Surviving Junk Food

My philosophy about traveling is that it's well to be paying a lot of attention to eating healthily when you start out, because by the end of things you're going to find yourself lying in your hotel room, staring at something incredibly cheesy on the TV, whilst eating stale junk out of the vending machine.

Our flight got in near midnight on Saturday, and the three of us, all fairly intelligent women who pay attention to what we eat and when we get our exercise, had found ourselves sitting in the terminal, waiting for the last flight, in -- oh, where was it? Chicago? that sounds right -- eating, in our three separate cases, 1) Cheetos and peanut M & M's, 2) an entire bag of butter-toffee peanuts, and 3) beef jerky and a package of cheddar-rye crackers. Made it home, though. Nordic Track! The next day!

I got a lot done on the vintage cardi, knitting in the hotel room and while listening to papers, but when I came home I found a nice shipment of Colinette "Giotto," which I had bought on eBay for about half what it would have cost retail, and I cast on for a pullover:



So easy. Though I'm mostly faithful to wool (the fiber of our people), I can be found, occasionally, knitting around. This is because I am easily seduced by the blandishments of shine. Yep. Do love the glitz:



Isn't that lovely? Simply irresistible. And it's fairly subtle glitz, too, if such a thing exists! I think it'll be wearable.

Unlike that darling pedal-pusher outfit I saw down at the department store which was decorated with pink flamingos and sequins, and was, just maybe, a bit over-the-top.

Fantasy Paper Presentation

Well, it's all wet here, no matter what my weather pixie says, but apparently, at least according to the yahoo.com weather guru, it's going to be warm and dry in Siloam Springs, Arkansas, tomorrow, which is where I'll be. What time is our plane leaving? O-dark-thirty, I gather. Into Tulsa, then an hour and a half drive to the town where the campus is. There's three of us, so we can keep each other company with brilliant conversation. And maybe even get some knitting done.

So I have all sorts of work -- teaching, paperwork, various jobs -- I have to get done first, besides the things like, you know, finding clothes and putting them in a sturdy bag. Also I've got a paper around here someplace which I'm supposed to give -- best to find it, as 1) I don't have time to rewrite it, and 2) if I did, it would confuse the responder, who already read the version I sent, and is supposedly ready to respond to that. It would be terribly rude to show up and give a paper Totally Unlike the thing you'd sent in.

Oh, wouldn't that be a hoot, though. Arrive, look all professional (crucial to the success of this project would be the appearance of sanity), converse eruditely with colleagues, and then, when the time to deliver the paper arrives, give one that's not only not what you said it would be, but something entirely different, on an absolutely different subject, but -- and this is key -- NEVER betray in any way that you know it's not the same paper.

Ah, lovely. I'll never do it. But I did enjoy thinking it up for a minute.

In reality, papers as delivered in my field are often NOT what 's on the schedule, as it's customary to invent an abstract, send it in, find it's been accepted, and THEN write the paper, in the course of which one often discovers that one was dead wrong about one's thesis, and can't write the predicted paper, but one sort of like it only ending up in a different place.

So that's normal and boring. But what if I showed up, and instead of discussing Margery Kempe's Autobiography from the point of view of Teresa of Avila's Interior Castle -- which is what I said I'd do -- I instead delivered a paper on, say, Morris dancing in late medieval Cambridgeshire -- which is the paper I'm giving next month, at an entirely different conference? Surely that would be interesting, and add to my fund of life experiences.

Best not. Reputation in academia -- don't want to throw it away for no really good reason, since it's the main currency.

And I may well be pushing it with the knitting blog, anyway.

What I Know

I'm enjoying the lists of things knitters wish they'd known when they started out, such lists appearing in a knitting blog near you -- just go surf the ring. I can't think of anything I wish I'd known at the start, though -- I've too much enjoyed the process of finding things out. I'd hate to have been an expert when I started; but then, I'm only really interested in things about which I can say, in Chaucerian fashion, "the lyf so short, the craft so long to lerne." I get bored with the easy stuff.

