Na Craga

As promised:

I like to knit Aran Isles. I like the sculpture of them, and the way the design builds up over the course of the piece. Some are difficult; this one isn't:



It's a Starmore design, "Na Craga," from Aran Knitting (Interweave Press, 1997). It's dead simple -- the cables are easy to memorize, and easy to do. Becomes, when done, a good unisex knocking-around sweater. Would make a great gift (but I kept mine).

This one's been done in Starmore's "Scottish Heather," a now long-lost yarn I dearly miss. It had (or has, if you can find some still) a slightly harsh feel, not hard -- it was easy to knit -- but just slightly harsh, so that it had some strength to it. After washing, it softens up and blooms a bit, but it doesn't fuzz, so the cables remain clear. If you buy yarn from Starmore directly now, you can buy 3-ply "Hebridean" to knit "Na Craga" up, and that's a fine yarn too. It's softer than the ""Scottish Heather" was, and has more of a bloom to it. Not so rugged, but lovely.

The color I used for this sweater was called, improbably, "Water Cricket." It's a lovely color, even if it is named after a bug. It reads as brown, useful, as I say, for a knocking-around sweater, but it's full of flecks of color, if you look closely -- gold, of course, but bits of red, and even blue.

And the pattern itself? Quick! Quick! Only $189.00 over at Amazon!

If you didn't buy it in 1997, you can see if it's in your library -- but you're honor-bound to give it back.

Obesity in America

Knitting content next time; today I've got something else on my mind.

For starters, click here for a lovely picture of Americans pursuing an American hobby, courtesy of James Lileks.

In a not-unrelated fashion, Erin, at Lose the Buddha, is reporting on her interview on Good Morning America -- she was discussing weight-loss blogs (hers is one of my favorites).

And it was this morning, waiting with my child for his school bus, that one of the neighborhood children was saying that he was glad his new teacher wasn't the awful one who's "this big" -- size here being shown by wide outstretched arms. Nearby guardian adult immediately told him he shouldn't say things like that -- "at least not where she can hear you."

It was an uneasy moment for our little family, as I am now a medium sized active woman, but a few years ago was an obese, sedentary woman. My weight-loss process (it was 100 pounds) made a big impression on my child, who saw his mother change so drastically. He thinks a lot about the issue of weight in America. I think my boy was worried that I might be upset by the child's remark, and I was disturbed, but not for the reasons he would imagine -- I didn't take it personally (since the neighbor child, though he knew me when I was obese, didn't know me well, was very young anyway, and doesn't remember). But though I didn't take the remark personally, I have a lot of empathy for the teacher the child described. Experience tells me that she's probably not very happy with her condition. But she has a lot of company.

It isn't just media hype, that America is in trouble with weight. If you spend time someplace else -- in, oh, Europe, for instance -- and then come home, you can't not notice that there are a lot more large -- and often very large -- people here than in Germany, France, even England, though the English might be catching up with us. I go to visit cousins in Norway, and I don't think I've ever seen an obese person in Norway. They keep their skis by the door, for one thing. They say "we will go for a little walk. It is a little walk, it will not take long," and you go off with them, and three hours later you're still walking, and they're saying, "it is just a little way now, it will not be far," and they can't understand why you can't keep up.

Next time, though -- next time I go, I'm keeping up. I'm not an athlete, but I try to move all I can. I pay attention to what I'm eating. Eternal vigilance is the price of freedom.

(Oh, and case you're interested, how did I do it? I ate healthy food in moderation, making sure to enjoy occasional treats, and started -- for the first time in my life -- getting regular exercise: morning walk, weight-lifting twice a week, yoga. What do I do now? Same thing. That's all. I changed my life. That's all. But I don't believe that anything else will work, not in the long run.)

But as I say, knitting next time.

The Principles of Knitting

I have finally recovered from a visit to Chuck E. Cheese's on Friday, which was, well interesting. It's not a very restful place....

I could go on, but forget that. Much nicer to think about knitting. I was extremely pleased to read that Joe came across a copy of June Hiatt's 1988 volume, The Principles of Knitting for $6.50 a few weeks ago. On Amazon, I see that they have a list of used copies, the cheapest of which is selling, as I write this, for $175. On Abebooks they're running from $175 up to $360. This is Too Much Money.

It's a marvelous book, alas. I wish somebody would reprint it. (I've heard rumors of a planned second edition, and I've heard rumors of a planned reprinting, but neither has shown up. If you'd like to create loads of hoopla on one of the Knitting Lists, then write an innocent query on this subject and sit back and watch the fun. I predict MANY opinions as to the state of the reprinting process, and the state of the rewriting process, and the state of Hiatt herself, degenerating quickly into veiled insults and grief. Or, since this happens occasionally anyway, you can just wait for somebody else to innocently start it off.)


If what a knitter needs is a good basic book on knitting techniques, with forays into more advanced subjects so that one can expand one's horizons, there are many much cheaper books on the market that are good -- I like Vogue Knitting, for instance. And if one needs a push towards knitting without patterns, or with minimal ones, then anything by Elizabeth Zimmerman will serve well. (It's nice to get such books directly from Schoolhouse Press, the company she founded.)

But for thinking about the structure of knitting, for learning the various techniques available for doing just about anything in the realm of knitting, for clear illustrations showing one how to perform all these techniques, I don't think Hiatt can be beat. If you're interested in conceptualizing the structure of the fabric you're creating, and incorporating this theory into your designs, she's useful . And if you're interested in polishing your techniques, even if you're not designing patterns yourself -- if you just want to be able to substitute other techniques for the ones given in a pattern, she's useful.

Also, the size of the volume manifests the seriousness of the endeavor. If your family and friends think of your knitting as a cute hobby, you can leave the Hiatt tome around and they'll be impressed and cowed by it -- takes up a lot of space on the coffee table. I like to lie in bed sometimes, reading it as my night reading before I sleep -- I figure it lets Sam know that I'm involved here in a Serious Study of a Serious Subject, thereby mitigating somewhat the impression I give of being simply off my rocker.

And I enjoy her tone. It's hard to find non-opinionated knitters -- we tend to be a stubborn sort of bunch, all of us convinced we know the best way to do what we're doing, but Hiatt is even more opinionated than most. At the very beginning of the book, of course, she must discuss How To Hold the Yarn and Needles, and though she says that all methods of knitting can produce exquisite knitting, and that if we're comfortable with our methods, we don't need to change, nevertheless, when she discusses Left-Finger Knitting (the method I use), she says it causes difficulty in bringing the yarn through the stitch (I don't find this to be true, myself), and considers it of use ONLY in two-color knitting. Indeed, even though she's been at pains to tell me that my method is fine if I like it, and I shouldn't feel I need to change, if by chance I am set in my foolish ways, nevertheless I should NOT teach a new knitter to knit in this way, as it will not "serve that person best" (p. 7). Well, too bad. I've personally been involved in leading new knitters -- many of them, many -- down the path of dreadful Left-Finger-Knitting sorrow, and shall continue to do so. Sue me.

What I enjoy here is the way she sets me up and then whacks the ground out from under my feet -- nice movement of the argument --1) all the methods are useful; 2) they are useful in different ways; 3) some of the methods are useful only in obscure ways that don't mean much; 4) all y'all who are using the aforesaid methods should therefore take care not to pass them on, YOU LOSERS!

I have to admire that method. Brilliant argumentation, though not exactly ethical argumentation.

Anyway, she's wrong on that point. And on others -- she's got some convoluted arguments as to why we shouldn't knit in the round unless a garment "is one that would be particularly enhanced by being seamless" (p. 117) -- whatever the hell that means. This makes no sense to anybody who enjoys knitting stranded-color designs, such as Fair Isle.

Unless, of course, you, like Hiatt, are fond of "Slip Stranding" (p. 256), which causes you to be able to knit stranded designs flat, by working each row twice, each time slipping the stitches that are worked in the color you're not using.

Very useful, I think, for little sections of stranded knitting -- such as the cuffs and borders on Starmore's "Catherine Parr" -- otherwise, why not just go round and round, with two colors! Just like everybody else! But she finds making armholes, or the opening in the front of a cardigan, or neck shaping, to be problematic. She gives directions for making steeks (extra stitches knit into a garment that can be cut open, creating an opening), but I don't think she really "gets" them.

To sum up -- beginners don't need to worry about finding this volume, or saving up spare cash for it. If you're out and about, and you find it being sold by a used-book seller who doesn't know what it is, SNAP IT UP! If you get advanced, you might want to save up for it -- certainly one could borrow it from a public library, but it's really not the sort of book you want to sit around reading once (despite my breaking my neck with it reading it in bed); it's the sort of book you want on your shelf as a reference. I turn to it often -- more often than I turn to my other reference books -- when I'm considering the best method for making a buttonhole, or deciding which cast-on method to use, or figuring out if I want selvedge stitches, or thinking about using short-row shaping on some pieces of fabric.

But the best-case scenario is the thing gets republished and we can all buy it at a reasonable price.

DNA Scarf

After seeing the DNA scarf over at Jerry's blog, I ordered the latest issue of Interweave Knits, as it seemed to me that I probably needed to knit one of those things.

The cover's pretty funny -- Parisian waiters wearing red aran sweaters -- right, yeah, that works -- and I don't think there's anything else in the magazine I'm interested in, but the DNA cable is a fine and glorious thing, and it shall be knit. The pattern is given as an adjunct to an article called "geekchic," which discusses the intersection of knitting and science, an good article in itself -- nice to read about the creation of the DNA cable, for instance; microbiologist June Oshiro, rather than paying attention in a lecture one day, let her tape recorder take the notes and charted out the cable design. (Note to students: this sort of activity is fine by me, but you have to share the pattern later, and you'll STILL be responsible for the material. Also, I'll blog you.)

Alas, my Dad, the biomathematician/historian, has never been seen in his life wearing a scarf, so I don't think he's getting one (sorry, Dad -- promise to wear it and I'll change my mind), but my Mom, the computer programmer/amateur mycologist, knows how to dye yarn with mushrooms, so she's sending yarn, and she can have one (link contains picture AND information on mushroom dying!). This seems fitting and good.

Yes. I think it's a good idea to have a copy of the cable lying around the house, just in case one meets a scientist for whom one needs to knit an artifact.

Or, better yet, one IS a knitting scientist. (Hey! Fillyjonk! You've got one, right?)

Freshman Move-in

Hoop-la!

Classes start Monday, but today's the day the freshmen start moving in, taking part in an annual ceremony that involves a long line of overburdened cars and SUV's waiting to get to the end of the journey, at which point the parents will be startled and perturbed when all their children's belongings suddenly disappear, carried away to the dorm rooms.

I do NOT know how this is orchestrated, and I haven't asked, being worried that I might get roped into the activity. But it's quite impressive. Somehow the Helping Students waiting at the end of the line know where all the stuff goes, and as long as the professors and staff remember not to attempt to park in our regular parking lot -- as if we do we'll be a part of that long long line, and it's not amusing -- then all will go well, and when I get to work in a bit I'll be able to look out my window and see all those cars with the harassed parents, all those freshmen who are trying desperately to look cool -- very difficult, when you're stuck in an SUV with your mom, your dad, some younger siblings, and Way Too Much Stuff -- and all those cheerful Helping Students, who are in an extremely one-up position, on account of a) not being freshmen, b) being obviously involved in Acts of Charity, and c) knowing where everything is.

Later there are activities for the freshmen, and activities for the parents, and Mass and whatnot, and then, at about 3:00, some of the professors will put on impressive regalia and go process in a solemn ceremony which officially accepts the freshmen into the life of the campus -- the Matriculation ceremony.

I never miss this. I don't think the ceremony means that much to the freshmen, really, whose minds are elsewhere, but I figure that if I were a parent who had just dropped my beloved child off at a place where he or she was going to live, away from home, amongst people I didn't know, at enormous expense, I might be slightly comforted by seeing that the child was now in the hands of serious looking people who own fancy robes.

Whilst engaged in ceremonies such as this, I look just like this, except my hair's a bit longer and my expression is usually not quite so vacant.

