Grades are in, I am planning (as one of my students asked me yesterday) on running FAR, FAR away for a few days.

So I'm doing the usual pre "Fermeture Annuelle" (as I think of my August break...though the REAL "Fermeture Annuelle," like in France, is much much longer than what I take*). I'm cleaning house today, and later on (once the dew has dried), I'm going to mow and edge the lawn (we are getting a brief break in the rain showers today so I have a chance to do it. AND it is cooler, so it should be tolerable to do).


(*Honestly, I think six consecutive weeks of idleness would drive me mad. I'd have to take a class or do some kind of home-repair project or something. I couldn't just sit for six weeks. Even knitting and quilting would pall after a while.)

Right now I can do the "big clean" (as opposed to, "this room is driving me crazy, I need to pick stuff up"/"the kitchen floor is all spotty, I need to scrub it" sort of limited-clean I ordinarily do). Part of it is that I have time, part of it is that if the house is clean, ants and other vermin are less likely to come in during my absence, and partly because it's nicer to come back to a clean house than a messy one.

If I can gear myself up for it tomorrow, I'm going to do the same to my office. Or at least get a start on it.

I'm also contemplating what projects and what books to take. I'm almost done with Twelfth Night (I should post on that tomorrow maybe), and I finished the most recent Campion I was reading ("Mystery Mile." And it does come out well in the end and no one dies who shouldn't have to die, which is always a relief in those mystery stories. Though poor Campion does get a bit banged up in the process of saving the world from the Simister gang...)

So I need something new. I had toyed with re-starting "Bleak House" (I read about half of it a year ago and put it aside when something else distracted me) but as it's an old, hardback book out of the collection of Dickens' Works that I bought a few years ago at an antique shop (for a shockingly low sum), it isn't very portable.

So I'm going to have to look at the shelves and see if there's anything new that grabs my attention.

I'm also thinking about projects. Of course I'm going to take the new sweater (Hm, should post a picture of the progress tomorrow, I've already finished the ribbing for the back) and work on that, and the two pairs of socks currently on the needles...not sure what else. I go back and forth between ideas - yarn for toys (I want to do The Deadliest Crab from Knitty and have yarn on-hand for it, and I also have some of the DangerCrafts patterns I want to do). And socks. I have several socks in mind, including a neat fern-leaf lace one called Kew from an older issue of Knitty (and I now have the just-right yarn for them: Lorna's Laces in the color "Huron," which is a mix of blues and greens that should look nice with the lace pattern)

It's really a strange feeling to be (briefly) shed of responsibilities. But I kind of like that. It's good to put the load down once in a while. And Sunday evening, I will be on a train headed north, for not quite 10 days of relaxation, not having to contemplate, "What do I cook for dinner, and how do I make what I want in small enough quantities for one person?" Not even having to drive if I don't want to.

Except for final exams (today) all my summer teaching stuff is done.

And I finished up the last of the soil-invertebrate samples yesterday.

(And I finished both the Bird's Nest Shawl and Cobblestone in the past week and a half).

I feel odd and at loose ends when I have all the stuff I "was" working on done. (Oh, I still have small projects ongoing, and of course the quilt in the frame...but my two "biggest" (in size at least) knitting projects are done).

So I started a new project. I finished winding off the yarn for the Honeycomb vest, cast on, and knit the first few rows.

Yeah. This is gonna be a long-term project, I think. Sport weight yarn on size 3-4 needles. And the ribbing is done in a twisted stitch where you twist not just the knits on the right side, but the purls on the wrong side (eep). I think it will go faster once I get into the main (cabled) section because only 2 rows out of 9 or so are cabled, the rest are just knit and purl (and not twisted knit and purl, either).

I have it along with me for invigilating-knitting.

I have to say there is something I find very satisfying about taking some yarn from my stash (the yarn is the Silky Wool that the pattern recommends, only in a sort of a bottle-green color) and using it. I had bought this last fall on my Mid-Fall Break trip to Stitches and Stuff.

There's also some pleasure in going to my Ravelry "queue" (a list of patterns you want to do sometime) and clicking on "start this project" to move it from the queue to the list of active projects. (I don't keep up with the queue or project page as much as I might, but there is something about them that pleases the more compulsive side of me).

I'm doing a smaller size on the vest than I might otherwise consider doing. I think I bought yarn for the 46" size, but reading the pattern, it points out that the stitch is VERY stretchy (as someone who first made clothes by sewing, and then usually using woven cotton fabrics, I tend to forget how stretchy knitwear is and that negative ease often looks better) and that you should do a size about 3" smaller than you might actually wear, so I'm doing the 41 1/2" size. So hopefully that will be a success. A few of the sweaters I have made have come out a bit too big on me, and I think it's a combination of my sewing experience plus having the "fat girl" message hammered home so effectively to me by society (as I've said before, I am NOT good at discounting others' opinions, even when they are perhaps ill-formed), that I wind up making (and sometimes even buying) bigger, more tentlike clothes.

But the fact is, you really can't disguise what size you are. If you're a big person, wearing loose clothes only makes it more obvious. And while loose clothes have much to recommend them (especially on 90+ degree days), sometimes something more fitted looks better.

So I'm going to try the smaller, fitted size. (I just hope, eight months hence, I am not having to either rip back the entire finished sweater - or, more likely, find someone just a bit smaller than me who looks good in bottle-green and give it to them.)

I finished Cobblestone tonight - everything, ends woven in and all.

I didn't bother to block it; it didn't seem to need it, and also, these knit-round sweaters are hard to block. (Also, it's as humid as stink out there and it probably wouldn't dry for a week).

So here are a couple of quickly-grabbed shots.

(It was hot - really too hot for wearing a wool sweater. And for having my hair down again.)



I'm glad I made the size I did. I did the second-smallest size (43"). Any bigger, I think would have been too big on me.

This was a fun pattern but did get tedious with having to swap out balls every row to deal with the kettle-dyed yarn (Auraucania) which has no real dye lots so you can wind up with two rather different shades if you're not careful.

I do think that although this WAS a pattern designed for men, it looks just fine on a woman. It doesn't scream out "MAN SWEATER!!!" (Or maybe that's just my figure.)



(And yes, when I wear it "for reals," I am going to have a blouse on under it. The typical problem with flash + white underwear happened in these shots. I deleted the ones that were really obviously bad.)

