Mindless Knitting

Here's what I'm working on at home:



I don't think of this as "real" knitting -- it's a quick, fun, top-down raglan mohair fluffy thing. When it's done, I'll wear it a lot, I'm sure. But "real" knitting involves difficulty of some sort. This is Not Difficult. It has no difficulty in it. It is completely bereft of difficulty. Hence. Not "real."

It's like the difference between "real" dinner -- which involves vegetables of some kind, and a stove -- and a bag of Cheetos and a carton of ice cream, consumed in front of the TV during "Colombo" reruns, except that in the case of the non-real knitting, one doesn't have to be quite so humiliated afterward.

Socks are like that, too. Mindless.

(Now, then. For some of you, socks are not mindless. Neither are top-down stockinette stitch raglans. Therefore, in your case they are not the equivalent of Cheetos and ice cream. But such are the heights to which you may aspire; keep this up, and someday you'll find the socks mindless. Really. I promise. Till then? They are REAL knitting.)

At work, I'm plowing through one of those Colinette "Ab Fab" throws, which is also Not Difficult, but has the advantage of being knit with several yarns in a scallop pattern, and therefore gives the appearance of difficulty. It's beginning to depress the rest of the department, though, because I'm only knitting it during interviews with The Candidates, and the fact that it's already halfway done -- and it's not small -- means that we've been spending a Lot of our time with the darling candidates.

Even though I knit like a bat out of hell (direct quote from one of my colleagues).

So, basically, I'm just having fun with knitting. I have lots of pieces on the needles about which I need to be mindful, but I'm not going to work on any of them for a few days. Either at work or at home. Also, both projects involve fluff. I'm in a candy-fluff happy knitting stage.

This won't last long.

That was TWO separate bits of knitting content, wasn't it! I RULE!

Hey, here's another:

TChem, who is brilliant, has posted a link to this marvelous site, so now I LOVE her.

I own a bunch of the booklets that the site makes fun of, partly because they are so hilarious (I have previously discussed the fact that many vintage designs are pretty much impossible to create, as well as the fact that occasionally the photographers appear to have lost their minds), partly because I often LOVE these designs. Sometimes in much the same way that I LOVE the knitted English breakfast -- but sometimes cause I really truly love them and intend to wear them.

More on this later, I expect.

Now I'm going to go off into the sewing room to work on a skirt that matches that vintage cardigan I knit up last month.

Portraits of You with Stevie Nicks

Knitting pictures soon -- probably Saturday, and not tomorrow, as we have another candidate coming in tomorrow and I need to get to work early so as to drink coffee and discuss literature. I'm working through the very simple mohair-and-metallic-thread pullover. Mindless. Fluffy. Very cheering.

I'm really excited about a new gift source I've run across -- thanks to mimi smartypants for the link.

Because it's lovely.

I find that, as I scroll down the page, perusing the various possible permutations of Portraits of You With Stevie Nicks, that I think of more and more dear, very beloved friends who could really benefit from one of these.

And look! All you need is a photo of your buddy! This could So Easily be done without their ever ever knowing what was in store for Christmas, or birthday. It'll help if they have Big Hair, but that's not strictly necessary.

And the choices! You can have your portrait painted with Stevie cause she just LOVES you, or you can have your portrait painted with Stevie cause you're both in what appears to be a sister act, or you can have your portrait painted with Stevie because you actually ARE Stevie....

And! Should you be musically inclined yourself, like Stevie, you can have your portrait with your best buddy Stevie painted directly onto a tambourine! Cool! If you'd rather, you can have your tambourine painted with a portrait of Stevie and a Wolf. This Means Something, I gather. (Should you require ribbons for your tambourine, and be disinclined to go on over to the local Michaels and make them yourself, there's a Helpful Link so you can get someone else to make them for you. And then you can be sure they'll coordinate.)

Does Stevie know about this?

Luckily, for those of you out there -- and you know who you are -- who might be worried about whether I'm going to buy you a portrait of you and Stevie, nah. Not gonna, much as I'd like to. They cost Way Too Much.

Zen Alarm

I have several things to discuss today, none of them knitting related, as far as I remember -- so for those of you (I think 3 of you, max) who read this blog solely for the knitting -- be forewarned. None coming up in this entry.

Icy conditions today, but no school delay for us -- and this is good, because Sam and I are supposed to go to the Special Persons lunch at the child's school, and though we are not looking forward to the "springs with meat sauce" which we have been promised, according to the little menu we were sent, we ARE looking forward to the child's happiness in showing us around and being a child who does indeed have Special Persons. It's extremely important that somebody show up to be a Special Person. My heart breaks for the one or two kids in each homeroom who don't have any Special Person coming by to pick them up for lunch. But the child has us, and this year -- as last year -- I can go, too, not just Sam. So I will. And I'll eat the damn springs. And I'll like it.

Quick, very quick, note for those of you who were curious about the slow-cooker lasagna. Works fine. As far as I can tell from the various recipes I've messed with, you can pretty much take your favorite lasagna recipe and put it in the slow cooker -- precook meats, and maybe any chunky vegetables; make sure to use those pre-cooked lasagna noodles; cook it on low heat for about 5 hours. But if you'd feel more comfortable with a recipe created specifically for the slow-cooker, though, you can find a bunch by googling.

Now, then. The Zen Alarm. I LOVE my Zen alarm. It's only recently the company started making the Zen Phone Bells that have so intrigued Ryan -- I'd like one of those in my office, but I'm not going to be getting one anytime soon.

But I do have a lovely Zen Alarm, and indeed I have a Zen Travel Alarm -- though I didn't inflict it on my colleague-roommate when we went off to the MLA in San Diego a few weeks ago -- I ought to have, really, as it would have given her Lots to Talk about and that's one of my main uses in the department. Darn.

Anyway. Long story short, I have the Zen Alarm as part of my Holistic Embrace of Menopause.

Short story long, a few years ago I noticed that I was less well-wrapped than usual, which in my case is Not Good At All. I gather that amongst the women of my age there are a lot of hot flashes running around -- well, I didn't get them. My main symptom was Screaming Fits followed by Uncontrollable Sobbing. Not very restful for me, and rather difficult to live with for everybody else. And though that was before the HRT debacle, I wasn't inclined to go the intensive drug route anyway -- if I can fix myself up with stuff I dig out of the backyard I'd just as soon do that.

So I did many things. I lost 100 pounds, cause fat's an estrogen factory, and mine was quite literally making me insane; I started exercising regularly; I started drinking soy concentrate (which luckily is pretty tasty, though I would have drunk it if it tasted like dishwater), and I started working on making my waking up less jarring, as my work life had gotten extremely intense and it was bad enough getting up in the morning at all, without adding in alarm disjunction.

I started out with a lovely artifact that we called "The Happy Healthy Holy Lamp" -- it was shockingly expensive -- much more expensive than the Zen Alarm -- and it had a full spectrum bulb in it (I'm now addicted to those and have them all over the house), and it had an alarm in the base.

