Thanks, anonymous yoga teacher. I've used that technique in the past and it has helped, I just kind of forget about it. I've slept well and free of bad dreams for eight months or so, so I forgot all of the old strategies I used.

I will say, I think I WILL sleep better tonight - receiving an unexpected "hey, just wanted to say hi" phone call that verified for me that not only was the loved one I had the nightmare about alive, but also very very well, so that's one concern off my mind.

(I probably should have just wimped out and called them myself on the pretext of "*I* just wanted to say hi" earlier in the day, but I try to keep myself from doing that. One time when I had a bad dream about my dad dying, I wound up sitting up by the phone for the rest of the night just waiting for it to be an acceptable hour to call him and verify that my bad dream was really just a dream. I think I made it until 7:30 am, but as that was back when he was still teaching, he was already up and had eaten breakfast and was ready to go to work...)

I'm kind of irked that the minor anxiety issues are coming back; I thought I had banished them. I tell myself that the anxiety is nothing "real," that it is something that is just a stupid biochemical legacy - like our cravings for sugar and fat are the ghost of optimal foraging past - because when Og the nervous caveman was scanning the horizon all the time for predators, he didn't get eaten, while maybe the more mellow cavemen didn't see the predator coming...so Og lived and (apparently) overcame his anxiety long enough to reproduce with some cavewoman, and passed his anxious genes on down to the next generation, and so it goes...being hypervigilant is a good thing when you're a hunter-gatherer, not so much in modern day North America where food comes from the grocery store and the most likely "predator" is that SUV being driven by someone who is distracted by their cell-phone call.

I TELL myself it's nothing "real," but I can't quite bring myself to believe it.

(And it's not caffeine consumption - I haven't even drunk tea in the past three weeks. Nor is it excessive sugar; I'm actually eating less sugar than I often do. So I can't peg it on anything biochemical that I can easily alter by altering my diet. I'm guessing it's the heat and humidity; they affect my asthma and make my chest feel tight, and I think the rest of my body interprets that as anxiety and makes the appropriate (inappropriate?) neurotransmitters.)

Not sure what to try differently this afternoon/evening to try to avoid a repeat of last night. (One thing I did do was wean myself off the allergy meds I was taking for the poison ivy; perhaps the bad dreams were partly related to a "rebound" from having done that).

Also I was buttonholed by a person yesterday with a big need to "share" lots of sad detail about a bad medical procedure; that may have contributed to the bad-kidney dream.

I don't know whether cutting quilt pieces or watching cartoons and starting a new pair of socks is more likely to help me sleep more soundly. (Though if it's the heat - well, I'll just have to wait until October. *whimper*)

I do get kind of gun-shy about sleeping after having a night of bad dreams. But I can't not sleep; tomorrow is my long day also involving fieldwork out in the hot sun.

I hate my brain sometimes.

Last night, I had a dream that someone I cared a whole lot about was dying, and there was nothing I could do - all I could do was wait for the final bad news.

Which resulted in my lying in bed at 3:30 in the morning (once I woke up) and wondering if it was worth it to try to go back to sleep for the remaining hour and a half, or if I should just say "bag it" and get up and do my exercise extra early for today.

(Ultimately, I tried to sleep again. Which resulted in my dreaming that my brother's kidneys were failing, and I was rushing to the hospital to see if I was a donor match, and feeling very sad and conflicted - on one hand, I couldn't NOT save my brother's life; on the other, the thought of the surgery terrified me. Which really did not help my mood today).

Well, I tried to put it out of my mind - if everything we dreamed actually happened this would be a mighty strange world indeed. But during class, I began thinking about it again. And began feeling very, I don't know, premonition-y? Like, "I'm going to go back to my office and there is going to be a Very Bad News phone call or e-mail waiting for me). It was almost unbearable finishing class. (Stupid brain).

So I rushed back here - no phone messages. It took some gutting up to check my e-mail (which is how I'd likely get the bad news in this case).

But I did. The only new e-mail was a spammy advertisement from Land's End.

Stupid brain. Why do you do this to me? Why can't I have dreams like normal people? About puppies or vacations or "dating" George Clooney (to keep it G rated here). What is it with all the armageddoney stuff all of a sudden? If you keep doing this to me, I WILL sit up all night watching television just to spite you.

I picked up the pillowcases I am embroidering and worked on them again. I have most of the outlining done on the first one, but I still have most of the second one to do (including some of the cross-stitching).

I like doing embroidery because, like hand-quilting, it requires a lot of focus. Make one stitch. Then make the next one right next to it. Stay in line. Stick to the pattern and you will have good results. It may not be "creative" in the sense that you are following an established pattern, but it does require a certain level of technical skill and attention to do it well - for example, I try to make all the backstitches for the outline the same length, so they look good.

But of course, I follow the pattern. I was thinking the other day, "You know, if I just said "forget color matching" and went and used whatever floss I wanted, or went and got one of those skeins of multicolored floss and did the pillowcases in that, the picture would be a big mess and look like nothing, but I bet it would get put up on Craft Blog or one of those sites, as this example of wonderful subversive art where someone takes a "corporate" kit and "subverts" it by not following the directions." Because "edgy" is the new pretty, apparently.

I don't know. I like the pillowcases. They are pretty. Working on them relaxes me. And I guess that's good enough. But I will say it makes me sad when people who make stuff like, say, the "bacon wrap" (a crocheted shawl made to look like a giant bacon slice) get all talked up on some of the DIY blogs, and the people out there doing incredibly complex and (to me at least) beautiful traditional lace shawls are all but ignored. (I wonder if it's a subtle ageism: most people over 30 or so wouldn't wear a "bacon wrap," but you can wear a lace shawl any time and most any place. And I wonder if it isn't partly the "not your grandma's..." attitude that's crept in places. Sometime I would like to see a little celebration of our individual or collective grandma's crafts...because if they didn't continue to do them, there would be no antique quilts to inspire quilters today. Or there would be no filet crochet designs to make people think of doing new designs. Or no one would remember how to turn a sock heel. It makes me sad when I feel like the people who came before us in the craft are being swept under the rug in favor of what is "edgy" and "new" and "hip." Because, not only is it right to honor our elders or foremothers/forefathers, but also there are an awful lot of us out here who are not edgy and hip - who want to do more traditional style craft - and it's frustrating to have to hunt for information on that whereas there are many websites out there detailing what the "rockers" of the craft world are doing.

And yeah, I admit, it's a little bit of sour grapes, from someone who has never been a Popular, and who often looked at the Populars and said to herself, "They're not so great.")

I worked on different stuff this weekend. Did some research stuff, some teaching-stuff (grading). I also worked a bit on the current "simple" socks (which are getting close to done) and the quilt in the frame.

And I got alllllllll the 2 1/2" segments of the strips cut for the four patches on the new quilt top, and sewed up most of them before running out of steam. (I still have a stack of them, pinned, sitting on my sewing machine but I think I'm done sewing for today. Sometimes I just kind of hit a wall on a project and have to stop for a while).

Here are some of the patches, to give you an idea of the range of colors:



Several (Four, maybe?) of the fabrics in there are Mary Engelbreit prints (the little circle-flower ones). And there are three of the "Dimples" line, and then a couple others that matched and worked with these but were one-offs or were from different fabric collections.

The light colored "plain" fabric has tiny starbursts on it, you can't really see them in the photo.

The four-patches then get put in a set with alternating big squares of the colorful fabric and they are turned so that the light colored background fabric forms sort of a diamond design.

This is a nice quilt pattern (it's from a book I have called "Bundles of Fun" which has many patterns designed for fat quarters, most of them pretty straightforward so you don't have to spend hours and hours cutting, or do lots of agonizing over matching points and such.

I could see making this quilt again, in different colors - maybe the late-1800s reproduction prints, with dark prints (the red and green and brown background ones) as the colorful fabrics, and "shirting" prints (light background with small designs, often geometric, in either navy blue, black, dark red, or dark green). Or doing it of 30s fabrics with that "30s green" in a solid color as the background fabric. Or Christmas fabrics with either a solid red or gold or green as the background. It seems like a really versatile pattern and although there are an awful lot of four-patches to sew together, it goes comparatively fast.

This is the kind of thing that makes me all stabby, first thing on a Saturday morning: a company that is selling "corrupted" files students can buy, then e-mail to their profs, and then student innocently goes, "What? You mean the file wouldn't open?" and (so the student thinks) buys himself/herself some extra time to write the assignment they slacked off on.

That is so full of wrongness....

first of all, I can tell, I would say, 80%-90% of the time, when a paper was written at the very last minute - which is what any student taking advantage of that site is going to be doing. Last-minute papers just have a certain "smell" to them.

second, it assumes profs are sufficiently clueless (or overworked) that we are not going to clue into the situation - I bet some profs receive three or four of these for a single assignment, they're going to figure something's up.

third, how hard would it be for someone to do this on their own? I'm no computer whiz but I suspect it's not that hard to do. (For that matter: find someone who has WordPerfect or some archaic word processing software and do it in that, chances are prof won't be able to open the file, or you can make off that it's a software mismatch).

fourth, it's CHEATING.

fifth, if a student has a major real problem, most profs are amenable to extensions. I know I am. I've even given an occasional extension for the "I really don't have a big life issue going on, but I'm just underwater in terms of all the work I have to do for all my classes." I'd rather grant an honest extension than have someone dishonestly e-mail me a fake file.

sixth, it is not a "good excuse." It is enabling people to procrastinate.

seventh, the assumption that profs don't talk to one another, that word of this thing won't get out, and that people won't be busted.

