Giant Leeks

(Nota Bene: There's a gorgeous poster for sale over at Ephemera, the proceeds of which go to DontAmend.com; thanks to JadedJu for the link.)

Tomorrow our new stove is to arrive. We're pumped. No bells, no whistles. I'm a cook. I don't need no stinking convection oven. I want a good-sized oven; I want a broiler that works; I want all four burners to actually burn; I want to have a Vague Idea what temperature my oven is.

So it's coming in tomorrow, as I say; courtesy of "Consumer Reports," I was able to figure out that what we want is a Hotpoint. Cheap. Reliable. Yes.

But naturally I can't plan to come home and cook on it tomorrow, cause you never know what might happen. Plumbers might find weird things, stove might get lost on way to house, oven delivery guys might discover that they need a Missing Part which must be ordered from Chicago. By pony express. But it's St. David's day tomorrow! Must eat leeks! Leeks must be cooked!

I'm using the slowcooker instead, to make Cawl Mamgu, a Welsh leek soup, only with ham instead of mutton, cause that's what we've got in the freezer. Pigs were sacred to the Celts, anyway -- I figure that ham'll be Just Fine in Welsh soup.

Here's what I have never been able to figure out:

I understand why we honor a Welsh saint with leeks -- once we were able, in a battle with the English -- one of many, I might add, for those of you unclear on Welsh history -- to tell ourselves apart from the English by wearing leeks. Fine. So tomorrow we're supposed to be wearing leeks.

Somebody please explain to me how the hell we wear these leeks? Cause if they're those big things sold over at the Giant Eagle, I do not understand how we attach them to our clothing, especially not our hats. We're going to need pretty large pins, and then when we try to stand up we're going to fall over.

Anyway. Around here we celebrate by EATING the leeks, which we know very well how to do, and we love them, for they are the food of our people, and we're looking forward to that. But we are NOT putting them on our heads, for we know not how to pull that off.

Lent in Pittsburgh

I just had the lovely experience of writing an entire blog wherein I asked all the knitters for help with a project, but then figured out on my own how to fix it, in the process of articulating just what the problem was. So, thanks, all y'all! That was great! No need to inflict my idiocy on you now. Let's just say that my advice for the day is: when in doubt, read the directions.

I'm starting Reynold's "Swirl Lace Pullover," in indigo "Mandalay" -- I know that there's going to be a problem with the directions after I finish the front swirl, but I'm hoping to be far enough along on it when the corrections get here -- should they ever indeed arrive -- that I can wear it this spring. So there's that, and also, Mary, don't worry, I'm blocking the "Cul-De-sac" vest, and I'll give you a picture of it, really I will. It was wrong of me to say I wouldn't, and I repent me of that.

It's Lent, so I'm practicing repenting all sorts of things -- if you've got any suggestions, just send them along in the email (Yo! "The Real Jim"! Keep 'em out of the comments! Incur not the wrath of the Elder Sister!) -- and also we're having all the Lenten Feasts. Let me explain.

At our house, we still look like one of those pre-Vatican II houses, at dinner time on Fridays, at least, cause we keep the Friday abstinence. Sam and the child aren't bound by the rules, and I know very well that I can eat meat on Fridays if I perform an act of charity -- and I do that when I need to -- but we like non-meat dinners anyway, and I like anything that helps me be conscious, since I'm pretty much not very, so usually on Fridays you can find us eating fish, or macaroni and cheese, or Boca burgers, or whatever.

However. On Lenten Fridays, we're supposed to be performing acts of charity AND not eating meat, and in order to help the Roman Catholics of Pittsburgh manage this, parishes all over the diocese stage Friday fish frys. There are so many of them that they take up about four pages of the "Pittsburgh Catholic" on the Sunday before Lent starts. We ourselves go over to a neighboring parish, St. Thomas a' Becket. (Our parish doesn't hold a fish fry -- we put all our Extravaganza energy into the annual Spring-a-Rama, at which there will be doughnuts and a Ferris Wheel. More on this later.)

What happens at a fish fry is that you get a LOT of food. We seldom eat fried fish, as it's less healthy than the broiled stuff I'm making tonight, so that's exciting right there. (Look! Oil!) And then there are the side dishes -- the french fries, for instance (Look! Oil!), and, because we are in Pittsburgh, haluski (Look! Butter!).

I was surprised to learn, when I got here, that it had occurred to anybody in the world that one could put pasta and cabbage together -- I'm still stumped on why somebody even tried it in the first place -- and even more surprised to discover that It Works. But I can't make it. I don't think I have the correct genes to create haluski, or pierogies. I do ok on borscht, I think, but really, my family doesn't know much about borscht, so we could all be fooled. I always expect, when I'm serving borscht, that the Eastern European Food Police are about to show up and explain to me that what I'm serving isn't borscht at all, but some kind of Irish stew with beets in it.

Anyway. It's Lent in Pittsburgh, so instead of our usual simple Friday fare, we get to go over to St. Thomas a' Becket's and eat enormous amounts of rich food we don't usually get.