I know I often look like I'm looking down my nose at people in my photos. That comes in part from years of being told by school photographers, "Look up, dear, so your glasses won't reflect." And I will also note - a tiny bit of vanity - when I do angle my chin down I get a bit of a double chin. Oh well. So I go with the slightly haughty pose rather than the slightly dowdy one.

Because of the humidity, other stuff, and the general having-been-reminded-once-again-that-there-are-people-out-there-who-care-little-for-the-feelings-of-others (see yesterdays posts), I was feeling just a little down.

And then someone on the Completely Pointless and Arbitrary Group on Ravelry posted this:



Now I feel better.

I now have just over 3" to go on the sweater. And did Decrease Round 3, which cuts down the number of stitches.

My knitting is slowed a bit because last night I burned myself. I decided I wanted to make tortillas and beans for dinner (after a long stretch of not cooking because BLEAH it was HOT). Well, one of the annoyances with my (electric) stove is that when the burners are on low, you cannot SEE that they are on. And the knobs are positioned such that occasionally, distractedly, I will turn on the wrong burner.

So I was cooking up the tortillas on one burner, trying to heat the beans on another. And I was almost done with the tortillas (had been putting the finished ones on a plate that, because I have NO ROOM in my kitchen, I had set on yet another (off, or so I thought) burner).

And I wondered why the beans weren't heating.

And then I looked at the stove knobs.

Crud. I turned on the front burner on that side when I meant to turn on the rear burner.

And then - OH NO - the plate is sitting on a hot burner! (they are Corelle plates, so they won't melt, but it is possible that that kind of heating may shatter them).

So, without thinking, I grabbed the plate to sweep it back up off the burner, as I turned OFF the front burner and turned ON the rear burner with my right hand.

It was interesting, in that I had discussed reflexes, particularly the hot-stove reflex, with my General Biology class just a few days before. Because as I set the first two fingers of my left hand under the plate (to stabilize it), I realized OW HOT.

But didn't drop the plate - my "must not break limited supply of kitchenware and must not ruin hard-fought-for dinner" overrode my desire to get the HOT away from my hand (It sounds like it took longer than it actually did). A second later I decided that the burner OFF could do no more harm if harm had not already been done, set the plate back down on the burner, and stuck my hand under the cold tap.

It was quite impressive how much it hurt. Even with running cold water over it for several minutes.

I put some Foille on it, could not find the band-aids immediately (I also have a too-small bathroom, so everything gets jumbled up in the drawers under the vanity). So I wound up eating my meal the way they eat in some cultures: with my left hand in my lap (that being the hand with the burns and the burn ointment on it)

It's hard to eat with just one hand when you're used to having the use of both.

After dinner I found the bandages and put a couple on, and tried some knitting, but it did slow things down. (Fortunately, the burn stopped hurting after a while).

This morning, while I can tell I burned the finger, it's not as bad. The middle finger, which got burned worse, has a little patch of stiff skin on it but at least there was no blistering.

If I could figure out how to make the ventilation work, I would totally replace this stove with a gas stove. I learned how to cook on a gas stove and it still makes more sense to me because you can SEE how high the flame is on a gas stove and you can SEE when it's on.

An addendum, because there always have to be addenda (And this is something that bugged me and very nearly made me take the previous post down).

I am NOT saying there is not right and wrong in some matters. If someone said on their blog, "I think the correct way of dealing with a neighbor's barking dog is to shoot the dog," I think most (if not all) reasonable people would agree that that was wrong.

But - so many things are matters of opinion.

And you can disagree with someone without becoming disagreeable.

I guess my frustration is that some people feel empowered to come in to places, anonymously, and be rude - and they suffer no consequences (and apparently feel no guilt).

And the other thing: it's a frickin' knitting blog. It's not Health Care Reform, it's not Voting Rights, it's not the Cambridge Police.

I'm less inclined to voice opinions on here (and as I said, very nearly took that last post down) because I've seen - and this may again be a factor of spending so much time on college campuses, where things tend to get overheated because of the close atmosphere - people who disagreed over little things becoming well and truly disagreeable.

At any rate. I don't want to see a world where the "winners" are merely the people who can shout the loudest and be the most intimidating. Jesus once said the meek would inherit the earth; it seems we are still waiting for that to happen. (If I'm even interpreting the scripture right, which is a topic that in itself can cause tremendous disagreement and much heat without much light).

***

Again, at any rate: I'm happy because my check for evaluating the textbook chapter came today. Yay MacMillan! I didn't think you'd be so fast.

I wish I could get more of that kind of work coming my way; for one thing, it's something I do enjoy doing (and can do on my 'downtime' on weekends and such). And I am good at it. And it's decent money for the work. And I suppose my working over the textbook chapters does make them better.

Sometimes I feel a little guilty taking the money - I am sure in part the generosity of textbook publishers towards reviewers drives up the price for students. But then again - wouldn't it be a bigger rip-off for the students if they got textbooks that were full of errors and were badly written? I really shouldn't feel guilty for taking money for something I am diligent at and do well.

The check came at the perfect time - I can cash it and use it for travel money (I need cash to tip the car attendant and the waiters on the train, and it's nice to have some pocket money with me in case I see something I want to buy).

The internet is weird, and I don't understand people. Part n in a series.

Apparently there is some kerfuffle going on over at the Yarn Harlot's - I wasn't aware of it, as I haven't been reading that many blogs lately (and even then mainly stick to the ones in my own personal sidebar). But apparently the author of the blog said something that someone interpreted as insulting (and again, I'm not trolling the archives of the blog for the supposedly-inflammatory comment, and it will become clear why in a moment). Anyway, some anonymous commenter basically called her an America-hating witch-with-a-b (The Yarn Harlot is Canadian) and continued to escalate.

You know what? Blogs are OPINION. Blogs by and large belong to the person who writes them. It's like inviting someone into your living room. So I don't really care what she said that set the commenter off, and I don't really care what the commenter said specifically. (To quote my mom: "I don't care who started it. I want to see it end now." And yeah, yeah, you don't give in to bullies, but still.)

Oh, bloggers say stuff I disagree with. Some of them say it all the time. If a blogger consistently rubs me the wrong way, I'm going to stop reading them, unless they are like the Best Writah Evah! (and even then, I might stop reading).

But...and this may be just me, I don't know - I'd never leave a nasty abrasive comment on someone else's blog.

Because so much of what's on blogs is opinion. And, to clean up slightly a phrase my dad has been known to use: Opinions are like armpits. Everyone's got 'em, but you don't necessarily want to know all about them. (And some of them stink).

