What's a fillyjonk?
(It's a made-up animal. Very feminine. Somewhat neurotic. A lot like me.)

Read Tove Jansson if you really want to know.
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Ich habe zwei "Knitscene".

(Perhaps I'm not saying that the best way I could but it's kind of late here now and I never progressed very far in sentence structure yet. And I don't know the word for "magazine," and I didn't want to trust a translator program and wind up telling you I had two "Knitscene" bullet-holders.).

Karin, if you e-mail me your mailing address, I will get the copy I picked up for you mailed as soon as I get a chance. (It looks like a good issue).

I had a nice little bonus trip this evening. My research student had me meet her at her workplace (the Denison Dam - she's interning with the Corps of Engineers) so we could go do some fieldwork down there. My original plan was to do the work and turn around and go home, but as it was not yet 7 by the time we were done, I decided to take a quick run over to Sherman (seeing as I was already 3/4 of the way there) and see if the bookstore had got in Knitscene and see if the Hobby Lobby had anything new.

I was quite fortunate. I did find Knitscene (they had several copies but interestingly enough, they were tucked in behind some issues of other magazines that had been out longer - normally their practice is to put the new stuff front and center)

And then I found that Hobby Lobby is in fact revamping its yarn offerings. For the better, it looks like.



They have sockyarn! Like, WOOL containing sockyarn. Paton's Kroy, even.

So I bought some.

The first one I picked was the grey one - it's a nice quiet mouline, I think it's called "Glen Check." I plan on using it for either cabled socks or some kind of knit-purl pattern.

The other two - well, I think eventually someone will have to stage a Self Patterning Sock Yarn Intervention for me. I cannot resist the stuff. I am so fond of it, that even though I have faaaaaar more yarn than I will probably ever knit up (and nicer sockyarn than the two brands shown here), and faaaaaaar more pairs of wool socks than anyone needs (let alone someone who lives in a climate warm enough to render them unwearable several months out of the year), I still keep buying it. It charms me, even though really there's not that much you can do with it other than knit plain stockinette socks. (There are a few "fancy" patterns that work with it, but most cables and lace kind of get lost in the color changes).

The pink one is another Kroy, "Mulberry Mix" or some such. The yellow is the much-discussed-on-Ravelry "Sock-ease" from Lion Brand. (The color is called Lemon Drop.)

Yes, it is obnoxiously bright. I am the only person among my family members - heck, the only person among my friends and colleagues - who would actually wear socks that color. (The same is true of the mulberry. I really hope the What Not To Wear people never get a hold of me; I'd probably give them an aneurysm. And not just because I'd be too cross-grained to take much of their advice.)

(That said - if they institute "Spirit Fridays" again this fall, where we're all asked to wear school colors - I could wear these socks, and a plain pair of blue slacks, and a white blouse, and have it taken care of.)

I rather like the bright yellow. And at any rate, I feel like I "rewarded" Hobby Lobby for carrying a non-furry, non-100%-synthetic yarn.
posted by fillyjonk at 8:27 PM

 
From the "I love the whole world, in all its craziness" files:

Heavy-metal playing Capuchin monk. He's 62, has a long white beard, and got interested after attending a Metallica concert 15 years ago.

Stuff like that just makes me smile because it's so unexpected.

Rock on, Brother Cesare. Rock on.

(Edited to add: holy cow, the volume on the video viewer is set so it goes to "11"! That delights me no end.)
posted by fillyjonk at 11:08 AM

 
If you're interested in different wool varieties (or milk sheep, or meat sheep): OSU sheep breeds page. There's one there called California Variegated Mutant; I've heard of them before but had forgotten about them. (They're a wool sheep). There is something amusing about a breed of sheep with "Mutant" in their name (I presume the mutation is in the coloration pattern; it's not like they have six legs or anything like that).

There are several Welsh breeds (Welsh Hill Speckled Face) is one that looks like they must share an ancestor with the Kerry Hill.

You can also learn a little about what is believe to be the wild ancestor of domesticated sheep.

For some reason, the old "heritage varieties" (also the "heirloom vegetables") have long been of interest to me; I suppose it's because they're different from what you typically see and they're sort of a link with the past.
posted by fillyjonk at 9:46 AM

 
different UK sheep breeds, shot fashion-model style.

