Roquefort Jello

My very own repeat of message found all over the blogs: blogging will be light until July 6th -- getting ready for flight out, and then being gone, man, gone. Vacation.

I do have access to a computer in Albuquerque, though, so I expect to check in a few times.

Next repeat of message found all over the blogs -- well, the knit blogs, at least -- have decided on my vacation knitting. Big deal, it's the "Oriental Flower" cardigan I'm trying to finish up. It'll be hotter there than it is here, BUT because it's hotter, there's air conditioning! Yay! Artificial continuation of knitting season!

One of my most treasured possessions is a photograph taken sometime in the 1920's, of one of my greatgrandmothers, sitting in a hard-backed chair in a dusty sunny East Texas yard, knitting fiercely -- you can tell she's knitting fiercely because she has a fierce expression on her face -- with the ball of yarn rolling, improbably, in the dust.

What the hell was she doing? Why was she sitting outside in the hot sun rather than on a porch (I assume she had one; everybody did)? Why was she letting that yarn roll in the dust? What was this project, that it required such fierceness?

I'll never know. Love that photo.

Enough about knitting. I want to perform a public service now, by warning you all: do not ever make Roquefort Jello.

This came up as we were sitting at dinner last night, which was good, and we were remembering the Most Horrible Culinary Mistake I Ever Made, as a contrast, a mistake which is so renowned in my little family that the child has been asking me to make it again, as when I did it originally he was a baby and hence can't remember it.

His being a baby probably explains why I made it in the first place actually -- I don't think I had the use of all my brain cells till he was about two -- was running on empty there for a while. And it's true that it was sort of an experiment -- it came out of one of my -- then -- favorite cookbooks, The Spice Island Cookbook, from the 60's. It's a clever and good cookbook, and full of interesting things, and I had had a run of luck trying odd recipes out of it and discovering that they were very nice, not just edible, and so I took a chance on the Roquefort Jello, which sounded awful, but I figured the rest of the cookbook was so good it couldn't be that bad. It was that bad. It was inedible. It was gray, for a start, but it tasted worse than it looked. The baby, who was the sort of baby who would eat Orkney Herring Pate, and Pepper Cheddar, and never ate baby food, put some in his mouth and then started scraping it off his tongue with both hands. I wouldn't eat it. Sam ate it all up, more out of thriftiness than actual liking, though he SAYS he liked it. It took him a while to eat it, though.

So, anyway. If you find yourself being seduced by a recipe called "Roquefort Cheese and Cucumber Salad Mold," which requires unflavored gelatin, water, sugar, salt, powdered mustard, garlic powder, lemon juice, cottage cheese, roquefort cheese, mayonnaise, and a cucumber, do not make it. Order in a pizza.

A History of Hand Knitting

Oooh! Side benefit of blogging! The very kind Sarah emailed me and suggested a method for using up the Koigu profitably -- patterned socks, the Koigu eked out with a solid color. I like that. I was thinking about socks, but hadn't got that evolved in my thinking yet, so I'm Quite Grateful.

I just noticed that Blogger, in moving me over to its new format, forgot that I'm blogging from the east coast of the United States, and decided I live in San Francisco. Yes, that would be nice, but it's untrue, and if any of you have been under the impression that I have suddenly become an astonishingly hard worker who goes to work at 5:30 in the morning, no. I haven't. I will explain all this to the machine.

I have been so enjoying Richard Rutt's A History of Hand Knitting. Though the book is very readable, I find the scholarship impressive -- this despite the fact that the author himself says that the book is not "an academic thesis," and that he has "forsworn the full delights of notes and page references" (p. v).

Well, he might have done, but he's meticulous with his evidence, careful about his reasoning, and invariably generous to other scholars, even when they're being idiots. Also, he's a graceful writer. Altogether a darling book.

One is not surprised, on turning to the endnotes, to discover that besides being the former Bishop of Leicester, he studied medieval and modern languages at Cambridge.

A sizeable portion of the beginning of the book is devoted to Debunking Romantic Myths Concerning the Origins of Knitting, and as someone who spends a piece of her time doing that with things such as drama and morris dancing, I do so enjoy watching other people do it.

