Liz Denys

Tan stoneware clay with black speckles and light grog, slab-built, satin bright blue glaze

Aged leather / dazzle camouflage / coming together? pushing apart?
Medium brown stoneware clay with white grog, slab-built, matte black glaze

Last November, signs banning e-assist bikes were tacked onto Prospect Park's rule signs:

I'm in Streetsblog today with a piece about why reversing this arbitrary ban is a matter of equity:

Over Memorial Day Weekend, an infuriating scene unfolded in Prospect Park. A now-viral tweet showed NYPD and NYC Parks officers setting up a sting in Prospect Park, stopping riders on e-assist bikes, including parents transporting toddlers:

Nypd has an ebike check point at prospect park this afternoon, apparently. stopped my husband on his pedal assist ebike from bringing our daughter into the park. Threatened him with a $150 fine and destroying his bike. #bikenyc pic.twitter.com/6ZgKqGSjLX

— Shay O'Reilly (@shaygabriel) May 29, 2022

According to the tweet, officers were even threatening to destroy the e-assist bikes, which are legal to ride on New York City streets, but have been banned in Prospect Park due to an arbitrary decree from the city Parks Department. This policy is discriminatory and ableist, and harmful to climate goals. Council Members Shahana Hanif, Rita Joseph and Crystal Hudson, whose districts border or include Prospect Park, all agree that Prospect Park needs a thoughtful policy to include e-assist bikes. I also urge Mayor Adams to right this wrong and set an e-assist policy based in fact, not fear, for Prospect Park.

You can read the rest of my opinion piece on Streetsblog.

Content warning: discussion of fatphobia in advertising

Practically overnight, my ads on Instagram went from annoying but benign reminders of capitalism to an utterly dehumanizing nightmare. Suddenly, every third or fourth photo of my friends' latest adventures with their kids, pets, and travels near and far was punctuated with liposuction ads.

Effective immediately, I've stopped reading and posting to Instagram because I refuse to subject myself to repeated messages pushing a potentially deadly procedure because people fear my "unruly" body.

Honestly, I'm disappointed that I've held out for so long here. I've spent a painful amount of time tweaking Instagram's advertising algorithm before by "hiding" ads and blocking accounts so it would stop showing me shapewear and diet apps - something I should never have had to do in the first place. Plus, hatred of fat bodies like mine has always been rampant on Instagram: many highly successful influencers' platforms are rooted in fatphobia, often directly.

I've previously delayed leaving Instagram because I knew I would lose social connections to people I care about, and I will grieve the connections I'm sure to lose. At the end of the day, the responsibility to create a safe platform for people no matter what body they inhabit should not be overwhelmingly borne by the people it harms.

A fan of my Library Blanket color palette preview tool asked if I could make one for the Mitered Corner Blanket, so I did. This blanket's square building blocks are also made by holding different pairs of yarns together, so this tool can be used to help imagine how a custom yarn palette would knit up.

The tool will also generate the color list for the yarn names given, so you can easy copy it without the bulk around the input fields.

I've included the original color palettes stated in the pattern, the additional palettes Purl created a year later, and two palettes of my own creation, and you can also create your own palettes either by selecting Purl Soho Linen Quill yarns from the dropdowns or by entering custom yarns in the text and color input fields. For each of the Purl Soho Linen Quill yarns in the dropdowns, I selected a hex color I felt corresponded well to the photo of that colorway. (Of course, a single color doesn't fully capture the subtleties in these yarns, and you may think a different hex color better matches a colorway than the one I chose! If you'd rather use a different hex color for a yarn, you can input it like you would for a custom yarn.) To preview this pattern with different yarns than the two Purl Soho specified in the pattern, you can enter your own yarn names and hex colors.

When you update any of the fields in the tool, the Mitered Corner Blanket rendering and color list automatically update below.

Mitered Corner Blanket rendering:

Color list: