it already is, meaning my only option is to polish them by hand. the tub of silver polish is dried out and rock-hard but still functional. after three days and 1.5 hours of standing over the sink i have EXACTLY THIS MUCH cleaned so far and am already seriously questioning my dedication. i am also very stubborn. tune in for updates to see which part of my personality wins!

woaaagh i really lost a full week there. i couldn't even knit half the time and that's how i know it's a Bad One.

yesterday i finally felt okay enough to plant my garlic. the early snow is mostly melted and it's been warm. i wanted to do half hardneck and half softneck but never could find anyone selling hardneck garlic so it's all Nootka Rose again. though almost none of mine colored up the way they're supposed to. it remains to be seen if 36 Garlics is enough garlics for the rest of the winter and spring.

thinking about that squirrel that bit into a head of garlic i had curing on the deck this fall, suddenly stopped, and then began wiping its tongue on the wood. i lost one clove of garlic but made that squirrel a little wiser.

i like creating posts which hint at fake media properties, especially videogames; so much of pop culture is like a plant that's been kept in a dark closet, weak and etiolated. and even here i can't resist a bathetic lapse into checkbox marketing-speak in the second half. but it's fun to imagine that all our "posterior collapse" media could be drawn from a different, wilder distribution, that it could be unexpected and strange, that we could be changed by it.

in a more general sense, however—

i think that culture should be an act of terrorism. people should stumble out of the cinema stunned like cattle at a slaughterhouse. you should turn on the radio and immediately crash your car and not even notice. every time you open a book you should have to lie down in a dark room afterwards.

videogames above all else should kill you stone fucking dead.

please excuse the mess i am currently Knitting Through It.