So I do this every year, partly because in order to make my regalia cost-effective I have to wear it as often as possible, partly because I think I ought to, partly because the ceremony itself is an excellent opportunity for meditation, partly because the parents look so stricken by that time I like to help out a little bit.

And then, I enjoy freshmen no end. They've got very big jobs ahead of them this semester -- they've got to reinvent themselves to fit the new life away from home, they've got to learn how to manage their time, they've got to let go of a lot of things they think they've learned. Big, big changes. An honor to be involved in them.

Let the games begin.

Lillehammer

Dale of Norway has been designing the sweaters for the Norwegian National Ski Team in the Winter Olympics since 1956. When Norway hosted the 1994 Winter Olympics in Lillehammer, the company outdid itself -- it went beyond the standard snowflake and reindeer designs and back into the Ancient Myths of the People.

Well, as ancient as they could get.

My cousin Liv, who lives on the Oslo fjord, hates the sweater they came up with. She did it once and vowed never to do it again -- you can't work it, after you get to the yoke, without following the chart every row, since it's pictorial rather than geometric. She'd rather be able to memorize the pattern and knit without thinking much -- she knits constantly, enough so that if all her American cousins show up in midsummer without their heavy woolen sweaters, she can help them out so they don't die from exposure, and she doesn't have time for any fol-de-rol. (One of the Texas cousins had been SO excited about the trip that she'd gone and bought several new pairs of shorts for the occasion, none of which she wore in Norway. And we're from the south of Norway. We were grateful for Liv's humongous collection of handknits.)

I appreciate designs I can knit without thinking -- good for meetings and traffic jams -- but I like to have a piece on the needles that I have to think about -- and for a while, "Lillehammer" was mine.

Comfortable sweater, fun to knit:



Here's what the English translation in the "Lillehammer" booklet says about the designs on the yoke (since you might not have the brochure lying around, I quote it in its entirety -- I think it's worth it):

First, there's Froya, the most famous of the goddesses. She's the Goddess of Love and Fertility, and she possesses the magic power to look into both the future and the past. She also maintains associations with the underworld and can draw upon their dark powers. Then there's Hugin and Munin, Odin's two ravens which represent thought and memory. Legend says they fly around the world every day and report to Odin what they've seen. You'll also see Odin and Sleipner. Odin is the King of all the gods. He's the God of War, Death, Wisdom and Mysticism, and he's the ruler of Vahall -- The Empire of Death. Odin rides the eight-legged Sleipner which is said to be the world's fastest horse. Yggdrasil, the world's everlasting green tree, represents the world's center as it connects both humans, the powers in heaven and in the underworld, Yggdrasil symbolizes justice, knowledge, and wisdom; and all the gods held their lawcourt here.

Be very worried if I'm wearing it for your final exam.

Do NOT Click Here

If you know yourself well enough to suspect that you'd be scandalized by a video of a young man dressed in an unconvincing Jesus costume, explaining how He's convinced his Dad to switch from Microsoft to Mac ("cause We get a LOT more messages today than We used to"), you should NOT, under ANY circumstances, click here.

And while you're at it, don't click here either.

(Both these links are floating around, but I got them from the Cranky Professor. Thanks!)

That's it. It's Sunday, after all. We'll keep it simple.

Happy Saturday!

A full and happy Saturday (so far):

The child got to go off on a Boy Scout day trip, as a friend of one of the Boy Scouts, so he's off hiking, eating peanut butter sandwiches, practicing archery, riding horses, eating hot dogs cooked over an actual fire, sleeping in the car on the way home.

Or, we HOPE he sleeps in the car on the way home, since it's Pleasant Hills Community Day, and there are fireworks tonight. Yes, that's the name of our particular Pittsburgh suburb (click on the link for news about the exciting life of our volunteer fire department -- yesterday steam set off the automatic fire alarm over at the KrispyKreme), and as the child is fond of pointing out, it's pleasant. And hilly.

And today Sam harvested the basil -- we didn't manage much last year, but we have a big bunch this year, so I'll be making pesto all afternoon.

Most will be put into little bags and stuck in the freezer, to be eaten all year, but we'll eat some of it tonight -- I think I'll broil some tilapia and put pesto on top -- and the feast day of St. Helena (Constantine's mama) is coming up, and we always eat pesto then, because when she found the True Cross it was buried in a hill covered with basil.