I don't accept e-mailed papers, except in dire circumstances (like, the person is trapped at home by bad weather). And then, if I can't open the file, they don't get credit. Simple as that. And now I have a good reason to put in my syllabi why I don't accept e-mailed papers. Or at the very least, to put in, "If I can't open the file, your grade drops by five points for every fifteen minutes that elapse between my e-mailing you "I CAN'T OPEN THE FILE" and your sending me one that WILL open")

And yes, on the rare occasions that a student e-mails me an assignment, I try opening it immediately. If it won't, I e-mail them right back and say, "The file did not work" and let them know they need to fix it, stat, if they want credit.

I HATE how we have this arms-race going with the cheaters. Many profs (I know, because I'm in this boat and many of my colleagues I've talked to this about are too) never cheated in school, and so some of the more esoteric cheating methods are ones we'd never even think of. It's infuriating how much time it can take - googling "key phrases" in papers to see if they're plagiarized off the internet, cross-checking all student papers (which is a challenge in big classes) to be sure there isn't a "Hey, you do the work and we'll all copy off of you" ring going on, dealing with cell phones and text devices on exam days (rule: they stay off and in the person's bag. If I see one, it needs to be surrendered to me for the rest of the exam time).

I don't buy the originator's claim that professors find it "funny" and let the students get away with it. I wouldn't. And I bet most employers, if they needed a White Paper or a spreadsheet or a TPS report or something by a certain time, would only find it funny in the sense that they get to laugh while they fire the person, if the person sent them a corrupted file instead.

I wonder how long before someone develops a company that will embed a hard-drive-destroying virus in a fake file, so students can "fry" the computers of profs who don't have up to date virus software? 'Cos I could totally see someone thinking that was a good idea.

Yesterday was, I think, one of the more surreal news days in recent memory.

It starts off with yet another politician being unfaithful to their spouse. Now, granted, I realize the "real" problem here was that he left his post to fly off to Argentina, but I do have to say I always feel a little - disappointment, maybe? - when I hear of this.

I don't know, I realize this is very much outside looking in, but I feel like - if I had someone who loved me (I presume the man's wife loved him?) and had spent whatever portion of my life with me, I'd not want to hurt them in that way.

I don't know. I realize life is complex and everyone carries a heavy burden of their own, but when I look at people doing this kind of thing, I feel kind of like when I was a little kid and a friend of mine had some REALLY COOL THING that I didn't have and he or she broke it, or left it out in the rain, or somehow didn't take care of it.

And then the two celebrity deaths. I admit, I had kind of "forgotten" about Farrah Fawcett until I saw news of her death. I didn't really follow her career all that much - I may have seen a few episodes of "Charlie's Angels" in re-runs (though during its first run, there were other things I would have been interested in on the television). But she seemed like she was a nice lady, and she was certainly beautiful (but not beautiful in that "I'm better than you because I'm prettier" sense that some attractive women have). And she had been sick. And in a way, you almost feel a little relief on behalf of the person: well, at least they're not in pain any more.

And then the real surreal news of the day. I'm not going to comment on Jackson's life, on what happened in the 90s and the 00s, the trial, any of that. For one thing, I don't understand it. For another, I was sort of raised that you didn't spit on a person's grave.

I remember Jackson best from the mid-80s - before everything started to go kind of pear-shaped for him. When he was really popular - crazy popular. People who weren't born yet probably don't realize the level of popularity. EVERYONE knew who he was. EVERYONE. And, though I admit I was a music snob in those days (more than I am now; it was part and parcel as trying to define myself as "different" and "special" in high school to insist that I only EVER listened to "serious" music), his music was catchy and fun. "Billie Jean" probably was my favorite.

(And even before that, his Motown work: some of it really beautiful - I do love "I'll be there" - and some of it irresistibly catchy and enough to make me get up and dance (well, at least, if I'm alone in the room when it comes on).

But yeah, later on he was pretty much the definition of "a cry for help." What happened to him made me more sad than anything: again, here was someone with real talent (again, something I don't have) and who was adored by millions. And whatever demons he had, whatever temptations he faced - they pretty much ruined his life. And yeah, yeah, all the classic explanations: he was probably abused as a child, fame corrupts, all of that. But still, up until yesterday, whenever I heard his name in the news, I admit I cringed a little bit in preparation for what I might hear.

I will say that while I feel kind of sad about his death - and really, more sad about all the stuff that came out in the news about him over the past 15 years or so, I expect this will lead to another Princess-Diana type situation for a lot of people. And perhaps it's an emotional failing in me, a way that I'm a little bit cold, but I don't quite get the extended mourning over someone you did not know. My reaction to the death was to go, "Wow, that's sad - and unexpected" and then move on. I don't quite get the extended tears and sadness for someone you never knew. I had enough losses of people (and one cat) that I knew well and cared a lot about in the past year to not feel like shedding any tears for someone I never knew, someone who was at the most on the edges of my consciousness. But to each his own, I guess: maybe some people need that.

(And now I feel kind of bad to realize that I felt worse about the death of my parents' cat than I did about another human being, but well - those you know well are closest to you, I guess)

Oh, and in other, very personal news:

The Oklahoma Blood Institute will not accept your blood if you have an active poison ivy infection. I walked in, explained to the phlebotomist, showed her my arms, and she shook her head sadly. I presume it's because there are antibodies or something in your blood that make it unsafe for a person in weakened health to accept. Oh well. Perhaps there will be another drive here in town in another couple weeks when it's cleared up.

Something I had never quite got around to finishing:



It's the 3-6-9 quilt made using lemonade-themed prints. I had this quilted a long time ago, did the machine-sewing of the binding, and then buried it under some fabric. I ran across it again this week and finally did the handsewing-down of the binding.

It's fairly small and my first thought was to use it on an occasional table (NOT an eating table...seeing quilts on dining tables, even ones covered by a plastic cover, gives me the heebies), but none of my occasional tables need a cover or are where a cover could be seen. So it may go to live on the back of my sofa for those times when I need something small to put over my feet when I'm stretched out, reading.

It's cute. It's one of the rare quilts I've done using all fabrics from the same exact line. Normally I don't care to do that because they look too "matchy" and pre-planned, but in this case, I just liked all the fabrics so much.

****

A while back I had said that I occasionally thought of how I sort of wanted a "Nauga" (the Naugahyde "animal" that is sort of a company mascot) but couldn't quite bring myself to buy one, because of the expense?

Well, I decided to use part of the money I earned reviewing a textbook chapter (I tend to regard this as "found money" and therefore eligible to be blown on whatever grabs my fancy).

So I did get one:



His name is Victor. His coloration is what suggested that name (Some of you, who have paid attention to my history, may get that without clicking on the link). (And while I'm being partisan, more is here.)

I rather like him, and I'm surprised at how cuddly he is, given he's made out of what is essentially fake leather. Oh, and for those of you for whom it is important the toys your children play with are made in this country: Naugas are "born" in Stoughton, Wisconsin (which amuses me greatly because I know right where Stoughton is, I've been through it a number of times.)

I finally started doing something that I talked about way back in January.

I began my "read more Shakespeare" project. My original plan had been to watch a video/movie of the play (or, go see a production live, if that became possible), and then read it.

But checking what my university library had - well, they had SOME but not as many as I expected, and most were on VHS. And while I still have a VHS player...I would have to haul it back out and hook it up (it is integral with the old Samsung tv I used to use).

And I got all excited, remembering we have a Shakespearean festival. But it seems to be the trend these days for "Shakespeare" festivals to offer one token Shakespeare play, and make up the bulk of stuff with modern comedies like "Welcome to Lesser Tuna" or whatever that one is called. (And while I have no beef, really, with comedies or modernity...I would think if you called something a Someone festival, that you'd focus the majority of your effort on their work or their era. But I guess that's how things go these days...you have to play arrangements of Aerosmith to get people to come to the symphony, and suchlike).

The one near me is offering "Twelfth Night" as its sole Shakespeare offering for the year. While it was not on my list of to-be-reads, I am contemplating actually expanding the idea of "read more Shakespeare" to "read all the Shakespeare plays." Of course, this is now a Life Project, rather than a New Year's Resolution to be Fulfilled in One Year. But I like the idea, in part because it is somewhat quixotic.

So I am going to go see Twelfth Night (well, provided there are still tickets available at a time I'm free to see it) and add it to my list of ones to read.

But the current play - I started with "Julius Caesar."

I kind of chose at random - my original plan was to start with one of the comedies, but this was the one that drew my attention first. (And I kind of know the history, so the plotline is more clear).

I admit, I was a little apprehensive. Because, like some people believe "Math is Hard," I was kind of under the impression (despite having read some, back in high school) that "Shakespeare is Hard" and that I'd need some kind of a commentary or at the very least a gloss for it to make sense to me.

The little editions I have do have a gloss, and a bit of a commentary - though they often say something like, "See note xvi for Cymbeline" instead of giving a full explanation. But most of the time, I'm not needing it. I think I'm midway through Scene IV of Act I.