So, someone says something I disagree with, my major inclination is to shrug and go, "their experience is not my experience." Or, if I really feel the need to post a comment, I'll say something like, "I see it differently because I experienced XYZ..."

Or if it's a matter of a fact, something that can be checked and verified, and I really think a correction is important, I may gently say something along the lines of, "Do you really mean..." or "But Noted Authority says..." But in a lot of cases, meh, I let it go. It looks pedantic to correct someone who's wrong, or at least it does a lot of the time to me.

I guess my attitude in the face of what I view as wrong-ness or an ill-formed opinion is more one of "You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means" instead of coming out, brandishing a broadsword, and declaiming, "My name is Iniga* Montoya. You insulted my father! Prepare to die!"

(*Attempt to make the feminine form of Inigo)

I don't know. I tend to be more retiring - to sit back and try to listen to all sides. Oh, I know, I jump to conclusions on stuff and probably my opinions are oft' as ill-formed as others'.

(And another issue: without facial expression and tone of voice, it's sometimes hard to divine what someone's attitude is. Even for people like me who are a bit more Rain-Man-y and don't always interpret facial expressions or tone of voice RIGHT, it still helps to have some kind of a guidepost. As much as emoticons are despised, they do sometimes help with that, someone saying something that could be seen as abrasive, SOMETIMES if they finish it off with a winky ;) face, then it changes the interpretation enough. Not always; a clever emoticon is not license to say passive-aggressive things and then go "BUT I WAS JUST JOKING!!!" when someone calls you on it. And sadly, I know a person or two who will say borderline-mean things and then call Pax by claiming they were 'just joking.')

But somehow, coming onto someone's blog and going into a little Tasmanian Devil flurry of anger and wrongedness because of something the blogger said - which was almost certainly not directed at you - seems kind of, well, unseemly. (And of course we don't know the commenter's backstory, but I find myself less likely to do the old "they may be worried about a relative in hospital" routine, which I sometimes use when someone cuts me off on the highway or something, as a way of preventing myself from getting angry. Because if you're preoccupied by stuff, are you going to be dreaming up nasty comments to leave on websites. I don't know. Maybe I'm falling into the trap of dehumanizing the rude commenter)

(And I realize how much this attitude of mine - of trying to avoid conflict and not be too inflexible to hear what others are saying - sometimes makes me ill-suited to be on a college campus, because there are times you do need to speak up for stuff and just grit your teeth and know that people are going to get angry - and in a lot of cases, extra angry because the stakes are so small. I was chair of a committee on campus for a couple years and had to give it up because the conflict was literally making me ill.)

But you know? As much as I bemoan having few commenters (and apparently, few readers these days), that's probably actually preferable to having some Anonymous waltz in and insult me.

Because it's funny: as much as I've said "I'm not thin-skinned," that really only applies with friends and family. If I know someone pretty well, I'm able to forgive and forget easily: "Oh, that's just Ronnie being Ronnie." or "I know she was having a bad day that day." Or "She's really worried about what's happening with her daughter, that's why she lashed out." But with the semi-anonymous world of the Internet, we don't always have that backstory (which would make it harder for me to forgive - and easier to be hurt by - what seem like random snarky comments). And also with the semi-anonymous world of the Internet, a person can hide their identity a lot.

And the simple fact is that some people do seem to enjoy being rude. Stirring the pot (to clean up yet another phrase a little bit). But because that's a bit out of my ken, I tend to not realize immediately, "Oh, it's a pot-stirrer" and instead obsess over the random comments or the things that may have been said for the sake of sowing discord (And how you do anything is how you do everything: the crux of my discomfort with student comments). I tend to take the stuff people say at face value; I am not always good at discounting someone else's opinion even if folks more objective than I look at it and go, "What he's saying about you, it's crap."

And I do get hurt if someone that doesn't know me well says something unkind. (There could be a whole new version of You Don't Know Me - which incidentally, I think is one of the saddest pop songs I know - written about someone who's been anonymously insulted). Because there's no recourse! If it's someone you know, you can take them aside, and say, "Hey, did I say something that upset you?" or "When you said that thing to me, did you really mean it in that way?" or, if you're braver than I: "Why did you say that to me?!?" With anonymous drive-by commenters, you're left saying to the screen, "But I'm a REALLY GOOD PERSON. Really. YOU DON'T KNOW ME." And it's frustrating and I admit it's the random anonymous rudenesses of life that get me down a lot more than the people I know saying stuff to me - because the people I know, like I said, there's backstory, or the chance to kind of go quietly to them and ask for a better explanation, or you can maybe kind of sort of take it as "constructive criticism" (though so often what people CALL "constructive criticism" seems to be mainly aimed at making them feel good and you feel bad).

(And then there's the whole issue of people teasing you and riding you hard BECAUSE they like you. That's another thing kind of out of my experience - I come from a family of extreme introverts, and that kind of teasing - which still feels borderline mean to me and I never know how to react to it - is something out of my experience. I've been told it's a "Southern Thing," but I really don't think it exclusively is. I think it's just something I didn't experience growing up so I'm not used to responding to it in kind)

I don't really know where I'm going with this, other than that I look around and feel like the human race is becoming more fractured and fragmented and it seems to be increasingly easy to see another person as an obstacle or a "thing" rather than another human being. And that makes me sad and also a bit worried for the future of civil society.

Ellen: Yes, I am originally from Hudson, Ohio. (My folks live in central Illinois now: long story short - my dad took early retirement from one university post and then took a different one). I haven't been back to Hudson in 20 years. The only yarn shop I remember, I remember as being kind of stuck-up (they actually REFUSED to sell me two balls of yarn out of a lot for a project, and rolled their eyes when I told them what the project was. I'm sure part of it was that I was a young teenager at the time). I bet the one you saw is a different shop, though - the one I remember was uber-traditional and would never deign to have "funky" in their name.

***
I'm actually thinking now of starting a different Potter-themed project (though may STILL start the Invisibility Cloak). I found a pattern that I printed out quite a while back that was an "inspired by" scarf - inspired by one Remus Lupin (played by David Thewlis) in the third movie. (Pattern is here, and I may print off a new copy because it looks like the author has made it more easily readable than my copy).

I will admit to having a wee bit of a literary crush on Lupin, at least as Thewlis played him in the movie, and so I would like a version of the scarf.

The author of the pattern (first name is "Dale" so I am not making any assumptions about gender) noted that the scarf is at best a recreation, because the scarf from the movie was a dark charcoal color and was hard to see.