But not just any alarm. Oh, no. No, this alarm woke you slowly and naturally, just as if it was your own idea, and not some thing the clock had thought up. And it woke you by slowly, slowly, slowly upping the light, just like it was the very sun, yes, the sun itself, slowly rising over the horizon of your little world. But there was more! Yes! It at the same time ran a tape of happy healthy holy noises, which slowly, slowly, slowly got louder and louder, just like it was the world waking up.

At any rate the idea was that one woke naturally and calmly and was then less likely to have Screaming Fits followed by Uncontrollable Sobbing.

I loved that lamp. I truly loved it. I get misty even now just thinking of it. My favorite part was that you could switch sounds -- you could wake up to the sound of a clear and non-polluted stream (you could tell by the crystal gurgling that there were no beer cans in it), or you could wake up to the happy bird songs and rustling leaves of a likewise unpolluted forest; I believe there was an ocean; and then there was the Happy Healthy Holy Town, which was really creepy, sort of like a Twilight Zone town, as it was a town on some sort of endless loop, so the same dog barked, and the same car drove by, and the same door slammed, over and over and over...

Ok, well, that wasn't so great. But I really liked the forest.

Alas, the Happy Healthy Holy lamp was defective. It broke, and I sent it back (a big bother; it weighed about 300 pounds), and they sent me another, and then that one broke, and I sent it back, and then they sent me a refund, and then they discontinued making the thing.

So I had to get a replacement, didn't I? Cause I'd gotten addicted to not waking up to the alarm going BLAAAH at 5:30. Or even blaring music at 5:30, which is always a dicey proposition, cause you never know what people are going to play. It can ruin your day. Or give you screaming fits.

Hence the Zen Alarm. It's simpler than the Happy Healthy Holy Lamp was -- well, duh, it's ZEN -- and I actually miss the creepy town a little -- but it's a marvelous way to wake up. Non-invasive. Tuneful. Beautiful. I have the one portraying the inside of a spiral shell. So it's Full Of Symbolic Meaning, which sometimes I like to think about.

Too bad they couldn't get the Happy Healthy Holy Lamp to work, though, Cause it was a Hell of an Invention.

And oh, by the way -- yes, the holistic mega-lifestyle change approach worked for me. I haven't had the screaming fits for some years now. And as far as I can tell, I'm pretty much as happy, healthy, and holy as it's possible for me to get. We all have our limits.

Lasagne in the Slow Cooker

This morning the Zen alarm went off, and for a while I incorporated its meditative little bell into a dream concerning British Modernism, about which I know Precious Little (when I teach Joyce it's in relation to Myles na Gopaleen rather than Eliot, so God alone knows whether what I was dreaming had any relation to any sort of reality), but finally I figured out that it was the Zen alarm and I had to wake up, and so I did, and the first thing through my head was remembering the moment at the grocery store when I didn't buy ricotta.

I didn't know you could remember a negative happening, but there you are. I distinctly remember pushing the shopping cart past the ricotta.

This was bad, because the plan today was that I'd put lasagna in the slow cooker, so we could have a nice home-cooked dinner even though I'm going to be late.

I have to be late coming home tonight cause I need to go to a meeting with the theater director, and theater people can't meet before 4:00 PM on account of all that exciting living, which regularly goes on till 3 or 4 in the morning and then they have to recover from all that Dramatic Art.

I tell a lie, actually. The theater director actually works someplace else and can't get here before 4:00. But I like much better the story where he's busy with Dramatic Art till 0'dark-thirty. I think he'd like that story better, too. Let's go with that.

Anyway. Dinner. So what we're having is a sort of slow-cooked casserole -- we've got the marinara sauce, we've got the Italian sausage, we've got the lasagna, we've got the mozzarella; we just don't have any ricotta. I'm serving it with a salad. I think it'll work.

And, should the Freezing Rain of Death hold off, I can get home and eat it.

Where, to my joy, I get to actually stay home working on my nice fluffy (but not pink) pullover, which is coming along so quickly I might get to wear it next week.

(That was knitting content. I try to obey the rules.)

Job Candidates! It's Not ALWAYS Snowing!

It's Monday. It's January. I'm in Pittsburgh. We've got another candidate for one of our three professorial positions to interview all day today. Big snowstorm came in last night. Schools shut down. Ice on roads.

Do I stay home? No! I do not!

Well, at the moment I'm home. But soon I'm going to go upstairs and dress -- thank goodness I've got some boots I think look ok, even if I can walk in the snow in them -- and then I'm going to go dig the car out, and then I'm going to drive into work. If indeed the crews have gotten to the roads I drive on.

I don't know about this having-the-candidates-come-in-January-so-we-can-quickly-make-decisions-and-snap-up-the-best-of-them business. Cause Pittsburgh is often Very Cold in January. Also, often, it's snowing. So I'm hoping that enough of us are able to get into work early this morning (for the "informal coffee and conversation" torture session that's scheduled for 9:15 AM) that we're able to make a good impression. One wouldn't want to have the candidate sitting there all by herself with the coffee and muffins.

Actually, I'm not as worried about scaring the candidate today, who's been living in the East, as the one we had on Friday, who had grown up in Southern California and is finishing up her doctorate in Southern California, and came on a day that was so cold she couldn't be taken on a tour of the campus, even though she'd borrowed the department chair's coat, and then got taken out to dinner in what, if you were from Southern California, would be a Scary Snowstorm.

You get tired of apologizing for the weather. I mean really. I didn't invent it. I'm responsible for all that knitting going on during the scholarly presentations. Fine. Blame me. But I didn't invent the weather. Come work with me anyway! I'll make tea! I'll give you good advice on how to get through the tenure process! I'll let you help knit leper bandages! And look! Here are my colleagues! They're darling! And the students! Also darling!

It's just, you know, snowy. Today. That's all.

So. Sam and the child are staying home today. The child will be sliding down the snowy hill for a goodly portion of the day -- thanks be to God I'll miss that (a child just died nearby yesterday, smashing into a tree). Still too cold to go buy another budgie to keep Sunny company. Sam's got haggis and pumpernickle bread for lunch. And I'm going to go get ready to go off and do my devoir. I believe I'll wear "Golden Gate" today. A bracing sweater, such as fits one for any sort of endeavor. Digging out the car. Impressing young future professors.

Hey -- I just heard the garage door open. I do believe that Sam is out there digging my car out. I'm being well taken care of and coddled. I'll go be nice to the candidate and spread all this charity around.

Elephants and Haggis

I'm quite interested in the fact that two of you -- Lauri and Greta -- knew "duille," which is the Irish for "leaf," but nobody knew "welkin," which is English for "sky." I'm not bothered, mind you -- I'm pleased that we've got some actual Irish running around out there. But it's odd. Anyway. 50 points each to Lauri and Greta. Well done!

So. "Elephants" got finished up, buttons and all:



And off it will go in the mail tomorrow.

Now then, as to the pool Rachael started, all by her bitty self, and which nobody else entered: I was finished with the knitting yesterday afternoon; I sewed on the buttons today at noon; she figured I'd finish it last night; she wins. A valuable prize will be speeding to her in the mail, as soon as I can think one up.