We don't care whether this is true or not, since we're so happy about the pesto. We think there was a True Cross, we think there was a St. Helena, and we think there was some basil -- were they all together in the same place once? We don't know. We eat the pesto anyway.

The anniversary issue of Piecework arrived. I had no idea it was 10 years old. I've got every issue; there are few magazines that, as with Piecework, I read from cover to cover every issue year after year (Granta's the only other one I can think of). Lots of needlework history (weighted toward European textiles, but they do try to be inclusive). Articles accompanied by directions for projects which don't, usually, take too much time. Reviews of interesting needlework books. Many beautiful ads seducing you into spending more money than you want to on yet more antique crafts you haven't tried yet.

OK, that's not so good -- but the rest is great.

In the anniversary issue there's a pattern for elegant and fancy cashmere and silk socks with a front lace panel, designed by Nancy Bush. I think that pattern alone is worth the price of the magazine this month. In fact, I was slightly sorry to see those socks, since I immediately desired to buy expensive yarn and knit them.

I am NOT going to even LOOK at the ads this time.

Not Beach Wear

Hmmm. Knitting content, knitting content...let's see...

Oooh, I know! Let's diss vintage Spinnerin again, that'll do.

Now, peruse this carefully -- it's the cover of "His and Hers," a Spinnerin knitting collection from 1963 -- and see if you can figure out why I find it so infernally amusing:



Yep, that's it. The sweater on the woman is just plain stupid. It's the feminine version of what's on the man -- his isn't quite as dumb looking, probably on account of not being knit up in yellow with green and red borders. Boxy and plain -- with an unconvincing fake-Nehru collar clasped by the then very popular fake oriental frog closing which is actually concocted of two buttons and a loop of yarn (all this on top of a zipper, you understand -- that's how the thing's held together), it should NOT be worn at the beach. Maybe, maybe, in the VW to go to the grocery store. But beach wear? No, I don't think so. And it should NEVER, under ANY circumstances, be worn with that cotton skirt. The two are just not working well together.

What that's you say? You've noticed that the models are apparently having a lunch consisting entirely of corn syrup and caffeine, served down at the low tide mark at high tide? Oh, that was the fashion that year, I think; the back cover models are doing it too:



You can see from the back cover that once you finished all your Coca-Cola (and I do hope they paid well for this advertising opportunity), you were so discombobulated that you actually stopped caring if your pants got wet.

Ah, 1963. What a year it was.

Considering Leper Bandages

The archives are back, oh frabjous day. As for knitting:

Well, I broke down and swatched and cast on for the vintage Shetland cardigan, and now I feel much better. Should have known I couldn't make it a week without something on the needles.

Today's not the feast day of St. Clare, founder of the Poor Clares, but we're pretending it is, cause my saints' day planner told me it was, so today we're having Chicken Mole, in honor of her when she's being Santa Clara. I'd hate to think that my little family loves her most cause we eat chocolate chicken in her honor, but alas, this might be the case -- a danger in my little Saints at the Dinner Table education program.

She's the patron saint of embroiderers, but I don't know why, since it seems to me that if you're focused on a life of voluntary poverty and serving the disadvantaged you wouldn't be having a lot of time for non-essential textiles.

Much better, one would think, to be spending one's spare time on knitting bandages for lepers (thanks to Ryan for the link). I'm quite attracted to this project. I know I said yesterday I had too much going on, and didn't want to start any more projects, but really. Knitted bandages for lepers -- can be sterilized and reused, and are thereby economical and smart. How can I miss out on that?

In fact, I'm considering organizing a campus-wide Leper Bandages project -- we are after all, dedicated to the Holy Ghost, who surely would rather I was knitting bandages for lepers than vintage Shetland cardigans that I could, to be completely honest, do without.

Yes. We've got a group that meets on Friday afternoons to do needlework (called, surprisingly, "Creating Text(iles),"), and I bet I could get the group to go in on this. Especially since it's mostly graduate students and I am their Graduate Director. Not that I would ever, you know, mention that, or anything.