Most of these are wool breeds. (For non-knitters: there are wool sheep and there are meat sheep. Some breeds produce lovely coats but apparently are not so good to eat. Others produce not so nice wool but have good meat). I know for sure that Leicester, Wensleydale, and Lincoln Longwool are wool breeds, because I have heard of breed-specific yarn from them. (I think you can also spin the Jacob's wool.)

(A quick check of Wikipedia turns up that the Border Leicester is a "dual purpose" meaning you can both spin from it and eat it. I think i was thinking of Bluefaced Leicester, which is a wool breed).

I always think this thing is so interesting...all the different "heirloom" breeds out there, all bred for different purposes (look at how different in appearance Wensleydale and Border Leicester are. Amazing to think how they all came from the same basic stock, and probably all of those different appearances arose over the course of a couple thousand years of selective breeding).

One thing I'd love to have a chance to do in my life is to knit with different breed-specific yarns, just to see how they differ in properties and feel. (Kind of like how people do wine tastings to see the effect of different grapes or different processes, or how they now have "single-source" chocolates where the cocoa beans all came from a single country and you can actually taste differences related to the soils they grew in and the climate).

And I don't know if Kerry Hill is a wool breed or not, but if I were raising sheep as sort of, you know, pets, I'd want Kerry Hill sheep. Because they're so CUTE. They look like they're wearing little shoes. (Apparently they are also dual purpose, at least when young. Interesting that OK State is the place to find out more detail about an obscure British sheep breed.)

(One thing I sort of daydream about is having a fiber-animal farm. Oh, I know, it's not something I'd probably want in reality, what with sheep tending to go into labor at 2 am and needing someone there to make sure nothing goes wrong, and with the noise they may (sheep are loud. I learned that one summer helping a grad school buddy do some work...we were working right next to an area where sheep were kept) and the smell and all the veterinary bills. But sometimes I think it would be nice to do something so connected to the land, so immediate. To be involved with the most basic level of the stuff you use to make clothes.)
posted by fillyjonk at 6:53 AM

 
Thanks guys. I will probably be OK - I mean, this isn't exactly something unexpected seeing as the cat is 19, and it's something I've been keeping in the back of my head for a while. (I am sure it will be harder for me when I go up there for a visit if she's gone, or if she's still there but really doing poorly).

I just wish my stupid brain processed things differently because I dreamed about it twice...two different scenarios...last night. (That's how it always is with me. When my grandmother died, I dreamed for weeks about losing other family members). I'd kind of like sleeping to be an escape, you know?

Though I do feel some better this morning; maybe the dreams (and the subsequent waking up and lying in bed crying for 15-30 minutes) actually did do something with the processing of it.

But, onward. I collect research papers today which must be graded. And this weekend is the big final push to spiff up the prairie conference paper. Which actually is a good thing - being busy keeps my mind from hanging out in sad places as much.
posted by fillyjonk at 6:05 AM

 
My parents called this evening. At the very end of the conversation my father warned me that the cat - yes, the same old cat - is probably "on her way out."

So I has a Sad.

I told them they were NOT to do any kind of heroic measures to keep her alive until I got there - it was more important to me that the cat was not suffering than that I got to see her one last time. (And honestly, I'd rather remember her as she was than see her suffering and emaciated.)

(Okay, maybe that doesn't read right. What I mean is, I don't want them to think that it's at all important to me to be able to say goodbye to the cat in person, and so they do things to keep her going after she's ready to be gone. I know I'm not making much sense.)

The vet is trying a program of rehydration - she said that the cat is not yet in such a bad state that she wants to euthanize, and sometimes rehydration does bring the animal back to a reasonable quality-of-life for a while.

But I'm preparing myself. (And yes, there were tears over the phone. And not just on my end of it.) It's been 20 years since I last dealt with this so it's a hard feeling to remember. I tell myself though that I managed to move on after Sam left us, and I'll manage now.

So if I go quiet for a day or two before I do leave on my break...it'll be because I don't quite feel like talking. I know you'll understand.

I'm going to allow myself this evening to cry and be sad and feel bad about this; tomorrow morning I have class again and I will have to be on top of things.