Now! Major news! It's Bobbie Burns' day, so we all have to eat haggis. Yes everybody. Yep, you, too. No, stop that! I do NOT want to hear any excuses. I'm eating haggis, you eat your damn haggis. We're all in this together.

When we were in Edinburgh, Sam tried haggis everywhere we went, and he liked it very much. And I tried it too, and pronounced it good. Last year, as an Extra Special Christmas present, I ordered some haggis from Scotland, and we had it for Bobbie Burns' Night. At which point we discovered that the haggis one is fed in the hotels and restaurants in Edinburgh such as non-Scots might frequent is not exactly like the haggis one gets if one orders it from Scotland in the mail. No, this haggis was much more...intense.

Yes. Well. The child and I ate some of it, because we have a certain code of honor around here, which is that you don't diss the food of your people,* any of them, no matter how addicted to sheep's innards they were, but we mostly ate our neeps and tatties. Sam said he really liked it. He ate a lot, and then he ate a bunch of the rest of it over the next week, in sandwiches on pumpernickle bread, where, I gather, it resembled a sort of chunky liverwurst. Oh, the cats were pretty excited about it, too, and could not be dissuaded from jumping on the table and trying to drag it away. Which I thought says a lot about the dish, really.

Anyway. A haggis, being exactly as big as a sheep's stomach, since that's what they cook it in, isn't that small. So we put half of it in the freezer. And today, on this sacred day, I'm going to resteam it, and make more neeps and tatties, and we're having a Bobbie Burns feast.

And next year? Well, we'll negotiate, Sam. Love ya, honey, but you might not be getting another frozen haggis from Scotland.

*Sam? MacDuff. Me? Elliot.

Saga of Dead Budgies

Knitting content, before I forget -- QueerJoe has posted a Beautiful Object d'Art (scroll down just past the darling baby) which can be knit up for deserving friends. Now, I'm not actually threatening anybody here -- not cause I'm too nice to do that, but simply cause I've done it too recently -- but it does seem to me that it were well for me to keep the directions, in case, in the future, somebody is found to really NEED a knit hat that looks like an English Breakfast. Without, I must say, the mushrooms and the tomatoes, being in this case a fry-up and not a mixed grill. I can't tell you how relieved I am to discover that I do not actually want to knit the hat for ME -- I've begun to worry a bit lately about the extensive nature of my eccentricity. Thought I might be getting a bit out of hand. But no. We've found my limit. I will not be wearing knitted eggs on my head. Sorry, graduate students. I know you would have enjoyed it.

We're having a little tragedy around here today. A very little tragedy, but we're sorrowful. One of the budgies, Duille, has been found dead on the bottom of the cage. Now, we keep two budgies always, so that they can bond with each other, since the budgies have to bond with someone, and we're not around enough for them and it's just too creepy when budgies bond with those budgies in the mirror.

We've had a string of budgies. First there was Angel, a white budgie I inherited from one of the graduate students, and then I bought Cecily, a green budgie, to keep her company, and then Angel died, and we bought Welkin, a blue budgie (25 points to whomever can tell me why we named her Welkin) , and then Cecily died, and we bought Sunny, a yellow budgie, and then Welkin died, and we bought Duille, a green budgie (50 points to whomever can tell me why she was named Duille), and now Duille is dead. And we can't go buy Sunny a new friend cause it's so piercingly horribly cold we're afraid we couldn't get the new bird back to the car without the new bird keeling over. So Sunny is sitting by herself, singing little songs, and breaking our hearts.

We're not actually heartbroken about Duille's demise, except that the child and I don't especially want to know what Sam did with her -- the ground is too frozen for the usual Meaningful Budgie Funeral (I am Really Good at funerals) -- as we don't get that deeply attached to the budgies individually. We're in love with the budgie relationships.

They get SO bonded. And Sunny and Duille were VERY close friends. Very. They spent every waking minute cuddled up together saying sweet things to each other, and feeding each other, except when they were performing tricks on the plastic rings in order to impress each other (Ah! My love! How elegant is your play among the plastic rings of our people!) or, occasionally, as a bit of spice, having a little spat over the bird seed, after which they would make up and get all sweet again.

If you're used to living with that sort of action going on in the sitting room corner, every morning, every afternoon, every evening, then it's too damn awful when what you've got is one solitary bird sitting alone in the cage bravely singing in case her true love, who has recently escaped, is lost and needs to hear the sweet dulcet tones of her beloved budgie friend so that she can return home.

Oh, lord, I am just gonna die here. I have to go lie down.

Or maybe read something really bracing. Something really anti-romance. Oooh, I know. Where's my copy of Don Juan?

Pittsburgh Directions

Quick update on the "Elephants" vest -- thanks to all of you who said nice things about it; I like it too. Very fine elephants. But Rachael, even if you weren't the only person in the pool, you'd still be winning, because I WAS going to get the thing done by last night, but it turned out I had to frog two rows of the neck band and reknit three, and it's that tedious corrugated garter stitch, and it takes a long time, and now I've still got one armband left, and teach late tonight, have choir tomorrow, and go out to dinner with a candidate on Friday. You may end up hitting the finish date exactly. (January 24, 9:32 PM, is her guess.)

On to other non-knitting issues:

We're going out to dinner on Saturday, over at the apartment of a very dear friend, who bought new dishes for the occasion, I'm supposed to mention, and we've never been there, so I asked her for directions. I should have been more specific; she lives in Shadyside, and we know how to get there; what I needed was the cross streets. But I didn't ask for those, did I. I asked for directions, and "directions" means "from my door to your door," as I now understand but didn't then, and so we started down the Bad Road of Trying to Give Me Directions.

The thing is, I don't actually get lost very often. I'm able to tell where I am, and where I'm going. And indeed, I know my right from my left, in three dimensions, which is where they really count. But I have a little problem with the words "left" and "right," which is that they don't actually mean anything to me. One of my brothers has this problem, too. Mostly it doesn't interfere with daily life -- I mean, I guess we'd be pretty bad at being bus drivers, but mostly we're fine. We can even figure out what the words mean if we're given enough time. You just don't want to be in the car with us, either telling us where to be going, or having us telling you which way to go, unless we're in the front seat and you can see which way we're pointing, cause otherwise the whole journey is a litany of "Turn left!" "No, the other left!" "Turn right!" "No, the other right!" and things like that, and it's not restful.

All of which is to say that I don't like giving directions, and I don't like having directions given to me, and one of the advantages of being in a long term relationship with a former Navy flier is that you can get your Significant Other to take over the directions, which he's glad to do, having driven you around on several occasions, and being well aware of the problem, and he'll be good at the directions, too, cause one of the things the Navy wants to know before they let you take off of one of those aircraft carriers is do you know your right from left and can you follow directions, and they've vetted you already for this.

So my suggestion was that we call Sam, but our dear darling friend just LOVES the Yahoo driving directions function, so instead of calling Sam, she printed out three copies of the Yahoo directions to get from our door to her door, and sent me off with them.

By the way, I don't think that she actually meant to imply, by printing out three copies, that I was such a feather headed ditzy broad that I couldn't actually get the directions from her office to mine without dropping two of them on the way...

