Not a Blog

No real blogging today, no, sorry, too busy,

BUT

it's a happy happy day when Lileks posts more retro food discussions, so I'm telling you, in case you were going to miss it.

This time, he's deconstructing a Knudsen's pamphlet from 1958.

Life is good.

Mermaid Makeovers

Sam's pretty cheerful today. He spent the weekend at a big ol' fancy southern wedding down in South Carolina, to which he got to drive his new used car. The child got dragged off to the allergist yesterday, and we discovered that All Is Well and we can leave the medications as they are, for a while at least. Today Sam's planning on pruning the medieval roses and the medieval apple trees, and he loves the garden. And also today he had the opportunity of coming downstairs and discombobulating me by telling me he'd heard on the news that the Danes, who normally are pretty sane as far as the humans go, have decided to revamp The Little Mermaid in Copenhagen harbor, by giving her breast implants and reducing her waist.

Well, he had me going there, but I googled it, and there's nothing out there. So I don't believe it.

He's out there all cheerful in the cold now, dragging around plant pieces. I gotta get out of here before he thinks up something else.

The corrections for the "Swirl Pullover" are marvelous. Very precise, very clear. So if you've bought the pattern and don't have the corrections, do write the company and ask for them (the address is on the bottom of the pattern). It'll be a lot more entertaining than trying to figure the sweater out for yourself. And this is indeed an entertaining sweater to knit. It's unlike anything you've ever done, I bet. Unless you've been knitting teacups and boats out of Unexpected Knitting, in which case you won't be so impressed.

I'm sorry to tell you that the winner of the "Britain's Best Sitcom" contest was NOT "Blackadder," which came in second (I only voted once, that's the problem, I figure), but "Only Fools and Horses." They must have had a cunning plan. Here -- comfort yourself by visiting Blackadder Hall.

On the other hand, the Little Mermaid is probably NOT undergoing plastic surgery. European culture, marching on.



UPDATE! UPDATE!

Many thanks to fellow Pittsblogger Cindy at My Brilliant Mistakes, for informing us that though the Danes aren't -- so far -- planning mermaid plastic surgery, the Poles are, on account of the heraldic mermaid of Ustka is not comely enough. Here's a picture, though since there's no Polish at me, I can't tell you if this is the first mermaid or the fixed mermaid. Either way, I think she looks just fine, what I can see of her. Of great interest to me is that Warsaw's apparently already messed with its own merperson, having given it a COMPLETE makeover, including a sex change. I don't know what she looked like when she was male, but she's quite fetching now. I'd be (mildly) interested to know if civic merpeople all over Europe are in danger of getting messed with, or if this is just something that goes on in Poland. But really. I have to go to work now. Lunch is over.


FURTHER RESEARCH!

Oh, all right, all right.

Poole's mermaid has been modernized, though exactly how is not stated in the source I hit.

The Germans apparently often use the mellusine, a two-tailed mermaid -- whether or not they drag them around and perform surgery is not clear.

Luxembourg's been having heraldic difficulties, and in 1948 a new crest was proposed, which included a mermaid, but they didn't accept it. So it exists, cause somebody made it, but it doesn't count. Which I think is sorta like messing with it.

Apparently several towns on the coast of Brittany have mermaid crests, too, but the link wouldn't work, and so I can't speak as to whether or not these mermaids have been being Harrassed.

Nevertheless. I have to leave you now, really, no kidding, but I think it's pretty clear. Civic Merpeople are Unsafe In Europe.

I won't EVEN get into the family crests, and the crests created for the realms of the SCA. I think I just don't want to know.

Oh, and by the way. The Danish Little Mermaid might not be in danger of plastic surgery inflicted by the civic leaders, but she's all the time in trouble, too. She's at various times had her head lobbed off, her limbs lobbed off, her skin covered with graffiti -- no peace. No peace at all.

I think they should organize.

Blondes, Thongs, Communion Banners

Various things.

1) It is supposed to go up to 72 degrees Fahrenheit today, which, the child points out, is two times warmer than freezing. We're glad, glad I say. It's a special "team day" at the child's parochial school, and instead of his Gryffindor sweater (knit for him by his mom, surprise, surprise) he wore his Yale T-shirt. Usually on non-uniform days he's supposed to bring a dollar for charity (what, exactly, is he to learn from this? I can't imagine), but on "team day" the kids get to wear their non-uniforms for free. Whatever.

