The Centipede

Kendall Adams
Aug 1
3 min read

Updated: Aug 2

Fantastic news for absolutely no one- this site is renewed for three more seasons! It's wild to think that two years have already flown by and I still haven't quite nailed the discipline aspect of regularly posting. We're all just doing our best.

One: screw Spotify. While I love embedded custom playlists in my blogs, I will probably stray from that in favor of radio. Spotify's servers were down and wouldn't let me embed a playlist, so allow me two seconds to talk about my most recent love: public radio! Just in time for it to lose so much funding! I have derived so much joy from local radio lately, and especially NTS radio. You can search mixtapes for different moods or choose between 2 live stations. I can only open it when I feel emotionally prepared to hear the sickest mix I've ever heard and never hear anything like it again. Cancelling Spotify in favor of radio, hand selected music and meaningful conversation is absolutely rewiring my brain in the best way. I want to support local artists and djs, instead of my money being funneled into war and AI bullshit.

Listening to:

Trevor Jackson - Bristol Bass, Warehouse Beats & Soundsystem Soul 19th March 2020

This post doesn't serve much of a purpose other than showing off pictures of my magnum opus: the centipede scarf. This scarf was the absolute bane of my existence for almost two years. This project destroyed my life as I knew it. This scarf is the reason for countless hours in physical therapy and many many tears.

I saw this post and knew I had to do it. I immediately got to work and spent 2 days crocheting 6+ hours. As with most crafts/crochet projects, there was a learning curve. I didn't like the look or feel with the yarn that I had started with, so I frogged the whole thing and ordered a delicate cotton yarn. That was when the pain started.

That crochet marathon weekend in early 2024 robbed me of most of my mobility in my right wrist. There were moments where I lost my grip strength entirely. Carpal tunnel was the least of my worries, my pain was primarily caused by tendinitis and crushed nerves. Despite rebuilding strength, the most random things will set it off. Most recently, I tapped a keg at a weird angle that caused me to cry out in pain.

It was probably six months before I even flirted with the idea of continuing this project. About six inches long, it lived in the shipping bag that the yarn came to me in through four different moves. Crochet gives me such bad time blindness so I began to work on it again: one row at a time. I would force myself to take a walk after each row that I worked on. This project elicited so many emotions in me that I still don't entirely understand.

I expected fireworks when I crocheted that last stitch. How underwhelming it felt to hold the completed scarf- how can this tiny thing feel so insignificant in my hands but so utterly heavy on my heart. Woven in these threads is the grief of Whiskey's demise, of leaving a place that has become home, of losing people that you believed were forever.