Anyway. Sam looked at these directions, and saw that they were insane. If indeed these are the sort of directions that Global Positioning is sending to all those expensive cars, I don't understand why more of them aren't wandering around lost.

The directions start out by charmingly telling us to drive 0.1 mile down our street, which will screw up everything, immediately, as we'll end up in the neighbor's front door, and that'll take up the entire evening right there.

But, should we manage to get out of our neighborhood -- by ignoring the directions -- they then send us down Route 51. That's fine, no problem, sensible thing to do, would have done it anyway. But they don't say "Take Route 51 north until you get to the Liberty Tunnels." No. They say to continue on Clairton Blvd, and Saw Mill Run Blvd, and Blue Belt/Saw Mill Run -- all of which are actually Route 51, which you wouldn't know from these directions, and if you're looking for street signs, you're not going to find them. Cause they're not there.

Ok, fine, let's say we get to the Liberty Tunnels, and even, by following the little lines, manage to drive through the Tunnels, and end up on the Liberty Bridge. These directions send you out across downtown and up the Allegheny. Sam doesn't want to do that. Sam wants to go the easier, softer way. If we follow the Yahoo directions we're liable to end up over in the North Side, and while there are lots of fun things out there, they don't include dinner with our darling beloved friend. Who even now is probably down in her office trying to print out directions to some damn place or other.

But wait. Let me be fair. It may well be that Yahoo's problem here has to do not with maps and Global Positioning per se, but with Pittsburgh itself, which is notoriously difficult to negotiate. Streets change names about every three blocks, sometimes labeling themselves, sometimes not. Three different streets in three different parts of the city might have the same name but no other connection to each other. Should you manage to find a way to get someplace, you can't assume that you will be able to retrace your route in order to get home. Should you be driving along and come across a one-way cross street, you can't assume that the next one-way cross street will be going the other way. Or indeed, that there will be a "next one-way cross street" at all. I have seen maps that show a street going along in a nice straight line -- which it does -- from above -- without at all making it clear that if you're driving down that street, you'll come to a cliff, and be unable to continue going straight along without severely damaging your vehicle.

I bet if you had a town where the streets were laid out in a nice grid, and didn't change names for miles and miles and miles, and there were no cliffs or other geographical hindrances, that Yahoo could do a nice job on the directions.

Let's see, shall we? I'll go find out what happens if I ask Yahoo to tell me how to get from my mom's house, on the northeast mesa in Albuquerque, to the house where we lived when I was a teenager, also on the northeast mesa in Albuquerque. No cliffs (no going off the mesa here; we won't ask Yahoo to get us down into the valley to Monroe's restaurant) a nice grid pattern to the streets (except for Monte Vista, which is going to go at a diagonal! Watch out, little Yahoo!) -- and No Name Changes to the streets. Ever. In decades. For miles. All the way to Santa Fe.
*******************
Ok, back now. This was a wash. Yahoo will give no driving directions for Albuquerque -- it keeps telling me it doesn't recognize street names, even though these street names show up on its little maps. Ok, Yahoo. Fine, fine, fine. Let's try San Francisco; hey, we'll make it easy: How does one get from my old apartment in the Castro to my old apartment in the Tenderloin? (Hint: Market Street would be a good bet. If Yahoo takes us over by the Presidio, Yahoo will be Wrong.)
********************
Yep, as I suspected, absolutely clear. Down Castro. Down Market. Down Franklin. Down Golden Gate. Down Taylor. Down Geary. No getting lost. Yahoo successfully negotiated a fairly clear grid -- with a nicely confusing diagonal and some one-way streets to negotiate.

It's not Yahoo. It's Pittsburgh.

So, Yahoo's off the hook with me now, though I find that I'm miffed that they won't provide driving directions for Albuquerque.

Let's see. Santa Fe? Do they recognize Santa Fe?.........

Cutting Steeks

All right! The "Elephants" vest is now ready to finish; here's a steek, about to undergo the shears:



Scary, huh?

In reality, I don't actually use shears. I use little pointy embroidery scissors, so as to be precise and careful. I just liked the way the shears looked in that photo. I would have used garden shears, just for the effect, but the backyard's completely covered in snow and ice, and I didn't feel like going out and finding them.

No, I use little scissors, and I'm very careful, and when I'm done, the cut steek looks like this:



and the vest is ready for the neck and front band.

So I'm sitting downstairs knitting, and right at this very moment I'm not watching "Ed, Edd n Eddy," because the child, who is addicted to all forms of water -- oceans, rivers, hot baths, snow, ice -- is out in it, sliding down the hill, and I am therefore choosing TV programs without consulting him. Sam is probably out there taking video footage. This is good, because I can't watch the child fly off to Certain Death. So it's good if there's somebody else out there to call 911. I'm like that at the beach, too -- other people have to take the child into the ocean, cause I'm forseeing Doom at every moment -- the ocean is after all nothing but a big ol' graveyard -- and it's not very restful. Also, I'd just as soon the child didn't grow up like me, at least in this respect. So we just get me on out of the picture and let him cavort and have a joyful experience in whatever Vehicle of Death he's involved with at the moment.

Knitting. I'm just knitting. Not even looking out the window.

(I made that mistake once last week, and looked out the window in time to see his little head disappear down the hill. I waited patiently for his little head to come back and it didn't, for what seemed like eternity but was probably about 5 minutes. Luckily for me Sam came by, and agreed to go find out if the child was dead. I forget why I couldn't -- it was either cowardice or my shoes, but I don't remember which. The child was down at the bottom of the hill, whacking the snow off bushes with some big stick. Which is what he does everytime he's down at the bottom of the hill. So. Knitting. That's what I'm doing. Not even looking out the window.)

Time to Throw Things Out

Here's a page that made my day: after visiting this collection of pictures (there are a lot of them, and once you start the tour it's kinda hard to stop -- like a really loooooong train wreck, in slow motion, but really, don't miss this) I now understand that the Storage Room is not nearly as bad as I thought it was. (Thanks to the Very Big Blog for the referral.)

It does make me want to go throw a bunch of things out, however, just in case they're planning to multiply in the night.

But maybe later. I'm definitely getting the "Elephants" vest done by next weekend -- it helps that I'm not going in to work on Monday. Not going in to work, AND not working. Knitting. Not even sewing, because it's too cold in the sewing room. Just knitting. (I've just been told by the child that there's going to be an "Ed, Edd n Eddy" marathon on Monday. Oh, great. Just so long as it's not "Bionicles.")

Maybe I'll bake something -- that'll help warm things up. It's A.A. Milne's birthday -- maybe scones. That'll make Sam happy. He considers scones one of the great treats of the world, and he's absolutely right.

Scones, yes, and perhaps we'll read some of Milne's poetry, such as "Teddy Bear," which begins:

"A bear, however hard he tries,
Grows tubby without exercise.
Our Teddy Bear is short and fat,
Which is not to be wondered at;
He gets what exercise he can
By falling off the ottoman,
But generally seems to lack
The energy to clamber back..."

and is very nice to read when you're eating scones.

Toddling

Progress on the "Elephants" vest -- I'm about to start decreasing for the V-neck, and adding in the armhole steeks:



So far, so good.