On the other hand, I do have a list of

Things I Know Now But Didn't Know Then

-- which is probably more or less the same thing:

1. You will need a lot of needles. No, more than that. You're going to need about three different sizes of needle every time you start a new project. You're going to need double pointed needles, and duplicates in circulars. You're going to need needles in different materials, for use with different fibers. You're going to find that it's not enough to own one pair of each size, because you're going to have several projects on needles at one time. Don't bother going and getting one of those complete matching sets of needles, though if somebody gives you one, be immensely grateful. Just keep buying needles. If you buy them one or two sets at a time, it's not so scary.

2. That gorgeous yarn you adore is going to be discontinued. Maybe not this year, maybe not next, but at some point.

3. On the other hand, soon after it appears, you can probably buy it cheaply on eBay.

4. But if you wait too long, it's going to cost you way too much money on eBay. Timing is all.

5. Despite what all the pundits say, gauge does not always matter. Really. Do you need exact gauge for a scarf? Nah. Dishcloth? Nah. Shawl? Nah. Easy fit pullover? Probably not.

6. But someday it's going to really really matter and then you'll be sorry you didn't swatch. On the other hand, you'll have a story, and isn't that the point of life? I for instance have "The Time I Had To Frog An Entire St. Brigid Sweater," more about which in another blog.

7. Never name the well from which you will not drink. Diss somebody else's yarn, or pattern, or design, and find yourself making the very same thing the next year. It's an extension of the glass house law; good to remember your house is glass; even better to conceive the idea that it might be a different sort of glass in the future.

8. Adore your yarn. That's when possible, of course. We can't buy all the nice yarn we see, and sometimes, out of financial necessity or cause the pattern calls for it, we have to use yarn we don't like to work with. (Cotton! Bleh! Hate it! But I knit with it anyway, so that I can have the finished products, which I enjoy.) But when possible use yarn you adore, because life is short and the craft is long (see Chaucerian quote above).

That's it. I could invent 10, the usual number, but in the spirit of anarchist knitting, I provide only 8.

War and Thistles

I've got three of the thistles on the back center panel of "Margaret Tudor" done:



I think it looks more difficult than it is. It's fidgety, certainly -- not mindless knitting, by any means; one is reading the chart every row -- but it's not horribly excruciating knitting. I enjoy it a lot. The pattern builds quickly, and the work is satisfying.

If I were working only on this project, it would even be going quickly. But I intersperse it with the mindless vintage cardi (no, no pictures -- too boring) and the mindless 4 feet of garter stitch that will become leper bandages (ditto), so that's why it's taken me a week to get the three thistles done.

I'm off to a conference at the end of the week, and conferences are nice places to get a lot of knitting done, on planes and in hotels, and I may take the thistles with me, not for working on while listening to papers, but for working on in the hotel.

Also, I'll take a lot of reading; I'm hoping to whack a big chunk out of War and Peace. I'm more than halfway through -- it's a wonderful read. It's just that there really is a LOT of it. Worth it, though. Well worth it.

The child and I finally got through the last Harry Potter. We've been reading it as our read-aloud chapter book every night (or, almost every night -- some nights I have a late class, or we're all at a party) since the summer solstice, which is when the book got released, and we finished it up at the fall equinox. So that's what, three months? Not bad. Now we're back to Little Women. Similar moral lessons (Be brave! Be charitable! Trust in love!). No magic.

It gives me heart, though. If we can finish The Order of the Phoenix, I can finish War and Peace.

Pittsburgh News

I know you're all wondering if, here in Pittsburgh, we're all right.

Yes, we are.

I was driving home last night, in a ferocious drizzle, when I heard on the news a list of school closings for today. It's very exciting, living in Pittsburgh, since we're so deeply affected by things that happen hundreds of miles away. Best send-up of Pittsburgh coverage of the hurricane? Jason, over at Tube City, provides it, with his PrecisionDopplerTrackerAccuStormCast WeatherCenter.



This morning, the power's on, the basement's unflooded, the school bus arrived on time to pick up the child, and I'm going to work. All of which I expected. It turns out that Sam did indeed do a little hurricane preparation -- he folded up the deck umbrella and he moved the potted plants off the deck rail. Thank God, that's all I can say, cause who knows what horrible damage we might have had if he'd forgotten those simple yet necessary preparedness actions. (It's hard to get a couple of people born on the Texas Gulf and in the Carolinas to get really exercised about a hurricane that's happening over on the other side of the Alleghenies. Our kinfolk live in houses on stilts. In our minds, a hurricane is what you're having if you board up the windows and join a long line of people driving off an island. It's not what 's happening if you have a thunderstorm.)