I have (not quite enough, possibly, but there's a way to modify the pattern to make a shorter scarf) nice brown "Country Silk" by Cleckheaton - which is a very nice yarn (I used it for the pink Clapotis I made).

I've said before how, though I'm maybe a bit disinterested in the more raving sorts of fandom - I doubt I'd ever dress up as a favorite character EXCEPT maybe for Halloween or if there were a big costume party I was invited to - I kind of like that there is this whole underground movement of people out there doing stuff like this: writing patterns for scarves resembling the ones the Hobbits wore in the LOTR movies, making up stuff to correspond to Harry Potter, all of the Nintendo-themed stuff (on Ravelry there's a really wonderful afghan made of solid-color granny squares, done of Mario in his raccoon-form. And it's not just an afghan, it's done in the "outline shape" of Mario (if you're a Ravelry member, you can see it here).

In a way, these things are kind of like fan fiction, but by needlecrafters.

(And yeah, I know, a lot of people malign fan fiction and some of it is poorly done. And I'm not crazy about the idea of some of the types of fiction where the characters are taken to, um, "places," where they otherwise probably wouldn't go...those of you who know a bit about fan fiction probably know what I'm euphemistically getting at here)

And realistically, no one will know when the scarf is done what its inspiration was. But I'll know. And just like I once described the fluffy blue scarf I made as containing some kind of "sympathetic magic" (because one of the yarns in it was named "George Bailey," after what I consider to be one of my big personal heroes among movie characters), I'll feel maybe a little more comforted with this scarf around my neck, seeing it as a touchstone to a movie series that I enjoy and that I can use as a sort of an escape.

I wound up nursing a headache for most of the day. I think this is because there's a cold front (which is going to become a stationary front and then drag through the other direction) parked just north of me.

And still we got no rain. I gave the garden a good soaking, and I hope we'll get decent rain this week.

I have one tiny watermelon - it's about the size of a "shooter" marble right now, but it already has the characteristic stripes on it - and I'm hoping it will continue to do well and develop. I'll have to find if any of my watering timers are still working and hook one up for when I'm gone.

(Because this time next week, if all goes as it should, I will be ON THE TRAIN going to my parents' for a short visit. I can't quite believe it but boy darn, do I need a break. Summer is always a drain on me, partly because of the heat, and partly because of the sheer pace of the classes. Going twice as fast is not fun, especially if you don't have a Time Turner.)

In the midst of moving the sprinkler about and nursing a headache (and doing piano practice is not fun with a borderline migraine, and I did notice that my dexterity was clearly compromised...just as I go somewhat dyslexic and sometimes even a bit aphasic when I'm in the midst of a migraine), I did work a LOT on the Cobblestone pullover.

I'm within about 4 inches of being finished. I'm working my way up the yoke. I've done two of the five decrease rounds (which are spaced 1" to 2" apart) and about half of the shortrowing needed.

I'm excited to be close to done with this. I definitely want to get this done before my break (and I think I will be able to, seeing as I wrote and typed up my final exams on Saturday, and the big chunk of grading - the research papers - is already done).

I think I've re-found my interest in working on bigger knitting projects, which was temporarily misplaced (I actually think my interest in knitting, period, was misplaced for part of the summer, probably evaporated away in that string of 110* days we had). I think part of it is finishing stuff. When I feel like I'm getting "nothing" done (and that counts at work, too), I feel kind of disinterested and at loose ends and don't want to work on things.

But then, when I feel like I'm accomplishing stuff (and I am, at work, too - I am more than half done with analyzing the soil organisms in the current set of samples and am well on track to being done by my break - another little goal I had), it energizes me and makes me want to work harder on stuff.

So I think it was finishing the Bird's Nest Shawl that did it - that got me energized again (at least for working on knitting). Maybe starting the soil-sample survey also helped, I don't know. (And getting the finals written and the big papers graded helped).

My next "biggish" project is going to be the Honeycomb vest from Knitty (Ummm... Spring 2008?). It will be nice as a travel project in that it is more portable than many sweaters. And hopefully it won't take too long, seeing as there are no sleeves (though there is all that cabling, and no matter what anyone says about it being faster, I am not comfortable cabling without a cable needle, so I persist in using one).

Haven't really decided on a "next shawl" project. I still have the "Providing Angst to the Crowned Heads of Europe..." scarf from TChem's pattern, but that seems like a longer term project for times when I can really concentrate.

I have yarn put aside for "The Spirit of the Southwest" shawl (a shawl with "pictures" made in lace yarn-overs - sunsets and jackrabbits and the like) which I've been wanting to do for years. And I am considering yet-another Clapotis out of some shiny pretty rose-and-green yarn that came cheap from Elann. And also, my attention is drawn by the "Invisibility Cloak" in the Harry Potter Knits book (that last one I was reminded of as ABC Family is doing one of their periodic "Harry Potter Weekends" - showing the first four movies in a long string).

I like the idea of the "invisibility cloak" (though I suppose one could argue that as a 40ish woman, I may already have my own sort of "invisibility cloak"). And I have some lovely cobalt-blue laceweight yarn I could use for it. (but meh, it's the cobweb-type yarn, which I always find harder to work with than the "jumper weight" (like fingering weight) that the Spirit of the Southwest would take. Maybe if I used a bamboo needle instead of metal? Cobweb yarn is extra-slidy and I always worry about dropping off stitches)

One thing I have been picking away at is getting out all the various patterns I've bought as single-sheets, or bought and printed off via the internet, or printed off from free pattern sites, and compiling them and putting each pattern in its own sheet-protector (dang, those things get expensive, though - but if you invested as much as $6 on a pattern, it's probably worth it for it not to get torn or otherwise wrecked) and then I'm going to organize them in binders (I did that once upon a time, but now I need a separate binder for each pattern type, instead of just one for all of them). So I may find a shawl pattern I decide I have to make RIGHT NOW that will displace the other ones I'm contemplating.

I had a checkup with my allergist yesterday. I waited 45 minutes past the scheduled time of my appointment- for a checkup that took maybe 12 minutes. (Sigh.)

The good news is that everything looked fine (ears, nose, throat, what they could determine of heart and lungs from listening, plus glands - and no evidence of thyroid problem, at least from a manual exam). I also lost 2 and 1/2 pounds since my gyn checkup in May.

That's HUGE for me. I know 2 1/2 pounds in 2 months sounds like NOTHING for the super-dieters, but trust me: I've been in instances where I actually really *dieted* - like, went HUNGRY for stretches of the day and was cranky and miserable and obsessive and kept a food diary (a good idea for some but I think not for me) - and dropped maybe 5 or 7 pounds in the span of six months.