Tonight I'll be in late, as the Medieval Drama course starts. (It's overbooked. Why, I do not know. I've been attempting to discourage students. "It's REALLY hard," I tell them. "We'll be reading a lot of medieval Yorkshire dialect." Do they disenroll? They do not. I'll have to think up quickly some dreadful thing to do tonight, so as to send some of them over to some other class. Oooh, I know. We'll have some discussions about what is drama. Drunken Elizabethans pretending to be ghosts, for example. Is this drama? Yeah. That'll be boring. I should lose at least five of 'em.) Also, some icy arctic storm is supposed to be coming in, which will make my drive home Not Much Fun. Luckily, I have a cell phone! Yes! And a Subaru with all-wheel drive! Yes! But, sadly, I'll need to wear non-spike heeled boots, on account of wanting to be prepared in case I get stuck on the side of the road at 9:00 PM. Alas. I do SO like to make a good impression, on the first night of class. Oh, wait. I see by my class roster that I know most of these guys. Well. Snow boots, it is.

Also, I need to toddle off to work now,* so as to work on a project I want to send off for a proposed volume of essays on "unruly Catholic women." Please. Oh, please. I would SO like to be in on this. I've got a conference paper on Margery Kempe and Teresa of Avila -- both of them unruly, in differing directions -- and that's what I'm revamping.

In the meantime, here's a lovely picture of an unruly Catholic woman, in the process of being unruly. (Thanks to Fr. Bryce.)

And, by the by, Skot over at Izzle Pfaff is always amusing, but he's especially humorous today, discussing what happens if you buy clothes online from Penney's.

*One of my colleagues said yesterday that she was going to "toddle off" and this got us all into a discussion about the phrase. What, exactly, does "toddling" look like? Is it anything like "tottering"? Or is it basically one of those Marilyn Monroe walks? Why do toddlers do it?

Oh, bosh, let's go to the experts; the OED says:

"Toddle" is from the Scots! Ha! And in 1500, it meant "to play with." And in 1600, it meant "to walk in an ungainly manner" such as might be done by a child or an aged or an infirm person. And then, by 1725, it meant "to stroll around in a playful or easy fashion." There you go, Jennifer! Marilyn Monroe! You go, girl!

Rawhide Fight Redux

That darling Rachael, darlingest girl in Oakland, sent me some olallieberry jam, for no reason at all except darlingness. I'm happy. Jam is good. Also, for those of you who missed it, Rachael's started a pool, concerning when I'm going to get the "Elephants" vest done (deadline: January 26th, my grandchild's 3rd birthday) -- I'm 10 rows away from the V-neck decreases and the armhole steeks. She's betting on January 24, 9:32 PM -- I gather that's my time, not her time; I'm for sure not going to be knitting at 12:32 MY time. If you'd like to be in on the pool, remember that I knit for about two hours a night, except on Wednesdays (night class) and Thursdays (choir), and whenever we go out to dinner (and we've got several candidates coming to campus to visit -- though when they come to visit I do get some extra knitting done during the presentations). I don't think there's a prize -- sorry, you can't have my jam -- but I'll blog you.

Lisa wrote in my comments that her version of the "Elephants" vest turned out too big for the child she knit it for, and I have to tell you mine will, too. I'm spot on gauge, but this thing is not going to fit any three year old I know. My grandchild'll get it anyway -- he'll grow into it. My own child has several sweaters that have lasted him YEARS -- I figure if you're going to knit for kids, you might as well get some mileage out of the artifacts. So I'm not bothered by having it be too big. What his Mama's going to say, I do not know, however.

On the work front, here's proof of what I've been doing last Friday and yesterday:



That's my office in chaos -- which it has been for months; not a chance to do anything to it. (The picture's fuzzy cause I took it, since my photographer was at home, being retired and reading Trollope.)

Here's what it looks like now:



Look! You can see the floor! You can find the books! You can find the pens! And! They have ink in them! (They didn't, for a while. Things were so bad I reduced to using ballpoint pens.)

And, finally, now that the Brannen Story-Telling hoopla has died down a bit -- for a moment -- I'll refer you to the comments from my last entry, wherein you may read the definitive edition of the Rawhide Fight story, which I mentioned in passing and apparently Got Wrong. Thanks, Dad! Apparently, there were NO GUNS! No! There were knives and clubs! Much better. I like the detail about some OTHER East Texas family treasuring a club used in the fight. (Used in the fight by that East Texas Family? So, did they have to leave Louisiana, too? Hmm...) Yes! Clubs! BUT! The Dials didn't fight! No! In fact, they rode up (they WERE on horses, right, Dad?) and Started The Fight By Trying To Stop It. (There was a snake involved, right? No, let's see, that's Morte d'Arthur...) I think they had tea and little cakes, as well. And that's why they had to run to Texas and change their name to Jenkins. It was for being peacemakers. But before they ran, they grabbed one of the clubs, and then gave it to some other East Texas family. Perhaps the Hardins, with whom the Dials were Best Friends.

Later on, if y'all are really good, we'll tell you the several versions of What Ephraim Dial did in the Civil War, and How he Later Dribbled Food Out of The Hole in His Neck he Got at Gettysburg. (No, he didn't! Yes, he did! No, he didn't! I WAS THERE!)

The Ballad of Weaver Dial

Many families have mottoes: "obey God, serve humanity, resist tyranny" -- that's a good one, but it isn't ours. "God will guard the prudent man" -- that's another, and we don't own that one, either. We've got several, though: "We survived the Irish famine, and by God, we'll never go hungry again" is one of them, along with its corollary, "And after that we built the railroad in between Galveston and Tenaha and we'd like to sit on our butts for a while. Pass the Doritos."

But the main ruling motto of my family's life is "Make sure the story's good." To that end, we don't actually LIE. Nor do we really exaggerate. We just sorta embellish things.

I've seen this in action, when one of the family members was telling a story -- in this case it was about how this person had actually managed to drive a pickup truck out of The Bottom, which is the spot of land in East Texas wherein my family drives cars by mistake and loses them -- they sink right in. I figure if we want to sell the mineral rights to that tract we should do Real Well. And while this story was going on -- and it was a good one, too -- another family member got all excited by it and started adding to it, all about how he had seen this pickup truck being driven out, with various pieces of expensive farm equipment dragging off it, getting ruined, and that's what happened to the expensive farm equipment...I gather this had been a point of contention.

"You didn't see that! You didn't see any such thing!" "I did too! I was driving right behind, and there you were, dragging stuff all over the highway. Pieces flying off right and left." "No, you did not!" "Yes, I did! I was there!" "No, you weren't! You were in HOUSTON!"

No argument from the interrupter; I gather he indeed wasn't there, didn't see it, was in Houston. But he wasn't lying. That's the deal. For the space of telling the story, it was true.

This trait, especially since it's shared by so many of us (do I include myself? You betcha.), makes it Difficult To Discern Reality, if indeed there is such a thing. It makes all our stories a bit...flexible.