The truth is that Pittsburgh news is always a hoot, as the entire world revolves around Pittsburgh. I know the rest of you, out there in the hinterlands of New York and San Francisco, were unaware of this, but you had to find out sometime. I tell you, if a Truly Horrible Disaster of Global Importance happened -- oh, for instance, let's say Germany accidentally nuked Paris -- the Pittsburgh news stations would spend five minutes on the Parisian details, and then skip over to some guy in downtown Pittsburgh who had been to Paris once, and was "really upset," since the Eiffel Tower was "pretty darn impressive."

Once one of our Canadian friends was visiting from Vancouver, and we were watching the local news, having explained to her how amusing the news coverage tended to be, and she thought we were exaggerating (as one of us sorta tends to, bet you can't guess which one) and then, when we got to the "World News In a Minute" section -- one of my favorites, as it really is ALL the world news, ALL of it, in ONE minute -- we were given the news -- in its entirety -- I'm not making this up -- "7 people dead in Canada!" That was it. Where in Canada? Dead from what? No further info.

If it hadn't been "World News in a Minute," and we'd had more time, we'd have had an interview with someone from Pittsburgh who had once read a book about Canada.

One day there was a fire on top of the Lazarus building, where they were doing some renovations. Now, that's actually Pittsburgh news, as it happened in downtown Pittsburgh. But the news was set up the same way. Five minutes of the fire, and how thank goodness no one was hurt and the workmen got off the building safely, and what sort of electrical problems might have caused it, and then another five minutes of an interview with a woman on the street below whose husband had once been a fire fighter. "Joe would have been pretty upset about this," she told us.

From one point of view this is all egocentricity -- there's a world out there! What does it mean to ME, a Pittsburgher? -- but in my more charitable moments (and I'm glad to be in one today) I can read it, more charmingly, as empathy. We FEEL your pain, Virginia, we really do. So we went and bought a lot of bottled water, in solidarity.

Leper Bandage Campus Project

As promised earlier, an update on the Leper Bandage Project:

A few weeks ago, Ryan posted a link to instructions for making bandages for lepers -- the Latter-Day Saints are collecting them and sending them off to places in South America, Asia, and Indonesia, where they are, I am told, of great use.

Well, I was quite taken by this project, and several of the graduate students were, too, so we started knitting leper bandages. (There are several reasons, I think, that we were so enchanted by the project: 1) it sounds vaguely medieval, 2) the uses of it are clear and compelling, 3) it is an easy project for beginners, and 4) we are all going to look like the March girls, who spend much of Little Women sitting around in groups looking fetching whilst knitting socks for the Union soldiers.) I said that I would collect the bandages and send them off myself to the Latter-Day Saints, as a present from the university.

And then I thought, well, you know, the English department's one thing, but what if we get more people involved? So I printed out instructions, and went around campus. The volunteer coordinator liked the project, the head of the dorms liked the project, the ministry center liked the project. (As could be predicted -- what were they going to say? "No! We scorn your leper bandages! Take them out of our sight, you dreadful charitable person!" Not likely.)

So now I'm waiting.

I'm not giving knitting lessons -- I don't have the time to teach the entire campus to knit -- I'm just waiting to see what happens. I say in the instructions I handed out that whatever bandages I receive by December 2, I'll mail off -- after that, everybody has to send them off themselves.

(I warned the department about this project at a meeting -- I figured that if the office started looking like the Red Cross, it would cause people to feel alienated if they didn't know what was going on. Best to give notice.)

Every once in a while I hear about progress in bandages, or about some little group that's knitting them -- but I've got no idea, really, how small or large this project is. We'll see.

I'm making two, myself -- one ball of Knit-Cro-Sheen makes two, and that's it for me. But the bandages are lovely -- strong, soft, and boilable. Can be recycled.

And very easy to carry around and knit on in odd moments. Quite satisfying project.

So, Ryan, there you are. Told ya. Many thanks -- we never know what will happen to the links we post.