The only differences I can point to is that I've been more active, gone at a faster speed on the cross-country ski exerciser, and I've been trying to eat more nutritious food. Not LESS food, simply more nutritious food. (I think some women get themselves into this problem where they ratchet down their food intake so much, that their metabolism goes down and their body conserves calories).

(I will say, as I was wandering through the Hobby Lobby after my appointment, my Rational Scientific Mind kicked in and said, "Wait...couldn't that scale just have been calibrated differently? Couldn't it just read low relative to what your gyn's scale read?" Shut up, Rational Scientific Mind, you just killed my buzz.

I finally concluded that (a) it is unlikely a doctor's office (using one of the old-timey push-weight scales) would be THAT far off, (b) I was dressed more heavily this time (Why, oh why, won't they let us take off our clothes to be weighed? That would eliminate the "I was wearing heavy shoes" issue) including big clunky trainers instead of the little strappy sandals I wore for the other appointment, and (c) most importantly, it DOES look like my waist is a bit smaller. Which is the part of my anatomy I worry most about. The size of my bust, I figure I can't do too much about short of reduction surgery, and the size of my hips, I just don't worry too much about (word up, Sir Mix-A-Lot). As long as I can continue to fit into my clothes, I just don't worry about the hips.

But the waist, yeah, I worry about that. Both because I used to be able to boast of more of an hourglass figure than I currently have and also (mainly, I will claim) because of all the medical stuff that says "fat on the butt and thighs, not so bad; fat in the gut, bad"

So I'm assuming the little loss came off my waist; as I said, I THOUGHT I noticed that it was getting a bit smaller.

Oh, yeah, I'm still technically FAT (though the doctor said nothing about that; I suppose it's out of an allergist's purview), but I figure as long as my body functions the way it needs to (and trust me, it does: I can climb up on my roof to get the leaves off of it, I can cut brush for a couple hours without a break even in hot weather, I "outrun" my students in the field, stuff I take for granted being able to do, other people claim is "strenuous") I'm not going to worry too much.

though it was nice to see the needle go down for a change.

(oh, and another rationalization: Maybe I've lost even a little MORE; I know I am retaining water at the moment. (And I'm kind of jumpy/anxious. The one thing that was out of whack was that my blood pressure was a little high; the nurse asked about it and I told her it was normally normal or borderline low, but that it was "that time" and I was feeling anxious and she just kind of nodded and made an agreeing sort of noise.

Speaking of which, I don't feel so great right now. I think now that I'm done typing exams I should go home and put something more comfortable than jeans on (it got HOT here again) and lie down on the sofa and knit and find something amusing to watch on tv.)

One of the pieces I am learning for next week is a (simplified) version of Londonderry Air, better known to most as "O Danny Boy."

Which of course gives me the excuse to post one of my favorite bits from the Muppet Show (at least among those I can find on YouTube). This invariably makes me giggle.



(Yeah, yeah, I know SNL did something similar with Tarzan, Tonto, and Frankenstein's Monster, but I think the Muppets did it first.)



(And apparently they have continued their singing careers:

)

And more Beaker, because More Beaker is like More Cowbell:

The bird's nest shawl blocked to a larger size than I thought it would. It's pretty enveloping; very long for a stole (somewhere over 7 feet) and it's plenty wide enough.

Perhaps the chambray dress I was wearing today was not the best background for it, but I'm in kind of a hurry, so here are the "action" shots:



This was an attempt to re-create one of the Cheryl Oberle poses with the shawl (except she didn't have her eyes closed in her photo). You can see how big the shawl is here.

I like it; it's kind of plain in color but I think it will work well over a number of things.

This shows the triangular lace pattern a little more clearly:



You can see it's asymmetrical; two repeats of the triangle hard on each other's heels, than a few rows of plain stockinet, then another triangle. I don't know if that's a specifically Tibetan design (maybe the triangles are supposed to look like prayer flags?) or if the only "hook" to the culture is that the original was made of cashmere.

(Actually, upon reflection, I LIKE the idea that the triangles might be designed to represent Tibetan prayer flags.)

You can really wrap the shawl around yourself.



(There are more photos in my Flickr stream, but I feel like these were the ones that came out the best. Taking photos with a timer is an iffy proposition some times - hence the photo with me with my eyes closed.)

Bird's Nest Shawl is DONE!

I finished it last night - knit the last few rows, wove in the ends (and there were EXTRA ends to weave in, seeing as a couple of the balls of yarn had knots in them that I had to untie and then start the end anew), soaked it in lavender-water, and then set it out to block:



I'll post "action" shots of it being worn as soon as it's all dried - possibly this evening.

This was a fairly nice knit to do - not tiny little yarn, and a pattern that wasn't so complex you needed a whole bunch of tools to keep track of it. (I just used a row-counter and a post-it note on the pattern showing which row I was doing). It is also one where the patterns are "separate" (where they don't flow into each other) so I could set off each segment with a stitch marker to keep from making mistakes.

The yarn is Elann's "Far East Collection" pure camel hair yarn. The original shawl in the pattern was made using cashmere, but there's no way I could afford/was paying for cashmere. The camel seems like a reasonable compromise.

The shawl will be very warm; I could tell that when I had it spread out on my lap to tie in all the ends.

Oh, so close.

I have five garter stitch rows remaining on the Bird's Nest Shawl.

I could not force myself keep going and get them done last night.

XKCD so often has something intelligent to say about...well, about almost everything.

Here's their take on dreaming, considering my discussion of nightmares of the two days past.

Yeah, that pretty much sums it up. Dreaming is kind of weird, when you think about it, or rather, our mundane acceptance of it. (I once told someone I had never done drugs because the dreams I had when I was sleeping normally were weird and scary enough, and I didn't want to risk doing anything to make them worse.

They're promoting a new show heavily on Discovery: "The Colony." Apparently it's a semi-reality show, featuring people trying to survive after a (simulated) end-of-civilization scenario (something about a virus and a political coup?).

As interesting as I find the concept of going "back to the land," as intriguing as the idea of trying to live off the grid is to me, I don't think I'll watch. The ads alone give me the fantods. It's set in a gritty, urban warehouse district (my back-to-the-land dreams focus on something like the side of an Alp or a meadow in the middle of a forest). And it's really starting from scratch - electricity is all gone, food is only what you can scrounge.