Shakespeare is not that hard. It makes sense to me! Most of the time when I look something up in the gloss - I'm kind of reading the gloss/notes parallel with the play - the words they provide explanations for, I'm like, "Yeah, I knew that was an alternate sense to the word and I figured it was being used that way here."

So now I feel a little smarter than I thought I was. I can understand "Julius Caesar."

I also am struck by something lots of people comment on about Shakespeare - how he seems to capture a great deal of human experience and human emotion. For example, Cassius' envy of Caesar - his anger, his feeling of being cheated - here is this man that he had to drag out of the Tiber lest he drown - this weakling, with the "falling disease" - and he is being hailed as a god, whereas he, Cassius, is little more than an ordinary citizen.

And while I have never been quite in that position...still, I have seen people that I felt had less skill, or less intelligence, or less SOMETHING than what I had lionized while I was ignored...and I can kind of "feel" Cassius, to use an early 70s locution about it. That sort of burning envy mixed with a sense of injustice...and you see how it could continue to eat at you and corrupt you if you're not a little lazy (like I am) and willing to go, "meh, that's the way the world works sometimes"

Urgh.

Over the weekend, I spent some time ripping weeds out of a neglected garden (it is the one with the irises in it). I didn't see, unfortunately, that the poison ivy that has crept into the very back of my yard also crept into that garden...well, I DID see it but had apparently been exposed by that time, because despite the fact that I had gloves on, and I VERY CAREFULLY cut the ivy out with the nippers, and carried them to the compost heap in the nippers, I now have rash up and down my arms.

Crud. I hope they'll still let me give blood on Thursday - the area right around the vein isn't rashy but there is rash-adjacent.

Luckily, Amazon.com sells Foille and you can even get it on 2-day delivery if you have Prime.

(I'm surprised more people don't know about Foille. Perhaps it is a very regional thing, but it was something my dad ALWAYS had in his first-aid kit for fieldwork, and we always had it around when I was growing up. It is essentially benzocaine lotion in a heavy oily base (so it stays on better). It is the only thing I've found that works really well on bug bites, and it works on sun burn, and it has healed minor kitchen burns almost over night. Poison ivy is kind of an off-label use; I don't think it's mentioned on there, but it makes it stop itching and it does seem to dry it up faster than just hydrocortisone cream will.

Foille can be hard to find - I don't think I've seen it in any of the pharmacies 'round here, and I know the last tube I had (which is almost all used up) was one my dad ordered from somewhere. I know there are other benzocaine formulations but the Foille seems to work best of the ones I've tried on stuff like bites and burns.).

I finished the "basic" cutting of pieces for the next quilt last night. This was (a) a series of 2 1/2" strips of the colorful fabrics (3 x 12) and an equivalent number from the "background" fabric, plus two, 4 1/2 inch strips (to be made into squares at a later date) from each of the 12 colorful fabrics.

I also started sewing some of the 2 1/2" strips together.

About being in a "mood" to cut fabric - it seems to happen more often in the summer. I think it's because piecing quilts is more appealing in hot weather than sitting with a wool sweater sleeve on your lap, or sitting with your entire lower body covered by the quilt you are hand-quilting. (Though by that argument, probably thread crochet is the 'coolest' summer craft).

I also think it's because in the winter, my sewing room - which is at the very end of the "chain" of ducts - gets kind of chilly. (Well, it's hotter than the rest of the house in the summer, but somehow that's more tolerable).

I think one of the reason I seem to get a lot of quilt tops done is because I HAVE a sewing room - it's a small room off the room I have as my bedroom. It used to be a screened porch in the earlier days of the house; someone who had the house before me had it closed in (and a walk-in closet built into part of it). The person who owned the house right before me used the room as her bedroom (and I think she used the room I use as a bedroom as an office).

The room's a little small (and too warm in the summer) to be a good bedroom, but it's really nice to have a sewing room. I can leave it as messy as I want to (and yeah, I do need to get in sometime and pick all the fabric scraps off the floor) because no one but me ever goes in there. So I can start a project and leave it when I get tired of working.

Before I lived in the house, if I wanted to sew, I had to set my sewing machine up on my kitchen table (which was also my dining table) and sew there (and sit on the sofa to eat, or take the sewing down before every meal). And when I lived at my parents', I had to set the sewing machine up on a worktable.

And when you have to spend 20 minutes setting up to sew - and budget in 20 minutes or whatever at the end to take it down and put it all away - it kind of cuts in to your desire to work on stuff.

So having a separate sewing room is something I'm really grateful for, because I can just go in there when I feel like working and START. And when I get tired, or when I have to stop to go somewhere, I can just leave it - all I have to remember to do is turn off the sewing machine and shut off the iron if I have it on.

I also think (though this is not the case right now, other than summer school being a "OH man it moves FAST" situation), working on quilts - especially either pressing off fabric or cutting it - is kind of therapeutic when I'm upset about something or irritated over something. I think part of it is simply the fact that it is cutting - it is something that "seems destructive" (though it is in the service of something constructive) and that it requires a more careful level of attention than most knitting does.

The other thing is that you're standing up and moving around (at least the way I cut fabric: most of the cutting I do is done with a rotary cutter), and there are times when I just can't sit still. So it works well to cut and prepare fabric when I'm anxious.

I also pressed off some fabric last night. One thing I tend to do - if I'm not going to use a fabric immediately - when I buy it is I pre-wash it (to make sure it doesn't shrink or bleed, and to get out any excess resins or sizing). And then it goes into a big pile of fabric. (I used to be better about pressing stuff off).

So periodically, I'll take some time and grab stuff out of the giant pile (which is actually more of a mound right now) and press it. And organize stuff, either into groups of fabrics I intend to use together, or sort them by color/theme, whatever, and either put them away in the walk-in closet or stack them up somewhere in my sewing room to use eventually.

Sometimes there are nice moments of serendipity - I will run across a fabric I had either bought simply because I liked it, or for another project, and realize that it will go even BETTER with another stack of fabric I have...so it's always a bit of a treasure hunt when I'm pressing and stacking fabrics. (That happened last night. I have a bunch of "cute" fabrics - including some of the "weird cute" Garden Friends (I have the deer in green, the rabbits in pink, and the orange mushrooms.) I also had some sort-of coordinating fabrics from totally different lines - including a very very cute one with pastel trees on it. I had "finished out" the twelve with a floral print I had had on hand, but didn't really like - it was a slightly different shade of green from the deer background, and while it would MATCH, it didn't match quite well enough for me.

While going through the fabric mound, I found a fat quarter with cute, pastel, anthropomorphized ladybugs and other beetles on it...in the same light pastels as the tree-print and a couple others. So I traded out the not-so-well-liked green print and replaced it. And I think these fabrics are going to be the next-next quilt. It's just going to be a simple, big-square quilt - either 6" or 4 1/2" size finished squares, because the prints are big and it's really the different prints I want to show off.)

I like doing the "simpler" quilts. I think that's another reason I get more done: I tend to prefer (both to make and also the look of) the very simple geometric designs. Part of it is that I don't like worrying too much about things like matching points or all of those little skinny slices like on Mariner's Compass, and part of it is I just like the look of the simpler quilts made with 'fun' fabrics.

And you know, I've sort of accepted that. For years I thought I wasn't a "real" quilter because I didn't have that much interest in doing the really complex stuff, the things that would win prizes at quilt shows. But you know? A lot of the "winning" quilts, when I see them in magazines, they leave me a little cold. They seem so rococo - so much effort has gone into them. They don't feel to me like quilts you can put on the bed, or curl up on the sofa with - it's almost like they are now ART, and they demand something of the owner/viewer. Whereas my little quilts are just QUILTS, and they are "happy" (yes, I anthropomorphize everything) to just fill out their role as quilts - to keep a person warm at night, or to cover someone's feet while they read in a chilly house, or maybe (with the ones I will make for Project Linus) to make the hospital a little less scary for a kid, or to be dragged around and loved.

And while on the one hand, I feel a little sad that maybe I will never enter a quilt into a "serious" show - because when I make quilts with points, they don't always match, and I tend to choose "odd" fabrics, and I like the simpler designs - on the other, my quilts do what they're supposed to do, and that should be good enough.

I finished the most recent quilt top.



The pattern is called "Sparkling Gemstones." It's kind of a modification of the four-patch - the "patches" are rectangular and there are sashing strips sewn right onto the patches - so when you sew them together, the quilt gets sashed.

This came out larger than I anticipated. Oh, I saw the dimensions printed (it is something like 58" by 72" - very nearly twin bed sized) but I envisioned it smaller somehow.

The photo above is not very true to color; I've concluded that very early in the morning, within an hour or two of sunrise, is probably the only good time for photographing quilts in my backyard.

A better photo of the colors is here:



The fabric is (if I remember correctly) Swanky by Chez Moi from Moda. It was a "jelly roll" - a big bundle of strips. (There are supposed to be 40, 2 1/2" strips. My particular jelly roll was inexplicably one strip short, but I substituted a very similar fabric - actually from another line by Chez Moi - for the missing strip.)

The borders are a piece of fabric I bought separately but it is from the same line. I think it was a good choice.

I like the "crispness" of the quilt. I don't often use pure white sashing (preferring to either use a color or something like unbleached muslin for the vintage feel) but I think the white is just right with these fabrics.