That would be one of the reasons I was so delighted with Alice Starmore's Aran Knitting -- another readable book, not in the form of a scholarly tome, but solid in its scholarship none the less, and full of very useful bits concerning the Romantic Myths of Aran Knitting.

(All y'all who overbooked my Irish Lit class in the fall: You'll be hearing more about this later, when we discuss Romantic Myths About the Irish Peasant.)

I'll go to work now (it's a reasonable hour), and devote myself to graceful and generous debunking. Insofar as I can manage it.

St. John and the Locusts

It's the one of the feast days of St. John the Baptist -- his extra one today; he gets his birthday, not just his death day. We're noting it, but I'm not planning dinner in accordance -- the honey I could manage, but locusts, no -- though I understand they've got some of their cousins they'd like to get rid of in Utah, so that'a a potential source. No, we're having some beef and rice dish tonight, completely unpenetential.

So I've got this stash-reduction project going on, and I'm steadily knitting my way through the closet -- already fewer bags of yarn fall on my head when I open the door; that's progress, I believe -- but does this stop me from inventing new projects? No it does not. Even though the knitting season is quickly drawing to a close (ozone alert today; sun's out), and even though I need to work on some of the embroidery projects that pretty much only get worked on in the summer, I am thinking up more things to do.

The back issue of Knitter's Magazine (#37) came yesterday, with the pattern that Amber (scroll down to June 15) used for her puzzle ball, and that must be knit. Just must be knit.

Also, I have decided that I want to make a pair of those socks that Anna Makarovna knits in Tolstoy's War and Peace -- you know, the ones where you knit double and then carefully time the finishing of the project to coincide with some party you're attending, and then at an opportune moment you pull one sock out of the other, and voila! you have cleverly knit two socks at once, to the amazement of all, and all your friends are really impressed. You know. Those socks.

Also, and more urgently, I have two skeins of Koigu that I bought years ago, and intended to make a couple of hats with (the two skeins don't go together at all, at all, and so can't be used in the same project), and I even started one of the hats, but I don't really want knit hats, and besides, I want the double-pointed needles back that are at the moment being used in the project I don't want to finish, and I think I'll just scrap the project. But I still have to figure out what one can make with one skein of Koigu. That one wants to finish. And then use. So as not to waste one's time.

And in the meantime, the new computer came in at work (oh, frabjous day!) so I have to finish up some writing quickly, very quickly, so it can get installed. This is A Major Event, cause the one I'm working on in the office crashed years ago, and the hard drive got replaced with some thing they had hanging around, and then nobody ever ordered a new one, though I asked constantly, really I did, and the upshot is that it takes me ALL DAY to download one paper off the interlibrary loan site, when it takes the secretary of the department two seconds.

Also, the new machine is black, and better looking than the old one, and takes up less space, so there's more room on the desk for Art, such as the glow-in-the-dark figure of St. Isidore, patron saint of the Internet. All in all, quite satisfactory. But I do have to, you know, get to work.

Sleep or Bats?

Ah. Fair Isles. So much fun -- small gauge, could be tedious, but it's so much fun to watch the pattern build it doesn't matter. Sheer joy.

Here's a close up of the colors in "Oriental Flower":



What fun. I'll have to figure out buttons -- gold? Enamel? I'll see.

We're getting ready for the trip to Albuquerque to see the relatives and eat Real Food. (First stop, straight off the plane: Monroes's Restaurant, for green chile cheeseburgers. Ah. Or maybe the tamales. Or the red chile enchiladas. Ah.

We're also planning a Big Trip down to Carlsbad Caverns -- three adults, three children (5, 6, and 7) down for fun and education. Some of us are especially excited about the bats. We hear that, whilst the nightly Flight of the Bats Out of the Caves is memorable and worth seeing, it's even more exciting when they come back at dawn, and swoop down into the caves. It's my opinion that it would be worth getting up, and getting three little children up, at 0-dark-thirty, in order to see this extravagance of nature. The kids are jazzed about it. My husband and brother -- well, not so jazzed. Sleep or bats? Difficult decision.