In my off-the-grid fantasies, I am still at least somewhat employed, money still is useful, there are still things to be bought. I would not be having to barricade myself in my house and defend my last few canned goods and my stash of wool from marauders. (And there wasn't a massive human die-off to get there. That's another idea that creeps me about the show)

And there are other people, other random survivors, in The Colony. And apparently you have to depend on them, however unpleasant they may be. (Satre's definition of Hell, right there).

Again, in my wooly little fantasies of running off to a flowery mountainside to bake my own bread and raise goats, there are other people - but I don't need 'em, except when I have to hike into town to buy more flour, or when someone hires me to do some writing/proofreading/however I make my living for them. I don't have to LIVE with them, especially live with them when soap is a distant memory.

It's funny - I'm surprised how visceral my reaction to the ads is. On one hand, I admit the intriguing quality of trying to see how modern humans would try to survive in a world where there is no support structure (no electricity, no running water...). On the other, the whole imagery of the ads tells me I'd be having giant nightmares after watching one episode of the show.

And maybe it's a horrible thing to say, but if civilization ended - I mean, really and truly ended, not just us going back to a more agrarian way of life (but with t.p. and vaccines and books still a possibility), I really honestly think I'd rather NOT be one of the survivors. Because I know I'd spend the remainder of my days daydreaming of a time when we had air conditioning. And when there was chocolate. And when you didn't have to chase down and kill your food before eating. And how I used to be able to come home from work, take a nice shower with good smelling soap, and then sit down and knit under an electric lamp while water heated on the stove to make tea with.

I like my little comforts too well to want to imagine a world without them. While there are things I'd happily give up (plane travel, for instance), there are other things that, if I had to live without all of them, I'm not sure it would still be able to be called "living," what I was doing...

I think I figured out the source of at least part of the distressing dream I wrote about: I am reading one of the Campion books (it's the second one in the series, and continues part of the thread of the first: there is an international gang of criminals that go after what they want, and will not stop at killing people and such to get it. It's all very vaguely (intentionally, I think) written, which makes it more distressing to me to read - it's like, you don't know much of what's going on, you don't know who's on the right side or the wrong side, you don't know exactly what's up. And as much as I love the Campion books, these earlier ones just are NOT as enjoyable for that. Right now there's an American judge who's been kidnapped, and also the young woman who is (with her twin brother) caretaker of the house where Campion had tried to stash the judge to protect him (he knew something about the gang).

And I guess, part of is is that kidnapping is one of my little irrational fears. Some years back, my dad was scheduled to go to Colombia to evaluate a geology research program at a university there - this was at the height of the kidnappings of Americans. He had his passport and everything. My mom kept pressuring him not to go, I felt the same (but felt it was not my place to say anything). Finally, at the last minute, he decided not to. And I grew up in a time and a place where there were a few high-profile kidnappings (mostly of young girls, and most of them turned out as badly as you might guess). So I guess it's kind of an old, ingrained fear - perhaps not as old, ingrained, or visceral as needles (I had a bad experience with a penicillin shot at 3: don't remember it but still can't take a vaccination without closing my eyes and flinching). But it's there, and it rears up at odd times.

I think also the story plays on another discomfort I have: the fear of being betrayed. Of trusting someone and finding out they were not who I believed them to be. And while I've never (thank God) been in a situation to be betrayed to an international gang of criminals, I've suffered the usual (perhaps a bit more than the usual, in a few cases) examples of people not living up to what I thought they could. And so reading about it reminds me too much of the old friend-betrayals, even going back to early grade school, or that time that one guy laughed in my face in public over something he ought not to have laughed at, or people I trusted to do something crapped out and left me holding the bag...

So maybe I need to shift over to either my WWI book or to Twelfth Night for a while.

(And this particular reprint of "Mystery Mile" - it must have been scanned from an old copy, it is positively LOADED with stupid typos that any competent proofreader would have caught. Typos drive me up the wall because I am just obsessive-compulsive enough to notice them, be bugged by them, and be yanked out of the realm of the story by them. I'm not QUITE compulsive enough (yet) to go through and circle every one in red pen and send the book back to the publisher (Felony and Mayhem Press, which normally do a good job) with a sternly-worded letter about how they have gotten sloppy and a request that if the book is reprinted, to kindly fix the errors I have noted. One big one I keep bumping into is "hail" instead of what should clearly be "hall," which is what leads me to think it is an scanned-and-uncorrected copy of an old manuscript or edition of the book).

****

I just could not get the last few rows done on the Bird's Nest Shawl. I got all the pattern rows done (and had the happy task of picking out allllll 18 or so of the stitch markers I used to separate repeats - that's a relief). But I'm on, I think, row 47 (I go up to row 50 in stockinette, and then do 12 rows of garter before binding off). And I just ran out of steam. I was so hopeful to get it done - even had a place cleared off ready to block it on. Well, maybe tonight.

****

I do have the yarn wound off for the Honeycomb vest, which I have decided is the next thing I want to knit. For one thing, I feel the need of some cabling (which this vest has, in spades). And for another, I want something more readily portable that doesn't weigh a ton (like the Cobblestone does, right now). And I just really like that bottle green yarn that I bought for it. This is definitely going to be one of my "over my short break" projects.

And it's going to be an attractive vest (or so I hope) when finished.

It's a real joy to be able to start a new project.

****

Oh, I am so ready for that short break. This has been an exhausting summer semester for some reason. Very likely because I had a higher proportion of people with Bad Problems (medical issues, family issues, job issues) that required make-up work or some other kind of concession. And while it's part of my job to pave the way a bit to make it easier for people (at least people with Problems that are not at all/not entirely of their own making), still, it wears on a person to do that. It's like having a lot of children needing care. Or something.

(Though I will admit less sympathy for the folks with Problems that are of their own making - like bad procrastination or people who cheat)

I wish I remembered the moon landing. Much is being made of it but I am a total blank. (I was all of five months old, so while I was technically here...my memories don't "start" until about 3 or 4.)

Still not quite sure how the conspiracy theorists keep believing it's a conspiracy. I suppose believing yourself to be privy to special knowledge others are too dim to see is a powerful enticement. (Just like the Gnostics...)

****

Standard disclaimer: I know it's the height of bore-blogging to recount your dreams, but this one still bugs me. I actually had to get up, put on the light, and sit and watch The Weather Channel for about 15 minutes to get rid of it sufficiently to sleep again.

I was living in a big household. The household was divided into different loyalties. I don't mean like baseball fans and football fans, or even Republicans and Democrats. I mean, loyalties like at some appointed time in the future, one group was going to kill the other.