We find this very amusing. And there's precedent, doncha know -- we're reminded of the giant feast of various fish with fancy sauces that Gawain gets served when he shows up at Bercilak's castle in the middle of the Advent fast. So we're in good company.

And just look at what happened to Gawain! He learned a lot about the limitations of courtly love!

Always a good thing to be conscious of. Bring on the fried fish!

Lost in Cyberspace

The "Cul-de-sac" vest is done, but it needs to be blocked, and I don't want to take pictures of it right now because it looks Stupid. If, indeed, it looks Intelligent after I block it, I will ask Sam to take pictures of it, and I will blog them, and you can then see it. If, however, it still looks Stupid after I block it, I won't. Ha! The power of the blog. Entire garments, unvisualized, lost not in cyberspace, but in some alternate reality next to cyberspace. Which, I guess, would be the reality of my sweater drawer. Or, failing that, Goodwill.

I've run across some blogs belonging to people involved in historic recreations, for which I'm mightily grateful. The Costumer sews up medieval and renaissance garb -- lately she did herself physical damage, I think, spending hours on the floor on her knees marking out the lines for the embroidery on a Really Big Piece of white fabric for an Elizabethan wedding dress. Lovely.

Laren, at The Needle's Excellency, has been working on 17th century spot motifs, easier to mess with than a giant wedding dress -- you can carry them around, you know, and also they get done quickly, and you can move on to another one. Lovely.

And a Californian, running Thrednedle Strete, experiments. At the moment, the production of Elizabethan starch is going on -- apparently it's difficult to get the right materials. Lovely.

I've been too loaded down at work in the last few semesters to fully exercise my rights as Costume Designer for the Players -- but these blogs have caused me to miss that action dreadfully. However. We've got plans to perform the "Gethsemane" scene from the N-Town "Passion" play next year, so that'll give us a chance to use one of my Angel costumes, an example of which you can see if you click here and then scroll down to observe God -- angels, God -- we put them in the same costume (scroll down further to observe the lovely black Devil's costume -- medieval devils always get to wear The Latest Fashion). But we now add a nice golden God Mask, which we didn't own when we did "The Four Daughters of God."

Oh, but Starch Experiments. What fun. I definitely must figure out a reason I need to perform Starch Experiments. Lovely.

Big Machines Bite the Dust

On the domestic front, we've been running through machines around here pretty quickly.

Sam's car doesn't start all the time -- I mean, you know, it starts most of the time, but not all the time. It's not the most dependable thing. We like to run our cars into the ground before we replace them, but though this one's not actually having to look up to see down, it's close. So Sam's looking for a used Subaru wagon. To match mine.

Then, last weekend, I went to run a bath for the child and discovered that there was no hot water. Turned out this was because the hot water heater was broken. For a while we were all pumped cause Sam remembered that the last time the hot water gave out was when his niece Deborah was in the shower, and she was a teenager then, so that made the current water heater about 30 years old, and we were justly proud of having REALLY run the water heater into the ground. But the guy who came to install the new one remembered Sam -- I gather that there's something about the experience of dragging giant machines down the broken steps in our back yard that makes a big impression on visitors -- and he'd installed it in about 1990. So. Not as old as we'd thought. Still. That was nice, those few days when we thought we'd run a water heater for 30 years.

Then a few days ago the TV, which has been coughing up less and less attractive pictures, started reducing the picture to a single horizontal line across the middle of its face. I was doing pretty well using it as a radio -- and really, it wasn't that much different from the experience of watching our beloved noir TV shows -- CSI, CSI Miami, Law and Order I, Law and Order II, Law and Order III, Forensic Files, Cold Case Files (no pattern here, no) -- since all those shows are mostly filmed in the dark, we haven't been able to discern pictures in them for quite some time now (TV night sounds like this -- what's happening? I can't tell. Are they in the bedroom? I don't think so. I think they went outside. Is that blood? I guess so; that other guy mentioned blood. Wait a minute. Who's that? Who's who? That guy there. On the edge of the screen. What?). But Sam went and got some big ol' monster thing --24" screen! we are living high! -- and now we can see EVERYTHING! YAY! I cannot tell you how much more entrancing Dexter's Laboratory is when you can actually see all the colors in it.

Then yesterday, I had to leave the King Cake in the oven and go off to a doctor's appointment, leaving Sam to take the King Cake out of the oven when the timer went off, which he did, and so now the King Cake's WAY overcooked, and though it is edible, it's not got the flaky goodness it should be having, on account of being Tough.

The problem is that the oven is too hot, and you never know what temperature it's going to be, and it's now hotter than it used to be, so my compensations don't actually compensate. Other things are wrong with it too -- indeed, Sam says that it was only AFTER they'd bought the stove that he looked it up in Consumer Reports and discovered that it was the lowest rated stove on the market.

Well. It messed up my King Cake. And now we're sort of on a roll. So I'm looking for a new stove.

Let's see. What else around here is about to go? Hmmm...maybe I could use a new breadmaker...

Mardi Gras

Laissez les bon temps rouler!