Anarchist Knitting

I've lately been reading a knitting book with a delightful title -- Knitting for Anarchists, by Anna Zilboorg. Now, it's not about knitting for anarchists -- not a book of patterns for sweaters useful for friends and family members getting dragged off to jail, no, no -- it's a book for anarchists to knit by.

The main point of the book is that you don't need to knit out of a book, and indeed, if we would all get more familiar with our knitting fabrics we could free ourselves up and be more flexible and improve the general tone and tenor of our knitting lives. Zilboorg provides clear pictures and instructions for alternate methods of knitting, showing exactly how the two great families of knitting techniques -- English and Continental -- differ, and how they operate, and showing also why one style favors the counter-clockwise wrap, whilst the other favors the clockwise wrap.

Well, who cares, if your knitting is working for you? And besides, isn't this all complicated and boring?

One of the most useful blocks of time I've spent in my knitting career consisted of a few days teaching myself, out of a book, different methods of knitting. Now I've got a way I like best, but I can use others when I need them. I think that a block of time spent in that way would be very useful for anybody who loves their knitting but worries about making mistakes, or finds it hard to branch out into new techniques. Zilboorg's nice and chatty and clear, and her book has the advantage of being in print and inexpensive. (Well, inexpensive in relation to the $180 Hiatt's Principles of Knitting is going for these days.)

And she manages to keep from making too many pronouncements, a difficult task for a knitter -- in general, she thinks (quite rightly) that knitters should try to get away from reading their patterns as quickly as possible, memorizing them and understanding the fabric instead, but she does agree that patterns are sometimes useful. Her own pattern, a method for making variations on a strip-knit sweater, is to my mind, not very attractive, but it has the advantage of showing her method, and providing lots of flexibility. She does diss U-shaped cable needles quite unnecessarily,* but it's a short lapse into bossiness, and easily forgiven.

Her tone reminds me of Zimmerman's -- the knitting's all about the process, and only secondarily about the product. I think this shows up, for both of them, in the designs they create -- you can't get really fancy if you're going to eschew patterns and writing things down. No "Margaret Tudors" for you, anarchists! I myself enjoy both process and product, and I like patterns easy to memorize AND those I have to follow line by line -- so I've got, always, at least two on the needles, as different designs feed different pieces of my heart and brain. But I do consider the focus on process extremely valuable, especially for new knitters who aren't feeling confident yet. Zimmerman and Zilboorg are both knitting writers who are gifted at instilling ease and hope into their readers.

A usable and useful book. Small. Easy to carry around and read.

****************

* What IS this new fangled-fashion for dissing knitting needles one does not wish to use? I've been seeing all sorts of mean remarks about various knitting needles lately. Zilboorg herself has a great broadmindedness about all things knitting EXCEPT U-shaped cable needles, which she believes to be "pandering to the horror of dropping stitches" (p.70). Oh, please. Like I'm scared of dropping stitches. I like U-Shaped cable needles because they're easy for me to use, and I find them less clumsy than those little straight or wing-shaped ones. And while I'm thinking of it, I HATE them in plastic, and apparently metal's no longer fashionable, and since I lose them regularly, I'm going to run out. So if you've come to believe that metal U-shaped cable needles are an abomination, let me know, and we can make a deal. You can send me your metal ones, and I'll send you the plastic ones that, it turns out, I don't enjoy. As part of the deal, we won't diss each other's choice.

Also. I have been reading more and more about the silliness of straight needles, now that apparently the whole world has figured out that you can knit back-and-forth on circular needles and take up less space. True, so true. However. If, like me, you've got your left-hand needle tucked under your arm, held steady while you knit against it, much as if you were using a knitting sheath, only you didn't have to buy one, and are used, therefore, to knitting like a bat out of hell, you can also, when you need to, such as if you're doing stranded knitting, knit around and around on circular needles, but you're never going to pick up circular needles to knit back and forth unless for some reason you absolutely have to, and it won't be because you're a knitting idiot.


Experiment. Try different methods of knitting. Use different needles. See what you like best, and don't let anybody give you any guff.

Alternatively, do the same thing you've always done, and don't try anything else -- but STILL, don't let anybody give you any guff.

First Thistle

I'll tell you what is a LOT of fun: "Margaret Tudor."