Labels: sad

posted by fillyjonk at 7:29 PM

 
Some of the stuff on Ectoplasmosis makes me roll my eyes a little (and some of it is at least borderline NSFW), but this entry cracked me up.

of course, that might be because one summer my brother and his friends had a running joke about the Kool-Aid man. But still, it made me chuckle.
posted by fillyjonk at 4:50 PM

 
Well, I looked up where I am on the roster at the prairie conference this summer (midafternoon of the second day...and there's not much on the first day which is good, it'll give me a chance to recover from traveling/check out the vendors/maybe wander around town some if Winona isn't too big and scary).

I have a half-hour.

I have never been granted a half-hour for a talk before (at least not in my memory). Usually it's 15-20 minutes, or if you're at the big prestige-meetings, 10.

I am wondering - having looked at the slate of presentations - if the high price of gas, sharply diminished university and agency travel funds, and the general unappealingness of flying these days has combined to reduce the number of people who are going out to conferences.

I continue to do it, because (a) this year I have something interesting to present and (b) I'm still kind of in "I'm not worthy!" panic-mode about getting Full Professor (when that issue comes up in a couple years), and giving a presentation (and hopefully getting a paper out) every year is a good way to show I'm not just deadwood.

But I am having to shell out quite a lot out-of-pocket for this trip. (As I did last year for the Chicago trip for the BSA meetings). Not that I mind; my traveling is mostly restricted to visiting family (cheap, once you've paid for transportation) and I don't consider going somewhere and lying on a beach for a week to be exactly fun. (But I do consider getting to hear about exciting research people are doing fun, and meeting with people who have similar interests, and maybe, just maybe, finding some neat bookstores or yarn shops or something while I'm there).

I looked over the roster of presenters for people I know. With the exception of one chap I know a little (spoke with him at some length at a previous conference about soil invertebrates), the only names I recognize are ones I know from the top of journal articles. So it may be a bit of a lonely conference for me, if there aren't some non-presenters I happen to know showing up. (And I'm not sure how likely that is, once again given the price of gas, the cost of travel [most universities at least won't give you travel funds if you're not actually presenting], and the general horribleness of flying.)

But whatever. It will be a chance to be in a new town and hear a bunch of talks and maybe meet some new friends.

I'll have to practice my little talk though and make sure it's "respectably" long enough; I think I was shooting for a time slot of 15 minutes when I planned it, but I can always add in more natural history and more management considerations at the end.

I wonder, if gas continues to go up and airlines continue to treat passengers like cattle if eventually scientific meetings will die out a little. Or if only the real high-powered types will go (which will be sad for me, because I have to recognize it: I am not a high-powered type. I am a teaching professor who does a little research on the side). Or if there will be some new kind of "virtual meeting" thing where people set up webcameras and give their talks from their home institution, or make online posters they put up and have live chats scheduled to discuss.

And while it's not the same as going to a new place and getting to meet people and go on real field trips and such, I have to admit I'd not be heartbroken to do my research presentations that way - I wouldn't have to worry about getting to the place, or finding a safe hotel for a woman traveling alone, and I'd get to sleep in my own bed at night.

Because I find the older I get, the more the "excitement" of travel begins to pale against the comfort of sleeping in my own bed. (Especially with what I've heard about bedbugs in some hotels, ew.). Of course, once they perfect teleportation, it will all be a moot point, because we'll ALL (well, at least those who can afford the teleportation fees) be able to travel ANYWHERE and still sleep in our own beds at night.

(And honestly? In some future Utopia? I don't care about the Jetsons flying cars or the replicators or the robot maids. What I'd really like is a teleporter...I'd be able to go to my old professor's retirement parties with no effort, I'd be able to drop in on my brother and sister-in-law on their birthdays and take them out to dinner, I'd be able to see Turkey without actually having to use the infamous Turkish toilets, I'd be able to pop in to Liberty of London or La Droguerie or Purl Soho and buy craft supplies in person...)

Labels: research

posted by fillyjonk at 3:25 PM

 
Phone, again.

My office phone had been out since around the first of the month. The first thing I was told was that the last round of thunderstorms we had knocked out a few phones. Then I was told a trunk line (I didn't even know such things still existed) was out and I just needed to be patient.

