Joan of Arc and the Quiche Lorraine

Ah. St. Joan of Arc's day -- she's one of my personal favorites (and what an abundance of St. Joan memorabilia one can purchase on ebay! But let's not discuss that right now...) -- and provides a good excuse for a dinner we always look forward to -- Quiche Lorraine. It takes half a pound of bacon, and tonight I'll use the slab that's in the freezer, left over from last year. We don't eat a lot of bacon around here.

Indeed, I don't often cook with cream, either, but you can't skimp on Quiche Lorraine.

We don't EVER eat barbecue on St. Joan of Arc's day, by the way, cause that would be tacky.

I'm waiting for some yarn, coming in from Patternworks. Do I need it at this moment? I do not. Will I even get to it for some weeks to come? Nope, unless I take it in to be the office knitting (translation: mindless stuff that can be done while waiting for the ancient computer to download Adobe files). And yet, do I need it desperately?

Yes. Oh, yes. It's the yarn for two shawls, both of which they're carrying in the new catalog (the Summer update). I want to see this yarn. I want to touch it. I want to get a clearer idea of what knitting with sequins is going to be like.

(Doesn't it HURT?)


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Now, here's what I forgot:

It's Friday! And since it's not true, as many people (including bunches o' Catholics) think, that the Catholics get to eat fish on Fridays now (only if one performs an Act of Charity, or other penitential rite), I'm a dangerous woman today, 'cause I've got my eye out for the main chance. Even LOOK like you might need an Act of Charity performed on you, and I'm there.

Maybe I'll walk on downtown and distribute largess.

Naughty Plagiarists

It was a Day of Obligation today, being Ascension Thursday, so the office was closed. A good day for cleaning one's private office. Wherein one found many many things to throw out.

Proof of plagiarism committed by students who graduated years ago, for instance. I threw those away -- the more recent files are big enough, God knows.

Still, I hated to say goodbye to some of them-- they cause me some grim amusement.

My favorite plagiarism examples so far:

1) The student who believed that his English professor would believe he wrote like William Hazlitt.

2) Two students, in the same sorority, who turned in the same paper for the same course. At the same time.

3) A student who turned in a paper he'd gotten off the internet, which asserted that the Houyhnhnms had read the entire works of Darwin, thereby alerting any non-comatose professor to the fact that Something Was Wrong and Needed to be Examined.

Ah, well. I let them all go.

Knitting content?

I'll take my Catherine Parr sleeve to choir rehearsal. That'll cheer me up.

Thomas Moore's Birthday

Here's the sleeve to Catherine Parr -- if you look closely, you can see the flecks of color in the dark gray and the brass as well:



Making nice progress. I've got more time to knit at night, now that the semester's over and I get enough sleep.

It's Thomas Moore's birthday today. We played James Flannery, singing Moore songs, during dinner, which was not an Irish dinner, though we did have pork chops, beloved by the Celts.


Now, Thomas Moore wrote such songs as "The Last Rose of Summer," "The Harp that Once Through Tara's Halls," "The Minstrel Boy," and "Believe me if All Those Endearing Young Charms," but let's not dismiss him -- he was one of Byron's best friends --

and Byron didn't suffer fools gladly.

So. Farewell, but whenever.

Budgie Relationships

Keeping up with the livestock: that was a large part of Memorial Day.

The bees, for one thing; got into the hive and found them well and good and raising children. We added another floor to their house. Gave them more room to move in. Rejoicing all round.

Then, the budgies. They have awfully small brains, to be as complex as they are. Since they're flocking birds, they like, nay, require company, so we always have two. But about a month ago, when Welkin died, Sunny acted like a widow whose new-found freedom had gone to her head and caused her to take a trip around the world and spend too much money on entertainment. She played on the plastic rings, which she had never done. She threw gravel out of the gravel bowl, with apparent glee. She sang and sang and sang.

I began to wonder if she hadn't taken out an insurance policy on Welkin, whom she'd never seemed fond of anyway, and had done her in herself.

But then we noticed that she'd started spending a lot of her time on the floor of the cage right where Welkin had keeled over, and was pecking at the spot as if she was trying to dig Welkin up. (Which she can't do, since Welkin's out under the oak tree.)

Well, that did it. After we took care of the bees, we went and bought another budgie, who hasn't been named yet. And Sunny, who never acted like a regular budgie -- never really buddied up with poor dear dead departed Welkin -- REALLY LIKES the new bird, and has been doing tricks on the plastic rings and throwing gravel on her.

