Life In A Pair Of Baby Socks

This sock and its twin make the first successful pair of baby socks I've made since my informal apprenticeship to Ines J. of the Dreams Tuesday/Saturday Knitting Group. It's made of locally available gradient colorway crochet cotton thread, using 2.75mm circular knitting needles in the Magic Loop Method. The pattern is from Tita Ting, a former member of the knitting group who is now based in the US.

How ADORABLE is that! These are for Etienne.

I'm also making socks for his brother Ethan, my cousin Ellen's baby Jianna, my godson Inigo, my niece Lilo, my goddaughter Meg, and my friend Red's baby boy whose name I can't remember at the moment.

I started one sock from the beginning of the Beijing Olympics Opening Ceremony (8pm-11pm) and continued the next morning for another hour. The second sock I started Sunday afternoon and finished before dinner. Roughly four hours per sock: instant gratification!

At this point I must comment on something that struck me as really funny. Last Saturday I attended a high school alumni meeting at a mall cafe. When I showed the guys that first sock, their reaction was, "You MADE this? How?" The girls, upon seeing the sock, teased me, "Ano na namang ka-manang-an yan! (What, more old maid stuff?)" Upon which, they marched off and went shopping for clothes in Mango. Jopet and I looked each other in the eye and laughed.

Men, it seems, are interested in the HOW. As in "How on earth are you able to do it by hand without going nuts?" and "How can you make money from this?". Women with children, it seems, are focused on maintaining the image of looking younger longer without making it appear they are doing a lot of work. Ergo as much as possible they would rather not do the work of making the sock if they can buy it with a brand. Makes life so much simpler, neh?

Why do I do this? Because I can. How do I do this? By making a lot of mistakes first. What's in it for me? Creation. Women with children have one up on me there, but I have the the inclination and make the time for this. Will I make money from this? Who knows. Nevertheless, Etienne and all the children in line for socks have my love along with it.

Philippine Pre-Colonial Gold

Photo: "Kinnari" (mystical half-bird, half-woman) gold vessel, Gold of Ancestors exhibit, Ayala Museum.

This is the reason why Spaniards went out to expand the limits of the known world in the 16th century. We all know the story from school, but it's a totally different experience when the gold is literally in your face. This is breathtaking.

The 4th floor of the The Ayala Museum permanently houses a mind-boggling exhibit of just over 1,000 pre-colonial gold artifacts that show our historical and cultural links to neighboring Southeast Asian cultures. Items on display range from jewelry, decorative detailing for clothing and weapons to badges of rank, ceremonial vessels, as well as funerary and religious accessories. Quietly collected for 25 years by the family of National Artist Leandro Locsin, the items are considered part of national patrimony and had been kept under wraps until the creation of a secure and appropriate exhibit location. The collection was finally exhibited publicly upon the construction of the new Ayala Museum in 2004. The exhibit is curated by premier art historian Dr. Florina H. Capistrano-Baker.

Jessica Zafra tells us more in Newsweek here. My favorite blogger Marketman, who was invited to the opening, has some lovely pictures and more food for thought (pun intended) here.

We went to see the exhibit last July 23 with my mother's friends UP Balik-Scientist Raul Suarez and his wife Pining. I was pleased to see a lot of students around; on their own, like most people, I don't think it would occur to them to drop by the Ayala Museum just for fun. This isn't something you hear about all the time on tv or the radio (I do however think it's a great date place for myself and TDM. I want him to see it with me.)

The entrance to the exhibit is designed to look like a temple door but it's outfitted like a bank vault security gate that opens every 30 minutes. When you see the gate slide down you get the feeling you've entered a time-travelling space ship. Some tourists tried to get out the way they came, but apparently the security is such that you can't get out the way you came in. You have to go where the end of the exhibit leads you, and there are sensors that slide another gate upwards to let you out from there. You can't get in from the outside that way, either. Which is great, because a collection this stunning and awe-inspiring can teach us a lot of things about who we are as a people. To lose that would be a tragedy.