Today I'm getting ready for tomorrow, which involves a lot of animal fat. We used to eat pancakes on Shrove Tuesday -- Mardi Gras -- BUT we now have a thoroughly decadent item called "Cajun Meat Pie" which involves both a pound and a half of ground meat, a pretty intense roux, and a bunch o' butter, and I make it every year, and then that's IT for the rest of the year.

Also today I must bake the King Cake, also involving a bunch o' butter.

But then after that the next day is Ash Wednesday, starting off my very favorite season of the year. So Balance and Sanity are coming.

Not today or tomorrow, though. Even if we're not in New Orleans, we can practice some excess, and according to our calendar, we are now to be in Excess Mode.

Part of which would be this:



Does anybody recognize it? It's Alice Starmore's "Mardi Gras," from The Scottish Collection, published by The Tomato Factory Yarn Collection, 1992. I find it very amusing. It's not a subtle cardigan, as you can see, I think, no matter what your browser's doing today. While I was working on it, people would come up to me and say things like, "Those colors shouldn't work together. But they DO!"

I don't wear it much. I mean really. You have to be in a certain mood.

It's clearly not an interpretation of New Orleans' Mardi Gras, as if it were, it would be done up in purple, green, and gold. It's a Scottish Mardi Gras. Which involves, apparently, blinding the local highland deer.

For those of you who are prone to Starmore envy, I'll now tell you that those are the original yarns, from a kit put together by the Tomato Factory. And Ms. Starmore picked out the buttons herself.

But I did the knitting part.

Classy Pin-Up Gal

Today the blog is so fragmented I am unable to construct suitable transitions between segments. Hence, I number them instead, so it looks like I had an order:

1) It's a good sort of life, when occasionally you find yourself saying things like, "Keeping the Dog Out of Trouble," meet "Sticks and String"! and then you get to buy yarn, eat lunch at a Thai restaurant, and talk talk talk with another knitter.

I suppose it's not really surprising that I've enjoyed so much the knitting bloggers I've met -- I only meet ones whose blogs I like, so the odds are great I'm not going to find myself bored. But still. It always seems like a little miracle to me -- look! Another human being I've never met before and I enjoy her company! And we have things to talk about! How odd is that!

2) Depressing as it is, I keep up with Critical Mass, cause if you're being an English Professor you never know when some of the academic horror stories Erin posts are going to be Relevant To Your Daily Life. It turns out it's a good thing, because the horror story she links to today looks to me like one I could fall into. I can imagine finding myself at some point in a classroom saying something idiotic like "I'll give an A to anybody who takes their clothes off," and then being shocked when somebody does cause I only meant to cause my students to think about cultural expectations, and then having to retire due to the following hoo-hah. I can see me getting into that sort of trouble.

Ok, well, maybe not.

But still, it's good to be reminded. Yo! All you professors! Do NOT offer A's for classroom nudity! Bad idea!

3) I don't usually share with you the results of the Quizilla tests I take when I'm surfing the blogs. I don't have much to say about the fact that the Quizilla tests have decided that if I were a Peanut's character I'd be Schroeder, or if I were a classic movie I'd be "Apocalypse Now," or if I were yarn I'd be mohair, though I do often bother to find out. However. I DO want to discuss this:


You are the classy pin-up! You are everything
sophisticated and refined about the entire era.
You exude class and dignity.


What Type Of Retro Gal Are You?
brought to you by Quizilla

I'm mildly pleased by this. I'm cheered to find that I am at heart a classy pinup girl. Also, as Sam will tell you, I look JUST like this. In certain lights.

However. Does not the phrase "classy pinup girl" bring to mind other phrases such as "military intelligence" and "jumbo shrimp" and "diet ice cream"?

Yep. There you are. I AM an oxymoron. Thanks, Quizilla!

Knitting Bloggers' Day Out

Exciting times coming up today: another knitting blogger comes to town! Yay! And what do the knitting bloggers do when they meet? Well, really. They go to the local yarn store and then have lunch. What a question.

So I have to decide what sweater to wear, cause it's important to BE a knitting blogger in such circumstances, so the knitted costume is crucial. But which sweater to wear?

I usually choose "Golden Gate" in these circumstances, but today I think I'm feeling more like "Roineval." Yes. "Roineval." I'll go with that.

Earlier, I promised pictures anon, but it was a lie. Sorry. I didn't know it was a lie when I wrote it, or I woulda told it better, but it was a lie. Pictures of progress on the "Cul-de-sac" vest Saturday, I think. But no promises. Trying to be careful about lies here.

In case you're not keeping up with the Constant Life of Brannens which appears in the comments on this blog regularly, and have therefore missed the important post wherein my brother Jim ("The Real Jim") gives me his email address (could he have actually gotten it to me in a more secret fashion? Yep. Must have wanted you to have it too. I'm just saying), and have therefore missed his link to a site wherein you can see a Bush doll in various yoga poses (doing them pretty well, too, though the doll needs to relax some, I think), it's here.

Must run now, to prepare for Knitting Blogger's Day Out.

More anon.

Pie in Heaven

I can hear birds outside. Not the ones that have loyally been here all winter -- the cardinals, the jays, those cute fat juncos, the sparrows, the crows -- but some other birds altogether, I know not what. So they've been gone, and now they're back, whoever they are, and that means that they think that spring is coming. Lovely.