And I had knowledge of this. But, I didn't know quite where the loyalties lay or what group was "in the right" (and therefore, should be the one I threw my lot in with).

I knew that there was information, important information (I think that the group that won was then going to go out and wreak havoc on the rest of the world?) that needed to be gotten out of the house to others. The information, inexplicably, was coded into quilt tops. Kind of like the old legend about certain quilt designs being indicative of a house participating in the Underground Railroad, only these were more like coded messages in the color scheme and arrangement of the patches. I had stolen the quilt tops, and had folded them up and tucked them under the bed in the room where I was sleeping. (In retrospect: how much smarter to tuck them between the mattress and box spring, or fold them and stow them in the pillowcases). Anyway, I had gotten into the bed and was getting ready to go to sleep, hoping no one knew I had them, hoping I could make my escape the next day.

Then, the spooky part...in the dark-ish room, I saw a small shadow disentagle itself from the bigger patch of shadow on the floor - and run out the door of the room. It was much smaller than a person, but not with the proportions of a baby or a child. And it was bipedal and clearly humanesque, so it wasn't a cat or a mouse. I couldn't figure out what it was and wondered if it was some kind of a spy.

I woke up shortly after but was so spooked by the image of that little dark shadow (which, in fact, may actually have had no corporeal body...it was shaped something like the "black doll" that shows up in some of Edward Gorey's work, only, it wasn't solid, in some way...it was like a walking shadow). I had to get up out of bed just to forget that.

(That happens to me from time to time. None of my "bad dreams" are very "bad" in the traditional sense - no monsters, rarely natural disasters, never showing-up-to-work-in-only-tatty-underwear. They're more like Twilight Zone bad dreams, where there's some little psychological thing that gets to me and makes me seek the light, if only for a few moments).

I went back to bed and at least the other dream I remember from the night was better: I was participating in an episode of Mythbusters; it was called "When the Cat's Away" (i.e.: when Jamie and Adam are away) and it was an all-build-team episode (mostly focusing on Grant, but that may be because he's my favorite of the build team). I don't remember what the myths were but building robots was involved.

Looking up details on this I feel considerably less panicked and despairing than I did after hearing the blurb on the morning news:

"EXERCISE LINKED TO MEMORY LOSS IN WOMEN!!!!"

Crikey. Just...argh. I have no words. (To use the reported-cable-tv-euphemisms that someone on Ravelry used: Monkey fighting! Monday to Friday!)

Seriously, how you get from "women marathoners or women who play pro basketball may have a slight memory decline in old age relative to other women" to "OH NOES EXERCISE WILL EAT YOUR BRAIN!" is a leap of logic I don't want to take.

I really totally understand why some people mistrust science, if their view of it is how it's reported on the news.

(See, I exercise. I suppose what I do is "moderate," though some days it feels like more than that. And I've been doing that for YEARS, being told, "This is a way to keep from dying younger than you might want to die." So being told that exercise is potentially bad for me - well, just pull the rug the rest of the way out from under me while you're at it. Tell me that people with advanced degrees are waaaaay more likely to develop Alzheimer's, that knitting CAUSES stress, that eating green leafy vegetables will give you cancer for sure.)

Gah. It's really too bad that the cartoon channel is showing idiotic Pokemon at the hour I'm getting ready for work. If they were showing a cartoon I'd actually want to watch*, I'd watch that instead. And probably walk out into the world as well informed as I would be had I watched the local news.

And yeah, yeah: CARTOONS WILL EAT YOUR BRAIN!

(*an increasingly rare event on Cartoon Network. Where have all the PowerPuff Girls gone, long time passing? Where have all the Yogi Bears gone, long time ago?)

****

I am really close to done on the Bird's Nest Shawl. I think I have two of the eyelet rows left, then a bunch of plain rows, then I can bind it off and block it. I've already cleared a place to block it.

I don't know that I'm going to immediately start another shawl; for one thing, I want to finish the Cobblestone pullover. And I pulled out, and started winding off the yarn for, the Honeycomb vest from Knitty. The only problem is I have not a long enough size 4 circular. I'm going to try a size 3, which I do have, on the thought that there's only a .25 mm difference between the two - probably not enough to matter. (I'm beginning to wonder if they lie to us a bit about the insistence of getting spot-on gauge; knit fabric does stretch, after all). And besides, the size I'm making would be a tiny bit bigger than what is suggested (they want 4" negative ease - it's supposed to be THAT kind of a sweater - but the closest size will only give me some 3" of negative ease.) So a slightly smaller needle really should not matter, as long as it gives a pleasing fabric.

Well, one piece of good news: One of the women I go to church with (her name is Jocyle) had had open-heart surgery back in June. (She had gone to the hospital expecting to get a stent, wound up with bypass surgery). Just as she was starting to get better, she got pneumonia and was in the hospital for a while.

I hadn't seen her in a long time - since before her surgery, in fact. She was back today, finally.

It is amazing how good she looks. Oh, I don't mean "amazing" that she's up and around after all that - "amazing" in that she looks 5-10 years younger than she did before the surgery. Her son had told me "her color's a lot better than it was" but I hadn't realized how bad she must have been feeling before the surgery (because she never SAID anything) - she's gone from sort of sallow-looking to a very nice pink-and-white complexion, which I guess was her natural state before she got sick. I guess the artery blockages were really adversely affecting her circulation. And her face, which always looked kind of drawn, has filled back out. She looks so healthy. It really made me happy to see her. I hope she continues to enjoy good health; she looked like she was feeling really good today.

It's always great when medicine can give someone that kind of improvement.

Now I just hope Jean, another woman I know from church, does as well after her knee replacement tomorrow.

So, you might ask: How does it work, resetting "Twelfth Night" to late 1800s Louisiana?

Quite brilliantly, in fact.

The play was very good. (I don't know how all Shakespeare festivals are, but for ours, we have some "outside talent" come in - I don't think our theater department would be large enough to sustain four or five plays, done on tight rotation, anyway. There are a number of actors who come back year after year - the man playing Malviolo last night was the lugubrious cop in last year's "Guys and Dolls).

I may have seen Twelfth Night years ago - the girl-dressed-as-boy theme is familiar, as is how the whole thing is unravelled at the end - but that version was clearly not as good as this version.