Here's the first thistle, from the center back panel:

.

It took me a couple of nights of knitting to get this much done, but I wasn't going all out. I was taking it easy.

What's enjoyable about the work is how quickly the design knits up, and how interesting it is while it's going on. Now, this is the center back panel, as I say; it'll be five thistles long. Since you're not knitting the entire width of the sweater, but a panel only, each piece is doable. It's like working a pieced quilt -- the whole thing is daunting, but if you focus on getting one section done at a time, eventually the entire piece gets done. (Although, to be honest, sometimes "eventually" equals 6 years, as in the case of the double-wedding ring quilt I made for Sam's wedding present. He did receive it eventually, but the 6 months I'd budgeted before the wedding to get it done was Way Off).

I'm happy with this. And then I have various mindless projects to pick up when I don't feel like paying attention. Great. Good start to the knitting year.

**************

We've had a lovely day so far. The weekly grocery shopping marathon (the child gets to stay in the "Eagle's Nest," a child care center provided by the local Giant Eagle -- the front of it is glass, so you can walk by and see if your child is behaving). The laundry -- an involved lengthy process, now that we have to slaughter dust mites every week. The playing around on the computer while Mama sings at a wedding. The celebration of 100 years of flight, over at the county airport. (Sam says it was worth going just to see the T-28 Trojan, the plane he loved best to fly; it is an excellent plane because the throttle responds instantly, the engine is so powerful. Can you tell I'm quoting exactly and don't know what the hell I'm talking about? I myself was impressed by the C-130, which is built to fly tanks around. I don't understand how the thing gets off the ground at all, let alone when it's packed. The child liked being allowed to sit at the controls of the little Cessna. We were all entertained.) The baking of brownies for the afternoon snack. The more laundry.

Just a lovely busy day full of errands and history and being alive.

Later, we're going out to dinner, cause Mama literally sang for our supper

Music of the Spheres

By the way -- am always amused when we discover that they had some stuff right in the middle ages. Thanks to my buddy Rosie for the link. The spheres do make music.

Production Planning

I have to get serious about some costumes today. Or, at least, this weekend.

For one thing, there's that whole Halloween event coming up, and I've got a child. Now, to my surprise, Pittsburgh turns out to celebrate Halloween even more extravagantly than San Francisco does -- in SF there will be a lot of hoopla, granted, but it will be, except for the kids, sort of localized. But Pittsburgh -- sheesh! Allegheny county in its entirety will be setting out realistic corpses in the front yards, pinning autumnal wreaths on all the doors, setting up elaborate gloomy light and sound shows that get set off the moment the hapless traveller sets foot on the sidewalk -- in the years I lived in San Francisco I was very proud to be part of the great Halloween celebrations. But when I got here I was humbled to discover to find myself in a community that considers the event to be, basically, a Decorating Opportunity for Everybody, and humbled also to discover that if you put the entire collective mind of an entire city to the point, you get a lot more mileage out of the holiday.

Well. I'm no good at that part, too bad. Sam will carve an elaborate jack-o-lantern. That will be our sole contribution. No ghastly skeletons rising from the ground accompanied by eerie electronic music, though I think they've got one next door.

But the child. The child requires preparation.

We've got all his earlier costumes around here somewhere -- the ladybug costume I made for him when he was one year old -- nice, that, with a foam-rubber shell -- the Teletubbies costume I made for him the next year, the Captain Hook costume I made the year after that, the elaborate wizard's robe he wore while representing Harry Potter -- got two years out of that one -- and the Indian costume in which he pretended to be Little Bear, from The Indian in the Cupboard. I see, looking back on it, that we've had a sort of literary theme going here for a while; guess that's understandable, in the circumstances.

This year I told him that if he wanted a bought costume it wouldn't hurt my feelings, I would understand -- subtle, don't you think? But no, no, he said, bought costumes weren't as nice, and weren't as well made. True, though I didn't think he would know that, at the age of 7.

Ok. So I need to construct "Perseus Carrying the Head of Medusa."

The Perseus part is easy -- the Medusa head a little more complicated. I'm using one of those plastic pumpkin-shaped Halloween loot-carrying tubs, and I'm going to cover it, give it a Medusa-like face, and stick plastic snakes all around the top, and then he can both carry it and stick the candy in it.