Turns out the reason I've had a longer knitting season than I generally do is that -- no surprise here -- it's been cooler this year than usual. Love it when the weather station reinforces reality as I know it.

I'd like summer to finally really arrive. It's sunny here now, and it's warm, but no one trusts it to stay. Even so, I am glad to have gotten so much done from the knitting stash. I'm working SO HARD on making inroads into it. I need just a tiny bit more of the cool weather, to get "Oriental Flower" done. Nevertheless. I'd like to wear some of my summer clothes. Otherwise they're wasting space.

Which, now that I think of it, could be used for yarn.

Fireworks and Galettes

It's a beautiful, gorgeous, sunny summer solstice -- not here, though. Albuquerque, maybe -- my mom says they're having a drought.

This is of concern to us in Pittsburgh, because our annual trip to Albuquerque is scheduled to coincide with July 4th, since Albuquerque is, so far, still a place where you can sit in the backyard and light off those fountain fireworks that make life worth living. You can't do that in Pittsburgh. Granted, we have Zambelli Fireworks (careful, you're going to get sound and fireworks), and they are worth going a far piece to see, but we like to sit in the backyard whilst the child's Dad and uncles set things on fire. It's very exciting. Occasionally things go a bit awry, and the spectators have to hustle out of the way, and that adds to the excitement. I'm told that this year, on account of the drought, the City Council got nervous, but they've decided to allow fireworks in Albuquerque backyards, as long as they don't go over 10 feet in the air, or are louder than capguns.

Now, what the sound has to do with the danger of fire is unclear to me. I think they tacked that on as a rider.

But sun or no, it IS the summer solstice, and by God, we're having nice sunny foods tonight, even if the sun's not appreciating it. Tomato soup. Parmesan baguette toasts. Nectarine galette.

Galettes are especially nice, cause they're dead simple, but they have a fancy French name and look rustic, so you get to pretend you're a rustic French housewife. In the sunny South of France.

How to make? Create pie dough. Roll pie dough out. Do not worry about making the edges even. Put the thing on a greased baking sheet (I use one of my pizza pans, which are nicely round). Pile some fruit in the middle. Fold the edges of the dough up over the edge of the fruit -- do NOT cover the fruit up. Let the center fruit be attractively visible. Sprinkle all with some sugar. Bake, as you would a regular pie.

Eat in remembrance of Brother Sun, who is up there somewhere, even over Pittsburgh.

Catherine Parr

Here's Catherine Parr, getting blocked:



and a close-up of the border work:



I started it in December, but didn't work on it all through January and February and half of March, on account of working instead on Starmore's "Mardi Gras," from The Scottish Collection. So, with some interruptions, this took about three months. It's "Catherine Parr," from Tudor Roses, Alice Starmore, The Broad Bay Company, 1998, pp. 108-115. It's available over at Amazon for about $45, I see. I love that book -- I believe it's my favorite of the Starmore collections.

The yarn, of course, has been discontinued. One has choices:

1) Substitute appropriate yarns of one's own choosing,
2) Buy the original yarns at exorbitant prices on ebay,
or, when possible,
3) Substitute Starmore's current yarns, available over at Virtual Yarns.

I've done all three, at different times; this particular sweater was knit up in Starmore's current yarn, the 3-ply Hebridean. I like its hand -- a strong, supple yarn. And I like the colors.

So, relief; that got done before any of the heat waves hit. It'll get packed away, waiting for the winter, after it dries out.

Other than that, a domestic day. Child to dentist. (How do you stay so calm and cheerful? I asked him. Are you doing your breathing exercises? Nope, he said. I'm just being at the dentist's. Ah. I see. And the difference between that and meditation would be.....?) Knitting -- well, really, of course. Cooking -- I think a lovely rosemary and olive oil foccachia, in honor of the sun, which is having its solstice tomorrow. Any round bread would do, really, but we like the rosemary.

And the olive oil doesn't hurt, either.

Texas, Our Texas

I've got "Catherine Parr" sewn up, and the collar half done -- pictures tomorrow, I expect.