Frankly, not having an office phone is only an annoyance when I needed to call someone -which wasn't often. My students knew that my phone was out, and so, e-mailed me or stopped by my office. And it was honestly sort of nice not to have random interruptions happening while I tried to work.

But I decided I needed the phone back, maybe people like colleagues were trying to call me. So I found an online form to fill out and send to the appropriate office.

They sent someone over this morning. He was puzzled by the list of symptoms - no dial tone, but the phone still works when plugged into someone else's jack. The internet (which is a different system but the wiring is adjacent) was never out at all. I could still access my voice mail (from home or from a colleague's phone).

He tried calling my number, said it was ringing (except it obviously wasn't, you know, ringing IN MY OFFICE). He called up the person in charge to see what was going on, then had to go and talk to the person in person (apparently they didn't believe that (a) there was supposed to be a phone assigned to me or (b) that my phone was actually not working.)

(I will admit at that point I got a bit worried..."They've reassigned my phone number? Do they know something I don't know yet? I'm on the list to be teaching this fall....")

Turns out in the reconfiguration that happened after the "trunk line" got fried was that my number was MISTAKENLY reassigned to an (apparently) empty office in a building halfway across campus. So my number was ringing, but no one was there to hear it. (Which doesn't really raise a philosophical question in this era of voice-mail: if the phone rings, and there's no one there to hear it, the caller just gets shunted into an automated system).

The guy managed to get the number correctly reassigned in about 20 seconds once the "they" believed his story.

So I have a working phone again though I admit I'm not going to be super-quick about telling people about it.
posted by fillyjonk at 11:48 AM

 


I'm closing in on the heel-flap of the second Undulating Ribs sock. I'm glad that the "pooling" or "flashing" of the colors is the same in both socks...I've had some variegated yarn where the two socks looked totally different.

***

Diann, I'm so glad it got there. I was starting to get a tiny bit concerned (sent it Priority Mail on Thursday, but it was late in the day). And I'm so happy you like it! As I was working on it, I kept thinking, "This looks kind of like Diann." No, not literally...I mean the kind of things you like.


***

I'm on one of my periodic news-fasts. (Or Escapes from Mock Reality, if you prefer a grander term). Turned on the semi-local news and they were doing a story on OH NOES ECONOMY IS TANKING STOCK MARKET IS FALLING LET US ALL RUN AROUND IN CIRCLES AND SCREAM NOW. And I'm getting tired of it. Yes, I know the economy is not great - but it is better than many places in the world. Like Zimbabwe, where it's literally cheaper to use the currency as t.p. than to go out and buy some. Or like the old USSR - I had a friend who knew a man who emigrated from there, and he broke down crying the first time he walked into a U.S. supermarket - he could not believe the choices and availability of food.

So yeah, some stuff sucks. But it doesn't suck nearly as badly as people would have you believe, and I don't like feeling like I'm slowly being tricked into believing it.

***
So I'm watching Cartoon Network as my bubblegum for the brain these days. They've done one of their periodic "sweep away all the shows that have grown familiar and replace them with new stuff." Which I kind of find unsettling, because you know? I liked Foster's Home for Imaginary Friends, and now it's apparently gone and replaced by other stuff, including something that looks and feels like a knock-off of SpongeBob SquarePants.

And of course, the Powerpuff Girls are long gone down the memory hole. (If they ever appeared in a picture with Russian dignitaries, they've long been airbrushed out of it).
posted by fillyjonk at 4:41 PM

 
If I were given the task of creating a world, one of the things I'd do? I'd limit how long seasons lasted to about a month and a half. So the most you'd get of hot weather at one go would be six weeks.

Because that's more than enough, in my book. (And there could only be six consecutive weeks of cold, for you winter-haters.)

I'm not sleeping well again and this time I'm sure it's the humidity. I wake up feeling like fists are squeezing my lungs, which is a decidedly unpleasant way to start the day. (I haven't even been TRYING to work out in the mornings because of that; the last thing I need at 5:25 am is a full-blown asthma attack. So of course the hour's workout in the afternoon eats into my relaxation time, and it's kind of a big ugly domino effect of things.)