Fine.

I also have to figure out the costume plan for Wit and Science (an hilarious morality play concerning how to get the most from your study time), which the Medieval and Renaissance Players are performing in November, as part of the 125th-year anniversary celebrations for the University in general and the College of Arts in specific. I am the faculty advisor for the Players, which means that I sign a lot of papers which come my way, but, more importantly, that I say, "Hey! Sounds great!" when people think things up.

Ok, that's not all. I do design, and sometimes sew, the costumes, and I do give advice. One of my students said yesterday, you're the Historian for the Players, right? and I like that title. Yes. I'm the Historian.

Here's how I operate, in production consultations:

Director and Producer: Hey! Wit and Science is a hall play! Let's stage it in the ballroom, with tables, and have snacks!

Me: Ok!

Director and Producer: Yes! That'll be great! And we can use the food in comedy bits! It'll be funny!

Me: Ok!

Director and Producer: Yes! And let's serve New World food, cause the whole dealing-with-the-New-World/exploration thing was a big deal in 1540!

Me: Ok....

Director and Producer: Popcorn, for instance! Popcorn would be great! People will love it! And it'll be funny!

Me: Wait. They were not eating popcorn in England in 1540.

Director and Producer: Yes they were!

Me: No. They weren't.

Director and Producer: Yes, but they'd discovered the New World! They were eating popcorn!

Me: No, no, no, no, no, no. They were not. Discovering things is not the same as getting them over across the sea and getting everybody to eat them. It takes a while. Look -- calling up "history of popcorn" on AskJeeves.com -- 1590. No popcorn till 1590. That's a whole damn 50 years later than the play.

Director and Producer: But popcorn would be great! Can't we have it anyway?

Me: Ok, just as long as we don't think it's historically correct.

That's me. A stickler for the details.

Why the Gauge Swatch Matters

I'm not usually fanatic about gauge, but I had a Very Bad Experience once (let's just say I now have recycled yarn but not a sweater out of the experience), and so I DO swatch, and sometimes I swatch a lot. Over and over:



Above you see several swatches for "Margaret Tudor," the main project of the year. If I can get this done this year I will be quite satisfied. (I say this now, but I predict I'll be whinging next May, when I won't think I've gotten enough done.) At the bottom of the gauge swatches, you see the gauge calculated on #2 needles, as called for in the pattern. Up at the top, you see the gauge done on #0 needles, which produces the correct number of stitches ACROSS -- and to the left you see the beginning of the center back panel, started on the #0 needles, but then stopped, when I realized that it was going to be too short -- in the center of the column of gauge swatches you see the gauge pattern worked on #1 needles, which makes a sample which is slightly too big across but is just right, maybe even a bit scant, up and down. That's the needle size I'll be using for the sweater itself, since it will be too difficult to figure out length changes, and it won't end up being too very big. In fact, I'm beginning to wonder whether the thing can be made just right by tugging it lengthwise while blocking.

Or, indeed, by tugging on it whilst wearing it. That should be charming.

Much easier project, just arrived from an eBay seller -- yet another vintage sweater-and-matching-skirt kit:



Will produce a nice mindless cardigan, suitable for spring, as you see from the colors.

By the way, if anybody has an extra copy of "Dale #107," the booklet from which Lisa is knitting her fox sweater, and wishes to sell it to me, let me know -- email info, slightly disguised, is down at the end of the sidebar. It's out of print, darn it all, and I hadn't seen the foxes in it before it bit the dust, or I would have bought it then.

Richard the Lion-Hearted and Warren Zevon

In knitting news, I'm still working on the things I was working on earlier; leper bandages, vintage cardigan,
elaborate "Margaret Tudor" sweater. This last is being tedious, even at the beginning. Starmore's gauge is notoriously difficult to get right, and I'm not happy with mine. I can get it right across, but not up and down. I think I'll go up a needle size, and make it slightly bigger. Won't be off by much around, but in a pattern in which you create length by number of pattern repeats rather than by measuring length, it's crucial to get the damn thing long enough. I do NOT want to be wearing a cute "Margaret Tudor" sweater that rides up over my belly button. Just plain don't.