In the meantime, here's some non- wool fiber (nylon and cotton) which is behaving:



It's Berroco's Zen, being made up into yet another shawl, this time one which will be helpful in the office as an antidote to the air conditioning. Now that I'm a little calmer, I repent me of having said such nasty things about some of Berroco's other fibers, and am glad, glad I tell you, to report that this fiber is not making me nuts, even though it is not made out of WOOL.

And why is this yarn called "Zen"? Will it help you to achieve balance and serenity? Will it help you to detach from the distracting stream of life as it flows by? Will it make your monkey-brain shut up? Is it, in itself, a little beacon of sprititual enlightenment?

Nah. But it's pretty.

And it behaves.

Today is Juneteenth, which commemorates the day that Texans found out the Civil War was over, and the slaves were free. We celebrate, we read the proclamation, we discuss history and our connections to it, and we EAT. We're having stewed okra, blackeyed peas, and cornbread for supper. (Those of you who don't come from, oh let's say, East Texas and South Carolina might not think this sounds good, but believe me, we're excited. And here up in Pittsburgh, I don't cook these things so often.)

Notice the timing here. The war ended on April 3 -- it took a while for the news to get to Galveston. Ah. Texas, our Texas. All hail the mighty state.

The Sacred Fiber of Our People

Calm and happy and pleased with knitting again today, on account of having put the Mosaic and Mirror scarf tidily away, and worked on the second sleeve to Catherine Parr again. And why did this calm me down and cause me to be happy? Because it's made out of WOOL, that's why, and wool is the sacred fiber of our people. Seduced by shiny sequins, that's what I was, and it caused me grief and sorrow.

Nah, I'll finish the scarf, don't fret. But not for a while. I'd gotten to a point where I'd managed to knit for an entire evening -- an ENTIRE evening -- without either the Mirror or the Mosaic unwinding and requiring untangling, before I discovered that I'd stupidly reversed the pattern without noticing, and then continued knitting -- still without noticing -- for oh, about four inches. Right. And why did I do this?

Because the project is CURSED, that's why.

So (shhhhh -- don't tell Sam) I'm going to have to undo it. Sam doesn't know why I'd want to undo it, when he can't see the mistake. Well, because I can see the mistake. (But notice the logic here -- if I do fix it, he won't be able to tell I've fixed it, since it will still look the same to him. We'll both be happy. I'll have a scarf that has no mistake as is visible to me, and he won't have An Unsettling Suspicion That His Wife Is a Little Obessive About This Knitting Thing. All will be well.)

I don't fix all my mistakes. Some I creatively work around -- some I ignore. But I'm willing to go to great lengths to create an artifact I'm happy with, and sometimes that means taking a lot of it apart.

But I'm not going to do it till I feel like it, and I don't feel like it right now, and besides, I've got WOOL to work with, and wool is, after all, as I mentioned before, the sacred fiber of our people.

It's Saintly Salmagundi's first birthday -- go say hello, if you've been enjoying Fr. Bryce's finds (that'd be the Toilet Paper Jesus, the Bible Themed Power Bars, the Are You Going to Purgatory quiz, for instance).

And then you can go see Amber's video of her Knitted Puzzle Ball Getting Turned Around and Around. Which will cause you to desire a knitted puzzle ball of your own.

Which, definitely, you should make out of WOOL.

Books. Knitting. Organization.

The blog today will divide itself into two sections. That's the sort of day it is. Organized. Purposeful.

First,

Books

As probably a couple of you know, the new Harry Potter is due in soon. Ours, having been ordered in advance from Amazon, will be in later than the ones you get to buy if you're even now camping out over at the Barnes and Noble. Nevertheless, it's coming in a bit too early. After we finished up The Hobbit (how I love to watch medievalists entertain 6-year-old children), we started in on Little Women -- we're in a classics sort of mood these days. We can't possibly finish up with Marmee and Jo before Harry gets here, so we've agreed that when Mr. Potter arrives, we'll be taking a temporary break from Alcott. But we're slightly regretful, for though Little Women is short on thrilling plot (Amy's pickled limes get confiscated! Meg twists her ankle at the dance!), it's nevertheless compelling -- this due entirely to character. The child, though male and living 150 years in their future, is extremely interested in the lives of the girls. He's been hearing the adventures of Harry Potter since he was a baby, though, and owns a magnificent wizard's robe of velvet and satin, sewn for him by his doting mother, and so the New England Transcendentalists will indeed go by the wall when the new volume arrives.