My favorite example is the story of The Death of Weaver Dial, who would be my -- oh, let's see -- my first cousin twice removed. Oh, what a happy day it was when the Brannens married the Outlaw Dials! While we were back in Alabama, we were very well behaved citizens. Primitive Baptists, we were, and we didn't drink or smoke or gamble or go dancing or shoot people up whilst having temper fits. Then we went to Texas and met the Dials, who had moved there -- or escaped there, to be precise -- after having shot up a school board meeting in Louisiana. (That'd be the Rawhide Fight, Sabine Parish, 1851.) We're grateful to all our Dial ancestors and cousins, cause they've given us so much story material over the years -- way more than we were accumulating while behaving ourselves in Alabama.

Anyway, all of us have been told about The Death of Weaver Dial. Lots. But as it turns out, we've been told different things. So one year, we all got together and tried to collate stories, so as to finally decide, once and for all, on a version.

Various details we collected: Weaver Dial was the handsomest boy in Trinity County. He was engaged to the loveliest girl in said county. She was the sister of the woman who would years later become my grandfather's second wife. No, she wasn't. Actually, he wasn't engaged at all. Anyway. One day, he was walking down the street in Trinity and some guy came up outa nowhere and shot him in the chest. No, it was Groveton. Well, anyway, he shot him in the chest, but Weaver Dial kept on comin'. He kept on comin' and that ol' boy kept shootin', till finally Weaver Dial fell down daid. No, he didn't. Weaver Dial was a terrible terrible bully, and the guy that shot him shot him in the back and everybody cheered and helped him get on the train and escape.

Ok. Well. As you can see, this is hard to collate.

Our final, definitive version (We all agreed on this! I was there! I don't wanna see no variations in the comment section!): Weaver Dial had been bullying some guy for months, on account of this guy stole Weaver Dial's Christmas whiskey, and Weaver Dial was giving him so much grief, and that ol' boy was so scared of Weaver Dial, he shot him down daid in the streets of Trinity. (I believe that the part about everybody helping the shooter get on the train was agreed to as an optional embellishment.)

I'm glad we agreed on a place, though I don't remember how we decided it. I think, really, that it was on account of it's more fun to say "Trinity, Texas," than "Groveton, Texas." In the construction of narrative, this is important. And the Christmas whiskey? I have NO idea where that came from, but damn, it's good. Yes. Keepin' that.

All of this is by way of explaining why my brother Carl would take it into his head to report, in my comment section for the last entry, that once I ran into a fire hydrant and water went everywhere. Even though this never happened, I don't believe he's lying. It's a good story, and therefore it's true. That's the point. I especially like the detail about the water going everywhere. If indeed I never drove into a fire hydrant -- which I didn't -- then water never went everywhere -- which, again, it didn't. But damn, it's a good detail. You hate to lose it. In fact, I may start believing this story myself, just so I can keep that detail.

I'm pretty sure this is how Weaver Dial lost his Christmas whiskey.

Subaru in the Winter

First row of elephants completed (for those of you just tuning in, the issue is whether or not I can finish a child's vest before January 26):



I need to do some rows of geometric patterning -- easy peasy, so that'll go quickly -- and then repeat the 28-row pattern and another 10 rows before I start decreasing for the V-neck. (I've got 221 stitches on the needles now.) I think I can do this. Can knit tonight, even, for a while at least, at choir rehearsal; the elephant section I might not want to do at choir, as it requires looking at the chart too often, but I can do geometrics while the sopranos and tenors are getting yelled at. Ah, the advantages of being an alto! It's not that my section is better -- no, no. It's that we're not doing fancy things, so don't require as much, shall we say, guidance. I try to sing Very Low Notes so as to make it clear I should NOT be moved over into the soprano section, where I'd NEVER get any knitting done.

So, it's winter, and it's cold, cause I'm in Pittsburgh, so that's how it is, and the Subaru station wagon -- which I have specifically because there's about four days in the year here when a Terrible Ice Storm hits and it's excellent to have all-wheel drive -- has started its annual acting up, which consists of calling wolf. Whenever it gets cold, the "check engine" light on the dashboard lights up -- Sam took it in this summer, and asked Them to look at it, and They said it was just fine. So the "check engine" light is on, or it's not on, depending on how cold the car is, and it doesn't mean anything, really, except that the car thinks we should clean out the garage and keep it there, instead of in the driveway. Dream on, little car.

Only now, instead of just coughing up the "check engine" light, the Subaru's started lighting up the "brake" light. Well, didn't THAT give me a turn the first time it happened. I thought something gawdawful had happened to the brakes. Nope. The light's on cause the car's cold, and apparently it needs a little dash light that says "car dislikes the temperature," but it hasn't got one, so it lights other things up at random.

This irks me.

The upshot is that I have no idea if anything is wrong with the car or not, do I? Cause various sorts of lights are on all winter, so I don't pay attention to them anymore, do I? So at some point I'm going to be driving down the freeway, and the engine will stop, and the brakes will fail, all at once, and then when we drag the car in, They will say, well, the dash lights TOLD you there was a problem, why didn't you do anything about it?

Mostly I love this car -- it has a disarming cup holder that's really cute, and makes me wish I drove with coffee cups so I could use it. And you can fit either an entire Christmas tree, or all your groceries, or belongings for a family of three on a week-long trip to the beach, in the back. Also, it drives pretty well for a station wagon, emblem of the Suburban Mom part of my identity. But I don't like this crying wolf problem with the lights.

Also, there's that issue with the clutch. I'd been driving the thing for two years when the clutch went out, to my extreme shock. Sam took it in, so They could fix, it, and asked Them why the clutch had given out so early, and They said that it had something to do with how his wife drove the car.

It was good it was Sam who took it in, cause that would have gone right up my nose. Oh, really. How I drive the car. What an excellent remark that would be to make to ME, who learned to drive on a three-on-the-tree '53 Plymouth (which was at that point about 20 years old and drove like a truck), and spent her teenage years driving A LOT (cause that's what you do if you're a teenager in Albuquerque, mostly around in the desert really fast), and won't drive anything but a stick-shift (cause automatics aren't really CARS), and besides that has been a feminist since 1969, when she was Exceedingly Young but doesn't feel like doing the math right now! Yo, dude! Why don't you call me a Little Lady, too, cause I'll REALLY like that!

And it was good also that Sam's Professorial mode took over, instead of his Southern Gentleman mode (though they're often the same thing), as instead of saying Suh! Ah say, Suh! You have denigrated the character of Mah Wife! Pistols at 20 paces, Suh! he said, much more reasonably, Well, if it's how she's been driving the car, then why is it that she drove the Toyota, also standard transmission, for 10 years, and the clutch on it was just fine?

Did he get a decent answer to this reasonable question? He did not. Later we heard that Subaru clutches are notorious for going out early. How I drive the car. I think not.

Maybe I'll go call Them out myself.

Bundle Up, Little Weather Pixie!

Well, I'm glad to see that my weather pixie is bundled up well (sometimes she does NOT wear enough clothing; that leather jumpsuit with the fishnet sleeves, for instance, is unsuitable for cold weather), but the cat should be indoors and not standing around next to her, enjoying the weather -- the weather people have told us so, several times already this morning. They're all worried that Pittsburghers, en masse, are leaving their pets outdoors, where, in about an hour, they're going to be frozen solid. Have there been any reports of frozen pets in the area? NO, there have not. But it's the weather reporting fad for today, so everybody go look out the door and make sure there aren't any cold pets lying around.