Although it's the Nativity of the Virgin Mary today, none of my saints' day cookbooks (yes, such a thing does indeed exist) mentions any food customarily eaten on this day. This seems odd to me. Shouldn't there be some medieval custom, oh, from Italy, let's say, or maybe France, that covers this? The day we eat apple pie, maybe, or some sort of nice pasta dish? But no.

So instead, we're commemorating the birthday of Richard the Lionhearted. This is a nice flexible sort of day -- one could easily cook English Food, French food, or Middle Eastern food -- since, though an English king, he spent most of his time in France, when he wasn't harassing Salah ad-Din in the 3rd Crusade. My choice? We're having a nice Greek salad, which, though it doesn't precisely fit any of the categories open to me, will taste good.

Then, on the other hand, yesterday was Elizabeth I's birthday, and we had pasta with roasted peppers. I use the commemorative days as guides and suggestions, not as rules.

****************************

Warren Zevon is dead. He was very ill for some time, and I've been keeping an eye out for the news. All the stories I've run across connect him with "Werewolves of London," apparently his best-known song.

Is it? I didn't know. I appreciated him best for his accurate portrayal of the seemingly-interesting-but-in-reality-deathly-boring state of addiction. He was very good indeed at singing about that -- songs such as "Desperados Under the Eaves" and "Carmelita" (both off his self-titled first album) combined bravado, desperation, denial, and acquiescence precisely. Anthems for the drunk and strung-out.

Well, the smoking got him, but the alcohol didn't -- he was 18 years sober. He got to have two very different lives -- the screwed-up drunken rocker, and the "sober dad," as he put it.

I wouldn't wish addiction on anyone -- it's too chancy and it's too dangerous, you're a horrible bother to other people, even on the best of days, and you've got no guarantee you'll come out the other side. But I appreciate having had two lives, too. Zevon articulated both, and I'm grateful for it.

May great mercy be shown to him.

And I will go off to work, and enjoy my second life.

Jesse James' Birthday

It's Jesse James' birthday, which we notice and discuss, but don't actually celebrate -- even though we're having pulled pork tonight, which sounds like it could be part of a Jesse James Commemorative dinner, but isn't, really.

Nah, we're having the pulled pork not in honor of Jesse James, but in recognition of the fact that we're having company tonight for dinner but the cook won't be home till about dinner time, and the way I make pulled pork, it'll be ready when I get there.

Here's how: Put bunch of pork in slow cooker. Cover with bottle of good barbecue sauce. Turn slow cooker on, low. Go to work.

Then, later, I'll toast the whole-wheat buns and mix up some coleslaw. Dinner. Done.

I'm using Stubb's Famous Barbecue Sauce today -- oh, the delight and rejoicing when the Giant Eagle started carrying it!

The bottle itself is impressive -- Stubb's intelligent face, framed by quotations: "Ladies and gentlemen, I'm a cook," for instance, and "My life is in these bottles." Stubb, hero of Lubbock and Austin, is dead now, but he was more than a cook.

Ah, Texas barbecue. We'll be happy, the guests will be happy (they've been told what we're having and are suitably cheered). Thank you, Stubb.

Cousins please note: I certainly do not intend my adulation of Stubb's Famous Barbecue Sauce in ANY WAY to be interpreted as a slur upon the excellent barbecue made by Cousin Stormy! Absolutely not! If Stormy put his stuff up in bottles I would buy it! Right quick! And I'm just grateful that, being a member of the family, I get to eat it, when I'm back in East Texas! I mean it!

(Ok, that should cover it.)

It's Friday, though, so in order to earn the pulled pork -- a meat product, I notice -- I'll have to work on the Leper Bandages some. More on that later, but I'll just say now that Many Organizations on Campus were very Pleased to Learn of the Leper Bandage Project.

I believe that was your knitting content.

Back to food: redfox, of Hungry Tiger, provides us with this excellent link to a Japanese Pizza site, which, she advises us, should be followed past page one. I did that, and believe me, pages two and three are worth it. Num.

Wearing Margaret Tudor

Oh, look, it's morning. How nice.

Or, to be more precise, it's Wednesday morning, which, for this semester, will be A Special Event. That is because all Tuesdays, till we get well into December -- with the exception of that nice week I'll get off for Thanksgiving -- will be, oh, what's the word I want...difficult?...painful?...