I'm just really getting worn out of summer. I opened up my lunch kit today and almost started crying for no reason other than that I am sick unto death of the plain yogurt/fruit/nuts combination (with not even crackers to relieve it because I ran out of crackers and can't seem to remember to buy them when I'm at the store). I contemplated sticking the lunch back in my colleague's fridge and going out somewhere, but meh. The choices of lunch that can be done in a reasonable amount of time all involve either something fried in hydrogenated oils or something that uses mass quantities of cheese to cover up the fact that it doesn't really Has a Flavr. So I ate the d....d yogurt any way.

And I have no idea of what to fix for dinner; right now my tomato plants are between ripe tomatoes (and I lost a couple of ripe tomatoes over the weekend...it turns out one of the local stray cats either likes tomatoes, or was so hungry/thirsty that it was willing to pull them off the vine and eat them. I don't begrudge the cat the tomatoes, especially if it was starving, but that means no broiled tomatoes for a while.

And yes, I know it was a cat and not other local wildlife; I watched it eat the tomatoes through my bedroom window Sunday morning.)

I sort of lose my appetite/cooking mojo when it's hot like this. Everything either seems to take more effort than I want to put in, or it heats up the kitchen too much. So I wind up eating a lot of salad (and then getting really sick of salad).

At least I have the good kind of hummus in the fridge; at least I remembered to pick that up this weekend on my trip South. (The local stores only sell the "basic" variety and I prefer the Greek style.) So maybe I can make a hummus sandwich or scare up some pretzels to eat it with or something.

Labels: gripes

posted by fillyjonk at 2:46 PM

 
Oh, and Karin...if I do find a place selling KnitScene, I'll pick up a copy for you. I'm not sure how successful I'll be in that...I don't have a newsagent in my town, so my main source for magazines in town is the wal-mart, and you never know from month to month what they are stocking.
posted by fillyjonk at 8:33 AM

 
Has a flavr?

This is one of the stupider quiz things I've seen, but considering that it originates from "The N," which is the pseudo-sophisticated teen variant of Nickelodeon (they play mostly what look like soap operas featuring completely blemish-free 15 and 16 year olds), I'm not too surprised.



That doesn't even FIT me. Not taking stuff seriously? What, because I said, "If my job's going nuts, I'll try to keep a sense of humor about it"? That's better than going and hiding in the walk-in freezer and snarfing toppings, or screwing your co-workers by quitting on the spot. (Or screwing the customers by wasting your time flirting with some co-worker.)
posted by fillyjonk at 7:48 AM

 
I set out this afternoon to test the Law of Neighborhood Peer Pressure.

But either it's too random, or it works too well - like, mystically well. Because as I was finishing mowing my front yard (I did the back yard first), I heard this noise.

It sounded like the unholy love child of a "rice-burner" motorcycle and some of the scarier dental tools I've experienced this summer.

Yup, north side neighbor's errant lawn-service people (they've been MIA for over 2 weeks) showed up and were edging.

So my mowing the lawn was totally unrelated (unless, like I said, there's some kind of crazy mystical thing in play, or, alternatively, the lady-of-the-house next door called the lawn service and said, "Get on it! Our yard will be the worst on the block if you don't!").

The other bad thing about not getting to test the Law of Neighborhood Peer Pressure is that the last 10 minutes or so of my lawnmowing reverie (remember, I use a reel-type mower so if I'm the only person out all I have to listen to is the soft "snip-snip-snip" of the mower as it rolls) was interrupted by that edger thing. And it's hard to enjoy a mindless task when it's noisy all around you.

Still, there's my neighbor to the south - his lawn is getting kind of long so I can see what happens over the next couple days.

Oh, and it's hot. But I've learned that after about 2 pm the humidity drops to a point where it's merely hot and not oh-my-goodness-I-think-I'm-going-to-die hot. Or I've become more tolerant of heat.

The secret is to drink a lot of water over the course of the day beforehand, and stop midway through to replace the water lost to perspiration.

Labels: garden

posted by fillyjonk at 4:34 PM

 
A couple things for a Sunday afternoon.

First, one of my favorite short pieces of music ever (Bach's Prelude of the First Cello Suite) played on an unusual instrument:



It's a nyckelharpa, a type of keyed fiddle. I know it best as an instrument used in traditional Swedish music. (Yes, I like traditional Swedish folk music too. There are actually few forms of music I don't like...and most of the ones I don't are very highly commercial ones). I guess it's used in some other folk or folk-idiom music as well.

