Some random weirdness

It's behavioral ecology time. I like to show simple "stereotyped" animal behaviors...Bellarmine used to have a short little video showing isopods (rolly pollies) in humid and dry conditions and how their behavior differed. But either that class is no longer taught, or that professor retired/left, because it's gone.

So I went internet searching. And found this. The music is so odd (yet appropriate) that I think I have to show at least the first part to my class:



I never even knew there was a song about isopods. Though I've never known isopods to go out and get drunk.

Week's now over.

I did run home and bake a second half-cake (well, it's actually the full recipe for the cake; I usually do it doubled to make a 9 x13 cake when I have to take it anywhere. So this was an 8 x 8 cake. Confused yet?)

On the upside: Once I had the flour and leavening in one bowl, and the butter melting, it took me only as long as it took my oven to heat up to 350 degrees* to get the cake put together.

(*I have an old oven that preheats very slowly. I've adapted to it but that means when I'm up visiting my parents and I want to bake something, I wind up turning on the oven my mom has way too early. But still - this is a very fast cake to put together, I daresay as fast as one from a mix).

On the downside: I didn't have to cut into it at the meeting. Only 18 people showed up, and of those, a couple didn't even want cake.

Again on the upside: I have an 8 by 8 cake, one of my favorite flavors of cake, all to myself. I think I'm going to make chocolate frosting (if I can find the recipe I used last time again - it was one you cooked a bit so you didn't have to put so much powdered sugar into it, so it wasn't as overwhelmingly sweet as some frostings). And then I'm going to eat a few pieces over the next couple days and carefully wrap up and freeze the rest. Because there are some days when I just WANT a piece of cake, and there are no decent bakeries in town. (The wal-mart has an allegedly "in-store" bakery, but I'm not that fond of what they produce).

The meeting was about "living well and living long." The interesting thing? Not a single mention of diet, or restricting doing "fun" things. It was based on a longitudinal study of people that began with them as 10 year olds in the 1920s. Certain personality traits seemed to be correlated to long life: "conscientiousness," "dependability," and a sense of purpose and connectedness to other people.

I have to admit I was secretly laughing over the "conscientious and dependable" part - I think one of my faults is that I take my responsibilities far too seriously and I know many times I've griped on here about other people that I thought I could depend on, but couldn't.

Sense of purpose: okay, on good days at work. Or when I'm piecing quilt tops for Project Linus or something. Or when I'm working down at church.

Connectedness to other people: I don't know. This is the one place where I consistently fall down because I will admit that people often disappoint me in their behavior and frankly by Friday afternoons, I'm ready to go home and lock the world out and spend the weekend reading or writing manuscripts or hanging out in my quilt room.

But it was interesting that, at least according to the study the person cited, people who lived "responsibly" and who had a sense of purpose seemed to live a long time. And as I said: no mention of diet (other than, I suppose, "living responsibly" meant that you didn't eat bar food 6 days out of the week or something), little mention of exercise beyond that it's good to be "active" but that doesn't require one to run marathons or such.

Also, it was noted - and this is one of those things that makes me crazy whenever it comes out in the news - the usual claim that "you die younger if you're not married" is not necessarily true. That while there may be some protective effect for men of being married, it is not nearly so strong for women. (I'm guessing that on average, men look to their wives for socialization, whereas women have other outlets - church, groups they belong to, stuff like stitch-and-chat groups, etc. So I'm also guessing men that aren't married but make an effort to have friends/be a part of groups other than at work probably have a similar "protected" effect.)

(However, another point made was that it is not healthy, over the long term, to push a person to act counter to their basic personality: so "fixing" introverts by forcing them to spend more time around people when they really need alone-time to recharge is not something that can or should be done)

It was interesting though, that the key to living long seems largely not to be tied up with "exercise your body like crazy" and "live on a diet that would make a rabbit cry" but more "don't live a crazy irresponsible lifestyle" and "have something in life that makes you feel like you're a part of stuff."

Not favorite day.

This day has gone badly so far.

I may not have my TA for class this afternoon. No fault of her own. But as I'm going to be coming off a faculty meeting (and before that, my previous class), I'm not going to be in the mood for dealing with this class. And yes, this is a class I need to be in a good mood to work with, there are a couple people who can try my patience. (I use the TA as a buffer a lot of the time).

I'm also plotting and planning how to bake a second half-cake this afternoon after class - I got to thinking, there could be as many as 25 people at this meeting (probably not) and I can't get that many pieces out of a 9 by 13 cake without them looking stingy. (I suppose the answer is for me to forgo having cake myself at the meeting, and hope there are few enough people....I don't know).

This is just one of those weeks where I feel like little bits and pieces are being pulled off me - like I'm a monkeybread - and the question is if I'll have any ME left for me at the end of the week.

The other question: do I eat my lunch at 10:30 today, before class, or drag it to the faculty meeting with me? I HATE my schedule this semester.

And a poem

I have no idea if the "Blogger's silent poetry reading in honor of St. Brigid" (or Candlemass, or Grounhog's Day, or I think, Imbolc (? someone who knows the old Celtic holidays better than I do is free to correct me on that) is still going on. It was out there for a couple of years but a quick Internet search this morning fails to turn up anything for this year.

Oh well. I know a lot of people have given up blogging in favor of stuff like Tumblr or Twitter. But me, I like words, and I like the flexibility to post a lot of words if I want.

And I like poetry. I know bits and pieces of a surprising number of poems. For one thing, we were required to memorize some poetry in high school (both in English and in French, and if I am well-rested and have a few moments to think about it, I can still recite most of Victor Hugo's "Demain, des L'Aube")

I also know a lot of odd bits of lines...I've been known to mutter the opening of Yeats' "The Second Coming" when the news looks particularly bleak on a given day.

(I suppose this is one way in which I reside in a very specific sort of "bubble" - there's been some talk on some blogs in recent days about a new Charles Murray* book coming out, that contains a test that allegedly tells you how much you are a part of the "insulated" upper-middle class. (In my case: pretty much, it seems). I think, however, my particular bubble has a lot to do with education and reading and books and such - I grew up in a household that was full of books, library trips were a weekly (sometimes twice a week in the summer) event. My dad's dad had tons of books (some of which I have inherited). My mom's family, even though they didn't have the same income or education level as my dad's (I believe she was the first one in her family to finish college) had lots of books - her grandfather didn't learn to read until adulthood but I'm told that forever after that, he always had books and newspapers around (making up for lost time?). So books and reading were a big deal when I was a kid, and I probably DO assume that people around me are fairly familiar with literature when some people may be not.

Also, poetry: it seemed to be taught a lot in school. I remember learning the different poetic forms and how to write some of them (we never attempted sonnets!) in third grade. And in fifth grade, one of the projects I remember - because I enjoyed it so much - we were encouraged to find poems we liked in the various readers and compilations in the library, and copy them out into a sort of chapbook, and we could even illustrate the chapbook if we liked. I remember two of the poems I chose: Sandburg's one about fog ("The fog comes in on little cat feet...") and William Carlos Williams' "The Red Wheelbarrow".

So I kind of grew up immersed in poetry (some of my older relatives used to recite poetry as well, having learned it in school). I recognize that some people did not. And yet, at the same time, I think the fact that I know it and like it isn't anything I should have to apologize for or be ashamed for. (A funny tendency in some aspects of U.S. society: people who are educated in specific ways are sometimes made to feel like somehow that level of education IMPLIES a form of snobbery, and it's better off to reject it. I'm not saying that very well... but there is a certain inverted-snob strain in our society that seems to suggest that if you care about stuff like poetry, there's something wrong with you.)

(*I find myself thinking of Wrinkle in Time, and being annoyed, because this is not the lovable Charles Wallace Murray I knew)

At any rate. Here's a poem I've been thinking about lately, the first line popping into my head.

XXXI.
On Wenlock Edge

On Wenlock Edge the wood's in trouble
His forest fleece the Wrekin heaves;
The gale, it plies the saplings double,
And thick on Severn snow the leaves.

'Twould blow like this through holt and hanger
When Uricon the city stood:
'Tis the old wind in the old anger,
But then it threshed another wood.

Then, 'twas before my time, the Roman
At yonder heaving hill would stare:
The blood that warms an English yeoman,
The thoughts that hurt him, they were there.

There, like the wind through woods in riot,
Through him the gale of life blew high;
The tree of man was never quiet:
Then 'twas the Roman, now 'tis I.

The gale, it plies the saplings double,
It blows so hard, 'twill soon be gone:
To-day the Roman and his trouble
Are ashes under Uricon.

(A. E. Housman. From "A Shropshire Lad.")

There's also a nice Vaughn Williams setting of it to music:



(Yes, I also like those kinds of song-settings of well-known poems**. (And after all: that's what most hymns are - a poem someone wrote that was set to music; many hymns have alternate tunes)

One thing I've read about Housman's poem-cycle is that though it took some effort to get it published (it was turned down by numerous publishers), once it came out, it became quite popular: apparently the poems appealed to the mood of the time. Probably the best-known of the "A Shropshire Lad" poems is "On an Athlete Dying Young," which explores a theme not totally unrelated to the theme of the poem I'm quoting. Though it seems that theme probably runs through many of the poems in that cycle...)

(**There's also apparently a musical setting (for baritone) of Demain, des L'aube, but I've never heard it.)

"Angry Mom Voice"

I gave my first exam in one of my classes today. (Note to self: do not ever take a Basketweave Stitch project to work on while invigilating again.)

I wound up ripping back one row TWICE because I messed up TWICE.

Of course, the first time I messed up it was because I noticed something - two students looked like they were looking on each other's papers. And at first I thought, meh, that's why I make Forms A and B.

Then I walked past them again. They both had Form A. The little stinkers SHUFFLED the exams after I handed out the four for that row so they wound up with the same form. I didn't think I had clear evidence to confiscate the tests, but that was coming.

I cleared my throat loudly and exclaimed "EYES ON YOUR OWN PAPERS PLEASE!"

They jumped and the person I think was the main "looker" sheepishly shifted his posture. I watched them for the rest of the hour and couldn't see any further evidence. (Though part of me hopes that if they were cheating, that they still will earn failing grades: in my experience, the super-prepared, high-grade-earning students don't LET people cheat off them; it's usually people who are marginal at best that do).

But I have to admit that I was surprised at the voice that came out of my mouth when I said "EYES ON YOUR OWN PAPERS." Much louder and rougher and harsher than my normal voice. Not quite a DI voice (and I did say "please," and the word "numbnuts" was nowhere in my statement) but approaching it.

I think it's my Angry Mom Voice. I think every woman has one of these, some of us usually don't use them. (I think mine came out once before, a couple years back, when one of the youth group kids broke a window in one of the church bathrooms...)

Blocks, pasties, cake...

These are the quilt blocks I was talking about. It's a very simple block but then again, I like simply-designed quilts. They tend to have clearer graphics, I think, and they show off the fabrics to good advantage. (And since I never met a novelty fabric I didn't like...)




That tree fabric is probably my favorite in the whole line:



I'm almost done with all the blocks (this is just a sampling).

***
Since PurlEwe (I think it was you) asked, here's the pasty recipe. (It can also be spelled "pastie," I guess).

Filling:

1/2 pound ground meat (I used bison, beef would be more traditional, the "real" pasties actually use chopped leftover beef that was either roasted or boiled.)
3/4 cup diced potato
3/8 cup finely diced onion
3/8 cup diced rutabaga
dash of pepper
dash of salt
garlic powder, basil, "tiny pinch" allspice, "tiny pinch" thyme (these are not strictly traditional but they add very good flavor)
3/8 cup broth (may need to add more if it cooks dry).

I actually doubled the filling recipe. (You can also eat the filling as a sort of hash; my father is watching his carbohydrate intake so he did that rather than have a pasty....he had it with a poached egg on top of it and said it was good).

What you do is put the vegetables and spices in the pot with the broth and simmer them over a low-medium fire until they start to get soft. Then break up the (still raw) meat and cook it with them until the pinkness of the meat is gone - you want everything to be more or less fully cooked.

(N.B.: If you're not familiar with rutabagas - they do not smell that good while cooking. Kind of that cabbage/old feet smell you get with some cabbage-family things. I actually called my mom to ask if the stuff was OK because it didn't smell good. But the bad smell dissipates as it cooks)

Take the filling off the stovetop and put it aside to cool.

Make your dough (You actually might want to do this FIRST and let it chill while the stuff simmers).

2/3 cup plus 2 Tablespoons shortening (I used Crisco; lard would probably be most traditional: this is a Tourtiere dough)
2 cups flour
1 teaspoon of salt
1 egg, slightly beaten and mixed with 2-3 Tablespoons of cold water (I started with 2 T and wound up having to add more water when I worked the dough).

Make it like pie crust: Mix the flour and salt and cut in the shortening until it is the size of small peas. Add the egg and water mix and mix until it's all moistened and forms a ball. Wrap in plastic and chill.

When it's time to make the pasties, preheat the oven to 350-375 (The Tourtiere is baked at a higher temperature but since the pasty filling is already cooked...)

Roll out the dough and cut it - you can cut squares or rounds or whatever. I used a 4 1/2" diameter bowl as a cutter. Put a SMALL amount of filling in the middle (I think my problem at first was too much filling). Fold closed, use a little egg wash or cool water to seal, and crimp the edges. Put on a greased cookie sheet and cook until the pastry is done and just beginning to brown.

This makes a lot...I think I wound up with 18 or so small pasties. But pasties freeze excellently well and heat up nicely, so you can stock your freezer with them.

***

And now for another baking success. I have to provide the snacks for this month's AAUW meeting (Thursday, but tomorrow is my big long day and I have the first Wednesday Night Youth Group meeting, so I baked it tonight). I made a hot-milk sponge cake. (I'm sure I've given the recipe before; this is one I make regularly for things).

I love this cake recipe because if you follow the directions, it turns out so beautifully. And it's not that much more complicated than doing a mix cake, and it tastes so much better:



I'm going to make a mixed-berry fruit sauce to serve on this, and have whipped cream for those that want it.

Thoughts on "Trouble"

The photos and recipe will come tomorrow. I got home last night (I have to upload photos from home, and the recipe - which is both on a slip of paper, and the crust recipe is in a book) and was in the middle of my early-spring (unusually early this year) "MEH" - I get this way when the trees flower, and guess what started flowering this weekend? The elms. The fornicating elms*. (And yes, that's what they're doing and that's what's causing my misery). Elm pollen is one of the things I'm most allergic to, apparently: had a near-migraine Sunday, had one yesterday, woke up with one this morning. (I knocked today's back to a manageable level, but I am going to take advantage of my "no afternoon classes and office hours" to bail early today)

I just hope this means the trees get it out of their systems early.

(*Okay, strictly speaking, trees don't fornicate, they pollinate. But calling them "the pollinating elms" doesn't carry the same force and meaning)

So anyway. I was out in the field with my Soils class yesterday. (For this lab, it mostly involves me showing them the map, pointing to the areas that have the soil association they need to collect, and then just standing around while they do it), and I got to thinking more about that "Ya Got Trouble" song.

Two things:

1. Really, that song is (to my cynical worldview) not that bad a representation of what many politicians do - and probably HAVE done, down over the years:

a. Find a link (even if it's tenuous at best) between what YOU want to promote, and something you figure the people want. (If the two things can be summed up as a brief slogan, all the better).

b. Repeat it over and over again. Repetition shows how IMPORTANT something is.

c. Appeal to the emotions. (I'm sure I've fallen for this over the years; I think we all have blind spots. But when I can SEE that someone, be they salesman or politician, is appealing purely to emotions he or she may THINK I have, I turn off pretty quickly)

d. Play on their sense that they are "good" people ("I know all you folks are the right kind-a parents")

e. Exaggerate

f. Suggest that if they do NOT do what you are suggesting, that the community is heading for the worst kind of "Moral Degradation" (That exact term may not be used, and what the individual on the stump believes is moral degradation will vary depending on various factors, including which side of the aisle they are on). Throw in that they, specifically, will be harmed ("caught with the cistern empty on a Saturday night...")

(I suppose I could also add "g. ?????" and "h. Profit!" but that's kind of implied).

Yeah, as I said: I'm pretty cynical about a good 95% to 99% of politics, which is partly why I don't talk about it on here. (Also, politics can be extremely polarizing. I have, in fact, seen friendships break up when one person learned the other person had the opposite party affiliation.)

And, on a happier note, 2. The song really does include a lot of references to things....things I've picked up over the years via osmosis and such, which is why I tend to think reading widely and paying attention to what you read/see/hear is valuable. While not knowing the cultural references in "The Music Man" will not doom your enjoyment of culture, I do think having a smattering of things like Shakespeare and the Bible and other well-known works (Even "classic" children's stories like Alice in Wonderland and Winnie-the-Pooh) gives one a better understanding of the milieu in which one moves.

For example: Dan Patch. I didn't know what that was the first time I heard the song, and I think I conflated Dan Patch with Old Scratch (which I did know, somehow) and pictured that Hill was describing a jockey riding the devil...which isn't TOO nonsensical, given the context. But actually, Dan Patch was a famous "trotting" horse - a sulky racer. (And another thing I assume from that song: at some point in time, sulky racing was seen as gentlemanly and respectable, whereas racing with jockeys astride horses was low-class. Actually, that song plays A LOT on the idea of "you're the right kind of people and you don't want your kids doing the kind of things that the wrong kind of people do." An appeal to snobbery, I suppose. Or something: maybe more of an appeal to "You folks are good middle-class types, not like those bohemians that go to jockey races")

Also, Bevo, Cubebs (I think I'm spelling that right) were early brands of cigarettes, but that's pretty clear from context. And Sen-Sen is a strongly flavored breath mint sort of thing (They still MAKE Sen-Sen, in fact).

And that dime novels were not something "nice boys" read (Presumably they were poorly written with sensationalistic plots). In fact, there was a time when novel-reading was looked down upon - I know I've read how it was considered an unacceptable pastime for young ladies. (Presumably, because it made them dissatisfied with their own lives, and kept them from more productive tasks). (Or at least, I seem to remember reading that somewhere...then again, novels go back to the era of Jane Austen, so SOMEONE had to be reading those novels). (And interestingly, now some studies show women read novels more than men. Not sure if I buy that, but I suppose it could have to do with the fact that the way school is structured now, many young boys get "turned off" of school...Or it could be that men read more non-fiction and women read more fiction, though of course I think a big Your Mileage May Vary needs to be slapped on that.)

And the idea that "new" music would corrupt the young (see also: jazz, boogie-woogie, rock-and-roll). I wonder how long that's been going on? Did parents forbid their children from going to affairs where Strauss waltzes would be played? (It's interesting how things people today think of as "classics" or even a little "staid" were the popular entertainment of their day....Dickens was serialized in the magazines and people breathlessly waited for the next installment*. And Shakespeare had a wide following....not just the "upper class" or educated sorts knew his plays.

(It actually gives one a bit of pause, and I admit openly this is my own slight snobbery showing: in the 2300s, if we haven't annihilated ourselves, will things like "Two and a Half Men" be considered "classics"? I'm sure in Shakespeare's day, there were people who detested his plays and thought they were trashy and that the bawdy jokes were just too much and over-the-top....)

(*Hence the phrase, I remember reading somewhere: "Does Little Nell live?" supposedly uttered by someone meeting a person returning from Britain via ship...the next installment of The Old Curiosity Shop had been published in Britain before it was published here. Though perhaps that suggests rather that Harry Potter ("Does Harry Potter live?") will be the remembered series, rather than "Two and a Half Men" - which I admit, again in my own snobbish way, makes me happier to contemplate).

You know, I don't know if other people do this kind of thing...I've said before my brain is kind of like an overstuffed attic, or maybe some kind of bizarre search engine where retrieving one thing brings up several more loosely-related things...and because of how my brain's wired, I get interested in those different threads and start following them. (I do this in my work, too - I have many articles I want to read some time that I found when searching for an article that I "needed.")

But in a strange way it makes me happy to know who Dan Patch was, or why "dime novels" would have been disapproved of.

And more happiness.

Just some random stuff.

***

I had gotten home from church today, eaten lunch, and was contemplating what I might do with my afternoon when my phone rang. I thought it might be my mother, as she sometimes calls after she and my dad get home from church.

But it wasn't. It was one of my department's former students (OUTSTANDING former student, I might note). He wanted a little advice as he's now teaching at Murray State (the one we have here, not the one in Kentucky). He's teaching botany, which is a bit outside his area of specialty. I offered the loan of a few books I'm not using (he's going to be down here next week). I'm really happy for him, and I think he'll be a good teacher.

I did kind of chuckle in a "been there, done that" sort of way when he talked about the many long hours he's putting in to teaching prep. I did reassure him that the first semester or so is by far the worst, because not only are you having to do everything from scratch, but you're also a lot less sure of yourself, and that things get better as time passes. (I wish someone had reminded me of that more regularly when I was first teaching. I made it through that first year but man it was tough.)

***

This week's MLP:FiM episode? I totally <3 it. A very short outline: the Apple family makes cider (it is clear from the context that it's sweet and not hard cider...of course, this is a kid's show). It's enormously popular and they always run out. So, a couple of unicorn brothers ("Flim" and "Flam" and you just KNOW what's going to happen given those names) show up with a steampunk-y machine that makes cider. And they challenge the Apples to a contest as to who can make the most (even though the Apples themselves say that they pride themselves on quality, not quantity...still, they wind up winning because the Flim-Flam brothers' cider is ultimately undrinkable. ("Mine's got rocks in it!") But what had me grinning like an idiot? When Flim opened his mouth and started to sing and I said to myself, "It's Robert Preston! In unicorn form!" Yes, they did an homage to the "Trouble in River City" song from Music Man, only about making cider, and at one point all the ponies were stamping their hooves and saying "Cider...cider...cider...cider" in the same cadence as "Trouble....trouble...trouble...trouble." (Lots of people on the various pony boards were all "Oh it's the Monorail song from The Simpsons" and I admit - though I didn't SAY anything of course - that I felt just a wee bit superior for knowing the original source). Oh, and by the way: someone has combined the two. This makes me laugh a lot:

I definitely get the feeling that this is a cartoon made by people who really LOVE cartoons and are not just in it for the money/for selling toys. There have been a number of funny other pop-cultural references, most of them a lot more subtle than this one, in the show.

There were also a lot of "background ponies" this episode, and I always enjoy seeing the "background ponies" (That is - characters that show up from time to time but usually do not speak and do not have the size of a role that the main characters do). And Derpy was there again (and at 3:52 or so in this video), but she didn't speak. (I think I like her better as a background pony). Another fan favorite, Berry Punch, shows up at about 0:51 in the video above. (She is so named because in an early episode she's seen drinking punch straight from a punchbowl...and she has, in the fan fictions, the reputation of being a lush.)

"Libertine men, and scarlet women, and RAGTIME!" Heh.

(I've heard some commentators note that we don't really have movie musicals any more like in the 40s and 50s, but that a lot of movies/shows aimed primarily at children have taken over the role that the musicals used to.)

Also, as I've said before: I honestly think life would be better (or at least more interesting) if there were random song and dance numbers now and again.

Also, at the very end, the Letter to Celestia (each of these episodes is supposed to have a life-lesson, which is how the show earns its "educational/instructional" cred)....Hah. I'm not going to give it away on the off chance that there are a few people who follow this show via iTunes or somewhere and haven't seen this episode yet, but I will say I laughed out loud at it, and it was totally something I was expecting would happen at some point, and the character who delivered it was the perfect one to.

***

I also started sewing together a new quilt's worth of blocks (pictures to come later this week). It's another one of those jelly-roll quilts, the pattern is called Jelly Filled. It's vaguely similar to a log cabin, though it's more of a framing effect than a stair-stepped effect. I'm using an extremely cute line of fabrics called "Love U" by Deb Strain....pastels, owls, turtles, trees, alphabets...obviously designed for babies but I still think it's cute.

I'm trying to work down the "stash" a bit by sewing stuff up...though I have to admit using up jelly rolls doesn't free up that much space.

***

I also did some cooking this weekend. Cornish pasties* (a type of meat pie) is a common thing in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, where a lot of my relatives come from, and they were something I remember eating on trips there as a kid.

My mom made them from a variety of recipes over the years, but she made one over Christmas break that was the best-ever. (For one thing: instead of browning the meat, she braised it in with the vegetables and some broth. And for another - instead of using the typical pie crust, she used a crust from a Tourtiere - a Canadian pork pie - recipe that she had (The main difference is that the Tourtiere crust has an egg in it, which makes it a bit sturdier and adds some flavor**)

I got the recipe from her (will share it here if there's any interest, I will say it's a little involved).

(*There's some discussion as to whether rutabaga or carrot is the "correct" vegetable to use in these, along with potatoes. I will say I consider rutabaga to be "correct," for three reasons: 1. I have a food intolerance to carrots and therefore could not eat pasties made with them. But I like rutabaga in the pasties, and it adds a nice flavor. 2. Every "authentic" Cornish recipe I've seen for these lists rutabaga, and not carrots. (Or "Swede," as rutabaga is sometimes known in Britain). 3. My relatives ALWAYS made pasties with rutabaga. The church they belonged to, who did pasty sales to raise money, ALWAYS used rutabaga. That said: rutabagas can be a little tough to find outside of parts of the country with a lot of Scandinavian immigrants. (But I was able to find one). They do come heavily waxed so they keep a long time, but they're also tough to cut.)

(**I consider this to be a particularly apropos substitution for my family, as my grandfather was French-Canadian and many of his "people" came from Quebec.)

I will say the dough was a challenge. I'm not as accustomed to working with short doughs (like pie crust), and also I misread the recipe (it calls for 2/3 cup plus 2 T shortening, and I somehow read the 2/3 as 3/4, so I wound up having to backpedal and add more flour). FINALLY I got it to work (I had to add more water - note to self, extremely crumbly unrollable pie dough means add more water). I made only very small pasties (These are about 1/3 the size of a normal pastie) because the dough was still kind of soft. And the filling came out a bit too liquid (I added more broth because I was afraid of it cooking dry and I should not have done that).

As it was, some of them opened back up and wound up being more like Cornish tacos than Cornish pasties, but whatever, they still tasted good. And I have a bunch leftover to eat in the coming week and some to freeze. (Pasties freeze well, and you can just pop a frozen one in a 350 degree oven until it thaws out and heats up).



Fork is for scale. I admit, my inner-12-year-old's fondness for ribald puns made me look at these and go "Pasties? Must be talking about an A cup." (But of course: pasty of the Cornish variety is pronounced with a "short" a, as in pass-tee, not with a long "a," like the burlesque girl's accessory)

A good surprise

So, I got the backing put together and ironed for the "Birds and Chairs" quilt, and I took it down to the local quilt shop to drop it off to have it quilted.

When I walked in the door, I had a moment of "What is this I don't even" but it was the best possible kind of "What is this I don't even."

The shop now has YARN in addition to the fabric. Mostly Berroco yarn, but some Misti Alpaca and a few "specialty" dyers like Pagewood Farm. The front eighth or so of the shop (it's a fairly deep shop) is now given over to yarn.

I just stood there disbelieving for a few minutes. The woman came out to take my quilt and I was like "You...have....yarn...now...." And she kind of laughed, and said people had been asking for it for a while. (I think I once made a somewhat-rash comment to her that "if you start carrying yarn, I will never have to leave town again.")

Those of you who live in more urbanized areas, or who live in parts of the country where the driving-distance between shopping areas is small may not fully appreciate my sense of wonder. The last time I actually lived in the same town (as opposed to just visiting) as a "real" yarn shop was Ann Arbor. Which was more than 20 years ago. And I wasn't really a knitter at that time. (I crocheted, and did buy some of my yarn from the little shop there...but I wasn't as yarn-obsessed as I am now). Before this, if I wanted yarn, my options were to mail-order it and wait (though I will say places like Simply Sock Yarn seem to ship super-fast), drive the hour's round trip to see what Hobby Lobby or JoAnn's has, or make do with either 100% acrylic or that dishcloth cotton from the Walmart. Or wait for one of my infrequent trips to Longview.

Obviously, the person who did the buying for the shop planned carefully: Berroco is a nice yarn but it's not totally "It costs WHAT?!?!" nice, so hopefully people will be willing to pay a little bit more for it. (I don't know. I've seen people look at the price on a ball of wool that I thought was fairly reasonable, and snort over how much it cost, and say they were going back to Red Heart.)

So I bought a little bit - a skein of turquoise and black Pagewood farms that I will either use for fingerless mitts for me, or perhaps I'll break out one of my cool sock patterns and make socks for my mom for her birthday (she wears turquoise and black a lot). And a skein of one of the washable Berroco blends (Vintage, maybe?) for a blanket square for a "get well soon" blanket for one of my Ravelry friends.

And I bought some fabric - I needed two yards of a grey to go with some pink and grey fabrics I'm planning a quilt from, and a half-yard of a piece that was just pretty (purples and greens and brown in sort of a stained-glass pattern) that I'll figure some use for later on.

The woman who checked my purchases out for me told me they're starting a Tuesday night knit night in February - the first week of the month will be beginner classes (Excellent, I can direct the women from church there if they want a more regular class that you pay for and that has a more professional teacher) and then the other weeks will just be sit and knit. It starts right as my piano lesson lets out, so some weeks I could just bring my knitting bag to piano with me, and then go down the street and sit and knit.

I really hope their yarn sells well and that the shop in general continues to do well (They seem to be; there are usually other people in there shopping when I'm in there. And I think for a lot of women who knit or quilt - I know I am this way - we will economize in other areas of our lives in order to be able to continue to buy high-quality supplies).

But yeah, this goes beyond a "yay," beyond an "Awwww, yeah!" and even beyond a "that's 20% cooler...."

pony fan update

...given all the furore over Derpy Hooves voice, it's interesting to hear that the voice actress has stated in an e-mail conversation with someone that she had been under the impression Derpy was a boy pony...and she never even got a picture to look at to plan the voice! (I thought that was standard in voice-over work, that someone had a drawing of the character in front of them).

She said she based the voice on a neighbor boy in pre-puberty, who was growing rapidly, clumsy, ate a lot, and "spoke at the speed of a tree."

And you know...that makes sense. Thinking of the resemblance some people noted to the Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer voice (also voiced by a woman trying to sound like a pre-pubescent male). Other people had claimed the odd voice was "proof" they were going to make Derpy a developmentally-disabled pony (which made me cringe, given how clumsy they made her - it just would seem to reinforce bad old stereotypes). I have to admit the "I thought Derpy was a he" simplifies things a lot...(And I still maintain that I didn't hear the "Developmentally Disabled" quality in the voice some people were ascribing to it)

What I hope DOES NOT happen? That the people working on the show decide, "Screw it, we don't have enough boy ponies anyway, let's make Derpy a boy" because I can imagine a lot of adult fans getting mad about that. And I'd have an awfully hard time re-imagining the whole "backstory" I had made up for her with her as a boy. (I might have to rename my amigurumi Derpy as Ditzy Doo or something else)

(Yes. I still make up stories about "characters" in my head, just like I did as a kid. I'm embarrassed to admit that but I will say it allows for me to do things like stand in long lines at the DMV and such without getting irritated at people)

I will admit I decided that I can reconcile the "Derpy voice" from the cartoon with the "Derpy voice" I had imagined in my head by merely telling myself that Derpy had a very bad cold that day, and the congestion was affecting her speech. (Maybe it also affected her balance/flying ability as well; I know that my balance is off when I have a cold).

(I wonder though, if they might be considering re-dubbing the voice...it would not be that difficult, I think, for the same actress to do the same lines, just as a more girly voice. I'd rather like that. I won't be upset if it doesn't happen, though).

I never know how the people on Deviant Art feel about people copying/pasting/sharing their images on their own website (so I won't copy the image here unless I specifically see that it's OK), but I will say that TavoGDL's drawing of Derpy is very sweet - no angst, no worrying about "what's wrong with this pony?" Just a funny little Derpy leaning on a storm cloud.

Least favorite parts

I'm working on the left front of the Ropes and Picots cardigan (I'm nearly done with it). And I got to thinking about the "least favorite" parts of various hobbies.

For me, with knitting, the least favorite parts are either when you are doing the neck/shoulder shaping on the second (say, the left front) side of a cardigan or something, and the directions contain the ominous instructions: "Shape neck as for right side, reversing shaping." Oh, I can DO it. It's not that difficult for me. But it does interrupt the flow of the process, because you have to stop and think about it. (I often just sit down and write out the reversed shaping, so then I can get back into the flow of knitting).

I also dislike the (necessary in some cases, but hated) "Decrease for neck WHILE AT THE SAME TIME, when armhole reaches 6 1/4" (or whatever), begin wraps and turns for shoulders...." That WHILE AT THE SAME TIME also breaks up the flow of working, because I'm obsessive enough to stop at every right side (or wrong-side, depending on how you are to do the shaping) row and measure to make sure I've not overshot. Also, there's the whole sense of that second direction "hanging over your head" so to speak.

I also find measuring armholes difficult...I can measure it three times and get three slightly different numbers. (The problem comes because you bind off...so it's not a straight edge...and you have to estimate either where to put the end of the tape, or where the end of the tape would be relative to the shoulder).

A little while back, Lynn wrote about the steps she disliked in quilting - mainly, cutting. And yes, I can see that: I dislike cutting too, especially if it's the type where you're having to trace templates and cut with scissors. I do a lot more of my cutting with a rotary cutter now...when I first started quilting I always felt like rotary cutting wasted a lot of fabric (and for some block patterns, it would, so if I want to do those, I use templates and a scissors). Most of the tops I make now are ones that are designed to be rotary cut. (I am a bit of a Luddite in many ways, but I have to admit I love my rotary cutter and rulers). Again, I think part of it is the it-slows-you-down aspect or that it breaks the flow of your work. (Funny...I don't generally feel that way about ironing off fabric, which I know is a step some people dislike. I find ironing rather soothing, especially this time of year when my sewing room tends to be a little chilly).

Another step that I'm not so in love with is binding. This is because the way I do bindings, I first sew the binding on to the front of the quilt with the machine - which is a big effort, you have to wrestle with the quilt to get it to go under the foot of the machine. And then (again, the way I do bindings) you hand-sew the folded edge of the binding down to the back of the quilt (so the binding totally wraps around the raw outer edge of the quilt, and there are no raw edges sticking out). That's a time-consuming process though I dislike it less than the wrestling-the-quilt-under-the-machine. (That said: I have a quilt that I've machine-stitched the binding to, but just can't quite make the time to do the hand-sewing part. Maybe this weekend).

The most exciting parts of quilting for me are (a) planning the quilt (getting a pattern I like, finding the fabric I want to use for it) and (b) when all the blocks or segments are done and I start putting the whole thing together.

Actually, I have little stacks of fabric with folded-open quilting magazines (or with patterns I've bought tucked in the stack of fabric) all over my sewing room; I don't know how many quilts I have planned ahead but it is a lot. (And once I can get a big enough open block of time to lay out and sew together the Sherbet Pips blocks, I will start yet another quilt...just not sure which one yet. Maybe the one using the Jelly Roll of bright, fun zinnia-themed fabrics I bought on my LAST birthday - I finally found a pattern I really like for that one).

Ten years on

Ten years ago today, I started this thing. It didn't start auspiciously; my first few posts involve me trying to get the template configured the way I wanted it (I did not then, nor do I now, have a great knowledge of html or any other web-language, so that's why I used and continue to use a pre-packaged template and host)


I started adding pictures in 2004 but the hosting site I had changed, so most of those are gone...I use flickr now, which I pay for, and hope continues into the future.

It's funny. It doesn't seem like it's been ten whole years. I remember why I started the blog. I had been following a few blogs - like the one called #!/usr/bin/girl (Which is apparently now on permanent hiatus; the last post I see was in 2009). And I started reading Not Martha, which is still around (and still in my links list). And Chicknits. And Wendyknits. And a bunch of others that are long gone.

Blogs change and evolve. In the early days I was leery of putting up non-knitting content, lest I scare off my few readers, or lest the knitting bloggers who had linked me would decide to de-link me. (Ongoing theme in my life: I worry too much about what other people think of me.) I also did every goofy "What X are you" personality test that was out there. (Now, I only do ones that are Relevant To My Interests). I also posted more links, partly because there weren't things out there like Ravelry to make Cool Knitting Stuff go viral before I could even find out about it, but also, I think, because I assumed a lot of my readers HADN'T seen stuff, when now, I figure most of them have.

I can post photos now, so I can show off my finished projects, rather than just talking about them (Which I think helps a lot - but again, I remember some people writing about knitting blogs how they "hated" the ones that were "all wordy and stuff" and how they really just wanted photos and technical details. I like photos and technical details (and errata reports) too, but I also like to read some of the motivation someone had for making something, or what they felt while making it, or how they felt about the finished product)

As I said, it doesn't feel like I've been writing this for ten whole years. I suppose that's because my life hasn't changed THAT much in that time: I still live in the same place, I still work at the same career (if my title and status have changed - this blog went with me first through the tenuring process back in 2003/2004, and then again through the promotion-to-full-professor process last year). I know people who, in the past ten years, have married, had a couple children, changed jobs several times, moved once or twice, got divorced...so my life seems stable (boring?) by comparison.