2) If you hurry, hurry, hurry, you can still get your bid in on a lovely salt-and-pepper set, shaped like...well...I tell you what, why don't you just go see. (Sam! Let go of the mouse and step away from the computer!) Thanks, of course, to Who Would Buy That. I don't find this stuff on my own. My yarn searches on eBay take up enough time, thank you.

3) Besides the opportunity to consider the great Catholic Mysteries such as why does the child not have to bring a non-uniform dollar when the non-uniform is a team t-shirt (see above), raising a Catholic child also involves the opportunity to Create Textiles. There was the enormously elaborate christening gown, for instance, of which I am still very proud, and now I am required to make a banner for the family pew to mark our space during first communion. I found this out when I was sent a Note (I get lots of Notes) telling me that I could purchase a banner kit for $5.00, and that I should not be nervous about making a banner. Oh, right. Like I'm nervous about making a banner. No, no. The problem for our family is Holding Mom Back from her Desire to Create Elaborate Textiles. Maybe I can use this as practice in humility, and concentrate on making a banner which is not actually over the top. (Here's the other thing I'm interested in making, but hope we don't have to use any time soon: a family shroud. I think one with an embroidered wheat sheaf. And you know, you'd get a lot of use out of it. I mean, you know, over the years. Many, many years.)

4) Jill Matrix has been attempting to get "the blonde" covered by her health insurance, and so now that's been worked out, only the way it got worked out is that the blonde has to be listed as her child rather than her spouse, and then a whole process is to ensue every time the blonde has to file a claim, which involves the claim getting refused by the computer and then manually over-ridden by the health insurance company's minions, thereby insuring that every single damn time the blonde goes to the doctor the both of them get to be humiliated -- or harrassed -- or just plain annoyed -- by a system which is insane. She had that nice new marriage certificate from San Francisco, too, but apparently it didn't make the company no never mind. One of the reasons I'm looking forward to the (admittedly hopefully distant) time I get to lie under the wheat-sheaf shroud (see above) is that I'm expecting whole lots of things are going to be explained to me then, such as What The Hell. In the meantime, here's to the blonde's continued health.

5) And last -- YinzerMullet (oh, what a lovely name for a Pittsburgh blog) is now selling Golden Triangle Thongs over at the YinzerMullet Shop. I don't know what to say about this, really, except to remark that, though I'm sorta glad they exist, I don't want one. Though I can think of quite a few people who SHOULD have, one, definitely. (But not me, Sam! Let go of the mouse and step away from the computer!) (An afterthought: Non-Pittsburghers don't necessarily know what we mean by the Golden Triangle, do they? I mean, as a Pittsburgh reference in specific, not a thong reference in general. Sorry. It's the Confluence of Three Mighty Rivers. Here's a picture.)

Folly (not Fluff)

"Folly" finally got done, and can be worn to work, where among other things I will be explaining the absolute brilliance of the late medieval English play, "Mankind," which has no peer ever, anywhere, in its ability to manipulate an audience into 1) giving money to the actors and 2) repenting of the terrible sin they've committed in giving money to the actors, who are involved in being Little Demons:



Alert and Faithful readers will notice the resemblance of "Folly" to "Mindless Bit O'Fluff." Yes! It's the same pattern! Vintage Bear Brand pattern from 1963. Also, I have more mohair in the stash to make it twice more. Quick. Easy. Dependable. Wearable, Mindless. Fluffy. Shiny, if you get the yarn that does that. (Folly's been done in Trendsetter "Dune.")

Now I plan to finish up the "Swirl Pullover," which should end up being a good spring and cool-summer-weather sweater. Will give you updates as to whether or not the pattern corrections actually work.

Back when I finished the Mindless Bit O'Fluff, it was snowing, a fact obvious from the picture, as you saw if you clicked on it a few sentences back. Now it's not. It's been cold, it's getting warmer; it'll get cold again probably, but maybe it won't actually snow. If it does, Lileks (who gets more snow than we do) says he's going out with a flamethower. You get tired of snow, lovely and meaningful as it is.

I'd like just enough cool weather to allow me to wear Folly a few more times, then that's it. Warmth, please.

So I'm off to work. For about a week now, it's been all meetings all the time. Constant events, some of which I have to perform at and some of which I get to mostly listen.