We sat ourselves in front of a curved cinema screen where a well-produced video told the story of Philippine gold from the geological formation of the archipelago up to just before Spanish colonization. The photos from the Boxer Codex of Filipinos in native garb sporting gold earrings and other displays of wealth and rank were familiar from school readings. You could tell who the rich individuals were from their distended earlobes -- only those who could afford it wore earrings, and gold was naturally heavy. Walking around I could actually see a number of items I would love to wear, if only I didn't need a motorized wheelchair to transport myself around with while wearing them! (In the first place I don't know a lot of people who could even afford the motorized wheelchair.)

The crowning glory of this exhibit was a magnificent chain link halter for some chieftain that I think once held a ceremonial scabbard (the missing bit that connected to some torn-off gold wire where the halter ends at the hip). FOUR kilos of gold chain link. Four KILOS of fine, fine, FINE work.

The amount of detail in such artifacts reflects superb, painstaking craftsmanship of incredible sophistication. You'd appreciate this in the varied styles and techniques used -- gold foil, filigree, chain-linking, others. The jeweller-historian Ramon Villegas's Ginto: History Wrought in Gold could enlighten us further (we own a copy of his 1983 book Kayamanan: Philippine Jewelry Tradition). Wish I could afford one. New York-based Filipiniana blogger Pu-pu Platter shares beautiful photos on Flickr. I would dearly love for regular folks to enjoy the photographs of the collection on top of the intriguing story of the discovery, how the Locsins funded the archaeological dig and how they decided for it to be accessible to the ordinary Filipino in this way. It deserves its own National Geographic cover story.

Luckily for us folks with internet access, The Probe Team covered "The Surigao Treasure" and aired it just last June 8, 2008. There's a good (but short) article accompanying the documentary. It was shown a day later as ABS-CBN's Independence Day Special "Gintong Pamana", which I'm pleased to find on YouTube. I missed both showings, but thanks to online links, I got intrigued again and want to return to the Ayala Museum. Or read the bibliography suggested by Pu-pu Platter in his May 4th comment to Marketman's post. (Funny how, when you're not required to read something, finally reading it becomes so delicious because you're just plain CURIOUS.)

Then there's that gold foil document inscribed with ancient Tagalog/Sanskrit whose significance (at least to us) would approach that of the Rosetta Stone or the Dead Sea Scrolls. It tells of a wealthy man who owed a debt of 900gms worth of gold and thus became a slave because he couldn't repay his debt. What a great story -- that could be made into either a novel or a movie.

But my favorite piece of all is that golden vessel shaped into a Kinnari, a mystical bird-woman that Hindu-Southeast Asian culture refers to as the epitome of grace and beauty. Graceful and beautiful the artifact was, indeed. You can see the very delicate facial expression in the photo above, and the exquisite feather detailing around the vessel, which I imagine held perfumed oil. It is displayed as found, slightly squashed (gold being very soft it couldn't have kept its shape under soil), but that doesn't diminish its very fabulousness.

I'm going back. (You can come along, and see it for only Php 225 for the entrance ticket. Bring an id, because they ask for one. I know, it's the price of a restaurant entree. But it's a special, special exhibit. It's worth it. Make it a date. Impress your significant someone. Or teach yourself something new. Today's a great day to consider it.)

Yet Another Txt Scam

I would like to warn you all about this scam text I received from +639278173011 with the ff. message:

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CONGRTLTIONS!!! You Have Won 300th\HONDA JAZZ Last May 27,2008 ur Cell # as Home Partner Winner. Call ds # for details ds is Jobert Lapuz of Phil,Com,Center....

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Kailangan pa bang i-memorize yan? (evil Korina Sanchez laughter)

Marami pa sana akong gustong sabihin, but the evil Korina Sanchez laughter will have to suffice. I would just like to point out that

1) I did not join any raffle of that sort.
2) There is no DTI Permit number.
3) Hindi ba condemned na ang PhilComCen building along Ortigas? Ni walang landline for return call.
4) Strange how the sender abbreviates important words and yet wastes sms space with extraneous punctuation marks at odd points.

Aga aga nagkakalat na ng lagim. I tried to report this on the DTI website but there's this frakkin form which requires you to have a respondent. I think that's for complaints against legitimate DTI-registered companies. I thought they had a fraud unit somewhere. They don't even have a "contact us" for emailed complaints re fraud warnings. Or maybe you report this to City Hall.

Of course I will also report this to Marietta Giron over at the Philippine Daily Inquirer. But by then the perpetrator will have changed his number. You guys know what to do.