And yet, things do change. I'm learning to play the piano now (a dream I had had for a while). I've lost a few people - friends as well as relatives - that I cared a lot about, and if I think about it much, I still feel that pang of loss. I weathered an ugly congregational split and took on more responsibility at church.

And I learned stuff. I learned, mainly, that I'm more resilient than I give myself credit for. That I really do seem to have internalized the old Churchill quote (if it's not too bathetic to take a quote that applied during terrible wartime and apply it to my relatively calm and safe life): If you're going through Hell, keep going. I've also learned that a lot of the time I need to NOT think about how I "can't" do something, and just sit down and do it instead.

(I think back, to the days before the blog, when I first moved down here: as my parents were getting ready to leave after moving me in, me sitting in the terrible "Kettle" restaurant that used to be here in town, and I cried. Part of it was that the OH NOES MY PARENTS ARE LEAVING ME AND THEY WILL BE 700 MILES AWAY shock (I had, for the previous nine or so years, lived with them while completing grad school) but also the sudden realization that I was going to be fully responsible for teaching three classes, and responsible in a way I had never been before, and what if I failed? (And someone - I never knew who, never spoke with him again as far as I know, but a man in another booth came over and heard what was wrong, and reassured me that I just needed to do it, that I could do it, that I would be fine. An angel? I don't know. As a scientist I'm not supposed to believe that but sometimes I wonder)

And so, here I am. Still. Ten years later.

I'm ten years older than I was then. (And again, I don't feel that much older; I still feel a sort of confusion when I think about how I am over 40: have I really been here THIS long?)

I read somewhere a saying that said "We are always the same age inside." I kind of agree with that, but kind of not. I think maybe we are always a multitude of ages inside - that we carry our past selves with us, and if we're smart, we learn from their mistakes and can draw on the happy memories as a source of comfort.

I know that some days I feel very much like a woman in her early-mid 40s: when I wake up with a stiff neck because I "slept wrong," or my hip bursitis bothers me, or I have to figure out some new moisturizer regime because my skin seems to be getting still dryer.

But there's also still a little bit of early-20s me in there, filled with hope and enthusiasm and idealism and wanting to FIX things and MAKE THINGS BETTER and CHANGE THE WORLD.

And there's some of 15 or 16 year old me in there - unsure about what the future will hold, self-conscious sometimes to the point of self-loathing, wondering if those people laughing over there are actually laughing at her. And yet, at the same time, still capable of believing that everything will get better when she gets a little older and maybe even of thinking she'll be a roaring success at something someday.

And I definitely still have 12 or 13 year old me in there - the one who laughs at the awful disgusting stuff, who likes ribald puns, who chuckles at every one of Muscle Man's "My MOM!" jokes on "Regular Show," even while realizing that Muscle Man is awful and gross and would not be someone to be emulated.

And there's a 10 year old in me - that quiet weird kid who still had a rich and interesting inner life, and still fundamentally liked who she was, even if she was also that kid eating her lunch alone in the far corner of the lunchroom. The one who figured that the snotty-popular kids (as opposed to the nice-popular kids, who actually DESERVED to be popular) would never accept her, so what the heck, she might as well do what she wanted.

And there's still the inner seven year old - the one who wants to dress up in fancy hats and drink tea (real tea now, not pretend tea like I was seven) and eat little cakes and pretend to be a "lady." The one who likes pink and kittens and girly stuff and who loves My Little Ponies: Friendship is Magic to death, and who would rather watch a cartoon than a boring news program any day of the week.

And you know? I don't know. I don't know if other adults are like that, or if they've all put their past selves in a box labeled DO NOT OPEN, and it's just me. But that's how I am. And maybe it makes me weird but I don't really care all that much (provided I am reasonably sure that it's not me you're laughing at, over there).

So, ten years. During that time I've made a lot of socks and a lot of "critters" and some quilts and a few sweaters (and am working on two sweaters right now).

Through this blog I've reconnected with at least one person from my past. I've met a person or two who read it, that I wouldn't otherwise have met (and maybe I'll have a chance in the future to meet a few more readers of the blog). It's been fun, and it still is fun, which is why I keep doing it.

But it helps to know people are reading. It really does.

So, happy birthday little blog. And maybe I'll have a picture of something knitted or a new quilt top coming very soon.

Tomorrow, ten years

I just realized this morning - tomorrow is my blogiversary, the anniversary of the day I started blogging. And it was in 2002, so that will be ten years.

That's both weird and amazing to me. It does not feel like it has been ten years.

My teaching schedule is keeping me extra busy (and I find that 7 am to 11 am stretch, I do not get as much non-teaching-prep stuff done as I anticipated I would. Or maybe I'm just still adapting to it), so I don't know that I'll do a lot SPECIAL for it (probably no pictures), but I'll have something to say. Because I always have something to say.

Quilting and Poirot

I'm still (slowly) quilting away on the final border of the quilt in the frame. I know I have one full side done, but I'm not sure if it's a "short" side or a "long" side. (I HOPE it's one of the "long" sides).

This weekend, I decided to pop in one of the Poirot dvds to have something to watch while I quilted. I chose "Murder on the Orient Express," which I THOUGHT I had seen when it was on PBS...but either I didn't see all of it or I had blocked parts of it out of my brain.

Of the Suchet Poirots, this is the "darkest" (in a psychological sense). At least of the ones I've seen. Not to be TOO spoilerish (but is there anyone who's into mysteries who HASN'T read/seen "Orient Express"?), Poirot is faced with an ethical dilemma at the end...which direction he takes is far clearer in the book. (In the Suchet version, we see him delivering his "verdict" to the Yugoslav police, but the focus is on the other passengers of the train car, and we do not hear what Poirot has actually chosen to report to them.

One issue that this story raises - and it seemed to be made much more urgent in the production, rather than in the book (then again, it was probably 10 years ago I read "Murder on the Orient Express") - is it ever all right for an individual or individuals to take justice into their own hands, if they feel justice has been denied because of a technicality or an additional injustice? (Or maybe I felt it more now, being 10 years older than I was when I read the book...)

It's a very hard question.

I noticed several other things about this production: first, this is the only one I've seen with Suchet that had Poirot YELLING and agitated with the suspects. Normally, Suchet plays Poirot as rather calm...but here, he lost it (and understandably so, given what was going on in the plot at that point).

(I think I've seen three different versions of this story in movie/television productions: the Albert Finney version, the Alfred Molina version (which I really did not like: they reset it to "modern day," which I think took away a lot of the charm...also, I think this was the one where the person who played Poirot made him kind of screechy and scream-y and I did not like that. And then this version).

I also noticed how claustrophobic the people who did the filming made the train feel. (Well, a fancy Pullman car buried in a snowdrift would probably be claustrophobic, much more so if there had been a murder aboard...)

And finally, Poirot's religion (he is, as one might expect, Catholic...though there is a large group of Protestant Belgians (the Walloons)) is played up far more than I ever remember from the books (Was it even mentioned in the books?) He's shown carrying a rosary, praying...and at the end (and I thought this was a rather effective addition), after he delivered his "verdict" to the Yugoslav police, he walks slowly away, pulls the rosary out of his pocket, and begins "telling" the beads (or at least, it looks like he is counting them off). Asking for forgiveness for what he's just done? Feeling the need to do penance?

(There's another episode...one of the ones set in the Middle East...where he's shown with a rosary).

I know some fans apparently disliked this version, the way things were portrayed (and the BBC/Mystery! productions ALWAYS change things...characters are left out, nationalities of characters are changed...) but I thought it was interesting.

I also watched a bit of the feature that was included on the disk, showing Suchet's own travel on the Orient Express as research. It's a bit startling at first to hear his "natural" voice (I know him almost exclusively from his work as Poirot) - his natural speaking voice is deeper (and of course, British). But it's a pleasant voice to listen to.

Most recent top

(Hee. One of my friends on Flickr referred to the swap box as "Pony explosion!" Yeah, I like that.)

This is the most recently finished quilt top. It's one of those "I like it better and better the more I look at it" tops:



Not a great photo, but it was taken Sunday evening, and it was windy here, and I decided that going out and trying to photograph it on the clothesline would be an exercise in frustration.

This is the "Little Man" quilt from Camille Roskelly's "Simplfy" book. It's designed for four fat quarters (though, as I said, the ones I had were less generously-sized than what the pattern apparently called for, so I had to press a couple other small bits into service as the narrow strips in the center of the blocks.

The fabric is (mostly) that Tufted Tweets fabric I bought last year...I think of it more as "Birds and Chairs" because, if you look closely, you can see tiny yellow, black, and pale violet birds in some of the fabrics:



I was chuckling to myself when I finished it, because I thought, "Now if I lived in Portland, I could call this an art quilt"

As I've said before: I don't so much think of my quilts as "art." I suppose that's because I tend to be more traditional in my style (even if I am doing what might be considered a "modern quilts" pattern). And art quilts tend to be made to hang on the wall and look at, rather than wrap around yourself. And also, I get the feeling that art quilts need to have some kind of meaningful message, and the message of most of my quilts is, "I really liked this fabric."

So there you have it. Not to take anything away from the art quilters - and some have done things like raise awareness (and I think, money) for Alzheimer's research and suchlike. But I prefer to make quilts that are primarily meant to be used as quilts.

Perhaps that's because I spend all day most days talking...and I spend the time I'm not in class trying to write manuscripts...and so, in my free time, I want to make something that's just pretty and useful.