At one of them the other day, a talk given by a visiting history professor, I heard about a Bad Work of Semi-History which contained many interesting stories, all of them carefully footnoted. But the footnotes, when you went to the back of the book and looked them up, all read "This story is synthetic."

Now that's bad history, though admittedly truthful.

Do not use this in your histories.

And yet, it has such a nice ring to it. I intend to use it myself sometime soon.

So. Meetings, and also I need to work on some details of my summer research trip to England -- like, you know, when am I going, and where am I staying. I've got work to do -- manuscripts to look at, a conference to go to (note to self: do not forget to write the paper for that) -- but it's also been a while since we were in England, and therefore we're low on supplies. Now, one can purchase some things from American importers, but it's more expensive. I've gotten some good deals on Yorkshire Gold occasionally. But I cannot find ANYBODY who's interested in importing Birds Angel Delite instant custard, with no sugar added. And Sam misses that stuff a lot. So I have to, at some point while traveling all over Western East Anglia -- well, and London, too. Ok, and York and Leeds -- drop by a Sainsbury's, buy a bunch of English food, pack it up, and mail it back home.

Here's what we need: Yorkshire Gold tea. Brodies Edinburgh tea. Angel Delite, sugar-free, all flavors. Hobnobs. Sainsbury's Ginger Creams. Branston Pickle. Demerara Sugar cubes.

And of course, anything Lush, which requires yet another trip to yeat another store. Because we can order that stuff by mail, but it's cheaper to go to the source. And I'm running out of glitter.

Wedding Cakes in San Francisco

What the hell, let's have some blogging.

I've got news for those of you also working, or thinking about working, or in the middle of giving up working, on the "Swirl Pullover" created for Reynolds "Mandalay."

(Quick recap for those of you tuning in late: the pattern, as originally invented, is Wrong. Horribly, horribly wrong, in ways that can not be fixed by the workers of it. Even if they're pretty good at these things. Rumor had it that one could write to the company and acquire the New Improved Directions. Last installment, I was waiting to hear from the said company.)

Well, Reynolds DID send me the new directions, and indeed, they change immediately after the swirl. So if you've got the pattern, write to Reynolds (the address is on the back of the pattern) and ask for the corrected version. They were very polite to me, and I got the corrections within about a week and a half after contacting them.

(Will I copy the corrections for you? Nope. Don't ask. Copyright issue.)

It's taking me longer to finish up my Folly than I thought, because I had to work at my Real Job instead. Fair enough, they pay me. Also, I like my Real Job and think it matters. So I tend to volunteer for things, alas. This won't be stopping anytime soon; I've met me, and I'm pretty sure about this. In fact, as of the last faculty meeting, I am now the head of the Service Learning Committee, a post I volunteered for, with the provision that I be hereafter referred to as the "Service Learning Tsarina."

I have a Dogbert title, too, which is "First Minister of Time-Consuming and Unprofitable Hobbies."

One might as well collect these things.

Folly is very nearly done, however -- another inch on the bottom ribbing, and then the creation of the neckline ribbing, and I'm wearing it.

After that, the "Swirl Pullover," so I can wear that, too.

A couple of Events coming up though, which will require Knitted Gifts, which will have to be shoehorned into the line of projects. A baby shower -- yay! -- for instance; I think one of those strawberry hats Ann Norling designed-- cute, quick, fun. And a beloved darling bestest friend is getting married, and therefore requires a wedding present. Well, she wouldn't put it that way, but I would, because I view it as an excuse to make another "Ab Fab" throw, and you know -- Colinette, well, I mean, really. Knit at every opportunity. I've got no shame when it comes to Colinette.

Now that I come to think of it, I've not got much shame anyway. Let's move on from that.

Anyway. The fact is that the friend has agreed to get married -- after much much conversation and discussion of the political implications thereof -- but she might NOT be getting married, on account of she wasn't physically up to waiting in the rain for days in San Francisco waiting her chance to be part of history, and so she and her girlfriend signed up for the first available slot -- which was in May -- and so the shower got scheduled, and the honeymoon cruise to Alaska got scheduled, but then San Francisco stopped marrying couples of the sort that my buddy is in, and so now the wedding's on hold, and the shower is on hold.

The California state government has therefore bilked me of an excuse to knit another "Ab Fab" throw, and has thereby gone personally up my nose.