And then, just think -- someday when I go up for full professor, there it'll be on my resume, under "service" -- which, alas, doesn't count for a whole lot -- Organized University Knitting for Lepers Project.

For sure, it's gonna need a better title.

Giant Projects

So I'm reading War and Peace, and a ripping good read it is, and by the time I'm 100 pages in (that's be 1/15th of the book), I notice that, though it SEEMS to be about big ol' issues like, oh, war, and peace, that's a ruse! Yes, a ruse, to disguise the true concern of the novel, which is -- needlework! No, really, no kidding. Every chance Tolstoy gets, he's dragging in needlework. Ladies carting embroidery around, maids sewing, footmen knitting -- all that fluff about Major Issues is just fog, meant to distract the reader from the examination of textile arts, which lies at the heart of the novel. At the end, you remember, we'll get to the climax of the novel, which would be Anna Makarovna's double knit socks (she knits two socks at once on the same needles) unveiled at a party, to the delight of the children.

Well, that theory was going on pretty nicely, till I got to the second 100 pages, which started the War part, and we haven't had any needlework since then. Too bad. If I find any soldiers darning socks, though, we're back on.

I'm trying very hard to obey the rule of the non-knitting season -- that one doesn't actually do any knitting -- but it's driving me crazy, since none of my embroidery or sewing projects travel easily, and so I don't have anything to carry around and take to meetings. So forget that. I'm swatching. I think I'll start something blindingly easy -- I've got a vintage sweater/skirt set kit I bought on eBay, which would work nicely. Simple raglan cardigan, done in hunter green Shetland wool, with green tweed with which one can make a matching skirt. Yeah. That's what I'll do. But I'm ONLY going to carry it around, and save my valuable nighttime for getting some of the many embroidery projects I've started out of the way.

As, for instance, the Teresa Wentzler "Millennium" design I started in 1999, two years before the millennium actually started. I intended to finish it in 2000 (the cultural millennium), but, obviously, I didn't. When I get to the part where I embroider the year, though (traditionally the year in which a piece is finished), I'm going to embroider "2000," rather than "2003," or, more likely, "2008," or whatever year I finally finish the thing. Rather than thinking of this as outright lying -- which would be, I admit, one way to interpret the gesture -- I'm thinking of "2000" as a symbol, rather than a date.

The piece is enormous, and extremely complex, and contains a lot of tiny stitches which are 1/4th the size of the normal stitches -- that's why it's taking so long. I like the way Wentzler describes it: "I'd rate this design at a little more than average difficulty," she says, "because of the over-one stitching of the faces and hands, and planets. It, of course, has its share of blended floss colors and fractional stitches. Otherwise, it is pretty straight-forward, with no specialty stitches or unusual fibers...just some beads." Right. Rather than thinking of this as outright lying, I'm thinking of it as exemplative of the rarefied atmosphere in which Wentzler lives.

But I do notice that I'm involved in Giant Projects in many areas of my life -- pulling together a book manuscript, ploughing through the Millennium sampler, planning several time-consuming sweaters for the upcoming knitting season, including Starmore's "Margaret Tudor" (that lace thing with all the buttons), cutting and sewing all that fabric I bought when I wasn't looking -- and I wonder what this is all about.

I don't want any more stash. I want to finish things up.

Easy-Peasy Cheat Socks

Here you go: my version of the easey-peasey cheat socks:



The fake Fair Isle yarn is hilarious. Lots of fun to knit -- makes patterns right before your eyes! -- looks complicated; makes socks that are lots easier to wear than real Fair Isle socks, which are a pain in the you-know-what. I may make a habit out of these.

These were Fortissima, and I enjoyed the yarn -- I think I'll try Opal as well; they've got some subtler colorways that would better suit some of my relatives.

And that's it; that's the end of the knitting season, which should have ended two months ago, if the weather hadn't been so weird. Now I'm going to spend a month or so trying to get some OTHER things done (which I'll report on, I expect), but, ever mindful of the Knitting Bloggers Webring rules, I will include knitting content! Yes! We'll have knitting book reviews, we'll have ponderings on knitting, we'll have more Sweaters From The Past.