Although, I don't know, maybe "This is pretty and useful and it makes me happy" is an okay statement for a quilt to make. Or, if you're doing one as a gift for someone, or as a donation to Project Linus or a nursing home or a women's shelter or somewhere, the statement of "I want you to be warm and comforted by this." That's a pretty good statement for a quilt to make, and is good enough for me and my quilts.

Anyway. I wasn't sure I'd like this quilt as I was working on it. At first, my reaction was: too much of the same color (magenta), it's going to be meh. Then I thought that the yellow I chose for the sashing would fight with the magenta. (Funny: the spellchecker in Firefox does not recognize "sashing" as a word. Well, it also chokes when I try to write "Pegasus" as starting with a lower case p).

But I persisted. And as often happens, when I started sewing the blocks together, the quilt started to look better and better. (No, I don't think it's purely a psychological, "I'm almost done with it" thing). I put the borders on (both fabrics from the stash - which is why I like having an extensive stash, I can almost always find something that works for a project I'm planning). And I decided I really liked it. In fact, I think I will wash up the backing fabric I bought, piece together the backing, and take it down this week to see if I can get it in the queue to be quilted.

It's a small quilt - it's about 40" wide (I can tell, because I could get an entire border out of the width of fabric, and most fabrics now are 40" to 42" after you remove the selvedges) and maybe 48" long.

As the pattern-author noted, you could make a larger quilt by making more blocks: you get roughly four blocks (well, four blocks minus one of the narrow strips) from one fat quarter, so you could easily scale up based on how many blocks you wanted. Or you could make it scrappier...I think the big pieces had a finished size of 4" by 6" (cut 4 1/2" by 6 1/2"), so you could go through a bunch of scraps and make the blocks all different prints. If you used novelty type prints, you could make an I Spy quilt for a child....all kinds of animal prints, or vehicle prints, or what have you.

I could see doing this one again in different colors and maybe two rows of blocks wider and a couple longer, to make more of a "napping" quilt, because it's a fun pattern and a good one for using novelty fabric. (And one thing my stash demonstrates, it's that I never met a novelty fabric I didn't like). You could also get a totally different look by using different fabrics for the "sashing," so each block looked more like an individual separate block, rather than small blocks "floating" in the sashing.

swap box arrived.

I said a little while back that a long time ago, when I did a few swaps, I got "burned," either by getting not-so-great stuff, or by my stuff being way way late.

Well, not this time.

The mailman actually came BACK to my house all apologetic ("I had this package for you and I forgot to bring it the first time"). And it was my box from the MLP swap.

And it was WONDERFUL:



My swap-partner came up with the clever conceit of having each of the Mane 6 (plus Derpy) send me something:

Rarity sent a skein of yarn (and the yarn is the mane color of another pony - the one known as either DJ PON-3 or Vinyl Scratch, depending on what fan fiction you look at). It has a custom ballband.

Applejack sent apple-cinnamon scented goatsmilk soap.

Pinkie Pie sent a little plastic cupcake full of stitch markers.

Twilight Sparkle sent pony postcards ("For all your important correspondence with Princess Celestia")

Rainbow Dash sent a keychain of her "best pranking buddy" (Pinkie Pie)

Fluttershy sent a version of her cutie mark in crochet...the idea is you can tuck a cable needle into it (or I can tuck my spare double-point when I'm knitting the heel flap on a sock) so it won't get lost.

And Derpy sent a whole mess of "pocket ponies" (Someone on Deviant Art does these...the idea is that he wants you to print them out, laminate them, and cut them out...to spread the pony love). It's an incredibly complete set, even with some of the more fanbase ponies, like Berry Punch and Dr. Whooves. I squealed like a little girl when I saw them. I may have to figure out some kind of thing I can hang up on the wall over my bed where I can tuck a least my favorite ones into it so they'll be on display for me.

Here's a closeup of the cable needle holder and a few of my favorite of the pocket ponies:



I hate to say it but the package I sent out is nowhere near as cool as this one was...I hope the recipient still enjoys it though.

More Taylor Mali

I may just suggest my students read his poem, The Impotence of Proofreading. It's in the same vein as Jerrold Zar's "Owed to a Spell-Checker" but this one is more developed and funnier. (And, yeah, has a few dirty-words-used-unintentionally-in-the-context-of-the-poem).

The last line, specifically, had me sitting here in my office shaking with laughter and hoping no one would come by and ask me what was so funny.

New sweater begun.

(I actually have more I want to say about BOTH current knitting and current quilting, so I'll talk about the quilting (with photos of the newest top) tomorrow....)

I started a new sweater Friday night. I did it partly because Saturday was the monthly "Crafty Ladies" meeting and I had volunteered to do a knitting tutorial, but wanted to bring a simple project for when the other people were working, or if no one showed up who wanted to learn. All of my current projects were either more complicated and required more attention, or were close to a point requiring more attention (the left front of the Ropes and Picots cardigan is within an inch of having to work the armholes).

So I looked over the possibilities and decided upon the Basketweave Pullover. This is a Melissa Leapman design - it was originally published in a back issue of Interweave and is also in their "Best Of" book (which is what I'm working from).

It was apparently designed to be a man's sweater, or at least, they show a man modeling it. But it's kind of a unisex design. And I do like a nice knit-purl stitch pattern:



This photo is a bit dark but it shows the stitch pattern better.

This one gives maybe a truer idea of the color:



Even that one doesn't really do it justice - it's a very bright clear blue, like a blue-sky blue. (I remembered it as being more turquoise, but it's not that green - this was yarn from deep in the stash).

The yarn is a Elann's Peruvian Highland - not the softest yarn out there, and it does pill a bit more than some yarns. But the color range was (is? I don't know if Elann still sells this yarn) great, and the price is good.

I'm doing the smallest size - the 44" (this is a sweater designed for men.) It will be a bit big on me but that's okay with the style, and also, since the yarn isn't that soft, I'll probably wind up wearing a long-sleeved t-shirt or turtleneck under it. (Well, also - if I wear it on campus, several of our classrooms have a tendency to be overheated in the fall and if I wear a sweater, I need to be able to take it off.)

The tutorial went okay, I guess. I had only tried once before to teach someone to knit and it didn't go that well - but then, she was an impatient person who wanted to learn to knit in the round IMMEDIATELY to be able to do socks, and while it's not that hard to learn to knit in the round...well, you have to walk before you can run.

There were four people at the tutorial: M. basically knew how to knit but needed to review, J. had knit some 15 years ago but had largely forgotten (or so she said), T. had never knit before, and B. (T.'s daughter) also had never knit.

Once I showed M. how to cast on again (she had originally learned the knitted cast-on, so I reviewed that for her), she was good. And once J. got past some challenges with casting on, once she started knitting in garter stitch, it seemed to come back to her. (At one point she said, "I can't believe I'm doing this! This is so cool!" which made me smile.) T. got cast on and I think one row knit, and B. got frustrated and kind of gave up, despite T. reminding her many times that she was still learning and it was okay to mess up. (That's okay. B. may not want to be a knitter, and that's fine. She has other talents in other areas.)

I only went over casting on and the knit stitch; I figured in two hours' time it was probably too much to throw much more at them. We are meeting again next month for me to do part 2 - purling and binding off and other bits and pieces. (Actually, M. already knows how to purl and probably bind off, but that's fine).

I also told all of them that if they were practicing at home and wanted any pointers or advice, they could bring their stuff on Wednesday nights once the Wednesday night program starts up. (They are all people who will be there anyway).

I don't know if any of them will keep knitting - I don't know that any of them will become hardcore, have-to-knit-or-else knitters like I am, but still - I think it's good to have that kind of a skill, even if you don't use it much.

Sharing a poem

One of my friends on the Ivory Tower Fiber Freaks posted this. I rather like it. I also thought it would be a good palate-cleanser for those sick of pony talk:



Apparently the poet - Taylor Mali - is a former teacher and a number of his poems are more or less in this vein. (I also like the way it's been converted into "word art" in this presentation.)

(It also reminds me a little of Tom Wayman's "Did I Miss Anything", which I actually have a copy of hanging up in my office.)

And 'bronydom' explodes...

(I started a new sweater this weekend. Pictures and knitting content and possibly quilting content to come tomorrow)...

Okay...in this morning's episode of MLP, they did two big things:

1. Confirmed that the "canon name" of the ditzy grey pegasus is Derpy

2. Had Derpy speak.

It's funny, lurking around a few of the Pony fansites, to see the reaction to this. There is some pearl-clutching, some triumphant gloating (mainly over the Derpy/Ditzy name controversy), a lot of hyperventilating over "OMCelestia, they listened to us" and that kind of thing.

I have to admit some of the gloating and such puts me off this kind of fandom a lot. I like to enjoy stuff. I like silly stuff. I don't like arguments, especially those that rapidly descend into name-calling/speculations on the anatomical shortfalls of one's opponent. I don't know. I guess hardcore fandom of anything really isn't for me; it seems that at times it brings out some of the uglier aspects of human nature.

That said, I'm not sure I'm in love with the voice they gave her. I'm hesitant to voice stronger criticism than that; one poster speculated they were trying to go in the direction of making her a "Special" pony (Down syndrome being the situation suggested). I don't know; I didn't hear that. I just heard, "Oh, it's the stereotypical dumb-girl voice, and it's deeper than I'd like."

Also, I found the level of clumsiness that they gave her kind of painful. (Especially if they're going to go the "Special" route with her...I've never known someone who was THAT clumsy and destructive because of some kind of challenge they had.)