I've got a friend who's spending her first winter out here, and she's unused to snow and ice, being from the Low Desert (not the High Desert, like me -- she's not nearly so tough, alas), and she's been pretty much complaining and grieving for about 3 months now, and had to turn in her beloved car and get some all-wheel drive thing that'll make it up the ice covered hills (Subaru is making a killing around here), and is pretty much just a Pitiful Sight, really, and I made the mistake of telling her that when the spring came it would all be worth it, and this went Right Up Her Nose and so I had to hear a lot of explaining about how not only was I wrong, but I had committed some political injustice, along the lines of telling the starving that there'll be pie in heaven.

Well, I'm sorry, but that's how I am. I really AM mollified in the winter by the fact that spring is coming. And then when the spring comes, I'm all suffused with gratitude for the loveliness of the universe, and the joy of having come through the hard cold winter into the greenery and life that is spring, yes spring itself, when lenten is come with love to town.

Also, I'm looking forward to the pie in heaven.

I have been dutifully knitting, and shall show you some anon* -- I'll have more time tonight, since I'm not working late nor singing nor visiting nor any other thing. Knitting.

It's "me and you, kid" night tonight for the child and myself -- Sam's going out to the famous Crawford Grill with his best buddy, and the child and I will eat grilled cheese sandwiches and watch "Ed, Edd n Eddy," to which I have become addicted. Sam'll come home all full of The Food Of His Childhood and jazz -- usually good jazz -- and he'll be all cheerful.

And I will have gotten the second half of the front of "Cul-de-sac" done or nearly done, I'm guessing.

*Ok, well, not "anon," really, since that would be Right Now, which isn't happening. "Anon" in its current usage, which would be In A While.

Justly Married

Well, for those of us who were all aggrieved on account of missing all the hoopla in San Francisco on Friday (though now we come to think of it, we got to spend the day in the library with the Victoria History of Huntingdonshire, which does have its own charms), there's a lovely bunch of pictures which document the Big Day at City Hall, right through the mass deliveries of flowers on through the mass pizza deliveries. (Thanks to Mamarama for the link.) There are lots of pictures, but they're divided up into separate pages, so they don't take forever to load. If you keep going, you'll run across Phyllis Lyon and Del Martin.

(Here's what I wonder: about the two women who are both in white wedding dresses. Where in the hell did they get those dresses on such quick notice? Cause this wasn't some plan-for-a-year-big-ol-reception-at-the-Four-Seasons thing. This was a hey-quick-get-over-to-San-Francisco-City-Hall-right-now thing. Were the dresses hanging in the closet, waiting for some big day in the future which suddenly arrived? Did the two women run out and get the dresses the night before over at the mall? Did they borrow them from friends who had used wedding dresses hanging around, taking up space? Damn. I'll never actually hear this story, I expect.)

But I do more than sit around and surf the net. Sometimes I sit around and knit:



This is one of the fronts of the "Cul-de-sac" vest. It's fine, it's good, but the main important thing about this picture is not actually the vest front, though I do include it here as Knitting Content. It's that the picture has been taken outside. In the SUN! Yes. Granted, I'm bundled up and freezing, during the photo shoot, but we were outside when that picture got taken. And there was sun.

The child's outside now, melting snow with his magnifying glass. A proper activity for a young scientist in Pittsburgh in the middle of winter.

Later, hot chocolate.

Hot Steam

Mostly I'm pretty happy to be in Pittsburgh, which is a place that's been very good to me, and sometimes I'm even glad to be out of California -- there was all that hooh-hah with the governor, for instance, which was Sad and Dreadful -- but sometimes I open up the morning paper and am damn sorry to be gone. Oh, San Francisco. How I do miss you sometimes.

But we're not in San Francisco today, we're here -- and indeed it's a lovely day, and though we're clearly missing a Real Big Party, we're having chicken with raspberries tonight. So. Good enough.

Pictures tomorrow, I think, of the "Cul-de-Sac" vest, which is coming along nicely. Knitting with wool-and-silk is lots more fun than knitting with silk-and-cotton, and especially cotton-and-cotton -- the latter two are like knitting with string; silk-and wool is not quite like knitting with string. Though it borders on knitting with string, it's not entirely there. It's got a bit of class.

Therefore, I do recommend Lavold's "Silky Wool," for it is a fine yarn, and beloved by me.

You do NOT want to be trying to get definition with it though, as that will not be happening unless maybe you knit it up at some really small gauge, small enough that you permanently cripple your hands. So don't.

Last -- it's bits today, you'll have figured out -- I have tracked down our buddy Steve, who appeared in the comments from the last entry, warning us of yet another Dreadful Southern Spirit of the other world besides the ones my Dad was telling you about -- The Hot Steam.

I have to tell you, I have never heard of The Hot Steam by name, though I have met it in person -- it's what happens -- Steve has been told by his wife Martha -- when you're walking down a Southern street on a cool summer evening and you run into a pocket of hot humid air, no bigger than a person.