I wound up sort-of laying out the quilt - I started laying it out on my bed, got the first eight rows together, sewed them up (because I ran out of room) and then did the last four. I wasn't quite as persnickety as I am with my usual lay out of quilts, because the colors are all close enough and the style is so similar that I only really worried about not getting big "blobs" of blue somewhere, or putting a string of patches with the same fabrics too close together.

Here's the typical corner-close-up, to give more of an idea of the fabrics:



I'm pretty happy with it (I say that about most of my quilts, don't I?) especially given that it's almost big enough to serve as a coverlet on my bed.

I finished sewing together all of the "Sparkling Gemstones" blocks last night. It looks like I will have a few left over (it is 12 rows of 9 for the quilt). I never know what to do with leftover blocks - in some cases, I just make the quilt bigger by one row but in this case it would interfere with the design, and I also think it would make the piece I have chosen for the backing be too small.

So I guess I'll save them. Maybe someday I'll have enough similar-colored extra blocks from quilts to put together into a sampler. Or maybe someone will figure out a "home for wayward quilt blocks" where you can send them - and then someone who needs a few blocks in that color and design to fill out a quilt can adopt them.

(Or maybe I'd have enough for a small pillow top; I haven't checked).

I haven't decided yet whether to do the time-consuming "layout" on the floor, where I try to balance color and design, or to do something I've read about but never actually done - just put all the blocks in a sack, shake it up, and pull blocks out and sew them together (with permission to reject and re-choose if a block is too similar to the previous block). That would be faster but I'm not quite sure I can bring myself to do that; it's not enough control over the finished product.

I did start cutting on the next quilt after I finished the blocks (I didn't have the energy to consider laying them out, and I still couldn't quite bring myself to do the random-grab method).

I chose to do the sort-of-four-patch, sort-of-trip-around-the-world quilt next. This one uses some of the current Mary Engelbreit line (mostly those characteristic "circle" flowers she does) in red, light green, and yellow. I like the color combination; it looks kind of "vintage" to me (in the sense of being mid-century vintage, about the era when my house was built). I have all the fabric for this quilt (except a backing, and I might splurge for this one and buy a big piece of one of the Mary Engelbreit fabrics for it. I think they are still available even though I bought these a few months ago). What I like about the quilt is that most of the piecing is fairly quick BUT you aren't sewing 44" strips to other 44" strips, which gets tedious.

I might do the cutting for this, and then, if I'm still in a "cutting" mood, cut the fabrics for the dog-print quilt I want to do for Project Linus. That will be a quick one with NO layout, because I'm using a very limited fabric palette; once the blocks are done I can just stack them up because the order will be four patch A, plain block, four-patch B.

But now, I have to change the sheets on my bed, and then I'm going to read on some of the accumulated scientific journal articles I have stacked up. And probably knit on the current "simple" socks while I read.

A statement that made me groan loudly this morning:

Weathercaster: "Yeah, it looks like that ridge of high pressure isn't going to weaken any; it seems to be expanding."

%#$&^#*$ dome of high pressure. That is the source of all my summer discomfort. It doesn't rain, it gets hot, and the "high pressure" makes my joints hurt.

I do work off and on (mostly off, this winter) on the Providing Angst to Crowned Heads for More than Four Centuries scarf.



I have completed five repeats on the first section. (There are two sections, each of nine repeats). I like knitting lace when I'm in the middle of it, but sometimes I look at it and go, "Meh. Too tired." And I've also learned not to watch anything very absorbing on television while knitting it...I made a bad mess-up in the previous repeat and wound up having to do some serious fudging. (I think it was during the crux of an episode of "House" I had not seen in its first run).

(What I really need to do is go through my CD collection again and pick out some of the favorites I have not listened to recently, and listen while I knit, rather than trying to watch/trying to find something worth watching).

Yes, you can has Ceiling Cat.

(For those unfamiliar with the Way of LOL, "Ceiling Cat" is kind of the incarnation manifestation* of God in the LOLcat universe. So: Ceiling Cat is watching you...uh, do whatever it is you do).

These are kind of funny, and if I felt like more of the students were in to LOLcats, I'd do something like print one up and stick it up in my lab, with the warning, "Ceiling Cat is watching you slack off!" (or better: "Ceiling Cat is watching you not wash the glassware you used!") But I bet people would either not get it, or would roll their eyes and go, "That is SO 2007"

(*edited to add. I was "looking" for that word earlier and could not come up with it. I do not know whether to be alarmed by that fact or merely to accept that because I have lots of stuff in my brain, stuff gets misplaced sometimes. But I do have occasional "blank spots" where I can't come up with the precise word I want or someone's name - the other day I was trying to tell someone about how Hedy Lamarr was somewhat of an engineer in addition to being an actress (she helped develop a system that could be used for radio-guiding torpedoes) and I could NOT think of her name..."Rita Heyworth" kept popping into my mind and "blocking" my ability to retrieve the name I wanted. I don't know why- the two actresses really do not look alike. But that happens to me sometimes. It's especially scary when I'm up in front of class and can't think of the precise word; I usually have to talk around it.

The thing is, when I'm relaxed and thinking of something else, the right word will pop into my head. As did "manifestation of God" when I was sorting through soil this afternoon looking for invertebrates. As did, for that matter, "Hedy Lamarr.")

I worked a bit more on the Bird's Nest Shawl (I am now 1/10 done with the last repeat of it.). But as it looks like just a big pile of light-brown knitting (and will until it's blocked), no photos.

I find myself torn between the desire to finish up the existing projects and to start something new. Among existing projects I have:

the afore-mentioned Bird's Nest Shawl

the Cobblestone pullover

two pairs of socks

the amigurumi cat

the quilt in the frame

the quilt I'm piecing right now

the embroidered pillowcases

the hand-piecing Grandmother's Flower Garden

the Color-bar blanket

the Airy Cardigan (yes, I still have that, and yes, it's not finished yet. I probably should take one of my weekend days, when I'm better-rested, and do the math to lengthen the sleeves on it, then start it up again...if I got it done this summer I'd have it to wear once it started to get cool in the fall)

the Feather-and-Fan scarf

The Crest O the Wave scarf

the no-longer-clandestine, "Supplying Angst to Crowned Heads" scarf (available for sale on Ravelry. Yeah, not so great as a test-knitter on this one...it's out for sale looooong before I finished it. Though I did pull it out a couple weeks ago and add a few more rows. It's slow going and I keep making #$&#@@ mistakes on it so I either have to rip back (which I HATE on laceweight, especially laceweight that's been "slip, slip, knit"-ted) or fudge it. I don't know how far I am - not far enough. I DO want to finish this but it requires a level of attention of me that I don't really have right now)


I'd love to be super-organized and super-disciplined and say, "I will start no new projects until I have finished these" (except, seeing as the Grandmother's Flower Garden might be a "lifespan" project, that seems too restrictive). And also, it just seems like - I don't know - I'm so disciplined in other areas of my life (hauling my butt out of bed at 5 am to work out when I'd really rather sleep that extra hour, eating spinach when I really want something yummier, doing all my classwork and grading before I can play, working an hour a day on research...) I think sometimes if I got any more disciplined, my head might explode. Or implode. I don't know which.

The good news is that it's Wednesday. Tomorrow is my Friday. If I make it through this afternoon's lab, the rest of the week will be easy.

Chris: Commelina communis.

That site also reminds me that it's a major greenhouse weed; I've been in a few greenhouses infested with it.

There's also some kind of wild grapevine-like plant (but that never bears grapes) that is in my yard that I kind of hate too.

"Why I eyes ya!"



This is the O. Don Piano cat I am making up. I was pleased to find I had eyes in the right size that kind of matched (in color and even in degree of pupil dilation) those of the cat in the original YouTube video.

A couple days ago, Charles posted about some unusual (or rather, fairly usual) spam he received.

I got one today: "Give your meat chance to fulfill its full potential."

I dearly hope that the link in the spam - on which I did not click - went to a site devoted to non-vegetarian recipes. Or perhaps to the Weber grill site.

Slept terribly last night. I don't know if it was an effect of the heat, the humidity, having worked outside for a while (I spent about an hour de-Virginia Creeper-ing the back yard and also broke down and bought eight large celosias as a reward for doing it, and planted them) or having stayed up too late getting sucked into the Internet Hole of Doom (seriously, I should never log on within 2 hours of my set bedtime).

I will present you with a short list of Plants I Now Hate:

1. Poison Ivy. Well, that one's self-explanatory; I think most people hate this plant.

2. Virginia Creeper. Yeah, it's innocuous and maybe even pretty and I think birds eat the berries. But the thing is a destructive evil. Around here, it will EAT houses whole. If it gets into your lawn, you will never get it out again. You will be pulling it off the sides of buildings and if they are painted, woe unto you. (I think I just bumped "get the garage sided" over "get new windows put in the house" based on what the creepers did to my five-year-old paint job)

3. English Ivy. Much the same as Virginia creeper, perhaps a bit less aggressive. But still evil.

4. Dayflower. I really didn't want to put this one on here - it has blue flowers! It's pretty! Yes, but it will also drown a garden if you let it. I spent a large part of the time I wasn't ripping down Virginia Creeper pulling this stuff up. It's like a really bad clingy needy boyfriend; you can't get rid of it and it just looks at you with a mix of sadness and contempt for even trying.