The cruise is still on, though. Maybe an "Ab Fab" throw in honor of the cruise to Alaska.

Yeah. Let's go with that.

Ok. I'm slightly mollified.

This does NOT fix the issue of wedding cake, however. Where's my damn slice, that's what I want to know.

Not Invited

One of the obvious advantages of the Internet is that one can connect with humans all over the world who otherwise would never show up in one's life, and that's just dandy. (Short pause here while we all think about True Friends We Know In Cyberspace.) (Ok, that's enough.)

On the other hand, one also gets to hear about parties all over the world to which one is not invited. This is not acceptable.

Annie, over at the London Tube Blog, reports on a party to which I gather she hasn't been invited either -- she's in London, though, so if she wants to crash it she can; I'm in Pittsburgh, so I'm for sure not going.

It's a party where you're supposed to show up dressed as a London Tube station. Only not physically a London Tube station -- so, you know, you don't have to go find a lot of pigeon droppings and Cadbury's wrappers -- no, no, you have to go dressed as an interpretation of a NAME of a London Tube station.

Oh, please. I am SO there.

Annie's buddy has a couple of friends who are going as Ken and Barbie (for Barbican).

Oh. The. Possibilities.

Knightsbridge. Cannon Street. Tower Hill. Victoria. Queensway. Pudding Mill Lane. East India. New Cross. High Barnet. Harrow-on-the-Hill.

Here's the map, if you want to ponder further possibilities yourself.

But Royal Oak is MINE.

Progress of Folly:

It should be wearable by the end of the week -- if I weren't teaching late tomorrow, I might well be wearing it Thursday. Would be nice to wear it before the winter's actually over. Once it's done, oh Readers Who Advised Prudence, I'll go back to "Queen Anne's Lace."

Winter, by the way, isn't over today -- snowstorm hit at 5:00 AM and now the turnpike's closed down on account of accidents. Ah, March.

And since I'll be teaching late tomorrow, we'll have our St. Patrick's dinner tonight. Corned beef and cabbage are in the slow cooker now -- and yes, I do indeed know that corned beef and cabbage do not an Irish dinner make. My stance on this is that if, whilst my ancestors and various 4th cousins were eating grass by the side of the road, they had had a chance to eat corned beef and cabbage, they would have been Extremely Grateful, and would not have mentioned the un-Irishness of the dish. Our special charity focus for St. Pat's day is always the victims of famine. We aren't them right now. We keep that in mind.

Also on St. Patrick's day we like to be grateful for the soy concentrate which I drink regularly. I've mentioned before that some women get hot flashes, but I get screaming fits followed by uncontrollable sobbing -- way too dramatic to actually live with -- and the Last Great Screaming Fit before I started the soy concentrate was on a St. Patrick's day a few years ago, when I found myself yelling at the child, "Your great-great-great grandfather was 6 years old when The Famine hit County Cork! Eat your g*damned potatoes! They're the food of your g*damned people!"

Well, that was the last straw. If the black cohosh isn't enough, you have to start the soy concentrate. Now the food of our people.

No Bees

Lazy quiet day today.

It's a bit cold, but still feels like spring is coming. It would be a bad idea to start planting anything yet, but Sam is about ready to go pull up a bunch of the hillside so as to be able to put in a cold frame. He says we're going to have fresh lettuce all summer.

No bees, though. Ours died last summer, victims of one of the wicked bee epidemics that have been decimating the bees both wild and kept* -- and we never replaced them. We need to burn the hive and start over. We're taking a year off on account of acute discouragement and lack of time.

*(Domestic bees aren't really domesticated. They're still the same brilliant little creatures they were before we met them. They don't accommodate us. We've figured out how to keep them happy enough that they stay around. Well, by "we" I mean "humans," not specifically Sam and myself, ours being, as mentioned above, Gone.)

It's not spring, no. Forsythia, not blooming. Crocuses, not up. Snow, some small amount on ground. Heater, on. But it's not the deep locked in winter either.

I've been diligently and cheerfully working on the Folly shown in the last entry, but I may just work on the "Queen Anne's Lace" today. I think I'm in the mood for some precision and care (rather than, as with the Folly, mindless knitting around and around creating fluffy shiny stuff).

Definitely, I'm in the mood for spring. Wish I had bees to look forward to.