As for the adults of the household, we're nearly done with the giant Rereading the Alexandrian Quartet Project. Sam finished up a couple of weeks ago, and I'm almost done with Clea. How did we get into this?

Oh, I remember. I'd been explaining to Sam the wonderfulness of Gerald Durrell, and he'd been reading Gerald's hilarious accounts of growing up on Corfu, collecting exotic animals, and annoying his older brother Larry, and that got us interested in reading Gerald's biography, which we did, and one of the many interesting aspects of the biography was the constant helpfulness of Gerald's older brother Larry, who, though he made fun of the animals, was consistently supportive of Gerald's writing, and even told people that Gerald was a better writer than he was, which seemed to us to be astoundingly charitable, or modest, one or the other, especially coming from somebody who'd written The Alexandrian Quartet, and then we wondered why we never heard anybody talking about The Alexandrian Quartet anymore (turns out it's just cause no one we knew was rereading it; there's a thriving Durrell business out there), and we wondered if we'd still think it was astounding if we reread it, and so we did, and we do. It's certainly dated now, but the intricate structure is still just as satisfying as it ever was, back when he invented it.

The pile of books by my bed has gotten so big I can hardly get out -- it's always like this in early summer. Things pile up, literally. Throughout the school year I'm reading, oh, yes, I'm reading, but mostly essays and books concerning whatever I'm supposed to be writing about in any given week, or I'm rereading things I'm teaching. The Alexandrian Quartet -- now there was an extravagance. That's how I know it's summer.

Now, on to

Knitting

Recently I came across a blog entry written by one of the young knitters (and alas, I didn't bookmark it -- it was only later that I knew I wanted to write about it) who was bemoaning the lack of trendy, stylish Fair Isle patterns. She pointed out, quite rightly, that all the Fair Isle sweater patterns she sees are boxy and old-fashioned looking, and unsuitable for such as she.

Yep. They are.

Now, this doesn't bother me; I'm very happy wearing boxy old-fashioned things (but then, I'm ancient, and unstylish), so I'm not going to be fixing this problem. But if one wanted to design trendy, non-boxy fashions in Fair Isle, one would come up against a difficulty inherent in the material itself. This is that the designs are created by carrying two yarns at once, at the back of the fabric, and knitting from one or the other yarn according to the color pattern desired. And this is made easy (or easier; I understand that some of you are still wrassling Fair Isles) by the fact that one is knitting in the round (which is, in reality, knitting in a spiral), so that the front of the work is ALWAYS what one is looking at, so the pattern is visible. Now, one could shape the fabric, even while knitting in the round, by using increases and decreases, as one does, in a simple fashion, on the sleeves. And one can also shape the fabric by using steeks, as one does not just when making a cardigan, or creating space for the sleeves to fit in, but also at the back of the neck, sometimes (on more sophisticated patterns, such as those done by the Starmores). But this is a hassle. So patterns that use these techniques are ONLY going to be invented by people to whom the shaping is Very Important. Not me.

Of course, it's also possible to shape two-color stranding by knitting, not in classic Fair Isle technique, but by working back-and-forth. Here's an example:



Here, on a "Catherine Parr" cuff, the back-and-forth stranding is not actually a Big Pain in the B**t, because it's limited. Even the larger borders for the front and the back of the sweater aren't boring; they move pretty quickly, and the pattern isn't so complicated that one constantly makes mistakes.

But it would be very tiresome indeed to do this for the course of an entire sweater. You'd have to be very committed to the design.

Still, I expect to see such designs in the future.

I leave you with that; it's a normal, average sort of summer day around here. Dad and child in the park over in the batting cage. Mom off to write about what Margery Kempe looks like if you examine her from the point of view of Teresa's Interior Castle. You know. The usual.

