Just a few random things:

First off, if you choose to comment anonymously (not logging in/not having blogger account), would you be willing to sign your comments? I mean, I don't need a full name and address but a first name or nickname would be nice. You don't have to if you have your reasons, but...I like to see a name attached to things.
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I finished the Eiffel Tower dishtowel this afternoon. While trying to find something on television that didn't deal with Anna Nicole Smith.

I don't know...I realize that the networks are totally playing into the public blood-lust on this - when someone dies, especially someone whose life has mostly been a big trainwreck, it's all over the place.

Mostly, she made me sad. Sad that someone felt she had to present that brainless bimbette image (or maybe that was actually what she was, I don't know). Sad that she seemed to be allowed to interview and present when she was on medications (prescribed or otherwise). Sad that she didn't seem to have anyone in her life who would say, "You know...you really should think before you do X." She seemed to be someone who didn't totally get the concept of "consequences."

I suppose part of the frisson is that she was just over a year older than I am. How different people's lives are. I don't think I'm going to spend quite so much time feeling bad that I've not managed to find a mate or that I seem to be labouring in obscurity a lot of the time. Because I know I'd hate being famous. And it seems there are an awful lot of famous-for-being-famous people right now whose lives are either big messes, or who have died young. (I will say it again: I think when people become famous really fast really young - like before 25 - it screws up their heads most of the time. Your personality really isn't completely formed, I think, before 25 (before 30 even, maybe) and I think the kind of influences that come with fame and wealth and that kind of attention are not always salubrious, particularly in cases where the individual involved doesn't have someone close to them who cares for their welfare more than they care for the money the person is making.)

It also hit me, driving home from my office this morning: for years, I've sort of mourned the fact that I'm not pretty, that I'm kind of fat, that I don't have the kind of face or body that really inspires attention from guys. But, you know? I guess that having that carries its own set of problems. And maybe it would be worse to be what society views as drop-dead gorgeous than to be kind of plain.

I guess at times I still hold onto the childhood idea (and yes, it is from my childhood; one of my early career goals was to be a "movie star." Fortunately that died somewhere around age 7) that people who are rich and famous somehow have it easier than the rest of us, that they don't have the same anxieties or screwed-upness. But intellectually I know that's not true, even if some days when the water distiller isn't working and someone in one of my classes calls me and says, "I missed class today, did we do anything?" and I have class until five and then a meeting from seven p.m. until God knows when, and it's so easy to think, "If I had somehow managed to be born with the genetic-freak body of a supermodel, I could be on a jet to Milan surrounded with yes-men and handlers instead of this."

So I don't know. To sort of paraphrase Tolstoy: all screwed up people are screwed up in their own way.

It also makes me think a bit of "Richard Cory" - the old Edward Arlington Robinson poem, where all the "poor" people of the town look at Cory and envy him, and think how easy life is for him, and one night Cory goes home and puts a bullet through his brain.

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I'm cutting more bits for the Tumbler quilt. I've decided now that I'm going to cut some of each of the fabrics, and then sew for a while, and then cut more. It gets kind of wearing to cut and cut and cut. And I'm not nuts about running a rotary cutter AROUND a template; there are awkward angles that hurt my wrist and also make it harder to cut accurately. (I know, they sell little turntables to help with this, but the little turntables I've seen are even too little for the fat quarters I'm working with.)
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I'm looking at the stitch-pattern books again, thinking about designing more socks.

I do think I'm going to do the Bacteriophage socks, in Fair Isle (I played around with plotting out/imagining different methods of portraying the things and Fair Isle seems to suit best). I'm thinking of the little row of 'phages up under the ribbed cuff, and then maybe a phage worked onto the heel, and then just a little row of 2 by 2 checks of the two colors in the socks, right before the toe decreases.

I charted out a little 'phage on some graph paper. I can make it 6 stitches wide and still have it be identifiable (to me at least) of what it is. Even the little "prongs" are there that it uses to attach to the E. coli. I think I'm going to do a little line of stitches in the color (or maybe even a third color) in the center of the phage to represent the DNA in it. (Maybe: red phage, blue socks, green DNA?)

I have sportweight yarn in all the colors I'd want except the green. I THINK I have sockweight yarn - at least scraps - in the colors I'd want.

Heh...if I really wanted to get fancy, I could do the 'phage on the heel attaching to an E. coli. (but that would be even more involved and would probably require some small-scale intarsia.)

I do want to finish at least one of the pairs of socks-in-progress (I have the Miranda socks, and the pink Opals, and now the Feather and Fan) before I start anything new.

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I do have a fourth pair of socks - a long time gone, I started the "Seasons of Door County" socks I got at Blackberry Ridge. But. They are too tight. I used a size 4 needle as suggested but did not swatch. I can't really get the first sock on over my heel without major stretching, which I think would wear out the sock too fast. What I need to do is gut up, rip out the very-nearly-finished sock and start over on size 5s (and not knit so tightly this time! One of the "issues" I have with Fair Isle is that I knit way too tightly on it and always need to remember to go up a needle size from what I think it should be.)

or if I were a very generous soul, I'd finish them and give them to someone with smaller/thinner feet than I. (But I'm not that generous.)