Folly, Not Prudence

It was Very Wrong of me to tell you I was shocked and appalled when I wasn't, really, and I repent me of it. No, not shocked and appalled -- pretty darn amused, though. Droves of readers I had, advising Folly. A few voices in the wilderness, advising Prudence.

Went with Folly:



Do enjoy Folly. Do love Folly.

I notice, now that I'm knitting up yet another Mindless Bit O'Fluff, this time in Trendsetter "Dune," that it's not actually red, as I had imagined, looking at it in the ball. No, it's red and some other stuff -- green, apparently. I like it. It's bright. It's cheerful. It's fluffy. And shiny.

And for those of you concerned about the fate of "Queen Anne's Lace" -- do not fret. I'll get back to it. I have a pretty good success rate of finishing projects up. In fact, I think I'll post regular pictures of it, as it iinches along, 5 rows at a time. As a sort of cyber monument to Occasional Prudence.

There's breaking important news, however -- if you click on over to Thrednedle Strete you can observe, finally, after a couple of failed attempts, the successful creation of Elizabethan Starch. Here's the Experiment page, if you want to go directly there. Be sure to click through the three pages or so of the experiment. Mold appears part way through -- you don't want to miss that, I'm sure.

Shocked and Appalled

I am Shocked and Appalled at the number of Faithful Readers who have urged me, both in public commentary and in private emails, to abandon my diligent progress on the "Queen Anne's Lace" pullover (see yesterday's entry for a picture; I'd post a new one, but I can hear the vacuum running upstairs and I hate to interrupt Sam when he's on a roll), and take up, instead, a bit of Mindless Fluff done in the red Trendsetter "Dune" mentioned in yesterday's entry as a flashily lovely yarn I could be working on rather than the subtle loveliness of the subtle "Queen Anne's Lace" pullover. Yes, shocked, I tell you. And appalled, as I mentioned. No, really. Stop that. I mean it.

(Let me note here in passing that I notice that the ONLY readers who did not urge me to throw over the Fair Isle for a Mindless Bit O'Fluff were two graduate students working through Ph.D. exams. I don't think I'll even comment on this. I think I'll just mention it and move on.)

Now, ALL y'all listen up. True support for your fellow knitter does not consist of saying, in effect, "yes, sister, drop the difficult and subtle pullover you've diligently trying to finish before you DIE and leave the unfinished project to languish in some bag making everybody else feel guilty, cause if they only took up knitting they could finish it and also all the other stuff you left undone."

No, true support consists of saying things like, "You keep at it! One row at a time! Let's see...if you're managing 5 rows a night, and the body of the sweater takes a little over two repeats of a 44 row pattern, then that's...well, ok, counting the sleeves...ok! Only about 4 months! You go, girl!"

Ok. Well, true support might not actually consist of working out how fast I'm going per row, as that's sorta depressing. I may well need a bit of denial to get through this.

I like the sweater, that's my problem. I'm just not jazzed. If I find myself in the middle of a project I truly dislike, I stop. But I don't actually dislike this project. I am just not really excited by it.

You know how when you're working a Fair Isle, one of the great joys is watching the pattern emerge out of the fabric, row by row, the colors working themselves on out into marvelous bits of joy? Well, that's not happening. What I'm doing is plugging along. Darn.

Oooh, wait a minute; the vacuum stopped. Let's go see if Sam feels like working the digital camera.

Yep:



Next row, I get to start on the Queen Anne's Lace Flowers Themselves!

Sam's not helping, here. I showed him the Trendsetter "Dune." "Wow," he said. "That's pretty just by itself!"

Yes. Yes, it is.

Now, I suppose one thing I could do is START the Mindless Bit O'Fluff, and then use it for BREAKS. Carefully monitored breaks.

Oh, forget this. Let's discuss something else, such as the fact that it's the day to celebrate Harriet Tubman. Since we don't know her birthday, we commemorate her death day, and this year we are delighted to have on our dinner menu a dish called "Our 'Aunt Harriet's' Favorite Dish," from my treasured reprint of The Historical Cookbook of the American Negro, first published in 1958 as a fundraiser for The National Council of Negro Women, Inc.