Baby Robin Drama

Who the hell has been giving Queer Joe grief about conflict of interest? I feel like I've missed some big ol' KnitBlog Drama. Joe is very funny about it, in his serious way. I'm relieved (I guess) to know exactly where his conflicts of interest lie, just in case it ever affects my estimation of his excellent knitting. (NOT!) You go, guy.

We had high drama around here yesterday -- one of the baby robins, having been sent forth into the world for the first time, managed shakily to "fly" (he was moving his wings some -- I think it counts) down to the deck. Then, after a little rest, he bravely flung himself off towards the cherry tree, which he did reach, sorta, though he didn't manage to actually land. Great consternation and distress. The child, being tenderhearted, was especially concerned, so we had to go down the hill and search for the bird.

He'd managed to get himself into one of the lower branches of the cherry tree. His mom then spent a couple of hours trying to lure him into further flight -- he was determined she was going to come feed him some more; she was determined she wouldn't. She kept parading choice dead insects before him, just out of his reach.

The child went to check, after supper, and both he and the mother were gone, and there were no dead bird bodies at the foot of the tree. So our assumption is that all is well, and flight has been achieved. Yay, evolution! Yay, creator of evolution!

I spent a lot of last night untangling the damn Mirror from itself -- while I go upstairs for ice water it throws itself around, I gather. So now I'm knitting the scarf again, though I see that the Mosaic has thrown itself off the ball, too, and is in a fair way to tangle badly as well. This should teach me. I was taking a little break -- just a little, very small break -- from the two sweaters I'm working on, and it turned into some major big deal.

All for a scarf.

Albeit a beautiful scarf such as is the envy of all who see it, I'll give it that. The general consensus around here (with the exception of me) is that I should buy BUNCHES of these fibers, so as to knit scarves for the girls for Christmas.

I'm sorry. I love the girls. I bless the day they came into my life when I married their dad, really, I do, every day. But it's going to be a lo-o-o-ng time before I tackle "Mosaic and Mirror" again.

Now I'm having trouble because the pictures of Jerry's gansey are SO enticing. He figures it'll be done by the middle of July. Major project -- clearly well worth it. The work's beautiful, and that gansey will last forever, through hard wear. The sort of sweater you can go camping in.

Or fishing. Or fishing.

Bible Themed Organic Bars

For those of you who are getting tired of your usual power bars (I know I am!), and feel that they just don't power you the way they used to -- they're missing something, though you don't know what -- despair not! It turns out that the problem is that you're probably not consuming power bars that are spiritual enough, a problem easily fixed by buying Bible Themed Organic Bars. (For those of you following the Weight Watchers plan, they work out to 4 points apiece, which is a bit high, but just THINK of how much better you'll feel after you eat one!) I must admit that I haven't yet figured out exactly why, other than their names, these bars are so spiritual. Oh, I guess it's the sesame seeds. (Thanks, as usual, to Fr. Bryce over at Saintly Salmagundi for the link -- how does he find this stuff?)


Knitting Content (I'm determined to keep my place in the Knitting Blog Webring, and so am very careful to include it): The Mosaic and Mirror scarf is not a walk in the park. I like the feel of the fibers, and I like the drape of the scarf, and lord knows I like the sequins, but the fibers are very hard to control. I've already discussed the problems with the fabric unraveling too easily when you drop a stitch -- that's a problem with the Mosaic; the Mirror is also problematic, as it falls off the ball and tangles.

Really, reading this, you'd think I was either clumsy or unskilled, and neither is true. I'm nimble, and I've been knitting for over 40 years, and I enjoy difficult projects. I would do this project again -- indeed, I might pick up more of these two dreadful fibers, as a present for someone someday. (The present being the scarf I might knit from them, not the fibers themselves.) They're well worth the difficulty. BUT. I think if you're a new knitter, you would do well to stay away from these fibers for a while, till your confidence and patience are firm.


It's W.B. Yeats's birthday, by the way -- I will arise and go now.