The child got safely on the bus this morning, on time, even. No school delays in Pleasant Hills. I'm proud, proud, I say, to be part of a community that did not delay school openings for two hours in order to wait for the air to warm up, which it won't.

The grandchild's vest is coming along:



Look! You can see the elephant's little feet, and the bottom of his trunk!

Can I finish this vest in less than two weeks, while at the same time starting a new semester and being a useful member of my household? Maybe! We'll see!

But no knitting for me till this evening (unless maybe at lunch...), as when I got into work yesterday and finished examining my lovely collection of Christmas Vacation Spam, I discovered that I have Lots To Do. Lots. Way Lots. I have a syllabus to write, a dissertation to read, a dissertation proposal to read, several recommendations to write, an essay to polish so as to please its editor, and a semester to schedule so that I can get a major manuscript done before I end up in Terrible Karmic Trouble on account of I promised it by the end of August. So. No knitting, no staying home watching "Court TV" and sewing new yoga togs. Simplicity has created a pattern with which one can sew one's own workout gear (6265), and well, hey, I'm charmed. I bought some lovely black knit material with rosebuds on it, and I'm making new yoga pants. It's important to have cute yoga pants whilst in the middle of "Down Dog."

But not today. Because I am SO working today.

(Now then. Just for the hell of it. Let's just use the Google translating function and move that last bit into French and out again:

But no knitting for me plow this evening (unless perhaps with the lunch...), as when I entered work yesterday and finished examining my beautiful collection of Spam of holidays of Christmas, I discovered that I have fates to make. Fates. Fates In Manner. I have a program to write, an essay with reading, a proposal for an essay to reading, several recommendations to write, a test with polished in order to being pleasant to his writer, and in one six-month period to program so that I can obtain a significant manuscript makes before I finish to the top of the terrible trouble of Karmic of in because of me promised towards the end of August. Thus. No knitting, no observation at the remaining house "court TV" and new togs of yoga of seam -- simplicity created a model with which one can sew his own speed of training session, and well, hé, I am charmed. I bought certain in vain a black knits the material with rosebuds on top, and I make the new trousers of yoga. But not today. Since I work THUS today.

Oh, my. Too much fun, and way too easy.)

Messing Around With Languages

Lisa! Look! Somebody else has been messing around with translating my site into Something Besides English!

Ha, ha!

Now, let's see what happens when you translate it back; we'll use the entry for August 20, 2003, concerning "Freshman Move-In":

Volume La! Categories begin Monday, but today's the day, which the beginners begin to move inside taking at an annual ceremony part, which refers a long line of the ueberladenen cars and the SUVs, which wait, in order at the end of the journey to arrive, at whose point parents are, starting LED and it disturbed, when property of all of their children suddenly disappears, away-production to the dormraeumen. I cannot do, this am instrumented, and I did not ask and did not ensure, which could receive I roped into the activity. But it is rather impressive. Somehow D help to wait class participant at D end of D line to know where all D material to go, and as long as D professor and staff do not remind will go to try to park into ours regularly parks lot -- as if we do not become we its some of this long long line, and it its maintained -- then all well, and if I received to work in point I become its capably to look out my window and see all jen car with D harassed parents, all jen beginner its try hopelessly to look coolly -- very with difficulty, if you cling its in a SUV with her Mamma, your dad, united young brothers and sisters, and way too much material -- and all those friendly helping class participants, who in one extremely one upposition, because of A) of the Seins not beginners are obvious, to B), with including in acts of next love, and C), knowing, where everything is. Later there are to activities for the beginners and activities for parents and mass and whatnot, and then, at approximately 3:00, some the professors to impressive regalia and goes process sets in a serious ceremony, which officially the beginners into the life of the Campus -- which accepts ceremony Matriculation. I never miss this. I do not think that the ceremony means that much to the beginners really their understanding other where is, but to me that represents, if I were parents, which had dropped straight my loved child away at a place, where he or they were, away from the house to live among people which I could not do, at the enormous expenses, me could something is GET-roasted by seeing that the child was now in the hands of the serious looking people, which possess fantastic robes. During engaged in ceremonies like this, I look so, excluded little my hair longer straight and my expression am normally not rather so free. Thus I do this each year, partly, because, to educate around mine regalia me cost effectively it so frequently carry it must as possible, partly because I think that I too, partly am, because the ceremony is an excellent opportunity for Meditation partly, because parents look thus fastened up to then may I help little out. And then, I do not enjoy beginners an end. They have very large jobs before them this term -- they have clean vent, in order to fit the new life away from the house to, have them, to learn how one lets its time, them have from a quantity of things goes, which think her that they learned. Large, large changes. One into it with honour which can be included. Let the plays begin.

Lord, I love this. Too bad I can't actually get paid for translating things back and forth to bad effect.

Here's the original, by the way.

Fluffy Sweaters and Medieval Drama

Ok, there were a few days there when I didn't get to the gym, but there weren't THAT many. Two weeks, max. But I got there yesterday morning for my yoga class and discovered All New Equipment. Now, partly this is good, cause some of the old stuff was getting a little creaky, but at a practical level, for me, and my little plans, this means that when I go this morning to use the said machines, I'm going to have to Figure Them All Out, as nothing is in its usual place, and besides, wherever it is, it's white now, instead of red, which will confuse me. This will take time. So I will be getting into work a bit later than I'd planned. So I'm probably not going to be finished trashing the vacation spam before lunch. Darn.

Classes don't start till Monday, though, and my syllabus will be easy to put together, as for various reasons I'm only teaching one class this semester, and it's Medieval Drama, which I could indeed teach in my sleep, and probably do. So if I don't get to the syllabus till tomorrow, we'll all survive. (It sold out this semester, why I don't know, though it might be because in my description of it I mentioned that students would have the opportunity to stand on desks and pretend to be Jesus.) (Which is crucial for understanding the staging of the York Crucifixion.)

As for knitting:

Alert! Alert! Alert!

A very dear lurking reader, for whom the angels sing when she wakes up in the morning, emailed me with the information that the lace-swirl pullover I just started has a Horrible Mistake in the directions such as causes one to abandon the project in disgust, even if one is really good at this stuff. Click on the link and I'll explain: you see the lovely swirl there in on the front, the swirl that indeed makes the thing worth knitting? You start the sweater at the center of that swirl, working it on out in a circle, like a doily. After you're done with the sweater doily, you cleverly work the piece on out into a sweater shape, and it's at that point that the instructions are screwed up, and since it'll be unlike any sweater you've ever knit before, if you're me, which is one of the reasons you wanted to do it, again, if you're me, then you'll have Real Trouble trying to figure out how to make it right.

So I need to write to the company and ask for the corrections. Or Google it, which would likely produce quicker results.