What is this gravel business, anyway? Do the budgies in Australia throw dirt on each other as part of the ancient courtship rituals of their kind? Or is this behaviour a product of the Cage Environment?

They've gone to sleep for the evening, at any rate. I'm off to knit.

Catherine Parr and the Bees

As promised, the front of Catherine Parr:



Shouldn't take too long now, with the front and back both done. Sleeves go quickly, not just because, in a drop-shoulder style, they take up less of the garment than even in a set-in style, but also because, since they ARE smaller than the front or the back, they're less tiring; one sees so much progress so quickly -- it's easer to spend a lot of time knitting.

The bees are ok, as far as we can tell without getting into the hive, which we plan to do tomorrow:



They're happy enough, and acting normally. We think there ought to be more of them around, however.

And, because Sam is particularly happy about the iris, I include it here:



And to think a few days ago I was griping about the weather. It's a gorgeous day today, warm and sunny. Got bees. Got flowers. Think I'll take the knitting out on the deck.



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It was nice on the deck for a while, but now it's cooled off. We're in for the day.

But I have a treat for all you crafters: a lovely and tasteful Toilet Paper Jesus, found for you by Fr. Bryce, over at A Saintly Salmagundi. Needs some glitter, though.

Wailing and Gnashing of Teeth

Oh, weep and sorrow. Wail and gnash teeth. The trip's off; it's hard to figure out a sane reason for putting a child who's thrown up twice in one day into the car and driving for six hours, even if he doesn't seem REALLY ill. It's just asking for trouble, for one thing, and for another, well, you know, the child should be taken better care of.

Alas.

So, no Digby Mary Magdalene for me. Michelle plans to take pictures, though, which she'll bring on home -- she's figured out that she can take enough pictures that, given a three-hour play, she can take one every two minutes. That gives one pause, doesn't it? a l-o-o-o-n-g slide show.

And, bless her heart, she's promised to drop by the Lush store as well, and acquire goodies for us.

So I'm partly mollified.

And since I wasn't planning to go into work anyway, and had of course had my heart broken by not being able to go to Toronto, etc., etc., I finished the front of Catherine Parr. Ha! Now for the sleeves!

If I do indeed finish this project, and the little Fair Isle for my granddaughter, I will have finished 5 adult sweaters and 2 child sweaters this winter. Not a bad total for a working girl.

Mary Magdalene in Toronto

Even though it's been cool this week, I know that my knitting season will soon be over. (No air conditioning in this house.) I'd like to get my Catherine Parr sweater done before high summer hits, as well as Oriental Flower, for my little granddaughter. I'm working the Catherine Parr in Hebridean 3-ply, from Virtual Yarns, in Selkie and Corncrake, and finding it very satisfying. I like the simple but effective color work in Catherine Parr -- the golden fretwork against the rich dark background, made rich by the flecks of color in the yarn and also by the texture of the allover diamond pattern. I like the feel of the Hebridean yarn, also rich. I'm enjoying as well the fact that the gauge is big enough that it goes pretty quickly. There's a picture of the border earlier on in the entry for the 10th of May -- I'll post another in a few days.

We're getting ready to drive north to Toronto, to see a production of the Digby Mary Magdalene play, at the University of Toronto. I'm taking the family, and driving up in a leisurely fashion, and missing the scholarly presentations, alas. But I'm looking forward to the production of the play, one of my favorites. I'm especially interested in seeing how the company produces it without the medieval infrastructure. Will they set the hell stage on fire, as called for in the script? How, exactly, will they construct the ship which is supposed to plow through the audience, taking various players from the Jerusalem stage to the Marseilles stage? I'll let you know.

Besides the Digby Mary Magdalene, however, the child and I are excited about getting to a Lush store in Canada. We got addicted to their stuff while we were living in England, and though we can indeed order it from Canada, the postage is too high for us to make it more than a Christmas treat. So we're going to stock up. Main goal: the Big Blue Bath Bomb, which 1) fizzes in the bath water delightfully, 2) turns the bath water a bright and deep blue, and 3) adds a lot of seaweed to the bath. Makes playing with boats even more entertaining than usual.