Well. This has happened to me before but I thought I had encountered Weather; I had no idea it was a Spirit. Not a ghost, I'm careful to say, on account of I learned from my father all about how the ghosts are all hanging out in the briar patches in the graveyards. So. Some other sort of spirit. Called The Hot Steam.

Ok.

I almost hate to ask this -- cause I know some of you are now going to tell me -- but are there any other Southerners out there who have heard of The Hot Steam by name, and knew it to be a Spirit and not a Weather?

Cause I have to say here that I think Martha might have been joshing him.

Oh, wait. I just thought of something. Let me ask you, Steve. When you passed through The Hot Steam, were you walking over A Grate In The Sidewalk?

Just asking, that's all. Just asking.

Haints, Ghosts, and Boogers

No knitting yesterday cause I was so exhausted when I got home from medieval drama (apparently it takes a lot out of me, exploring the ways in which the N-Town Passion Play rips up the Doctrine of Transubstantiation; I have to wave my arms around a lot and then require lots of rest in front of the TV when I get home) that I did Nothing To Speak Of, BUT

this morning I was so extremely helpful to my Dad, in revealing the profound and miraculous mysteries of Googling, because of which he now knows where a quote he needed came from (see the comments from this entry), that he has given me permission to quote an email I got from him concerning the differences among three different sorts of East Texas spirits: the Haints, the Ghosts, and the Boogers.

He was setting these things out in the first place because his sister was going off to some folklore conference and needed the Facts. So he has Facts. And as a special treat, I'm a-gonna share them with you. (Yo! Dad! Did I spell a-gonna right?)

He explains the spirits of his East Texas childhood according to the ways in which they interact with children, the children in question being his numerous cousins, his brother and sister, and he himself.

1) The Haint lives in graveyards, he says, and is set on terrifying children by disguising itself as briar patches:

A haint resides in a graveyard and on some nights they come out as balls of fire and roll down the hill and along the ground. Their inclination is to scratch and claw. Jack F took some of my first grade friends to Saron cemetery to see the haint on halloween night. Jack said a rabbit hit the fence and that bunch of 1st graders got clawed up trying to run through a briar patch. My friends said the haint grabbed them and scratched and clawed until they broke away and ran like greased lightning. My friends were more to be believed than Jack F who was about 10 years older and prone to fabrications. My mother who had a command from God to not allow me to have any fun caused me to be the only 1st grade boy who did not go on the haint expedition.

I'm sorry that my grandmother tormented my father by not letting him go down the the graveyard at night when he was six years old. What a mean lady. (My child's not going, either, let me tell you.) I know well the graveyard in question, and although OF COURSE I believe my father's long ago six year old friends and not the teenager who led the expedition, I do have to say that the briars proliferate there.

2) Ghosts, on the other hand, have apparently escaped from the graveyards, and are congregating in the trees, often disguising themselves as grapevines:

Ghosts tend to hang out in the shadows and are difficult to see if you look at them straight on. They are best viewed from the corner of the eye. They tend to be grabbers from behind and chokers. Thomas M had a run in with the ghost that hangs out at Ghosty Branch. It is thought that that ghost is associated with Thornton Church graveyard. Thomas was riding home from some play party out on the Thornton Church road. He took a short cut through the woods when the ghost grabbed and choked him, yanked him off his horse, who went to the barn but Thomas got away. The M's lived close by and Thomas came over the next day and asked Dad to go with him to look for his hat. It was only a short distance behind the house. They found the hat and Dad said Thomas had almost pulled a grape vine completely out of its home tree. Thomas said it was a ghost. Dad was about 35 years old and already beyond much understanding.

I'm not clear here why it is that my grandfather, who had himself had dealings with the ghost at Ghosty Branch (unless of course he didn't and I'm disremembering the story he told me), so wrongly assumed here that Thomas M. had run into a grape vine and not the ghost itself. But the general import is clear: the haints are scratchers and biters. After they escape from the graveyard (or perhaps they get kicked out at the Graveyard Co-op Meeting), they become grabbers and chokers.

3) Yes. But what, you may ask, are Boogers?

Well, I think that the Brannen-Murphy-Courtney clan of Trinity county, East Texas, made them up. (How Irish Americans of the rural South amuse themselves.) They seem to live under beds and grab their cousins, though sometimes they go hang out with weird guys who get chained to trees:

The only one I ever directly knew about was associated with the man who had been chained to that big oak tree in the old log house where my mother's grandparents had lived. He was hell on kids. One time he put a scorpion up my britches when we were sliding down the shingled roof on the barn. All of my cousins had experiences with him. He got involved with all 10 of us in our games of "under the bed booger." When we played utbbooger, there was a subtle transference of power to the IT. IT playing the part of the booger. If you were the booger and power transference was good, you might make somebody pee themselves.

(Dad explained in a phone call that the method of making one's cousins pee their pants is by use of a particularly good scary growl. At which, I'm pretty sure, he excelled. How do I know this? Well, I did grow up with him. I've seen him in action.)

From reading this, I can tell that Boogers, whether they be Under-the-Bed Boogers or not, are not connected with the Ghost/Haint contingent. They are concocted out of sheer ol' meanness and have nothing to do with dead people. They are Pretend Spirits of the sort you invent if your mother won't let you go on over to the graveyard and you're having a little snit fit. I'm surprised, frankly, that guns weren't involved.