In case you have not got a copy of this fine book to hand, I'll tell you that what you want to do is chop up some salt pork (we're using the ubiquitous Christmas ham out of the freezer) and fry it, mix up a cup of white flour with 3 cups of cornmeal, a heaping tablespoon of baking powder, a teaspoon of salt, and a bit of baking soda, add 4 eggs and enough sour milk to moisten it all, mix in the pork and the drippings, and bake it in a greased pan at 350 degrees till it's nice and brown. (Cooks! Recognize this? It's an American variation of Toad-in-the-Hole.)

Tomorrow! Let's see if I'm still working on "Queen Anne's Lace"! Who knows!

Diligence

So I've been very good lately and have NOT started any new knitting projects, though I have, in the stash, yet more shiny fluffy metallic mohair. Yep, I do. But I'm not knitting it, because I am diligently working on "Queen Anne's Lace":



This is another Alice Starmore design, this time from Stillwater, 1996. I've googled, but I can't find a picture of the finished design online, alas. But I can tell you that the key to the design is that the marled yarn is meant to evoke the sun-and-shadow pattern of the plant's flowers.

Oh, I know! Here's a picture of the flower. My sweater is going to look Just Like That. Except, as you can tell, with a lot of purpley tones added in.

I find this design even more meditative than usual. I think it's because of the subtle color changes. This is not a loud sweater. This will be a calm, meaningful, workmanlike sweater such as will be appropriate for walking on hills -- which I have some of around here -- and making decisions about what to do with the garden shed -- which I have not got, though maybe Sam will want to make one when he sees the sweater.

No, it's not exciting. But it requires paying attention, and it's restful, and it's easy on the eyes, and I find it intriguing.

So I'm diligently working on it.

(Translation of entire previous entry: I was seduced by the clever use of the marled yarn into believing that I, who am Really Cheerful when knitting silly things made out of metallic mohair, would Really Enjoy knitting an intricate Fair Isle created out of subtle color changes in dull colors. Right. But I'm determined to get the thing done. And then, by God, I'll wear it. It will be useful. It will be pretty. And there is time enough in my life to knit the Trendsetter Dune that I have in the stash. In two colors. No! Stop! Not even THINKING about the Trendsetter Dune. Even though some of it is red.)

Cawl Mamgu

It's supposed to go up to 74F today, and later in the week snow. Hard to figure out what to wear on any given day, let alone make the decision about when to put the winter sweaters up. I like to do it bits at a time. "Lillehammer" isn't getting worn again this year -- it can go. Yes. And "Catherine Parr." She's going, too.

I'm pleased to learn, from one of my Welsh readers, that as we suspected, the leeks that we were supposed to put in our hats on Monday are little things, more manageable and probably tastier than the leeks we get at the Giant Eagle. Heartening news. I guess this means that we could put leeks in our hats if we had some of the wild ones. But we haven't got any, oh gee darn. (Do NOT send us any in the mail. Thank you very much.)

Sam and I finished up the Cawl Mamgu last night, and oh it was very good, and we were sorry to see it go. But while I was putting together some Irish Soda Bread (and didn't the new oven bake it up all nice and even, oh joy), I ran across the recipe for Brotchan Foltchep, and we haven't had nearly enough leeks this weeks, so I think I might make that this weekend. All leeks, all the time.

Sam'll like that; he's in favor of leeks. He's been having a good week, except for the part in which the child left his gym bag on the bus and now Sam has to go buy him some new gym shoes. The child got reprimanded at school, as since he didn't have his gym bag he couldn't participate in gym, but I think it was only a reprimand and not an actual demerit, such as the one he got that time he threw his pants at the wall (hey -- that was at gym, too -- maybe we should keep him out of gym class altogether). And then he got reprimanded at home. It was the day I teach late, and when I called for the ritual Mom Calls From Work exchange (hi, honey, how are you? I'm fine. How was school? It was great. What are you having for dinner? Pizza. Do you want to talk to Dad?), I had to both comfort the child and support my fellow Parental Unit. Difficult negotiation.

But the child is now off on the bus -- guess he's got all his stuff, for now at least -- and is ready for Show and Tell. Now this is a special Show and Tell, as his teacher has decided that her brood of second graders needs to learn Eye Contact with Large Groups, so they're all supposed to be practicing. Sam and I have been the audience several times for the child's showing of some books he made over the weekend, which he wrote and illustrated and stapled together, books in which he stars, along with his buddy Dylan, as caped crusaders saving the world from monsters through the use of books. Excellent, Young Master Ruskin!

