Jananas

By day I’m a financial analyst. I’m the cog in the machine that puts together your business cases  so that you can get the go ahead to launch. Last week I worked on a program that involved DRM (or even more importantly, a move towards the lack thereof!!). I got to explain to my manager what DRM is and why many people aren’t big fans of it. I had to add a footnote explaining it, just in case senior management didn’t understand either. I took it directly out of wikipedia.

“Digital rights management (DRM) is a generic term for access control technologies that can be used by hardware manufacturers, publishers, copyright holders and individuals to impose limitations on the usage of digital content and devices. The term is used to describe any technology that inhibits uses of digital content not desired or intended by the content provider.”

I understand that definition. It made me think if other people would understand it. If people don’t really think about ownership rights when they buy a song or download an e-book, then they may not understand the implications that DRM has for them. If people aren’t deep into the tech world or the music world or cutting edge authors, then they may not have a frame of reference for what this means.

How else can I explain DRM? How else can I frame the problem? Can I use another metaphor, something with more relevance to everyday situations? Something that someone who isn’t technically minded (and might even be dismissive of those who are) would still get? It hit me last night.

Imagine that you’ve bought furniture for your house – couches, a dining room table and chairs, a bedroom set. Imagine that you’ve moved homes twice in the last 10 years. Tomorrow you’ve moving into your third house. Except that when you go to move in you get told that you can’t take you’re furniture with you because you were only allowed to use it in “two houses”. That’s what DRM is – it is restrictions on how you’re able to use something that you’ve bought.

Imagine a world where someone told you how many times you could move your furniture or how many times you could sit on your couch. That’s DRM.

How else could I explain this? What other metaphors might work to communicate this idea?

I’ve been struggling lately with pain/stiffness/numbness in my right hand. We’re not 100% sure what’s causing it but I have noticed that too much knitting/spinning/typing on my work keyboard really aggravates it. The end result is that I’ve been trying to take it easy on the crafting front lately as I can’t do too much about the amount of typing I have to do at work.

My hand was feeling a little better this weekend so I did some spinning. First though I had to take yarn off the bobbins.

The first skein I spun using my left hand, drafting with my right. This is the opposite of how I learned/have practiced and should give you an idea of just how desperate I was to spin. I think that it worked out quite well. The second skein is some lovely BFL (quickly becoming one of my favorites) that I spun up this weekend. The last two are some merino/nylon blend that I dyed and spun several weeks ago. I did also spin up another braid of BFL this evening, but I took it off the bobbin and skeined it minutes ago and so don’t have a picture.

I wanted to share this picture because the colours cheered me up today while it was gray and rainy. Hopefully they make your day a little brighter, especially given tomorrow’s forecast of more rain.

Overall this weekend I spun 8 oz of fiber and skeined around 20 oz. I’m hoping that my hand will continue to feel okay this week so that I can go back to having a reasonable amount of spinning in my weekly routine. I also finished another book, got caught up on Big Bang Theory, ate some non-vegan baked goods,  prepped and supervised the hanging of some textiles, and picked up some fun buttons.

What did you do?

When traveling along the Mekong in Laos we stopped at several hill tribe villages. At one, there was a row of women along the pathway selling silk and/or cottons scarves and textiles. We grabbed a bunch from different women so that we spread our $$ around. We’ve given away most of the silk scarves as presents (there are only so many that Jason can wear after all). We kept this last mostly cotton textile piece for ourselves as Jason likes the pattern. It would make a good table runner, but our table is normally covered in art projects, bike parts, and miniatures so it wouldn’t be seen very much. Instead I picked up some neat hardware to hang textiles.

We hung it in the corner of the living room. It fits almost perfectly and we’ll be able to look at it all the time. Next up is a close up of the gold/black work so you can get a better idea of just how lovely the weaving is.

I scored some fun yarn related Craigslist finds this week. Even better was that they turned out to be from Caroline’s mom’s best friend. The first is a basic yarn winder, but I adore the old/rustic look that this has. I may have to spin up some yarn today so that I can use this to wind some skeins.

The second find was her mom’s working spinning wheel. I’m going to have to do some research to find out more about the manufacturer, etc. I’m thrilled that this wheel came here as it means that it will get loved and used and the tradition of loving yarn will continue. There is definite wear to the original orange paint job, but Caroline has already expressed interest in stripping it down and refinishing it. What an awesome project (and what awesome friends). I really enjoy the sense of collaboration and shared creative energy that my house has.

This wheel looks very antique/old school. Especially in comparison to my Majacraft Little Gem, which is tiny and has a very modern design. Something about this wheel makes me wish that we had our own little cottage. I think that it would be a perfect summer wheel. Imagine this next to a big stone fireplace and me spinning away the summer evenings. Time to stop daydreaming and to get my day going!

I always end up with a pile (or two) of things that would be good to reuse and make into other things. Two prime examples of this are a Rainbow Brite sheet I picked up for $8 and a giant bag of what was supposed to be wool for spinning but is something that isn’t spinnable. We’d come up with the idea of using it as stuffing for some homemade pillows and I thought that the Rainbow Brite sheet would be perfect.

Caroline was nice enough to sew these up and I stuffed away to my little heart’s content (getting covered in fluff in the meantime). We had enough filler for three normal sized pillows and a fourth smaller one made from an old Cabbage Patch Kids sheet.

We’re all excited about how awesome they turned out. They’re a little lumpy because I just took handfulls of the material and stuffed it on in instead of gently pulling it apart and fluffing it up. Regardless, they have that lumpy feeling that old pillows at your Grandma’s had. Its a comforting sort of familiarity.