In the meantime, here are a couple of illuminating illustrations of projects not currently causing me grief:

The beginning of "Elephants":



And the start of a mohair top-down raglan, in Milos' "Missioni":



(Because a girl can never have enough fluffy shiny sweaters, especially if she's going to stand on desks and pretend to be Jesus.)

Project Orgy

I was being so good till last night -- I had three projects on the needles, for three different sorts of moods; a pair of socks, for completely mindless knitting; the "Margaret Tudor," for times when I feel like knitting a puzzle piece; and "Queen Anne's Lace," for cozy sitting on the sofa watching TV and going through rows and rows of small gauge knitting in complex subtle color changes. But last night I just LOST it -- I swatched for two more projects. I may well swatch another tonight -- that'll mean 6 projects on the needles. Well, not counting the Colinette "Ab Fab" throw I have knocking around at work.

But I feel -- oh, I don't know -- safer, I guess, having all these projects started. It's not the same thing, just having the yarn and the patterns ready to go. If they're started, and I can pick them up and work on them anytime, then they really exist. They're not just plans stuck in sacks.

Of course, it also makes me nervous, having so many projects on the needles. So much to do. So little getting done.

Weird.

Anyway. I'm now, apparently, besides working on the aforementioned three projects, also working on a lace-swirl pullover in indigo colored silk "Mandalay" from Reynolds, and Elsebeth Lavold's "Cul-de-sac" vest, from the Fall, 2003, Knitter's, in Lavold's "Silky Wool," in a lovely olive green tweed. I've got some mohair with a metallic thread upstairs, too, and that would knit up quickly, and it would be nice to have something shiny and fluffy around. So I might put that on the needles, too.

Oh, damn. I forgot I've got that "Elephants" vest I want to get done in the next two weeks. Bother.

Clearly, I can NOT go back to work tomorrow.

I expect I need to take it easy tomorrow -- probably I've been up and around WAY too soon, after nearly knocking myself out on the laundry room door.

Yes, that's it. That'll work. A little rest.

Maybe another week...

No, Really, I Ran Into a Door

First off, it's Tolkien's birthday, which I tell you in case you forgot. I considered having English food tonight, but the shrimp was on sale, so we're having some shrimp/spinach/nutmeg thing I found in Cooking Light instead, and we'll read something out of The Hobbit. Maybe I'll make some dessert. That would Mean Something, especially to the 7-year-old living here.

Second, I ran into a door. No, really, I ran into a door. Stop looking at Sam that way. Door. I'm telling you.

Actually, I was in the laundry room, all dressed up to go out to Julie's for dinner, and I was putting down the laundry baskets in a perfectly cheery mood, and I cheerfully stood up and cheerfully whipped my head around, right into the edge of the open laundry door, and then I wasn't so cheery anymore, for Quite A While.

It made life more interesting than one really wants. But I wasn't bleeding, and I wasn't comatose. I was ministered to by Sam, who got ice, and the child, who hugged me, and Lila the Balinese cat, who sat on my chest -- her remedy for all that ails you -- and eventually I felt ambulatory, and not nauseated anymore, and we went to Julie's after all, which is good, cause we had a lovely dinner and great companions, and now things are pretty much back to normal, and, though I require things like aspirin and ibuprofen, on account of my head hurts and my neck hurts, I didn't do any permanent damage, as far as I can tell.

Crucial test: I can knit on "Margaret Tudor." Fair enough. All is well.

Yarn for an "Elephants" vest for one of the grandchildren is on its way from The Yarn Barn, where you can get Jamieson's shetland wool to use in patterns calling for Starmore's Campion, long discontinued, and you can get it pretty quickly, too. I think I can get this done by the end of January, for the said grandchild's 3rd birthday -- it's just a vest, and it's in a child's size, and it's a fairly simple pattern, for a Starmore. Updates to follow.

Third, it's time for me to take up my Knitting Tarot discussions again, desultory though they may be -- I do have some sense of order, and I like to keep projects going, and I'm inexpressibly fond of the Knitting Tarot.

But I am indeed feeling a bit prickly this morning, so it's a good day to discuss the Prince of Needles, who represents the sort of knitter who Thinks up REALLY new things, ALL the time, and can't understand why you don't want them. "[A] poorly knitted leghorn hat constructed entirely from sandwich bags" is the type of item Amber has in mind here. Oh, I like this. If you know the Rider-Waite deck, you know its version of the knight of swords, charging down blindly on a white horse, waving his sword around, going who knows where, too fast and without much forethought. Like that, only with knitting needles. Get out of the way.

Or be prepared to live with a $400 scarf you wear once.

Mom For the New Year

Lovely morning, lovely day, good start to the year. We used to miss the new year coming in; we'd just go to bed at the regular time. But when 2000 came in, we thought, well, we've got this child, and he's 3, so he'll remember this, and we want him to be able to say to any future children he might meet -- yes, I did indeed celebrate the moment at which the millennium didn't turn over but everybody except people like my parents thought it did. So we woke him up just before midnight, and dragged him downstairs, and we all sat and watched the ball drop in Times Square and toasted each other with what we call "wine juice" (that non-alcoholic stuff), and blew noise makers (his favorite part), and then went to bed.

This was such a success that we now do it every year. He went to bed a bit early last night, having exhausted himself with his Christmas toys, and we woke him up and watched the New York crowd (very funny guys, all that orange, in honor of our High Alert status; har har. Americans. My, my.) and went to bed and now we're having a nice day wherein we do not go to work and get to play with all our toys and read our books and knit our yarn and cook the southern food of our peoples.

My idea of a good time. One gets old.

James Lileks this morning, on having seen the new year in quietly, without fanfare, at home:

This would have seemed like HELL when I was 21. But what does any 21 year old really know about these things? I'm sorry, but there's a certain comfort in knowing that whatever may happen tonight, I will not be throwing up in a restaurant sink around 2 AM while waiting for pancakes. Been there, heaved that. I prefer the comforts of home now.

My feelings exactly.

As promised, "Queen Anne's Lace," as far as the corrugated ribbing and a bit of the body are concerned:



This should take me through the semester -- what is this, 7 stitches to the inch or so -- so it'll take a while to do. Will see many meetings and hear many presentations.

The child just came downstairs -- he said that sometimes he wishes he was his younger self. Like when he enjoyed playing with Legos differently than he does now. Do you still like playing with the Legos? I asked. Yes, he said, but sometimes he misses enjoying them the way he did when he was younger. Ah. This is common for the humans, especially at this time of year, I said, and there's a name for it. We call it nostalgia. Nothing's wrong with you, this is normal, but if it's making you nuts, try repeating a prayer over and over in your head -- kind of helps your brain jump the track, using something harmless to do it.

He had a little weep -- he has these fairly often -- and we've agreed that he's going to go put his clothes on and I'm going to finish blogging and we're going to cuddle.

So I'm off for now -- going to go be a mother for the New Year. Cool. Always good to be useful.

(Don't worry, those of you out there who are fond of him -- I know him well and believe he'll be just fine. He's just sort of given to dramatic spiritual and emotional moments. I do NOT know where he gets this.)

But hey, here's a thought; let's me NOT tell the child that someday he'll be nostalgic for this very morning. Let's leave well enough alone.