But ask yourself: would I rather be set upon by spirits pretending to be briar patches and grapevines, or would I rather have some weird guy stick scorpions up my pants?

And where, on this scale of Dreadful Things that could happen to me, would my cousin causing me to wet my pants out of terror fit in?

And, hey, should I just move the hell out of East Texas and go to Austin?

There's a thought.


*****************************
Ok, all right. Some of you, having read this far, are asking yourselves: Wait! Hold on a minute! Why the hell was the weird guy chained to the tree in the first place?

Good for you! You were really paying attention!

As a further reward, and assuming you haven't had enough of this hoo-hah, I'll tell you:

He went mad, finally. He had rabies.

Unless he didn't! Who knows! Watch the comments, is my advice. You never know what might turn up.

Heads up on the Tube!

A lazy morning today, cause I need to go do the Valentine's shopping, which is crucial if you've got a 7 year old person in the house, since the child must be able to participate fully in the Customs of His People without humiliating himself. The candy store doesn't open till 10:00 AM. So there's no point in hurrying. Last year I finally broke down and included candy in the valentines he gave out -- I swear, I don't know how it is that any of the children of America have retained any of their teeth -- and now apparently I am continuing the ritual.

So I'm sitting around and I'm blogging in a desultory fashion, and I'm glad, glad I tell you, to have gotten the heads up from the London Tube Blog, that somebody threw up over at Charing Cross this morning. Careful, everybody!

No, wait, it's 6 hours ahead over there -- surely somebody's cleaned the station up by now. Never mind.

I like getting the daily news about what's going on on the London Tube. Especially these days -- I'm getting myself psyched up for a trip this summer to the manuscript collections wherein lie various Things I Must Find.

Some of these things are manuscripts I've seen before and now want to look at again -- it's pretty damn humbling to discover that one has, in one's expert fashion, written down the wrong folio number for an entry, I'll tell you (over the course of months and months of one's life sitting in manuscript rooms, one has probably lost one's mind several times; scary) -- but some are things I haven't seen yet.

A few of these manuscripts are just lost. There's one famous English city -- name will not be mentioned here, sorry -- which has managed to actually LOSE a bunch of its important medieval manuscripts -- some 12th century charters, the city account books from the 15th century, a bunch of other stuff. There are many of us who suspect that this city actually knows where the manuscripts are, and just doesn't want to hand them over. But they're really sweet about it. If you go there, armed with all your documentation and your bestest American smile, they give you tea and drag you all around, looking into various closets. Nope, not here. Well.

Anyway -- I'll be in England in July. English readers! If you're in London, York, Leeds, Cambridge, Wisbech, Peterborough, Huntingdon, or Northampton, drop me a line. I work like hell when I'm there, but I'll have time for a cuppa.

Subtle. Sometimes.

50 points for Robbyn and Fillyjonk and Rob for knowing Alice Through the Looking Glass -- the "Wool and Water" chapter (Dad, you can have 50 points too, for thinking up non-related quotes out of the blue of the western sky):

"It's very good jam," said the Queen.
"Well, I don't want any TO-DAY, at any rate."
"You couldn't have it if you DID want it," the Queen said. "The rule is, jam to-morrow and jam yesterday -- but never jam to-day."

(Has anybody besides me noticed that Robbyn wins a lot of these little points? So, she knows Irish and Middle English and Lewis Carroll? Is she me? Have I been writing a whole nother blog I don't know about? I wouldn't put it past me, actually. Must check this out.) (Oh, wait, no, she's working on gloves. None around here. Not me. Fine.)

Here's what I'm working on these days:



As I mentioned yesterday, it's Elsebeth Lavold's "Cul-de-Sac" vest, from the Fall '03 Knitter's magazine. Mine is nothing like the original, which was done in Debbie Bliss' Merino DK, and looks all nice and crisp. I'm using Lavold's "Silky Wool," and the vest will therefore be drapey rather than crisp; also, the choice of the heathery shade means that the cables are even more subtle than they'd be just because of the drapey fabric alone. Not a yarn choice that shows off the cables to best advantage. (Warning: Do not try this at home.) However. I'm happy with it -- it will be great for spring and fall, a nice light vest; the cables do indeed show, mostly at angles and in certain lights -- the design will be noticeable later, rather than immediately -- the sort of thing you see after you've been talking to someone for a while, not the very minute she walks into the room.

I do occasionally wear subtle clothes. Really. I really do. And I'm looking forward to expanding my collection of such. Sometimes you need these things. (Next! A completely non-subtle garment! As usual!)

Jam Tomorrow But Not Today

Now that I'm done with the Mindless Bit O'Fluff, I'm working on Elsebeth Lavold's "Cul-de-Sac" vest, from the Fall '03 Knitter's magazine, and it's going Very Quickly -- I'm nearly done with the back. Pictures tomorrow but not today -- (sort of like jam) (50 points if you can name where the quote's from) -- cause I'm going off quickly quickly to have coffee and discuss 18th century drama with -- we hope -- the last of the candidates. So no time to show you what I'm doing. But I will. Really.