(Though to be totally honest, I think I'm moved more hearing it on a cello, as it usually is played.)

(One of the lovely things about YouTube? You can listen to many different artists' interpretations of a piece. Normally I don't get to do that, not having ready access to classical music radio, and as I generally prefer to have a broad rather than deep collection of CDs. I've been listening to different cellists play the above mentioned piece...have to say Pablo Casal's version [there's an old film from 1954 of him playing it] is my favorite, with Mischa Maisky a close second.

And as I am not a musicologist nor do I play the cello, I feel that I am free to be totally "wrong" and counter to the opinions on what "serious" musicologists would say on this. And I don't even feel that I have to defend my likes, not being a musicologist or such.)

****
I began the Lace Ribbon Scarf:



This is the first...I think repeat and a half? It's a pretty easy pattern once you get going but that single yo is easy to forget...I wound up having to rip back a row or two because I'd forget them.

I will probably invariably think of this as my Hobbit scarf, as Hobbits famously are fond of yellow and green together.

****

I'm working away on the various socks. I pulled a bunch of yarn out of the center of the skein of the Kureyon sock yarn (I'm knitting it from the center out) and found a knot. On one side of the knot the yarn was purple. On the other side it was peach.

Yeah, there was a break in the yarn and they just tied two skeins together. Way to phone it in, Noro.

So I took the skein and used my ball-winder to subtract that part of the sequence from the center of the skein (Journey to the Center of the Skein! Hah! I slay me!) until I got back around to the purple. So the stripes may be a little off, whatever. I didn't want a sharp transition right there in the sock. I just hope the progression is the same and it's not that one of the skeins goes purple-reddish purple-gray-green-peach and the other part is reversed relative to that, where it will go backwards into the yellow green I had just left. (I've heard of such things happening in the self patterning yarns, though not specifically Noro.)

Labels: music, random

posted by fillyjonk at 4:31 PM

 
Life #8?

(could also be titled: Lazarus Cat Sez, "I Cheets Deth Once Moar").

My parents' cat, while not eating as heartily as she has been, is eating again. My mom has been making chicken broth out of chicken wings (!) because that's one thing she will eat willingly and will take a bit of the canned food with it. But she is eating on her own again to a certain extent. So maybe she'll just be a skinny old cat, but be a skinny old live cat for a while longer.

And the fact that she still seems to be enjoying life - purring and grooming and seeking laps and sun - suggests that as long as she can keep going, she should be allowed to keep going.
posted by fillyjonk at 7:16 PM

 
The mail just came, bearing my Something from the something store.

It's a tiny screwdriver set with interchangeable heads. In addition to the Phillips heads and the standard slot heads (one of which I think is small enough to use on the screws of my spectacles when they get loose), there are also a couple sizes of Allen keys and a bunch of what look like little socket wrenches.

Not sure that I'll ever use them all but I think this is going to go over to my office to live in my desk drawer because I KNOW there will be times I need a tiny screwdriver - whether for, as I said, my specs, or to take the back off a calculator when a battery needs replaced. So I guess it was worth the $10. (Probably will seem more than worth it the first time someone really really needs a tiny screwdriver over in the department...)
posted by fillyjonk at 3:04 PM

 
Heh. Seems I've garnered a bit of fame for my comments on the new movie that may or may not be based on a Jules Verne novel.

It amuses me what people pick up on. I wonder now if I have almost as many non-knitting readers as I do knitting readers - because there are thousands of knitblogs out there (well, still thousands, I guess. A lot of them have gone defunct in the past couple years, either because the person writing them got sick of it, or they had life-changes [babies, new jobs] that prevented them from having time.) And I realize I'll never be a "knitting celebrity" (though I admit I fantasize a bit about it: how lovely it would be to have a hand-dyer name a color combination after me, or be invited on a lecture tour, or have people longing for my input on things). In reality, I'm not that creative (in the sense of coming up with fancy shiny new content, like a free online magazine or a weblog that could be parlayed into a book deal. And perhaps I lack the personality necessary for that type of fame - I've said before I'm not that good at self-promotion and I am probably overly modest about my accomplishments (if the comments of my department chair at annual evaluation time are anything to go by).

But still. It's fun to write, and especially fun when I know other people are reading and might get a laugh or a different way of thinking from what I've said.