5. Mulberry. Though I think I have to share the hate with the birds that eat the berries and then poop out the seeds in inconvenient places. Where I then have to crawl into to cut down the resulting trees. And you can't pull it out of the ground, even in seedling stage.

6. Nutsedge. But it's normal to hate this, if you live in the Arklatex area.

7. Privet. Again like the mulberry. Incredibly prolific, can't be pulled, must be cut. Shows up everywhere.

8. The mystery plant that my mom says is Ampelamus albidus when I describe it to her (but I'm not 100% convinced). This is a twining weed with milky sap but its main claim to infamy is that the sap smells to me like teenage boy sweaty t-shirts that have sat in the sunny backseat of a closed car for about a week. The first time I crushed some of this while mowing, my instant reaction was, "Dang, I better ease up on the B vitamins or something; they're beginning to make my perspiration stink." Eventually I learned it was this plant - which apparently my neighbor has in his yard and just lets grow wild (and creep over into MY yard).

It is a sad irony that this thing is commonly known as "honeyvine." Ain't nothing honey-like about it.

Of course, it could be that it has some weird chemical that 99% of the human population cannot smell, and I am in the unlucky 1%

9. Any grass that is in my lawn that is not St. Augustine grass. (Some of them may be OK elsewhere, but not in my lawn).

The biggest thing I did this weekend was this:



I finished cutting allllllll the strips for the latest quilt, and began sewing up the patches. This stack represents 65 of 108 (if I counted correctly) blocks for the quilt. The good news is that this is the fun part - deciding what patch units go together and then sewing and pressing them.

I also found a piece in my stash that will work for the backing - it is a very large pink and green floral print (and I do mean LARGE - the flowers are perhaps 8" across). I don't remember exactly where I got it but I have just about 5 yards, which means I bought it with the intention of using it as a backing (and besides, with the huge flowers it would not work so well in a quilt). It's an Alexander Henry print, so I'm guessing I got it at some quilt shop, probably as part of a "take what's left on the bolt and get 30% off" deal, which a lot of shops do. That's usually how I acquire backings - by scouting for fabrics that other people seem to have rejected and that have gone on sale. It helps to have slightly different taste; all the "awww cute" stuff is gone by sale time, and it's the "Well...that's INTERESTING..." stuff is left. But often the stuff that people reject as "interesting" (which is Midwestern Nice for "I don't like that") actually works well as a backing, and a lot of those great big prints are actually kind of fun, and a nice contrast to the smaller fussier prints on front.

I always like finding a piece to use for a backing (or a big border, or whatever) in my stash for two reasons: first of all, I've already made the monetary outlay for it, so I feel like it's "free" to me - or at any rate, I don't have to go out and hunt for something. And it also feels good because it gets a big chunk of fabric out of the stash and into something useful.

I'm contemplating the next quilt. I have several I want to do - those fabrics I photographed last week (I think?) for the Avalon quilt, and I have a pile of Mary Engelbreit prints put aside for a 1930s-inspired pattern (sort of like Trip Around the World but sort of not).

I also spent part of the money I made reviewing a textbook on another Jelly Roll of fabric - this one is called Hill Country Spring and is, as you might guess, Texas-inspired. Lots of wildflowers and a few bandanna prints. I've already decided I am going to see if I can find a red bandanna print to use as the back for this - it's going to be a framed four-patch.

I also have some very cute pink-and-brown fabrics in "dog" prints - different dog breeds, and some polka dots, and dogs-in-purses-and-teacups, that sort of thing. I think I'm going to do a simple large four-patch with those and do that as another Project Linus quilt - it looks kind of "8 or 9 year old girl" to me.

Oh, and I have others. I have little stacks of fabrics scattered all around my sewing room just waiting to become quilt tops. In some cases I have the pattern tucked in with them; for others, they're still waiting on a pattern.

***

I also hand-quilted more on the quilt in the frame, and knit a bunch on the sleeve of the Cobblestone pullover. (It seems odd to be working on a bed quilt and a warm sweater when the heat index outside is 102*, but you do things when you find the time for them). I have four "big" blocks left to do on the quilt, and a few edge half-blocks, and then the borders. And then I'm done! I find I work faster on things when I can actually see the end in site - I get a burst of motivation once I push through the middle of a project.

***

I also got a package Saturday. One of the people I correspond with on Ravelry (she goes by KnittyBe on there) suggested we do a swap of stuff - some yarn, some silly little things. I sent her box out last week, mine came this week. One of the things she is known for are what have come to be called "Nellyphants" - small knitted toy elephants. They are done in sort of the Waldorf school mode, where you knit a flat "pelt" in garter stitch and then, by clever seaming, you get a three-dimensional animal with separate legs and everything.

The Nellyphants are kind of a coveted item, so I was excited to find that she sent me a Nellyphant "kit" - the already-knit-up "pelt," plus beads for eyes and instructions on how to seam it. So I put mine together.



I'm calling him Claude because the colors remind me a bit of the colors Monet used in some of his paintings. (You can see how tiny the sockyarn Nellyphants are).

New word of the day:

Feculent.

Meaning cloudy or murky. My dictionary tells me it is derived from the same root as "feces," which is not very appealing, considering it was used to apply to what happens when you soak cut-up squash in water as part of a recipe for acorn squash sauteed with garlic (which actually sounds rather good and I may start looking for acorn squash [I know, it's not really the season for it] at the market).

(The original source described the starch that comes off of grated squash when you soak it in water as "feculent." Maybe the person who wrote the recipe didn't like starch, or didn't like squash.)

I finished the first sock of a pair:



I had started these over break but kind of stalled on them once I got back. The yarn is called Pacapeds; it's an alpaca sock yarn.

I once said I didn't like the names "Smooshy" or "Yummy" for sockyarn, because "Smooshy" sounds kind of icky (it makes me think of an apple that's sat in the refrigerator for too long) and yarn really ISN'T yummy unless you have some kind of odd synesthesia. (I'm not really crazy about using adjectives normally applied to food - tasty, yummy, delicious - to other things).

But I DO like the name "Pacapeds." For one thing, it tells you what the yarn IS - "Paca" for Alpaca, and "Ped" in that it's designed as a sockyarn.

It's also fun to say. pacapedpacapedpacapedpacapedpacapedpacaped.

But, because it's too hot to wear socks right now - let alone alpaca-wool socks, I did something else that I used to do every summer, but hadn't for a couple of years.

I painted my toenails.



(Yes, that's a healing fire-ant bite between the third and fourth toe. I must have gotten it some day when I was out wearing sandals; I don't go barefoot outside.)

I used to do this every summer but I stopped - I think it was the year I had a really bad sprained ankle (or it may have been a stress fracture for which I never sought treatment - at any rate, I had trouble with my ankle for about 8 months). I could walk on it but it was very hard to flex it to reach the little toes on that side.

The color here is called "Opulent Pink." It's a departure from what I used to wear - I used to use very dark, almost burgundy, reds. (That polish has since been "repurposed" for mark-and-recapture labs in Ecology class).

I've read that darker polish is not quite as good for your nails, and I also decided I wanted something fairly "girly girl" (the color I used to wear was called "Vixen," which implies something else altogether). So I picked this. (It took two coats to get the color looking right.) It's not a perfect job, but it's not too bad. (And I'm pleased I'm still flexible enough to paint my own toes; that was kind of a concern.)

I picked up the nail polish yesterday afternoon at the Target - after doing a couple hours' research, I ran down to Sherman (it was a rare free Friday afternoon - my piano teacher is at a professional conference this week so no lesson) because I wanted to drop off the sock-monkey quilt top and the Ooh La La quilt top - I've had both tops finished for quite a while, but just never got around to prepping the backings, and then I finally did that early yesterday morning before going in to do the research work. (The person who does quilting for me is not open on Saturdays so I have to find time during the week).

I'm also doing something I don't normally do.

We have been having really HOT weather (the heat index is supposed to hit 105 today, though I'm wondering if perhaps the heat-index predictions are a bit like the "baseball sized hail predictions" - something that weather-casters slaver over but that rarely happen). But anyway - HOT. It was already like walking into a Turkish bath when I left the house this morning at 7:30.

I put shorts on this morning.

I own, I think, two pairs of shorts. I almost never wear them.

(Well, for fieldwork it makes sense. Wearing shorts makes it a whole lot easier for chiggers to creep up your leg and bite you in places you REALLY don't want to be bitten, not to mention the risks of ticks finding their way there...)

But I realize the reason I never wear shorts - why I tend to suffer in long pants even on "casual" days when I'm not teaching, even when I'm just running to the hardware store for something - is traced back to something that happened over 20 years ago. And that's too dang long.

At my high school, we were allowed to wear Bermuda shorts (provided they were, I think, no more than 2" above the kneecap?) if we wore blazers with them (Which I realize now, kind of defeats the purpose of shorts: it would make more sense to wear a light cotton dress instead).

Well, one day I was wearing shorts, because it was a hot day, and one of the guys made a rude comment about the fatness of my legs.

And you know, those kind of offhand comments sometimes STICK, even if the person doesn't actually intend them to, or if it's just a "hey I'm going to look cool in front of my friends by harassing one of the less popular kids" or something dumb like that.

