progress and “progress”

Sometimes I feel like a bit of an internet split personality. Of course all craft bloggers are human beings who have interests outside of crafts and reading/writing about crafts, but these past couple weeks have been a bit odd for me, what with the blizzard in Chicago coinciding with the protests, then violence, then protests, and today - finally! - celebration in Egypt. I'm not going to pretend to be an expert on Egypt; I've never even been there, actually. And I'm certainly no political scientist, and not even a historian. But I am in many ways a soft-hearted individual, and violence and oppression of any kind makes me sick to my stomach. Combine those feelings with my elation over an epic blizzard and, well, it's been a very confusing couple of weeks. Suffice it to say I was thrilled to hear that Hosni Mubarak resigned this morning (morning Chicago time, not Cairo time, obviously), and while I'm naively hopeful about a chance for an actual democratic government to form in an Arab country, I'm apprehensive. So for the time being I'll do what I can do - keep up with events in Tunisia and Egypt, and especially Yemen. Inshallah.

that's me three years ago at the shrine of Hatim Ibn Ibrahim al-Hamadani, in Manakha, Yemen.

Suffice it to say - my research doesn't exactly interface with my crafting interests. And I'm not sure I'd like it to. Case in point: there's no way to talk about contemporary events in the Middle East in the same blog entry as a discussion of a sock in progress. Sigh.

These are some burning stripes. I've been kind of semi-obsessed with this pattern ever since I saw the entry in Elinor's sock contest way back when. That heel. IT WILL BE MINE.