I don't know. I wonder how this will affect her popularity. I have a hypothesis: subsidiary characters on shows (as Derpy was) become popular because they're often kind of a cipher. The fans of the show can overlay their own ideas over what little information they have about the character. And I'm not alone in that; in the Origins of Derpy Hooves, the writer notes: "One of the more enduring features of Derpy is she isn’t overly locked into a personality as many of the other background ponies are. " (Actually, I think they meant "endearing" instead of "enduring," but, whatever).

There was an enormous amount of fan commentary about Derpy, where some thought of her as a "challenged" pony, some as a pony who had met with some sort of accident (sometimes as a result of time-traveling she did with the Dr. Who-in-pony-form that is also a fan-favorite character), as a spy who only ACTS "derpy," as a character who is actually brilliant but suffers from some bizarre form of aphasia or speech impediment, or as basically a ordinary pony who sometimes has little glitches and scatterbrained moments.

And I have to admit, that last way was how I imagined her. (So either she was having a REALLY Bad Day in today's episode, or she's not merely a scatterbrain - that she's some kind of Disaster Girl or else she is being destructive under the guise of being merely inept).

I also imagined her voice differently - more high-pitched and "bubbly." I saw a bit of "Born Yesterday" a few months back and realized that how Judy Holliday's character spoke - kind of a high-pitched, slightly "dizzy-blonde" voice, maybe even a little "tone deaf" sounding - was how I imagined Derpy's voice.

But after re-listening to it a couple of times (You can see it here, at least for as long as YouTube allows that clip to stay up), I don't totally HATE it. Another commenter noted that it sound a bit like Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer's voice in the old "Animagic" special, and I can hear that. (Oh, and gentle readers: Language warning for the comments that follow that post over there. Yeah...uglier side of human nature indeed.)

(And having known a few people with Down Syndrome, I don't quite hear the claim a couple people were making that they were trying to take her in that direction. If they think that was a "Down syndrome" voice they have a fairly stereotypical idea about it. But I could be wrong...though I think if the show did go that way, they'd be treading on eggshells to avoid offense. And I also have to admit: as well-intentioned as the Very Special Episodes of any comedy show have ever been? They've been kind of heavy-handed and overdone...I really don't want to see MLP go in that direction.)

Pony-heavy post

(skip at will, if you're not a pony fan)

I'm in a better mood now, for a couple of reasons.

1. I got my swap-box all packed up for my swappee. (This is a Ravelry swap for the My Little Ponies fan group on there.) Even though in the past I've been burned in other swaps I've done (not on Ravelry) and I've had a few tsuris with my package coming very, very late...I still do these.

Because honestly, I really love hunting down fun, unusual little items and packaging them up and hoping that the recipient is surprised and likes them.

While making up the box, I used two whole packages of brightly-colored tissue paper as padding...and then I thought, as I got the notecard ready to go in, "I wonder if I could draw Pinkie Pie saying "Tissue paper is awesome!" on the card envelope.

So I tried. And I have to admit, it was a creditable likeness.

So then I tried drawing Twilight Sparkle on the box:



Okay, that one's not as good; it's harder to draw them in 3/4 view than in profile. But maybe it will amuse the mail carrier.

2. On my weekly (I try to make it only weekly) jaunt to the Mart of Wal (disclaimer: if Green Spray carried every last grocery item I used, I'd do all my shopping there, because I don't walk out of there discouraged with humanity as I often do with the Mart of Wal. But they don't, so I can't.) I found something wonderful.

Something that totally made listening to a child scream the WHOLE 20 minutes I was in there worthwhile*:



I had heard of the existence of these but frankly doubted. (And when I was at Target this weekend, they didn't have 'em).

I squealed (inwardly; you never know when students of yours are lurking at the Mart of Wal, and I like to keep my eccentricity under a tight lid for at least the first six weeks of the semester). And yeah...I bought a couple of boxes. They were inexpensive enough.

(*I also found a copy of the newest issue of Knitscene. Which has an adorable bolero-type sweater knit of sport or fingering weight yarn, with a little scallop detail on it, and a lovely pair of fingerless mitts. And I bought some yarn Saturday precisely with the thought of doing fingerless mitts with it, and this pattern will be perfect. So that made it more worthwhile too.)

(And I have to admit: as much as I hated Valentine's day some years as an adult, when I think back to childhood and the silly little paper cards with pun-ny sayings on them, and carefully picking out just the right card for each of my friends (and some years, just the right card for that boy I liked, if he happened to be in my class), that was nice and good and fun. It doesn't have to be fraught with all the thoughts of romantic failure and questioning why I have not conformed to the general model of husband-and-kids in this society. It can just be a funny pastel card with "Have a sparkly day!" or somesuch on it.)

So, I am once again extending the offer I made (I think it was) last year: If you want a Valentine card from me - in this case, a My Little Pony valentine - e-mail me your address and I'll send one out (closer to Valentine's Day, of course).

(It's actually kind of interesting which characters they use in "heavy" rotation - there are more of Pinkie Pie, Rainbow Dash, and Applejack. I suppose those might be the most popular with kids, I don't know. They had only one with Fluttershy (and in my mind at least, FLUTTERSHY IS BEST PONY) and NONE with Rarity. (poor Rarity.)

Actually, this brings up something I thought of the other day: it would make an interesting data set for a chi-square contingency table analysis to get different age-groups of fans (I was thinking of the Ponies, but it could be fans of anything that spans a wide age group) and ask their favorite character, and do an analysis to see if different age groups prefer different characters. (My gut feeling is yes: Fluttershy seems to be enormously popular with adult fans, but I suspect Pinkie Pie or Rainbow Dash is more "relatable" for a lot of children. And perhaps a lot of the kid fans don't like Rarity? I might not have when I was a child...she does seem a bit uppity at times).

(I also find myself thinking of "alternate" valentines, maybe more fanon than canon: I'd love to see a valentine card with Derpy Hooves on it. And one with Twilight doing that funny-weird dance she did at her birthday party, and the legend, "You're adorkable!" (What? "Adorkable" should TOTALLY be a word.) But, whatever - it is the kid base that keeps the show going, so if they want to put pinkish Celestias on some of the cards and have no Rarity cards, I'm OK with that).

At any rate: I have a whole mess of these, so if you want a Valentine's card from me, e-mail me your address.

***

ETA: And here's another little Pony-fied personality test (N.B.: You need to know your Meyers-Briggs "type" to do this one).

Surprisingly, I'm not Fluttershy.

I'm Zecora, the alchemist/healer zebra on the show. Interesting, it almost kind of fits with the traditional description of the INFJ...

Movies I'd see

I confess, I'm not a big fan of most "modern" movies. I don't like "meet cute" movies or most rom-coms, and I don't care for movies where every other word is an Anglo-Saxonism beginning with "f" and ending with "k."

But I love the idea of these movies from an alternate universe.

Oh my, that version of Rushmore looks interesting. And the Jack Lemmon - Dean Martin version of The Hangover, I'd totally want to see that.

(Of the real antecedents of those? I think Fifth Element and Rushmore are the only ones I've seen in their entirety. (Have seen parts of Big Lebowski and Pulp Fiction). (And the only thing I remember about Rushmore is the joke about "These are OR scrubs." "O, R they?")

Thanks, Dr. Benninghoff.

My mother's graduate advisor was a man named Dr. Benninghoff. (I met him twice...once, he and his wife invited all of us to their house for lunch when we were up visiting relatives in that part of the world, and then, a second time, not that long before his death, they were down in Illinois where my parents lived, and we all went out for dinner together.)

Oh, wait, I also discussed "contingency plans" with him after being asked to leave the first graduate program I was in. He was long-retired by then but still had an office on campus.

He was a kind man and someone who seemed to look out for students. After he died, his wife went through all his stuff (academics have a way of accumulating LOTS of publications, both books and journals). She asked if I wanted a donation of his back numbers of Ecology (which stretch back to 1954, and terminated around 1980 or so). My first thought was to donate them to the library here...but then I decided to keep the collection together, on shelves in my department. I'm glad I did. On several occasions there's been a "classic" paper that I needed or that a student needed and I could say, "Give me a minute, I'll go make you a copy."

Yes, I know lots of thing are online and JSTOR has a database of all the old Ecologies....but to subscribe to them is prohibitively expensive, at least for the Ecology database. So doing it the old-fashioned way still works best here.

Today, I found I wanted to look at an old Victor Shelford article about Mississippi floodplain forests that another author I'm reading referred to. It was published in 1954...so I went down to look for it and hoped.

Well, bless Dr. Benninghoff again (and bless Anne, his widow, for being so organized). The issue was there, right in the box where it was supposed to be. So I have that article available to me.

I'm really glad I was smart enough to accept the offer of these; they may take up a lot of space but they have been useful. In some fields "old" articles aren't very useful, but in ecology many of them are.

More new socks

First off: I wonder if this virus maybe isn't quite done with me yet, and if that's why I've been out of sorts the past day or two, and so tired (I went to bed at 8:30 the other night because I just couldn't make myself do anything more. I have stuff I could be working on, but I don't WANT to be working on any of it, even the fun stuff).

I wonder now if I maybe pushed a little too hard with the trip to McKinney Saturday and set myself back a little. It does seem that certain respiratory viruses, when I have them, sort of leave fatigue and almost a bit of a "meh" feeling in their wake.

***

This is another finished-over-break project. This is a pair of socks I'd been wanting to knit for a while.



These are the cabled socks from Jane Brocket's "The Gentle Art of Knitting." They are made of a Regia yarn, their Extra Twist Color. This is a really nice yarn for socks; it is soft and yet it's plied with a sort of cable construction that should make it strong.