I've only met two of the Lush bath bombs that I wasn't ecstatic about, neither of which I can find on the shopping page -- perhaps they've been discontinued. One contained coffee grounds, and though the idea of sitting in a bath smelling like cafe-au-lait was a good one, the idea of sitting in a bunch of coffee gounds wasn't. Very disconcerting. "This is garbage," one thinks to oneself, which detracts from the joy of the experience. The other was full of shiny metal star-shaped confetti, and though lovely and darling, the points hurt when you sat on them.

But that's the Lush company for you -- always willing to try something new.

(For adult baths, my recommendations are Waving Not Drowning -- very calming -- and Tisty Tosty -- rose smell, and rosebuds to float in the bath.)

Spring-a-Rama and the Donuts

I worry about my weather pixie. Sometimes I'll be sitting in my house with the heat on, in warm clothes, and she'll be prancing around outside in short sleeves. I understand that, living in cyberspace as she does, she doesn't have the same wardrobe requirements that I do, but still. She's broadcasting from about six blocks away. At the moment I'm writing this, she's wearing sleeves, but they're much too diaphanous.

Now that I come to think of it, however, I remember that this morning I sent the child off to school in shorts, which, looking back on it, I understand to have been a mistake.

When we go off tonight to the parish "Spring-A-Rama" he'll have to have warmer clothes on, or he'll freeze to the Ferris Wheel.

Perhaps the weather pixie hasn't had time to change yet, either. Or maybe she's just being hopeful.

Cause this is NOT a day in late May. It's somewhere around the beginning of April.

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We're successfully back from Spring-A-Rama, where we spent money on Doughnuts and Plastic Junk. The doughnuts are a major part of Spring-A-Rama. They have been mentioned in the parish bulletin repeatedly. The priests have pointedly mentioned them in the announcements. We have been told quite often that during Spring-A-Rama week the sales over at the new Krispy Kreme outlet will fall. I wouldn't say that we've been given A Directive, no, no. But it's definitely been a Very Strong Suggestion.

The school children were allowed to buy these doughnuts after lunch on Monday; my child reported that the most exciting part of this enterprise was not the doughnut itself, though he liked it well enough; no, the best part was being allowed to go and buy the doughnut At The Booth In The Parking Lot, which, he explained, made it just like recess except that they were eating doughnuts.

My guys did not fall off the Ferris Wheel and die, which I fully expected (as always), so that was successful, too.

Our duty fulfilled for another year. Ta da! Now I get to sit and knit. Catherine Parr is coming nicely -- I'm halfway up the front.

Surviving East Texas

We're all back from East Texas, and we all survived. The child missed a day of school, though, so I had to write a note explaining the educational value of the trip. As it turns out, I was supposed to write it BEFORE we left, so that he wouldn't have an Unexcused Absence. But I didn't, so he does. I had to write the note anyway, so that he could do his homework.

I enjoyed that note. I hope I get to write a lot more in the years to come. I listed the subjects in which the child had been educated -- history, for instance, (that'd be the Giant Statue of Sam Houston), or entomology (exactly how fast do fire ants move?), cultural studies (the eating of crawdads), archeology (remains of old homestead) -- I had a good time.

And oh, joy, we're allowed to take our knitting on the airplanes now. At least, at the moment we are. Last December, I forgot I'd brought my lovely embroidery scissors along (I was working a Fair Isle -- Starmore's "Mardi Gras"), and those got confiscated. But the knitting survived, though it got mauled around some. And this trip, I even had long lethal looking Addi Turbos. Made people nervous. But I got on board.

(That was the knitting content for the day).

Waitress Admires Sweater

A knitting story: I was in a restaurant having lunch, when the waitress asked me where she could buy a sweater like mine. Alas, you can't, I told her; I made it myself. No! Not possible!

I live for moments like that.

And it turns out she knits, but it hadn't hit her that she could use the craft to create the kind of thing I was wearing, the cover sweater from Knitting the New Classics, edited by Kristin Nicholas. I love this sweater. The silk-and-cotton yarn makes it perfect for spring and fall. In fact, I've knit it twice; when I first made it I weighed 100 pounds more than I do now, and instead of getting rid of the sweater, I took it apart and redid it in my new size. Took one hell of a lot less time than it did originally. Good reason to get in the daily walk.

So I gave her all the information she needs to find the pattern and yarn. I love moments like that. Ambassador for knitting, that's me.



On the subject of weight loss, though, here's a treat!

