I made these socks from a ball of Opal yarn using the colour pallet from the famous van Gogh painting “Vase kit Sonnenblumen.” I liked working with these colours. I happened to find a golden solid that blended almost perfectly with the yellow in the variegated yarn.

Into the giveaway stash.

I’ve started the next pair – this one Opal Rainforest 17-4 Ply Sock Yarn – a nice combination of greys/whites/yellow/turquoises. The repeating pattern is a bit shorter than the Van Gogh pattern above.

As I sit knitting I have the TV on to one of the US news channels but I’m going to have to turn it off! Even though everybody’s known the result of SCOTUS abortion decision since it was leaked a month ago, it’s angering. What’s so terrible about that decision is where it takes women – not only in the US, but we will feel that decision ripple through Canadian politics – particularly since several of the Conservative leadership candidates are promoting the same arguments as far-right Americans are.

Today I read an article in The New Yorker that shows just how far-reaching this decision is. “We’re Not Going Back to the Time Before Rove v. Wade. We’re Going Somewhere Far Worse“. We are entering an era not just of unsafe abortions but of the widespread criminalization of pregnancy. That’s the subtitle. It’s a lengthy read but here’s the gist:

“We won’t go back”—it’s an inadequate rallying cry, only prompted by events that belie its message. But it is true in at least one sense. The future that we now inhabit will not resemble the past before Roe, when women sought out illegal abortions and not infrequently found death. The principal danger now lies elsewhere, and arguably reaches further. We have entered an era not of unsafe abortion but of widespread state surveillance and criminalization—of pregnant women, certainly, but also of doctors and pharmacists and clinic staffers and volunteers and friends and family members, of anyone who comes into meaningful contact with a pregnancy that does not end in a healthy birth. Those who argue that this decision won’t actually change things much—an instinct you’ll find on both sides of the political divide—are blind to the ways in which state-level anti-abortion crusades have already turned pregnancy into punishment, and the ways in which the situation is poised to become much worse.

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2022/07/04/we-are-not-going-back-to-the-time-before-roe-we-are-going-somewhere-worse?utm_source=twitter&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=onsite-share&utm_brand=the-new-yorker&utm_social-type=earned

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Everybody’s tired. I’m tired. But we’re all going to have to summon the energy to become involved in various political activities if we’re to retain a modicum of civil society and push back against the dystopian reality of “The Handmaid’s Tale”!

June 25/22 – the next day:

Here’s what Margaret Atwood has to say abut it all: Enforced childbirth is Slavery! Read it.

This image sums it up: “Let Us Pray!“

The SCOTUS decision is so amazingly ignorant: “Why is right-wing Christianity the only religion afforded legal and political accommodation in America?“