What his buddy Dylan is going to think of this I have no idea; he hasn't seen these books yet. Perhaps he is the sort of child who would rather save the world from monsters by whacking them instead of reading to them.

But at least the child's been practicing Eye Contact.

And I'm going off to work, leaving Sam to revel in his orchid, which is doing shockingly well:



He says he saw one in Dr. Bartlett's office on "The West Wing," and that his compares favorably.

Also, he wants you to know that its name is Phalaenopsis. (Rachael, didn't I see one in the window of your new apartment?)

And the last of the Major Machine Replacements showed up in the driveway the night I drove home from late class (ooh! what a surprise, honey!) -- and Sam is reveling in that, too. It's hard to find used Subarus, at least around here, cause if you have one you don't want to let it go; it's just So Great every winter when you drive your little car all around round, past SUV's and pickup trucks stranded on the side of the icy road. So it took a while to find one, but now we've got one, and since his last car had been pretty damn annoying for some time, we're all really happy to get to sit in something else, and we're going to take it grocery shopping tomorrow and see how it does.

Here's Sam's new used car, astoundingly clean and shiny:



Life in suburbia.

We believe we've got a little reprieve now from buying Big Machines. That's enough for now. We'd like some time just to enjoy the water heater, the stove, the car, the TV, before anything else breaks.

Do NOT Try This At Home

As I posted earlier, I forget when, I started Reynolds' "Swirl Pullover," even though I had been warned by Alert Readers that there's a problem with the directions and I needed to write and get corrections from the manufacturers. I figured, when I started out, that I could at least work the swirl part, and then use the corrections.

Well, I started the pullover, and I got the swirl done -- it went much more quickly than I'd guessed -- and then I googled the thing to see if I could find any helpful hints on the net, BUT the only person I could find on the net discussing the problems with the directions -- besides me, several times in the blog -- was on this review site (scroll down for the Swirl Pullover), and what the reviewer on this site says is that the pattern is difficult to follow, but not impossible.

Well.

So instead of waiting for my helpful corrections to arrive, I decided to go on ahead, and see if I could get through the directions, even though I'd been told very clearly by several people that there were dragons.

I was pretty happy for the first section of instructions after the swirl, as they were indeed very difficult to follow, but I was able to figure out what was meant, and I ended up with the right stitch count, so I figured I'd done that part right.

But the next section was not only even more difficult, but as it turned out impossible. There's no way that you can follow the directions and end up with the correct stitch count. I did the math. Several times, in several ways, trying various sorts of permutations of What The Pattern Might Possibly Have Meant.

So now I'm waiting for the corrections. Also, I'm wondering in which reality the person who said that the directions COULD be followed lives, cause it sounds like an interesting one, and I might like to visit.

It's sad that this is happening -- I'm not usually stuck, when patterns are messed up. I can usually fix them, or make something else up. But the construction of this pullover is so unusual that I can't do that -- I could conceivably have worked out such a structure from the beginning, but I can't work it out halfway through.

Hmm.

Now that I think of it, I might could do that very thing....

NO. Life is short, and mine is full. I'm going back to "Margaret Tudor" and "Queen Anne's Lace," both of which are nice and clear and working well.

Wore the "Cul-de-sac" vest yesterday. Love it. Just love it. Perfect for spring. Just as I thought.

Sure would like to get the "Swirl Pullover" done for spring, too. Darn.

(Now. If I took it off the needles and off the holders, and laid it out and worked out the dimensions left, and figured out the angle of the mitering, then I could conceivably plan out what's going on there on the bottom row with the decreases that can't get done if you're going to get the stitch count which you couldn't get anyway even if you left them off...)

(NO! Too short, too full. Need relaxation.)

(But oh, I do love a problem in logic and math...)

(NO!)

Odd Midterm

(Warning: complete lack of transitions follows. Sudden jumps from one subject to another, with absolutely no help whatsoever. Good luck, and may the force be with you.)

Mary! Picture of "Cul-de-sac," as requested:



Sam's very proud of this picture -- he had to drag the vest all around the house trying to find the correct slanting light (I mentioned before that the yarn choice (Lavold's "Silky Wool," in a nice heathery olive green) makes the cables Very Subtle; I wasn't joking), and finally ended up out on the deck, on account of the sun helpfully came up, and provided the slanting light that we weren't able to coax out of the lamps.