I remember this era of Weight Watchers very well. The company's saner now. I remember a thing called "cheese danish" -- the quotation marks were part of the title -- which involved mixing cottage cheese with no-cal sweetener and cinnamon, spreading it on a piece of toast, and broiling it. Nasty. Also "roasted peanuts," created by mixing a drained can of button mushrooms with salt, and roasting them in a low oven for hours. Also nasty.

On the other hand, I learned a method of using leftover fish I still use and even enjoy. (There was always an abundance of leftover fish in the refrigerator, if you were on Weight Watchers in the 70's, since you had to eat it 6 times a week, not counting breakfasts.) One takes a slice of bread, toasts it on one side, spreads a TINY bit of mayonnaise on it and then flakes the leftover fish and spreads it on top, and then broils it. Oddly edible, and a good breakfast. I call it "fish toast," and still eat it regularly in the morning. However. My husband, who can cheerfully eat Orkney Herring Pate out of the can, has to avert his eyes at breakfast when I have fish toast.

Anyway. The Weight Watchers recipe cards are just lovely. Thanks to Pound for providing them.

Going to Purgatory

It's raining; it's windy. It's spring. The bees are all inside the hive; they've got some jobs to do -- being bees, they probably have MANY jobs to do -- but I can see a lot of them hanging out in the entry, discussing the weather. Any minute they can fly, they're out of there.

I'm pleased to find that I'm going to purgatory (the place from whence you don't go to hell). My only problem here is that by behaving myself better and better, a little (very little) each year, I've now got my health to the point that, according to insurance programs online, I'm likely to survive another 40 years at least, unless I get hit by a bus. This is a long time in which to practice keeping one's temper, alas. Especially if you've got mine.

On the other hand, if I'm to believe The Castle of Perseverance, all I need to do is croak out "mercy!" right before I run out of breath, and I'll be ok.

It's good to have a plan.

(Thanks to Fr. Bryce Sibley for the Purgatory link.)

Things Fall Apart

So, there you are, you're a graduate student, and you're writing your dissertation and teaching Freshman Comp, and you figure, well, this is hell, but pretty soon I'll be outa here, and I'll have a job, and then things will ease up. So then you're an assistant professor, and you're worried about getting tenure, and you're teaching a bunch of classes you've had to invent out of more or less whole cloth, and you figure, well, ok, this is not good, but someday I'll have tenure, and then things'll ease up, and it'll be so much better, just wait and see. So then after that you get tenure, and you're an associate professor, and you serve on about 10 committees of various sorts, and you help out on oh, bunches of projects, and you help search for three new professors, and you're still teaching classes you've had to invent, not to mention which you've got of course all that research, and you think to yourself, well ok, this is pretty damn bad, but soon the semester will be over, and then I'll have a chance to get some stuff done around the house, or better yet, clean the office up, and you try all week to clean the office but there keep being little fires to put out (somebody please explain to me how you can possibly have an actual emergency in an ENGLISH department; I'm still trying to figure that out), and so by Friday, there you are in piles of books and papers, not nearly done, not nearly done, and you go home anyway, and about that time you have a little hissy fit and today you're pretty much not doing ANYTHING.

Well, the laundry, ok.

One of my colleagues told her students that this last semester was so bad that she didn't have time to do her laundry, so she had to buy new clothes when she ran out. I don't believe this for a moment. Really.

But as for knitting:

Scapa's done! Ta da! Here it is being heavily blocked:




And Catherine Parr is coming along nicely; I'm working it in Hebridean, in Selkie and Corncrake. I've started the back now (I actually follow the sequence in patterns -- front, back, sleeves, accoutrements -- I like it that way):



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And back to the now-over semester:

As mentioned previously, one of the nicer parts of those four months was the Poetry Workshop -- twice a week I could count on an enjoyable hour and a half. Here is the Fabulous Picnic Loaf, meant to dazzle and impress -- it's edible, but you wouldn't wake up in the middle of the night and wish you had more:



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Nice afternoon. Sam's napping; Andrew's watching some Deadly Venoms of the World and How They Affect You, In Gruesome Detail program, on the Discovery channel (he's allowed to watch natural disasters but not actual evil -- naughty snakes, fine; naughty humans, no); and I'm doing laundry. And knitting.

Well, and to be honest, watching MST3K -- "The Horrors of Spider Island" is on, and it's one of the best. The movie's so bad that it would be worth watching even without the chatter, but the little robots are in fine form with this one. And so much to work with! An entire dance troupe of lovelies in 50's sundresses! A horrendous spider made out of a cereal box and some pipe cleaners! Life is good.