("Yo dawg, I heard you liked cables. So I knit you some cabled socks out of a cabled yarn.")

The socks were pretty simple - the pattern is straightforward if you know how to do cables. But it's a nice pattern...sometimes a good basic standard pattern is nice. As far as I can remember, I knit the pattern as written. I used the larger version of the pattern (the 72-stitch version) because I wanted to knit it on size 1 needles and cables tend to make knitting pull in a bit and be smaller than plain stockinette would, in terms of the sock circumference.

You can see the cables a little better here:

Silver lining sought

I'm tired today. Lots of strange upheaval-y things around me....

Someone I know who was involved in a volunteer project with me has apparently quit, claiming they "didn't feel appreciated enough."

Uh, isn't part of being an adult putting up with not feeling appreciated a lot of the time? I mean, that's something that I've had to learn to deal with, and still a lot of the time I feel sort of underappreciated. But sometimes there are things that have to be done that are more important than any "feelings" a person might have.

***

I have a difficult student in one of my classes. I can't say much more about it here other than that I fear I'm going to come to dread this class a bit for having to deal with them.

I definitely think I'm going to have to have my "one Saturday a month (at least) just for ME" thing in force to keep myself on an even keel.

***

And this is how my luck runs: the first time in my life ever, I order something from Zappos.com. A couple days later, they experience their first-ever security breach. The good news is that apparently no credit card numbers were stolen and they suspended the passwords of all* customers. The bad news is that the hackers apparently got addresses, names, and phone numbers. I don't know if that's enough for someone to take out a credit card in a person's name** - I would think not, seeing as any online lookup-system (like White Pages) would have that information. Still, it creeps me out a little bit.

I did reset my password. Gah, another new one to try to remember.

(*Or did they? One of the headlines said "X number of passwords suspended" rather than "All")

(**That said, I have a fraud protection/identity theft assistance program through my homeowner's insurance).

The thing that irritates me a bit? Allegedly they sent e-mails to all their customers warning them. I never got that e-mail (and yes, I checked my spam folder). I don't know if it just got lost in the ether, or if because I was a new customer who "only" spent $120 with them, I didn't get the e-mail, but I'm not too happy that I only heard of the breach because I saw it on the news.


Whatever. I had my credit card number stolen some years back in a security breach at one of the online used-book places. I found out when my credit card was denied at another place...and I knew I hadn't charged that much on it. The credit card company took care of it. Some four months later I got an e-mail from the used-book company (it wasn't a mom and pop place, it was one of the big places) saying "Um, oops, your credit card may have been compromised." I've never ordered from them again.

At least in this case, the parent company seemed to do a better job of protecting credit card numbers.

***

So I'm not in the cheeriest mood ever today. Also, I had an evening meeting last night (Education Committee at church). We're going to move the youth program BACK to Wednesday nights (it was on Sunday) because of low attendance.

I hope attendance picks up. I don't know if it will. We're SO small...sometimes I wonder if in five or ten years if we'll still be in existence. It's hard not to get discouraged.

***

What I really want to do is sit and watch cartoons all day, but I can't.

Last weekend's episode of MLP:FiM involved babies. (Yeah, I'm guessing that Hasbro will soon offer those creepy "baby" pony toys again....they did "baby" ponies in the earlier go-round of MLP, and I thought they were kind of creepy).

In the show, there are three varieties (Subspecies? It's not entirely clear) of ponies: "Earth" ponies (which are non magical and cannot fly), Pegasus (can fly), Unicorn (can't fly but have magic). (And yeah, the royalty are apparently winged unicorns)

Well, two earth ponies (subsidiary characters - Mr. and Mrs. Cake, the couple who run the bakery and to whom Pinkie Pie is apparently apprenticed*) had twins.

One was a unicorn, one was a pegasus.

That sound you heard early Saturday morning? Hundreds of grown-up fans throwing the pedigree charts they'd been making to try to figure out Pony genetics in the trash.

(Yes. I am perfectly able to accept that Ponies can speak, come in pastel colors, that unicorns have magic and that unicorns and Pegasi exist in that world....but dang it, the genetics have to MAKE LOGICAL SENSE!)

Some fans apparently resorted to the "it was the mailman" hypothesis (Uh, this is a kid's show, guys?). I was willing to throw up my hands and go "Spontaneous mutation" but then I saw this. (Which I am calling "My Little Genetics: Epistasis is Magic.")

(Okay, so it's not PERFECT, it's not exactly 100% how epistasis works, I think (it's been a while)....and they use "theory" when they really mean "hypothesis." But it's better than having to accept spontaneous mutation as the explanation).

And yes, I'm embarrassed to admit how bothered I was by the wonky, illogical genetics, and how much it cheered me up to find that.

(*Or so I assume. I'm basing that on the idea that Equestria is somewhat of a feudal society, as some have argued...except I'm not so sure, it seems to me that there is some capitalism going on there; after all, Rarity has her dress shop and it's implied that there are wealthy ponies that can afford fancier things. And Applejack certainly gets a bit obsessed at times over selling apples...So maybe Pinkie is doing something like an unpaid internship, or is actually some sort of employee of the Cakes (though they don't seem to pay her for babysitting))

Then again, I probably just need to invoke the Mystery Science Theater 3000 rule on this: "I should repeat to myself, this is just a show, I should really just relax.")

***

I can tell, though, I'm in one of those moods where I can very easily start to take stuff personally, where I can very easily slip into the bad old "the whole world is conspiring against me" mood.

Part of the problem is a few people around me are in that mood right now, and it rubs off on me. I recognize what's happening but it's hard to stop. And in a case when I tried to do something helpful, it was rudely rebuffed...which then makes me wonder if there was something wrong with my being helpful, or if that person was just in too bad of a mood...

People drive me crazy.

"Peering Sam," again

Heh. These kinds of things amuse me far more than they probably should, but, then, there you are:

(I originally was looking for an image of Rainbow Dash saying "What is this...I don't even." Someone I know on Ravelry has it as her Ravatar, so I didn't know if it actually existed on the 'Net or if it was something she cobbled up from a picture. I didn't find Dashie (I've learned not to look TOO hard for Pony stuff using Google Image Search, because sometimes you find things you don't want to see and that can't be unseen...some people have very strange ideas about those creatures). At any rate, I found Peering Sam and it just cracked me up.)

Quiet day, home

First off: Yeah, I found a spaghetti container (it was actually kind of PRESSED on me by the hyperactive owner of one of the shops I was in) but I find it's 1/2 inch shorter than what I actually need...so I can either break my spaghetti, or use it for something else and find a different container. Ugh. I TOLD myself as the guy was enthusing about how GREAT the container was that it didn't look tall enough, but my overly-polite nature kicked in and I bought it anyway. (Also, I just wanted to get out of there....there's a certain hyper-helping, wants-to-be-your-new-best-friend personality type that frankly scares me a little). I'm thinking I may use it to hold smaller pasta (like elbow macaronis) instead.

Didn't find a light fixture, but I didn't really look. There is a Home Depot in the same strip mall as the Target so next time I get down there I will look there.

***

I stayed home all day yesterday. I don't get to do that often. It was nice, I got lots of stuff done (in addition to the usual everyday stuff, like an hour of piano practice and working out). I re-started my commitment to doing an hour of research-work (either collecting data, analyzing data, writing up results/revising manuscripts, or reading research articles). I'm thinking having my teaching day not start until 11 means that I can get in an hour of research early (it only takes me an hour to prep for both lecture classes; mainly re-reading stuff and updating). One of the articles I read had a table that suggested a format for the table of results in my paper, so that's good.

I also got all the rest of the "Sherbet Pips" blocks sewn together; I just have to make time sometime to lay them out and then I can start putting that quilt together.

I also cut the pieces for, and sewed up the blocks for, a VERY small quilt. The pattern is from the "Simplify" book I bought last year (my birthday trip). It's called "Little Man" and is (obviously) designed as a baby quilt, but will also work as a small lap/footwarmer quilt, or maybe as a wall quilt. I used some interesting magenta-based fabrics - you can see them in the second photo here. The line is called "Tufted Tweets" but I find myself thinking of it as "Birds and chairs" (three of the prints feature either chairs or sofas, and there is a small yellow bird that shows up in most of them). So I'm calling this my "Birds and Chairs" quilt. (I did have to press into service two other fabrics from my stash because the fat quarters I had were less generously sized than the fat quarters that the pattern author used. This is actually pretty common. Fortunately I had bits of two other fabrics that coordinated well enough). The rest of the quilt top is going to be 100% out-of-stash; I have a yellow fabric that will work for the sashing, and another reddish purple that will work as one border, and a floral for the second border.

I also spent a little time flipping through quilt magazines and books and found a pattern that's what I want to use with some cute sort of "Swiss folk-y" looking fabric I have on hand (one print has cuckoo clocks, another one shows chalets...)

I don't know how many quilts I have in the planning stages but it's a LOT. Then again, it's nice to have the fabric all piled up together with the pattern for those times when I have the time and inclination to cut or sew.

I also hand quilted some on the top that's (still) in the frame. I do have the inner border finished now, though there's still quite a bit left to do on the second border. (However, I pulled out the batting for the NEXT quilt - this one will be smaller and simpler and hopefully will take me less time to quilt - and set it to "relax." I don't know how necessary this really is but I was always told that you need to let the batting lie out flat for at least a day (they generally come rolled up tightly in a plastic bag). So I'm looking forward to starting quilting on a NEW quilt sometime.)