And in the meantime, I haven't mentioned the Knitting Tarot lately, but it's been growing rapidly, and has indeed entered a new phase of its existence, wherein the displayed cards change every now and then, and you've not got access to them all online at EVERY moment singly -- just all the moments put together. If you see what I mean. I'm taken today, though, with X, "The Swift and Winder," which is the Knitting Tarot's equivalent of The Wheel.

As Amber conceives of it, the Swift and Winder is all about watching as the yarn plays itself out and onto the needles. Trusting that there's a pattern there, even if we haven't invented it ourselves. And that all the interesting little bits of the yarn -- the flecks of color, the dazzle -- will eventually reveal themselves, if we wait.

As will the rest of the Knitting Tarot.

Mindless Bit O'Fluff

I'm happy to have finished up the Mindless Bit O'Fluff, and moved on to other things. Here's what it looks like, in use:



I know I'm standing correctly, in the position the sweater requires, cause that's what the pattern dictates:



Much as I love to diss vintage patterns, occasionally they're just fine, on account of being Classic. This one is from "Campus Hand Knits for Men and Women," from Bear Brand Yarns, 1963. There are some sillier designs in there, but I'm saving them for Later, someday when I Run Out of Things To Say.

As you can see in the picture above, it snowed recently -- I think it was last night or this morning, but who knows. I guess the weather people do. I'm not asking, cause I don't care. I've become numbed to the ice and snow. Snow. Ice. Ice. Snow. Endless. Pretty today, though. Nice trees.

So while I was working out the menus for the week, I was feeling housewifely, and decided that we need to use up some of the ham bones in the freezer, so I thought I'd make split pea soup. Which I've never done before, on account of it's not one of my favorites. But I suspected it might be beloved by Sam, who's that sort of guy. Indeed, yes. He's all happy.

And the thought of split pea soup knocked loose a couple of rural South Carolina memories in his head; he remembers his mama talking about a cousin who continually sang a song which contained the line "Run to the ham bone; bite off the end."

Right.

Also, he remembers that the favorite saying of one of his uncles was " The flatter the plate, the fewer the soup."

Right.

I tell you, East Texans pale sometimes in comparison to those Carolinians. I got nothing to beat that stuff. Dad, can you help out here? You got some East Texan saying concerning ham soup?

Sam also thinks that I can gracefully figure out a way to mention his orchids, of which he is Very Proud. Yes, honey, I can, on account of I am able to write my way out of a paper bag.

Get ready for the extraordinarily graceful segue:

Look! Here's Sam's orchid!

Sam and Child Have Lots of Snow Days

75 points to both Robbyn and Greta -- yep, the new bird is one of the colors of the sea -- blue with a green tinge to it (not the clear blue of the dearly departed Welkin). I'm going to stop naming birds in Irish -- it's too easy for y'all. Welsh, next time.

Progress on the Mindless Bit O'Fluff:



and closeup of the yarn:



I'll probably finish it in the next couple of days. Just in time, too, because I am now heartily tired of the mindless knitting and require more action. I've got about a half inch of the bottom ribbing to finish, and then the neckline ribbing to pick up and knit. (Very important to make the neckline ribbing, as otherwise one might be wearing it and have a wardrobe malfunction.) (Sam requested the phrase "wardrobe malfunction" in the blog, so there it was.) ("you write about knitting," he said. "That's clothes. You could fit it in somehow." He's got such strong faith in my writing ability.)

So yesterday it was icy, as I mentioned earlier, and when I left for work, the child's school was on a two hour delay, but when I walked into the office the phone rang and it was Sam, telling me that he and the child had gone to wait for the school bus, but it didn't come, and it turned out that at the last minute the school had announced a closing for the day. So he was home with the child all day. This has happened frequently lately.

But there I was at work, and of no use on the domestic front, as I had graduate applications to sort out and label (my best advice; should you wish to enter a graduate program in English literature, do not begin your Statement of Purpose with the phrase "snuggled cozily in my little bed"), and I had a meeting to get to, and eventually I had to call up Sam and have him start the oven for the biscuits cause I would be late, but I got home eventually, ready to cook dinner for my guys and have a lovely calm evening at home, safe in the bosom of my loving family. Snuggled cozily on the couch.

But when I got there, it was frosty inside -- the child came up and threw himself on the couch in what looked exactly like an adolescent snit fit, though he's only 7 -- and Sam explained to me that the child was Unhappy with his Dad. As indeed, the Dad was Unhappy with the child.

Well, of course. I'm sure this was happening all over Pittsburgh, nay, the entire northeast. My child is getting pretty much no education this semester so far, on account of all the snow and ice. And Sam, who has already had two careers and is theoretically in retirement, is also a stay-at-home dad, and if you're home with the kids, you REALLY NOTICE the days that they go to school late, or, God forbid, stay home altogether. Usually I get home and the guys have been playing poker, and reading the Hardy boys, and discussing the Bionicles, and reading Calvin and Hobbes, and engaging in manly exercise outside, all since three o'clock, which is when the child gets home, and they're good friends, but yesterday they were together all day, and they got on each others' nerves. So they were pretty much waiting for me to get home, cause they both liked me best at that point.