But I internalized that remark (to use - GAH - pop psychology terms) and never wore shorts to school after that. And didn't even really wear them in the summer unless I knew I wasn't leaving the house. (To the point of which, if someone said, "Let's go for ice cream!" or something like that, I'd run upstairs to change into jeans).

And this morning - after several days of hot, hot weather (which were dealt with during the school weak by wearing light cotton dresses), I decided: screw it. I'm wearing shorts.

And you know, I'm trying to convince myself of something I heard the other day, in re: matters of appearance you don't have much control over: "The people who matter won't care and the people who would care don't matter." On the one hand - if I stopped combing my hair, for example, I would expect the people who "matter" to say something, because that's an easily rectified problem. But heavy legs - especially when I do an hour of exercise most days and make a decent effort to eat a healthful diet - well, that does seem like something where if someone says something unkind about it, that it's just not very helpful. I can't magically decide to make my legs smaller. (An aside: you know, you don't hear much about liposuction any more. I don't know if it's become more commonplace and therefore invisible, or if it was deemed risky (I have heard of a few cases where either the results were ugly, or the person actually experienced bad complications), or if it's that people who are desperate to be thin-by-surgical-means now just have their intestines rerouted instead)

But at any rate. And for that matter, my legs may be better now than they were in high school - in high school, I made it an effort to avoid exercise as much as possible; now, I do it, not because I love it so, but because I know I am much healthier in many ways when I do it. My legs are not small and slender, but neither are they jiggly.

So I don't know. It's kind of a big step wearing shorts over to my building (even when I doubt anyone else would be in today). It makes me mad - both at the kid (and I can't even remember his name, now) who said that rude thing to me all those years ago, and at myself for letting another person's opinion define me so much.

Not that I'll be going out and buying a bunch of shorts to wear (and I doubt I'd wear them to teach in, even if I was more confident about my legs; shorts seem like play-clothes to me). But maybe I will wear the couple of pair I have more.

Matthew Crawford, who wrote the interesting essay Shop Class as Soulcraft (which I linked to way back when) has a whole book on the topic out. (Yes, I ordered a copy).

He also has a short interview promoting the book up at Popular Mechanics.

One of the arguments he makes - which others also make (including my beloved Mike Rowe, whom I love even more after hearing his talk - someone who is classically educated, but who takes on all kinds of manual labor, and who likes and respects the people who do it*), is that not everyone needs to go to college.

(*If you're a real animal-activist type you might not want to watch the video - or, rather, you might want to watch it with an unclosed mind because Rowe talks about how the supposedly more-humane method of castrating sheep seemed to traumatize them more than the quick and more-violent-seeming traditional method)

That, as a society, we need to promote alternative career paths.

And I agree with that. Even as a college teacher. You'd think someone who teaches at the college level for a living would be all about pushing more and more people to go (job security!), but I've seen too many people who were unhappy and were going to college because of family pressures. Or because someone told them they'd never amount to anything if they didn't. Or because they didn't know what they wanted to do, and their high school counselor pushed them to go to college.

I even once had a student who admitted to me that he was trying to fail out so that he could just go back home and get a job. Because that was all he really wanted.

At the same time, there ARE people who are very geared to go to college - I know I was - I loved the whole idea, I was excited to be going, I even enjoyed (on some level) the hard work and long hours of study. I was motivated to do it for its own sake, or for the internal satisfaction of knowing I had completed it. But I know not everyone is the same way.

And so I do think that trade schools, and apprenticeships of a sort, and learning-on-the-job is very important. And we need people who can do stuff - who can plumb well, or fix a car (in the Popular Mechanics article, he talks about how some places are having a hard time finding decent mechanics. And I know where I take my car to be fixed, the average age of mechanics working there seems to be close to 50).

And I think also - as the original article said - people should care about doing something well for its own sake. For some (like me) that was writing a good research paper (and now, teaching stuff so people can understand). For others that may be rewiring a house the right way, or building cabinets, or cooking food, or playing the violin. (And of course, in my away-from-work life, a lot of the satisfaction I feel comes from knitting clothing, or making quilts, or playing the piano, or even baking bread).

But I don't know. In our culture lately we've become conditioned to wanting the fastest and cheapest, and I wonder if there's still much of a market for hand-built furniture, or real bakery bread, or if most people would rather have something that's not quite so good but is cheaper (and therefore, they can have more of it: my mother talks about how people have more clothes now than she did growing up, because clothing is on average a smaller percentage of a person's paycheck - true, a lot of it is much more poorly made, and a lot of it may come from places with questionable labor practices - but it's cheaper, and so someone can have five pairs of jeans instead of two. And you don't have to worry so much about taking care of stuff. I know I'm kind of an anomaly because I still wear clothing I had 10 or more years ago - but I take care of stuff; I'm careful how I wash it, I mend problems as they come up, and I try not to be hard on my "good" clothes)

I mean, emotionally and spiritually I LIKE the idea of us turning into a nation of craftspeople, where there is care and love that goes into making commercial goods (and things are made here, or at the very least, are made by people who have decent working conditions and are making a decent wage). But practically speaking (especially in this economy), I wonder if it could work, if we could go back to that more agrarian-nation ideal.

But at any rate. I await the book to see how Crawford has expanded on his original ideas. I admit that sometimes these more pie-in-the-sky type idealist books frustrate me (I read one, called "The Bones of the Earth" over break that had me really irritated - one of the author's premises seemed to be that we should go back to small individual stores - grocers and butchers and such - rather than the big "super store" type set up. And my response to that was pure irritation: that kind of thing might have worked a treat in the 1950s when more women were at home. But in my household, I am BOTH breadwinner and bonne femme, and so having to shop at five or six little stores - some of which would doubtless open from 8 until 3, the exact hours I am in class - would be largely impossible for me. And there were a few other things the author said that made me think he was someone who had only ever lived in high density settings - where you don't need a car, for instance - and had never been in the emptier middle of the country where long drives for things are the norm and there's really nothing to be done about it.)

And for that matter, could we not have both? I have earlier alluded to my dream society - a place with plumbers who read Shakespeare because it interests them, or officeworkers who keep a volume of short stories in their desk drawer for odd moments. Or homemakers who study calculus. Or, I suppose, college professors with the quixotic goal of learning to play the piano well, even if they are almost 40 before they start learning...a society where no one is defined solely by how they earn their livings.

This is Thursday's post, incidentally. Until I get used to this summer schedule thing again posting is going to be weird and hiccupy - a couple posts on a single day, and then a day without posts. Apologies in advance to the discombobulated.

Oog. I taught from 8 Wednesday morning until just about 5 that afternoon, with a break long enough to write tests for Thursday. And then I had an evening meeting starting at 6:30.

I did manage to get in a half hour of piano practice. It pleases me how I have gone from absolutely NOT being able to play the first part of "The Wild Horseman" with both hands together to being kinda sorta able to play it. That's what keeps me going back to the piano, even despite frustrations, even despite so very many people being so much better at it than I - being able to see that kind of improvement day to day is a powerful motivator and I find it very rewarding.

(And I anticipate in a few more days, I will be even better at it.)

It's really hard to explain the kind of satisfaction I feel about being able to get steadily better on a piece...it's a type of satisfaction that I don't often get (so many of the things I do, their success or the evaluation of such is contingent on someone else's opinion) and it's something I really crave.

I can't quite think of anything else I have in my life that feels the same way - not even knitting and quilting, because I've been doing them so long and am fairly expert at them, that there really isn't a learning curve any more and it's more a satisfaction of getting something done or being able to see, for example, that I've completed a sleeve. It's not the same as, "Wow, I could not play this at all last week and now I can play it almost without mistakes and close to the speed at which it's supposed to be played." It's not exactly instant gratification but it's as close to instant gratification as I get in my life.

It may be that every week as I sit down at the piano and try to play the new stuff, I go "Oh no, I've reached the limit of my ability. I can not play this. I will never get better than I am right now." And yet I persist, and yet I do get better. It's almost like beating my learned pessimism about my musical abilities every day.

I also scored a minor book win this evening. After finishing up Pickwick the other night, I was casting about for something new to start on. (I am already reading "The Guns of August" - Barbara Tuchman's account of the beginning of WWI - but that's a non-fiction book, and I want a fiction book to read too).

One of the online commentaries about Pickwick that I looked at (I like to read a few commentaries about a novel, especially a so-called* Great Book, after I've finished it) and several of them noted that Vin Reid's "Moosepath League" books were a modern sort of Pickwick tale. I had read "Cordelia Underwood" several years ago (I have four books from the series - don't know if they're just the first four, or if they are the only four; I've not checked to see if the author has written any others).

(*"So called" because supposedly Dickens' novels were the "scandalous" books of their day - some young women were actually discouraged from reading them lest they be corrupted by a, gasp, NOVEL. Makes you wonder what will be considered the "Great Books" of 2150. Makes you worry a bit. Or at least it does me.)

I decided to re-read "Cordelia Underwood" (it's a pretty light book) and them maybe read the others in order. I found the first, third, and fourth books in the place I knew I had left them, but could not find the second - Mollie Peer, which I KNEW I had had, because I had started reading it at one point. Had I given it away? Lost it? Taken it with me when visiting family and left it there?