Advice From Your Graduate Director

Erin O'Connor, over at Critical Mass, is today again discussing the fate of English Lit Ph.D's -- scroll down after the letter from a disaffected student, for more links to earlier discussions of the matter. The situation is likely to get worse, I'm afraid, as for some reason (I can't understand this myself), when the economy's bad, humans flock to graduate schools. Here's my advice: DON'T go work on a Ph.D. in English because you can't get a job. It's not a good way of marking time, especially if you're also borrowing money to get through. (If you're already one of our students -- you know who you are -- we admitted very few of you. We're training you broadly in lit, deeply in theory, well in teaching. Our placement rate is very high. But if you ever decide to bail out, no shame, no blame. This from your Graduate Director.)

As for knitting, a much cheerier subject, here's the Mosaic and Mirror scarf (I don't think it's a shawl, not really), reconstructed after the Horrible Debacle:



I'm planning on wearing it to the opera; we go on Sunday afternoons (not a staying-out-late sort of couple), and I get to dress up but not go formal. This works well for me. But I may need an entire new outfit to go under the Mosaic and Mirror scarf. Perhaps something in black velvet.

I've been thinking about the projects I'd like to do next fall, when the new knitting season starts. I figure that if I make five sweaters per season, I can decimate my stash in just four years! Yes! And if I don't die before then, then my darling Julie won't have to figure out what to do with it all! Ebay, Julie, that's the ticket.

Kaffe Fassett's "Heraldic Dogs" -- I think I might do that next season. And one of the Fair Isles, certainly -- maybe "Queen Anne's Lace." And that lacy "Margaret Tudor" with all the buttons.

But first, the things on the needles now.

It's raining. I heard recently that in May we had three days without rain. June appears to be going along in the same fashion. Not good for bees, who need to get out of the hive and throw out the garbage, besides (of course) finding nice sunny flowers full of nectar. The humans are getting weary, too.


Might as well go to work.

Sequinned Shawl Hell

The shawl kit from Patternworks I'd been waiting for came in. I hid it for a while, and then took it down into the family room (where I do most of my knitting) so that I could "look" at it. I fully intended -- no, I thought that I fully intended -- not to touch it until I'd finished BOTH Catherine Parr and Oriental Flower, the serious knitting projects left for the season.

But there it was, and I could see it. So I started working on it.

I was happy to discover that it does not, in fact, hurt to knit with sequined thread -- even when the sequins are square. I think you could make it hurt if you wanted, but you'd have to focus. And the thing drapes beautifully, and is lovely, and anyway, sequins in general are a good thing.

But you can't see it.

This is because I have discovered a Very Important Fact about knitting with Berroco's "Mosaic" and "Mirror" fibers, and that is that you must not drop any stitches. Ever. At all. If you do -- oh, let's say you try a little experiment wherein you tie on a new ball of fiber with a knot you're pretty sure is going to hold, and then it doesn't hold, it will not only not hold, but will unravel for about half the length of the needle, and then while you try to pick up stitches, a bunch of others will fall off the other needle, and even after you secure them on cable hooks, the cable hooks will fall out, and at some point the whole thing will just start falling apart and you'll unravel the whole project and go to bed.

Hence no pictures.

But I'm not disenchanted -- the two threads knitted together are gorgeous. I'd want to think carefully about using them for a large project -- just in the course of normal knitting, things happen, and these yarns are Unforgiving. But for a scarf they're wonderful.. So I'll take a few days off the serious sweater work and make this frivolous sequined scarf. Pictures soon.

(The "Mosaic and Mirror" scarf kit from Patternworks isn't available yet online; I ordered it from the Summer update catalog.)

Notorious Bossy Boots

Back from the seminar; here's "Oriental Flower", one row away from the armhole steeks:



The bottom edge is curling up because it's not ribbed; it's stockinette stitch, bordered with a purl row, and will become a hem. The same technique will be used on the sleeve edges, and even the front opening (it's a cardigan).

I think a child will love these colors. And doesn't a child's sweater move quickly! They're so SMALL!


As for news that doesn't concern knitting, I'm glad to report that somebody out there is still beating the bounds. (Thanks to Rebecca's Pocket for the link.)