Speaking of which, Blogger has apparently lost my archives on that compost heap it keeps out back of its corner of cyberspace (you know -- that compost heap that all of us at times suspect to be the ENTIRE Blogger site) -- I don't think they're completely gone, though, as I can see them in some places. So those of you who are trying to read about Roquefort Jello, or find out why I don't knit catnip mice: hang in there. These things might reappear.

In the meantime, though I'm done with yarn for a while, I'm busy in my spare time. When we nuked the dust mites in the child's bedroom, I took down the beautiful quilt hanging over his bed, made by a dear artist friend, and as a result, there's a big empty wall there. So I let the child pick out one of the mottoes from Sage Stitchworks, which creates neo-Victorian embroidery kits using perforated paper. I love these kits. They work up VERY quickly, and they look great framed -- the kits come with gold leaf to put behind the design -- little bit of non-tacky glitter.

They specialize in religious mottoes, though that's not all they do -- I've got an eye-popping "Rise and Shine" hanging in the bedroom, for instance. I'm also working on a very stern "Be Still and Know that I am God," which will hang, aptly, behind my desk at work (ha! so! you want to withdraw from classes after the deadline has passed, do you?).

And, given his choice of the catalog, the child picked out the impressive and mildly scary "For this Child I Have Prayed," which I'm pretty sure will frighten off ANYTHING which goes bump in the night.

Including those damn dust mites.

Things to do in Charleston

Home!

It was hot in South Carolina. This actually cheered me -- it's not gotten really hot here this year, not for long, at any rate, or not when I was here. I had to travel to get some summer.

Our program is to stay on Edisto beach for a week -- quiet, non-trendy beach -- then we go to Charleston for a few days. We always think, oh, we'll never fill up three days in Charleston; maybe we shouldn't stay so long -- but we're always busy when we're there. This year we went to see the Hunley -- that confederate submarine that got found and hauled up out of the water. Later, when they're done with the restoration, it will be on view someplace, I'm assuming, but for now, one can go to the conservation lab on Saturdays or Sundays, when the scientists are off grocery shopping and whatnot, and look at the thing in its conservation bath. Satisfying combination of history and science. How to amuse our little family.

Then we went and ate. We do a lot of that in Charleston.

Our favorite restaurant is Slightly North of Broad. They specialize in traditional southern food that's been tweaked -- they make the ubiquitous Key Lime Pie, for instance, but they serve it with a passion fruit sauce. Intelligent food.

One of our Charleston friends knows a lot about good food, and a few years ago we were debating about asking her what she thought of S.N.O.B. -- but then we thought, no, we love that restaurant, and we don't know beans about food really, and what if she says, "Aaaugh! How can you eat at that pretentious dump!" -- we'd be all shattered and it would ruin it for us. So we never asked, but last year we were buying dinner, and asked where she wanted to be taken, and to our delight, she wanted S.N.O.B.

So we're happy. We ate there twice this year.

Now I'm back in the office, answering the email (main message: No, it's not too late to register for classes. Stop panicking.) The new professors are starting to arrive, too -- that's nice. They come with boxes of books, and charming personal effects to stick in the offices, and they actually read the email they get, and have opinions about things they're asked to opine on. Very refreshing.

I loved my vacation, really I did, but I'm so glad to be home and back on a regular schedule. I liked drinking my own tea this morning.

And the cats! We don't have cats that sulk when you come home. We have cats that run to the door like puppies and then won't leave you for hours. Cuddly beasts.

Got a lot of reading done, as usual; finished rereading Vanity Fair, and think I might try more Thackeray later. Might be while later, though, since I've been thinking that really, it doesn't make any sense not to have read War and Peace, so I bought a copy. It's sorta heavy.

As for the knitting, I did indeed finish my Fox Fibre sweater, but you can't see it -- it's just a plain old slouchy sweatshirty contraption, and I'm not going to photograph it -- it ought to be nice on fall weekends, though. I now get to wash it, and see the color get darker. That was the whole point.

I've also nearly finished my Fortissima fake Fair Isle socks -- what a hoot! "Isn't that cheating?" my brother-in-law asked. Yes. Yes, Henry, it is.

Will post picture tomorrow.