I felt a little bereft. I went through most of my book-stacks (My books are not organized in any logical way; in some cases I have similar topics roughly together but many of my shelves are the "Oh, I have a new bookshelf - time to get this random pile of books off the floor/off being double-banked on this other shelf"). Couldn't find it.

(I do find, to my embarrassment, that I have two copies of "Glory, Passion, and Principle" - a book about eight women who played some historical role in the American Revolution. As I have a hardback and a paperback copy, I can only assume I bought the hardback when it first came out, shelved it away, forgot it, and then saw the paperback a few years later and thought, "Wow, I want this book." If someone's dying for a copy, let me know...I would be willing to swap or maybe even outright give the paperback copy (it does have a slight ding - the front cover has a minor fold in one corner. Failing that, I might donate my hardback copy to the university library if they think they could use it.)

Anyway, I thought, "I wonder how much a new copy of "Mollie Peer" from Amazon would run?" followed almost immediately by, "Oh noes, what if "Mollie Peer" is out of print?"

Well, I checked. Yes, it apparently is, but there are many used copies. But they all have high shipping and none were eligible for the free 2-day Prime shipping. (Yes, I buy a subscription to that every year. It's one of my few luxuries. But it's so wonderful and I can often get a book from Amazon faster than I can find the time to drive to the Books a Million and hope they have it.)

So I thought, Okay, time to look again.

And a second hunt - this time on the shelf full of books-saved-from-childhood (you KNEW I had those, didn't you?) turned it up. I guess I stuck it there in a fit of cleaning.

So anyway, my set is back together, and I think I will start re-reading "Cordelia Underwood" tonight, with plans to continue on some of my copious (hah) free time this weekend - maybe set up and try to knit on the stalled Cobblestone Pullover sleeve while I read, seeing as it's pretty basic stockinette.

"I reeked of salty bacon and salami, which I found out is actually quite alluring to guys. If you ever need a date, I highly recommend wearing a meat dress".

Perhaps THAT'S what I've been doing wrong all these years...

(Yes, the woman in question literally made a dress of meat. And then wore it to a party.)

*Interesting about how today's Little Dee refers to one of the things I talked about last night.

(I did put eyes on the worm after writing that blog post last night. Now it looks less like a disembodied section of intestine)

*We had a heat index of 85* at 5:35 this morning.

That is wrong on so many levels. The ONLY thing I cannot stand about living in Oklahoma are how our summers get to the point where it will not cool down at night. And it's unusually early for it to be this bad.

I'm already not sleeping well, despite trying to keep my house cooler than it is outside.

*A rather weak, summer-school related joke: "It's only Wednesday and I feel like a whole week has gone by already!" (Regular semester is 16 weeks; summer semester is 8, and we cover the same amount of material. You do the math.

*I'm still trying to figure out the best time to do summer-postings. I don't like going online in the evenings; it eats too much into the limited free time I have (But I'm doing that tonight), also, because of the copious anti-bad-stuff software on my computer, it takes it longer to GET online. (McAfee, in particular, seems to always want to update itself JUST as I am getting ready to do something involving the Web. And because my computer's a bit older and a bit slower, that updating slows things way down.)

*I decided I wanted to start a toy this evening - specifically, Maddox the Mischievous Monster - I had the yarn out, I had the right sized double-pointed needles. And NO PATTERN. Could not find it anywhere. So I figured I'd get the pdf copy I had stashed on my hard drive. Which, of course, meant that McAfee cackled and decided it was time for an update - and then trying to open Acrobat reader while it was going crashed the whole mess. I decided it wasn't Maddox's time to be made yet.

Pity, really, as I had a name picked out for him already: He will be "The Honourable Tootles Ash," which I said a while back would make a rather nice grandiloquent name for a toy. (I did eventually retrieve the pdf file and print it out, which means I'll probably find the original copy tomorrow).

So instead, I decided to start another toy - a crocheted black and white cat out of that "Kyuuto" amigurumi book.

I had forgotten how much a pain it is to crochet with boucle yarn, and how black yarn is even worse. But I will persist, because this toy also has a name already. It will be Oliver Donald Piano, or O. Don Piano for short. (Do I need to spoil the joke by explaining it?).

You know, it's probably a good thing I don't have children, considering the names I give to the toys I make.

*And speaking of ridiculously-named toys - but this one has an "historical" precedent, of sorts, here's another little Hansigurumi toy:

(It was hard to photograph so it didn't look like, um, something I don't want it to look like. And even with this photograph, I'm a little squicked.).

It's the earthworm!



And I named it Clementine the King's Daughter. That is an old family joke...I used to follow my mom around in the garden (and I was young enough at this time that I don't remember the actual event, just being told that it happened by my parents). When she'd turn up a particularly large earthworm, I'd exclaim "Oh, it's the King!" (or the Queen). One day, I declared that one of them was "Clementine, the King's Daughter."

I really don't know where that comes from - for years I wondered if it had been some kind of a bit on Sesame Street (not with worms, necessarily) or some book I had read, but a Google search only turned up one thing related to a French chateau that not only had I never been to, but I had never even heard of chateaux at this time. So I assume it was something out of my imagination.

I've gone back and forth about putting eyes on Clementine. (Real worms don't have eyes, but then again you'd have to name a real worm something like Pat or Chris because worms are actually hermaphrodites and Clementine the King's daughter would also be Clement the King's son, or perhaps the King's/Queen's daughter/son). I kind of like the idea of little embroidered eyes with long lashes (it might also cut down on the slight ickiness of the worm) but I just haven't gotten around to deciding yet.

The start of summer teaching coincided with the start of the summer heat.

It is going to take me a few days to adjust. Our heat index around 4 pm yesterday was 100*. My body does not like humidity.

I also had an evening meeting, for which food needed to be prepared. So I finished one of the half-blocks on the quilt but that was the extent of the craft-work for yesterday.


I did, however, finish reading "The Pickwick Papers." It took me much longer to read the last 40 or so pages than it might - I find that with books I am enjoying, I don't want them to end, so I drag out the reading longer.

I think "Pickwick Papers" has to be the most cheerful of Dickens' works (with the possible exception of the short story, "The Cricket on the Hearth") that I've read. Except for the unpleasant stay in debtor's prison on entirely trumped up charges, the book was mostly one long entertainment.

(And I will say - small spoiler here - but it may be the original "Marriage is breaking up that old gang of mine" story).

The book does change a bit in tone as it progresses - first, it starts off as the somewhat bumptious adventures of the four men (the most-likely-fifty-ish Messrs. Pickwick and Tupman, and the two younger men, Winkle and Snodgrass). Pickwick, while not exactly a fool, is a bit naive (and lovable for that). Tupman is somewhat of a ladykiller; Snodgrass a poet and sensitive soul; Winkle claims to be a sportsman but is a notoriously poor shot.

They travel about, getting into trouble (One of them very nearly has to fight a duel), visiting inns, seeing famous sights, shooting at partridge.

They meet up with the bootblack Sam Weller, who becomes Mr. Pickwick's valet (and who provides considerable comic relief, and is a "man of the world" in contrast to Pickwick's unworldliness). Weller speaks in a rather opaque dialect: I assume it is meant to be some variant of Cockney but I found myself reading bits of it aloud and not being able to get it to sound "right."

Eventually they fetch up at Dingley Dell, home of Mr. Wardle (and his marriageable daughters and their friends).

It is here that Mr. Winkle and Mr. Snodgrass begin to form their attachments.

And the story progresses - as Mr. Pickwick is incarcerated (for a claimed "breach of promise" to his housekeeper who apparently wanted to believe he was offering to marry her) - things happen, things change. Mr. Tupman is seen less and less, Mr. Winkle especially comes to the fore as he woos and eventually wins his Arabella.

Oh, there are still comic moments...but it is almost as if you can see Dickens growing and changing as he writes (I believe this was one of his earlier works?) and the book's tone becomes less picaresque and more serious.

Eventually, it all ends well enough (I suppose): Pickwick, deciding that as two of his young friends are now husbands, the Pickwick Club must be broken up and he decides no more to roam, but to settle in a quiet sort of retirement in a house he bought. (I rather wish the book had closed with the Pickwick club - in some shape or form - continuing and continuing their rambling adventures. But you can't always have what you want, and it was still a good book.)

Whoo-hoo, a whole big linkdump of free online quilt patterns, including some from Funquilts (the people who did the Modern Quilt book I like so much). I'm going to have to surf around on there and see if there's anything I like for some of the many little stacks of coordinated fabrics I have piled up. ("I want to make these into a quilt sometime but I don't know what pattern to use")

*Monday, classes start. I guess I'm ready. I mean, I'm prepared but I'm not sure I'm emotionally ready for 2, 75-minute-back-to-back classes each day.

*I was watering the plants out in the front garden today, using the hose with one of those multi-nozzles (that will do mist, cone, soaker, spray....). The spigot leaks a little so right next to it is a little patch of mud that the robins have discovered. (They use it both as a source of worms and of mud - I guess they're building their second set of nests for the year). While I was watering, a robin came to look at the mud and happened to walk through a bit of the spray. It kind of hunkered down and started fluffing its feathers like they do when they are bathing. So I carefully moved the spray so that the robin was underneath more of it (I didn't point the hose at the robin; I didn't want to hurt it). It stood there and bathed and even started chirping while it did. It was sort of an odd moment...it was probably only about six feet from me. Eventually it got done and ran out from under the water and then flew away.