That's all. It's good to be home -- literally home today, as Sam's gone off to the defense of a dissertation upon which he is a reader, and, since the child, whose school year is coming to a close, only has a half day, somebody has to be home, and it's me. Maggie the cat has just discovered that I'm down here in the basement working on the computer, and has showed up complaining.

She's glad to see me, you understand, and she's glad to sit on my lap while I type, but she's concerned about the disruption of The Schedule. We actually invent the schedule, but she appropriates it as soon as she figures out whatever it is, and then becomes the self-appointed Schedule Police Force. This involves telling us when we're supposed to get out of bed, or feed cats, of course -- the usual -- but also when we're supposed to put the child in the bath tub, or watch TV. We call her the Notorious Bossy Boots.

It's good to feel useful, though -- it'll probably prolong her life.

Here and There

Those of you who enjoyed the Weight Watcher's Recipe Cards from the 70's, brought to you by Wendy, over at Pound -- that'd be a different Wendy than Wendy at WendyKnits -- won't want to miss the English to German and then Back into English translation of the introduction, wherein you can read such sentences as "And nevertheless also, completely spirit-ill," whatever the hell that means. I find it interesting that the ONLY sentence to have survived the computer's mangled translation process is "I would probably have supressed the memory, anyway." Surely this Means Something.

I realized a couple of nights ago that I had to start a new knitting project before I finished Catherine Parr, oh, gee, darn. I'm leaving now for a four day seminar to meet with other Graduate Directors of English Departments and moan and complain and then think up interesting new projects and exchange hints, and it's my custom, always, to knit at academic events (and boy, does that cause a ruckus!), except when I'm in a session in which I'm giving a paper, which this week I'm not. So I'm going to be knitting A LOT, God willing and the creek don't rise, and if I take Catherine Parr I'll be done about Friday morning, and then have no knitting, which will make me cranky.

So I cast on for Jade Starmore's "Oriental Flower" (scroll down) design for my granddaughter. Lovely. Makes me look forward to waiting at the airport. It's too boring to look at right now, though -- nothing but the hem done -- so I'll post pictures later.

Which I'm off to do right now -- I'll be back Sunday night.

Why No Catnip Mice

I've been following Wendy's Mouse-a-Long with interest. A score of happy cats connected to owners connected to the web have catnip mice now, knit for them by their loving owners. This is an admirable project. The cats are happy. Their owner/knitters have had a project in common, thereby forging bonds over cyberspace. Several bits of leftover yarn have been used up. The finished projects are cute.

And yet, I am not participating.

Well, why is this, you might ask? Have I no cats?

Nope. Got cats. Two of them.

Well, do these cats not enjoy catnip?

Oh, no, they enjoy catnip.

Ah. You're one of those cat owners who doesn't actually fawn over the cats and make much of them?

Ha! No, not that. These cats, like most American and English cats, sleep in the beds with us, share our food (favorites are haggis and vanilla ice cream), and consider themselves the bosses of the property.

Oh. You don't have any yarn scraps? You need some?

No! No, please, don't send my any more yarn scraps!

Let me explain. Here, for instance, is our cat Lila:



Notice the complete lack of knitting in the picture. Lila is not lying on knitting, she is not playing with knitting, she is not any where near knitting, in fact.

Again, here's Maggie:



And again, no knitting is in the picture.

Well, are the cats even in the same room with you whilst you, the supposedly loving owner of these cats, is knitting?

Oh, yes:



Here, you may observe the complete lack of interest in the process of knitting exhibited by the cat Maggie.

I don't know how I did this, actually. Both these cats are normal cats. They whack little objects under the sofa, they knock pictures off the wall, they even play with fringes on afghans. But they don't touch the knitting. They don't even look at the knitting. Any cat that moves into my house learns this very quickly. To the best of my knowledge, I use the same tone of voice when I tell new cats not to touch the knitting as I use when I tell them not to whack pictures off the wall. But clearly, they know that one command is more serious than the other.

This is a pretty good state of affairs. I figure if I knit them catnip mice and encourage the tearing up of knitted objects, I'm asking for trouble.

Gonna let sleeping cats lie.