The nadir of the day was, I'm told, the point at which Sam went into the sitting room and discovered that the child had dragged all the cushions off the couch and disported them about the room, and was jumping around the room and throwing himself upon them, all to the soundtrack of Footloose. This was more than Sam could bear. Dancing, fine, he told me. "But the cushions were All Over the Room!"

Anyway. I put dinner together, and they ignored each other, and we had our nice dinner -- they were quite polite -- and the child went up and had his bath, and read books in the bathtub (his refusal to read had been an issue earlier in the day), and Sam did dishes, and then we all sat downstairs and watched "Dexter's Laboratory" -- one of my favorites; I adore the Mom who does all her housework in high heels -- and at some point I looked over and the child was curled up on Sam's shoulder.

So all is well, and it was by the time the child went to bed. And now he's gone off to wait for the school bus. Please join me in praying it's coming.

Freezing Rain of Death

Meg asked what yarn the Mindless Bit O'Fluff is being made in -- alas, it's one of those discontinued things one occasionally finds on eBay, sorry, Meg -- it's a Filatura di Crosi yarn -- "Missoni." A sort of taupe heather mohair with a metallic thread running through, and occasional bits of pink and blue. Sounds dreadful. Looks great.

Today we've got Freezing Rain of Death, and apparently we're all going to die on the roads this morning, either from hitting black ice and driving off the highway, OR by hitting water and hydroplaning off the highway, depending on -- what? It's unclear. But. Doom predicted on the news.

Bother.

So the child has a two hour school delay once again -- though, once again, the weather is not going to be better in two hours; don't understand the point of this, myself.

Now, some of you have been concerned about little Sunny the Grieving Budgie. I'm happy to tell you that she has a new potential friend. I say "potential," because though the two budgies are sitting fairly close together on one of the perches, they're not cuddling yet. I mean, really. They've got some class. You don't cuddle up to budgies you just met. You have to get to know each other first.

I figure in about three days they'll start talking and feeding each other. Budgies are so driven to bond that they'll actually eventually talk to strange birds that have come to live in the cage. Other than that, they've got no truck with anything they haven't seen before. New toys? Agents of Bird Death. Cute little budgie bathtub, purchased by the loving Bird Mistress over at the pet store? Budgie Death Trap. Excellent carrot tops, added to the cage for extra nutrients? Poison. Pure poison.

But they'll talk to each other very soon. They can't help themselves. Budgies are incurably romantic.

By the way, the new bird's name is "Farraige" -- 75 points if you can figure out what color she is.

Commemorative Days

No knitting content today -- still finishing up the Mindless Bit O'Fluff discussed in the last entry -- but I have Lots More Information than you can possibly need:

Several commemorative days happen very close together, here at the beginning of February. This explains why, should you be around the department today and catch a glimpse of me, I am so gussied up.

Yesterday was St. Brigid's day -- patron of, among other people, poets, blacksmiths, and healers. One of the most important Irish saints, she founded the abbey at Kildare (Cill Dara, Church of the Oak), and was crucial in the formation of the Church in Ireland. Hence, I'm wearing my St. Brigid sweater. Which has made a good impression on today's candidate, who says she now wishes to practice her knitting. Well, come work here. We've got some Scholarly Knitting Guild going in the department. You can join. The more, the merrier.

Or, yesterday was Imbolg, (Oímelg), the beginning of Spring, sacred to the goddess Brighid, a good day to burn up all the leftover greenery with which you decorated the house a couple of months ago, and which is so dry that if you burn it in the fireplace you're going to have a visit from the holy sacred Quenchers of the Flames, in the form of your local fire brigade. So don't do that.

Or, if you like, it was the day sacred to both.

And then, today itself is Candlemas, the feast of the Purification of the Blessed Virgin. There's a nice story about why it's ok that St. Brigid's day directly precedes the feast of the Purification, which I found in Dáithí Ó hÓgáin's lovely tome --

The Holy Family was fleeing into Egypt, and ran into a bunch of soldiers, and St. Brigid came by and very intelligently distracted the soldiers by sticking lighted candles on her head, in, I gather, an imitation of either St. Lucia OR Hannibal's cattle, I'm not sure which.

Ok, so much for that.

But if you don't celebrate Candlemas today, perhaps you prefer Groundhog Day, sacred to the Western Pennsylvanians. Punxsutawney Phil saw his shadow. Six more weeks of winter. Sorry.

Fine, fine, fine. Like I care. Bring it on! More snow days! Shut the schools! Cause me to have to repeat the Hail Mary over and over whilst driving home on icy roads!

Oh, sorry, back now.

Then, tomorrow is St. Blaise's day (Roman rite), in case you haven't, by that time, gotten heartily sick of candles and sun feasts and the fires of the forge and all the burning greenery -- you can go and get your throat blessed in a lovely ceremony which involves the priest crossing candles over your throat.

I love that ceremony. And it's so timely, too, what with the winter weather and all.

(Cough, cough.)