The only bad thing about robins discovering the little mud patch is that they've begun leaving lots of "calling cards" on my driveway next to where it is. I suppose at the end of the summer I could get the powerwasher out if I had to. I kind of like seeing the robins around and most of them seem to have little fear of me. (I tend to move slowly and cautiously when they're around because I don't want them to get all scare-y, it's neat being able to see them so close up). And of course they eat other bugs as well.

* I finally got all the long strip-seams done on the current quilt, and am now on to the more-fun part - cutting the long strips into smaller segments and sewing those together into sort-of four patch blocks. Even though I've only cut up a few of the strips so far, I did piece together a couple of blocks to see how they look:



I think the white sashing was a good choice; I wasn't sure what color to use but I think the white looks nice and crisp with the pastels.

I have a bunch of other tops I'm longing to start - I have the Mixtape Quilt fabric I've had stacked up since my birthday, and I dug out some old, old fabric (well, old, old, in fabric-line terms, where most lines are printed for only three months). This was from deep in my stash:



It's an early Jennifer Sampou line called "Folklore." I think this is 10 years old now; I'm pretty sure I bought it before I moved here. (there is also a small red and small green check fabric but I figured they wouldn't show up well, it's a black check on a dark color).

Most quilters have a few fabrics that, once they've bought them, they can't bear to cut into them.

This is my favorite one:


I love those hearts. I also have it in red on a navy background.

I had never done anything with these fabrics, because, as I said, I couldn't bear to think of them fractured into little pieces where the impact and prettiness might be lost. Well, recently I bought a copy of "Material Obsession." Most of the quilts in there are applique (which I am less interested in than piecing), but the first quilt in the book - called Avalon - is a very simple quilt: 18" squares of attractive fabrics set in sashing.

And it occurred to me: I could use the fabrics for that! I wouldn't have to cut them into tiny little pieces!

But of course, Avalon takes 12 fabrics, and I have but eight from the line. But this is why a person has a "stash":



I found all of these coordinating fabrics in the stash. The big daisies were bought for another project that I lost interest in, the sort of wild print on the left was a 1930s reprint, the spools was something I just liked (and was on sale). And that last fabric - the bright doesn't-quite-match-with-the-others-but-I'm-still-using-it red with little flowers? It's a small piece of fabric that my mom had saved and gave to me the last time I was up visiting: it is a remnant from a dress she sewed me when I was a child.

(I come by my packrat ways naturally, you see. Of course, my mother, growing up, had to wait for HER mother to remove basting thread and give it to her to sew doll dresses with, so my mother is very frugal about fabric and thread)

I'm going to have to piece it to get an 18" square* but it delights me that I have it and can put it in a quilt. I think it will go somewhere near the center of the quilt.

(*Quilters of old pieced bits together to get bits big enough for patches all the time. I have a vintage quilt top where the person did that, and my mother has several in her collection where there was a lot of piecing-to-get-pieces.)

I also have some butter-yellow (sort of the 1930s yellow) solid color fabric that I think will make good sashing. So this will be (except for the back, when it comes down to it), a totally-out-of-the-stash quilt.

*I'm also working on a new pair of socks. The pattern is called Faceted Rib; it is a slip stitch pattern which means it works up Very. Slowly.

The yarn is Wildfoote, Brown Sheep's venerable sock yarn, in one of the newer "hand dyed" colorways. This one is called "Sonatina":



Here's a close up, less true to color, but showing the stitches a little more clearly:



It also seems to eat up more yarn, but the pattern was written for yarn with the same yardage as these (it was written for Lorna's Laces, which is also 215 yards per skein), so I'm going to pretty much trust it will come out. (And I'm not going to make the tops the full 7 1/2"; I'm probably going to stop at 6" which is long enough for me.)

Clean house yay.

Sunday school lesson done yay.

Most of the annoying errands run yay.

I had my first piano lesson of the summer. The teacher said, "You know, when we finish these books...maybe I should just start you out on, you know, regular sheet music." She also assigned me to start practicing Schumann's "The Wild Horseman." I like being able to play "real" music, in the sense that it's something actually recognizable to people other than those who have done that specific set of piano exercise-books.

(Though I will say one of the exercises for this week - I guess it is to teach the eighth-rest? - is called "Touchdown Tune," which I immediately recognized as a simplified version of "Let's Go Blue," which is sort of the unofficial Michigan fight song (the official one, of course, being "The Victors".) The book coyly lists it as "Traditional" but I feel duty bound to report that the REAL composers are Joseph Carl and Albert Ahronheim. (And yes, I had to Google that to remind myself.) I was once told that when other schools started using the cheer (and it is quite widely used) they had to pay royalties. I don't know if that is still the case.)

It's funny, I was never really a football fan when I was at Michigan - and yet that old cheer makes me happy. I think it's probably because it reminds me more of fall Saturdays spent while my dad was listening to the Michigan games (broadcast by Bob Ufer) on the radio while puttering about the house.

I will also observe that Michigan has one of the more interesting alma maters* that I've heard; so many of the others with which I am familiar seem to use the same tune, and "The Yellow and Blue" is actually distinctive, if perhaps a bit archaic seeming.

(*And that's a .pdf link, there.)

Sadly, I cannot find any reference to the Michiganized version of "Heave Away," which my parents used to occasionally sing when I was a kid. The only line I remember is, "OH! Ypsi** girls are very fine girls, heave away, heave away! With codfish balls they comb their curls, heave away, heave away!" I'm sure it was some old Down East tune that probably some glee club member or fraternity man converted to at least vaguely apply to Michigan***.

(** Ypsi = Ypsilanti, a town near Ann Arbor that I think had a teacher's college, where there was more likely to be a female contingent in the days when Heave Away was written).

My parents were at Michigan in the late 50s; it seemed that a lot of the traditions were still alive then - but they had sadly died back a lot before I got there in the late 80s. A lot of the romantic images I had of what "college life" was like came from my parents; it was kind of a rude awakening to show up on campus picturing something like Norman Rockwell's Willie Gillis at College and find something a bit more closely resembling The Satyricon.

Of course, I suppose it's also possible that they cleaned up their memories of the time somewhat before presenting them to me, especially when I was at more tender ages. And yet, I kind of think there wasn't too much sanitization - at least of their own personal experiences - that went on.)

(*** No codfish balls, but here's the tune, called Michigan Men. Unfortunately it's a bit hard to hear and the videographer is GIGGLING at it and talking during it. Grr.)

I decided to take the morning off and clean house - so I have a nice clean house for the start of the semester. There are a couple reasons (beyond merely wanting a clean house):

1. My piano lessons start this afternoon and I have a slight headache this morning; I don't want to make it worse by hanging over pans of soil that is full of mold.

2. The headache was worsened by the fact that I ran several errands already this morning and Every. Single. One. of them took approximately three times longer than it should. (And I still have the recycling in the back of my car because the city either moved or removed the bins and I can't find any. I'm going to call when the city offices open and ask. I hope the answer isn't "People started throwing trash in them so we are not doing recycling any more.")

Last night I did finish sewing the white strips to the colorful strips for the Jelly Roll quilt. Now (once I have pressed all the seams) I get to sew sets of colorful strips together.

Even though this eliminates some of the cutting I am not sure I like doing the long strip-seams; it takes careful pinning to get them to come out well.

A supposedly fun food I'll never eat again...

My car is in the shop. (This was a planned in-the-shop day; the brakes needed some work - it's a nearly 10 year old car and this is the first brake work it's needed). BUT. Sometimes I've found that leaving the car there tends to slow down the progress of work (as opposed to me sitting fuming in the waiting room).

I was told it would be done by noon. Nope! "We need a few more hours"

Of course, I did not bring a lunch. (And I do not have a loaner car. I live in a small town and none of the mechanics here have twigged to the concept of loaner cars, which would be really nice). And I am in my office building. And no one else is here. And the cafeteria is closed for break. And the nearest food-purveyor is about a half mile down a busy street with no sidewalks.

So, I hit up the vending machine. My lunch was NOT nutritious but at least I tried. A little sleeve of peanuts, a snack cake (yeah, yeah, I know. But when you're stuck with no food access until MAYBE 5 pm...) and a packet of beef jerky. I got the last snack cake and the last packet of jerky. There is almost nothing left in the machine.

I had never tried beef jerky before. Never in my life. It was one of those foods that kind of scared me as a child. But I figured, how bad can it be? And the package trumpets right on the package that it has "PROTEIN!!!"

Um, yeah. It has protein. So does leather. So do wichetty grubs. So does Bovine Serum Albumin.

Beef jerky...it's interesting. I did not know they could make cow so hard and chewy. And this was teriyaki flavor (my apologies to the Japanese for this flavor being used in this way) so my overall impression was: "Oh...my. Salt." I do not like highly salted things. I'm usually the one who doesn't add salt at table.

I know beef jerky is highly touted on those high-protein diets and all, but it's just not for me. I suppose it was nourishing, one can say that (And wasn't that really the original purpose of jerky/pemmican? Not so much to be a preferred food, but to be the thing that kept you from starving when you were trapped in the soddie by a blizzard and were having to melt snow for drinking water and had nothing else to eat?). But really not something I need to eat again in my life, at least not by choice.