Tuesday's just a long, long day, that's all -- at 6:00 yesterday evening I met one of my colleagues in the hall, and she was headed off home, and asked if I was, too, but no, I was not -- I had three hours to go.

Granted, it was three hours of Irish Lit, and I love this stuff -- it's not like I'm enduring the tortures of the damned. No, I'm a lucky woman, and the teaching is the part of the job I like best. I don't get paid for the teaching -- that's how I figure it. I get paid for the meetings, and the grading papers, and the shoveling the sea with a teaspoon, which is that thing we call administrative work. The teaching is the perk.

But Tuesdays are a long long day now, and I get very tired. (If I could learn to teach without waving my arms around and getting excited, I suppose I wouldn't be so tired, but I don't see that happening soon, alas. I'm lucky if I can keep from flinging the chalk around.)

Luckily, I had the mindless cardigan to work on when I got home. I'm planning on swatching for Alice Starmore's "Margaret Tudor" soon -- but it's a lace pattern that will have to be followed every row. It will NEVER be worked on Tuesdays, not this semester.

Ah, "Margaret Tudor." I've had the yarn for it sitting around in the stash for a few years -- I bought some plain old gansey yarn, nothing spectacular, no "Scottish Fleet" off eBay, nothing like that -- and I've got the 56 pewter buttons ready -- they've got Tudor roses on them, no less -- and I'm ready to go.

It's one of those patterns you get warned about; Starmore herself says, "Attempt this only if you have the skill and patience to match that of a Tudor tailor or gownmaker," and I found a review that speaks of it as "wearable but dramatic." It's done in panel overlays, so that the design evokes Elizabethan "slashing" -- a method wherein two layers of fabric are used, the top one cut to reveal the one underneath. In the case of "Margaret Tudor," the top layer is held down, at the points, with buttons. 56 of them, as mentioned above.

I once saw a discussion of the sweater on one of the knitlists; somebody wrote that the buttons didn't make any sense, so she wasn't going to use them, and somebody else said that she wanted to figure out how to change the pattern so that she didn't have to knit panels, but just knit the whole thing flat. I'm unclear as to why one would bother with changing the pattern to make it easier -- I mean, there you are, knitting a bunch of thistle-and-rose patterns into a sweater; why not go all the way? But there seemed to be general consensus that if you knit the thing as it stands, it would be impressive but way too over-the-top to wear. Wearable but dramatic. Something you couldn't really use. So, ok to make, but you might want to tone it down some.

Well, I can use it, and I can use it as it stands.

My method: 1) be a medievalist -- everybody thinks we're eccentric, anyway; 2) fling the chalk around -- helps to establish dramatic personality; and 3) wear what you damn well please.

Knitting Season Declared Open

Oh, the hell with it. I'm tired of embroidery. Knitting season, which ended late, is now starting early.

Here's the end result of a project which was NOT mindless, Jade Starmore's "Oriental Flower," from The Children's Collection:

Now that it has its little buttons on (only the finest plastic for MY grandchild), it's ready to be sent off for Darling Livy's 3rd birthday.

Here's the beginning of a project which IS pretty mindless, though the front of the cardigan will have a couple of easy cables:

I'm such a sucker for these vintage sweater/skirt sets. This one's being knit up in Authentic Shetland Yarn, according to the label, and I have to admit I wonder whether even I, who have a pretty high tolerance for wearing wool, even when other people might not, will comfortably wear something this scratchy. Yes! Yes, I will! Constant itching all day long is a small price to pay for high fashion.

And here's something so completely mindless that I do think one could knit it whilst in a coma:

It's the beginning of a leper bandage (this is all Ryan's fault by the way), and if you were a beginning knitter, and wanted practice, and didn't know anything but the knit stitch, you could do this, for a good cause, and boy, would you get some practice, cause the thing's supposed to end up 4 feet long, and it's all knit, all the time.

But I must say that while knitting it I've seen why it will be useful. It feels good and it stretches. And of course, it will be reusable, which gauze bandages aren't -- this can be washed and sterilized.

But it's mindless. It's numbingly mindless.

Excellent for knitting in public, though -- you should see the results when people ask what you're knitting and you tell them.