The buttons have fox heads on them, by the way -- I'm Very Fond of foxes. Have a big stash of these buttons that I found on eBay. I should have fox buttons to last me some years into the future.

The new stove is excellent and we are pleased. The directions encouraged us to run the self-cleaning oven cycle before we did anything else with it, in order to burn off the new oven smell, so we did, and luckily we did not asphyxiate the birds, and since we're in the warm snap, the house didn't freeze when we opened the windows to let the new stove smell out. It was a powerful new stove smell -- not nice, like a new car smell. You wouldn't want to live with it. But now it is gone, and all is well. Some of my buddies were disappointed because they thought I should have bought a red stove (this Means Something, but I do not want to find out what), instead of the off-white stove I chose. The last one was off-white, too. The next one, should I live long enough to get one, will also be off-white. If you have an off-white stove you don't really have to think much about your kitchen decor. If you have a red stove you have to think about your kitchen decor every morning, when it startles you.

But it's not really off-white; I tell a lie. The last stove wasn't really off-white, either; it was almond. This one, rather than being off-white, is -- what? French vanilla? Ecru? Clam chowder? Oh, Sam says it's "bisque." Well. There you are, then.

One of the nice things about teaching is that students never cease to surprise you. You can continue to learn and grow, till hell freezes over.

Last week in the Medieval Drama course, we had a midterm and papers were due. And there's a student in the class who's of the category that any professor reading this blog will recognize immediately -- the sort-of-no-show-who's-there-sometimes-but-not-mostly. Not the student who never shows up, and is just a ghost on the roster. That other one -- the student who actually appears occasionally for who knows what reason. Often one ends up at the end of the semester explaining to such people that no, there's no way they can make up the work they didn't do all semester. They're always, like, SO surprised.

I welcome these students. There aren't many of them. They're not bothering me. They make it look like I'm doing more work than I actually am. It is not difficult to grade work that doesn't show up. They often have very fine excuses. I find them amusing. They're in the middle of some Learning About Life Process, and I'm glad to help. (There were, very early in my own career, some very helpful professors who quietly and without fanfare flunked me for not doing my work. Thanks, guys. You helped save my life.)

But this guy is exhibiting behavior new to me. He emailed me the day before the paper was due, asking if he could have an extension on the paper, because he hadn't bought the book yet. Now, this is pretty funny, but it's not new. Well, I take that back. Actually admitting it to the professor is new. I told him that he could turn the paper in later, but I was going to send his name in on the midsemester "at risk" list, since technically he'd be flunking the class at that point. (Why do I allow the extension? Because I enjoy hearing the stories, and besides I most times don't see the papers anyway. I could shut down the process, but that wouldn't be nearly as interesting. I am an evil evil woman, I'm telling you.)

So, fine, nothing new here. But then we had the midterm. The set up was that, since it's a once-a-week class, we'd have the midterm for the first half, and then meet back in the classroom so that I could explain East Anglian Drama, and the students could have a restful but productive time. Learning about East Anglian Drama. Well, maybe you had to be there... anyway, he came to the midterm, and sat for 45 minutes with his little "blue book," and turned in his essays, and then disappeared and didn't come back. Also not new behavior.

But! It turns out that there is NOTHING written down in his blue book! Nothing! He wrote his name down, that's it.

Now, here's the part that's new to me: not showing up for class, common behavior. Not buying the book and reading the assignments, same old same old. Not writing the paper, boring. But showing up for the midterm and pretending to take it? What is that? And not even writing one of those scam essays that don't make it by the professor but at least you made a good faith attempt to run a con (you know, the answers that make it Very Clear that the only thing you know about the text is what you've found in the question itself*)! 45 minutes of his life he'll never get back, when he could have been home watching the tube!

Colleagues predict I won't see him again. I dunno. I think I might. I think he's some New Thing I haven't seen yet.

*Here's one (I'm making this up as I go, by the way; let's see if it works):

Question: What do you make of the passage in the N Town "Passion" play wherein Jesus is given the Host?

Answer: Medieval Drama was very important to the people because they couldn't read so they had a lot of passion. Although it was not in the Bible, the play from N where Jesus found a hotel room and a new disciple, the Host, taught the people that they could follow Jesus no matter what their job was. It is a good passage and I like it very much, because it teaches me that I can follow Jesus even if I work in a hotel.