*****

I really needed to get to Sherman for certain things today, including a run to Sam's Club. (Yes, I know that it's odd that I as a single person living alone has a membership, but whatever. It's sort of comforting to be able to buy a year's worth of t.p. and such at one go....knowing I won't have to do THAT kind of shopping again for a while)

And I spent part of my "stimulus check" - they had vols. 1 and 2 of the Poirot movies (the ones with David Suchet, which, IMHO, are the only Poirots worth watching) at Sam's Club, for $25 each. I dithered about it but decided that some Friday evening this fall, when I'm tired and want to be entertained and everything on the television stinks ("TV, stop being stupid!" is one of my regular comments-to-an-inanimate-object), I will be glad to have these. Because they're one of the things I find re-watchable - I love the costume design and the stylishness of the setting and the characters and the fact that nothing is crude or coarse and I especially love Poirot.

Or they'll be good for when I'm sad and I just need something absorbing and pleasant and that I love to cheer me up.

I also needed to get a new pair of khakis and a few other garment type things. (Kohl's for that. And, true to form, the three items I bought - a skirt and two pairs of slacks - were all marked with different sizes. The sizing of women's clothing is kind of nuts. My theory on it is that we're all so hung up on our actual physical size* that it would give the female populace of this nation a collective aneurysm if they started sizing clothes like they size men's jeans, in other words with actual inch measurements of how big the waist, etc., are. Of course for women you need waist, hip, bust and possibly rise or length of the waist to actually get an idea of the fit...But still. It's frustrating to pull, say, a 14 off the rack, when shopping alone, try it on, find it's too big/too small and then have to truck out to find another size. At least when I shopped with my mom I could send HER to get the correct size.

*because otherwise, why would a size 0 be presented as something to aspire for? I know there are size 0 women and while I suppose they're glad to be able to find clothes that fit...to me it just seems strange to refer to a body size as a 0. I'm not sure I'd want my body size referred to as a number used to designate nullity.)

I also went to three stores-that-sell-books-and-magazines in hopes of scoring a copy of the new KnitScene, which is supposed to be out. No luck. (I know: I should just take out a subscription and be done with it.)

And I went to Hobby Lobby. They are carrying the new Red Heart sock yarn and also apparently will be carrying Paton's Kroy.

Except they had exactly 1 50-g ball of each color they were carrying. One. That's great if you want to make socks for a tiny child (or your favorite house-elf), but for an actual adult person, 75-100 g of the yarn is necessary. And none of the single-ball combinations would have worked as pairs for striped socks or such.

I wonder if they'll not sell any, then cancel any future orders, saying, "People around here just don't knit socks."

I did, however, do something I had not planned on doing.

I bought another row-counter. So I can start the lace ribbon scarf. Because I really need something new to work on.

I also took myself out to lunch. An Olive Garden has opened in Sherman. I got some kind of shrimp and pasta dish. It was good, but I expect that garlic will probably be coming out of my pores for the rest of the weekend. I don't use such a heavy hand with garlic when I cook.

The good thing about it? I'm done shopping for a while. Doing it all as a big bolus makes sense, both gas-wise and in terms of burning me out on shopping - mid morning I was like, "I'm done. I'm ready to go home" but of course I still had other things on my list to do.

Labels: random

posted by fillyjonk at 2:33 PM

 


The "clandestine knitting" continues.

Heh...I can imagine a knitting pattern where there's a "secret message" encoded in the finished item. It couldn't be charted, though - that would make the message too obvious. Spy stuff.

Or, it could be like that thing we used to do in grade school - I don't know if anyone else of my generation experienced this - to teach us Cartesian coordinates (I don't know if this was some New Math thing or not), the teacher would give us graph paper and a long list of instructions of x, y coordinates and what color to color in the square with those coordinates. And if you did it right, you got a picture. (If you did it wrong, you got a big mess. I remember redoing at least one of those pictures because I got off-count with rows or columns. And I remember one that had an error in it, and the picture never resolved right because of the error.

I still don't like to do counted cross-stitch for that very reason - if you mess up and get off count it's a real pain to fix, and it HAS to be fixed; it can't be fudged like you can often do with knitting).
posted by fillyjonk at 6:31 AM