Ilyria has become "Ilyria Parish." The lovesick count (who was played wonderfully well by the actor doing him) was sort of a nouveau-riche shipping magnate (that's how Antonio's arrest could be worked in). The Fool was a Yankee (I believe the actor playing him was from New York; he let some of what may have been his natural way of speaking shine through, and a number of the characters referred derisively to him as "Yankee.") Olivia, for much of the play (well, until she started to fall in love with "Cesario") wore the old-timey full mourning that a woman in the South of that era would have worn. Viola and Sebastian, while they did not look greatly alike (the actor and actress playing them), were dressed the same (in top boots, dark pants, cap, and a blue sailor's jacket) and they spoke much the same (they, in contrast to most of the other actors, spoke with a "neutral Midwestern" sort of accent - actually, rather like I talk. Except I do not talk in blank verse.)

Accents were used to great effect in this play. I once said here that in England, you could guess someone's social class by their accent, but not so much in America. I rescind that statement; I see now how the Louisiana accents were used (from the almost-impenetrable argot of Captain to the better-enunciated (but still clearly South Louisiana) speech of the Count). Several of the actors in the production actually WERE from Louisiana, so perhaps they had heard the accents more frequently and they were certainly good at doing them, they rang very true. (I am assuming the actors do not normally speak Cajun-style.)

There were clear differences between how the servants spoke and how the upper-class spoke (well, except for Malviolo, who seemed to put on airs and sounded like a Louisianan trying to sound British).

Incidental music was provided by a three man Cajun band (guitar, squeezebox, and that plastron-thing that fills the role of a washboard). They stood over to one side of the stage, under a "gaslamp" near Orsino's balcony...the whole play was done without changing sets; one half the stage was Orsino's balcony and porch, the other half was Olivia's house (balcony and veranda), but it also played the role of the tree that the "conspirators" hid in to watch their prank on Malviolo begin.

(O poor Malviolo!)

All of the actors were good, though I found that the love-struck Count Orsino (who got the chance to chew the scenery just a little bit (but not enough to not seem right)), and Sir Toby Belch (Fat, drunken, lecherous, joking old planter-type), and Malviolo were particularly good.

Oh, and the Fool was good as well. When he played "Sir Topas" (pronounced "Topaz" at least for this production) he did a very fine parody of an old-timey Gospel preacher. (Malviolo, rather than being in an asylum, was sitting out "on the dock of the bay" in the dark and fog (they actually used a fog machine), which was a rather effective change from the original play).

He also played the guitar and sang. Rather than the songs in the original play, he used some traditional songs: "House of New Orleans" made it in there, and at the very end, "Jambalaya" was used as the ending music. (in that case, the three-man Cajun band played along with him)

There were a few little changes here and there - mostly of proper names ("Boudreaux' bedchamber," for example) and the scene before Sebastian and Olivia plight their troth was rewritten to imply they had spent the night together (and all that includes). (And Sebastian was given Mardi Gras beads instead of a pearl). And the priest was given a few lines, something about shriving Sebastian, I think?

Two of the male roles (Valentine and Fabian) were given to women: Valentine was a maid, and Fabian was - well, I'm not sure what SHE was, she hung around with Toby and didn't seem very respectful of Olivia if Olivia was in fact her mistress and employer. (Those switches may have partly have been to give enough "partners" for the dancing at the very end - everyone out on stage (the two couples, all the servants, Belch, and Aguecheek) went into the traditional zydeco-style dancing to end the play)

My only complaint, if I may have one? The accents, wonderful as they were, at times made it harder for me to understand what was being said. I know I missed some of the wordplay because I was distracted by the odd-to-me way that bayou people have of pronouncing some of their vowels (to my ear it sounds like they start out doing one - say, an "a" - and it ends up as another, say an "o"). But that's a minor quibble, and I can certainly read the play to catch what I missed.

In fact, I do think it will be my next Shakespeare read.

I know that that "Scientists for a Better PCR" thing is really just an ad for Bio-Rad, but it's still one of my favorite things on YouTube.

I show it to my students once in a while, though I realize it kind of dates me, because it's a take-off of We Are The World, which was produced around about 1985, which is (gasp) well before many of the students I have (especially in my non-majors class) were born. (Though I suppose it's still occasionally shown on the music video channels?)

I find this parody fun partly because of the fun of guessing who the people are supposed to represent. I can pick out people who are supposed to be:

Lionel Richie (I THINK that's who the first African American guy is supposed to be, but he doesn't look much like him. Sounds more like him than he does like Michael Jackson, though)
Willie Nelson ("You had to grow tons and tons of tiny cells" Hah, I love that line and the way he delivers it)
Madonna (?) (The blonde in the cowboy hat - or is she supposed to be Stevie Nicks - was Stevie Nicks even in the original? She does look more like Nicks than Madonna, even Madonna circa 1985.)
Bob Dylan
Whitney Houston
Aretha Franklin (maybe, I don't know)
Simon and Garfunkel
Quincy Jones (I think that's who the African American guy in the sunglasses and vest is supposed to be, rather than Stevie Wonder. He acts/sounds more like Jones to me)
Huey Lewis

I always crack up when the guy kisses the PCR at the end. Though I suppose there are some lab-types who feel that grateful for their modern technology.

see more Engrish

And they can use PCR to find out who the daddy is:



(And before anyone lights into me for posting an "Engrish" funny and making fun of people for whom English is not the first language: I will openly observe that I could not write as well in, say, German as the authors of that fortune are writing in English. I think the humor (such as it is) comes from the fact that there is an actual saying that is "Necessity is the mother of invention," which I suppose translated into another language and forced back into English* could read like that)


(* Famously, Mark Twain allegedly found a copy of his jumping-frog story translated into French, and then back-translated it. (The link is to Google books, so I cannot vouch for the entire story being complete; for "copyright" reasons, Google often omits pages. Though I think Twain is now in public domain. The "back translation" is at the very end of the book.)

While there are a lot of good things about modern times (antibiotics, vaccines, greater rights for women, the Internet), sometimes I still wonder if I was born in the wrong era.

Lynn posted the other day about 19th century "personal" ads:

ADORED darling. - How dark my life without the light that you shed upon it, how cold without the warmth of your love! Dearest on earth, my heart languishes for the rich treasure of your love. Longing to see you, if no other news, will be this evening same place as last time. Kindly grant my request. Remember, sweet, noble soul, you are my everything in this wide world, and I press you in my arms as I worship you.

Seriously, if a fellow honestly, truly, and seriously put that in a letter addressed to me - well, while I wouldn't necessarily offer a blanket "yes" to whatever he was requesting, I can say that the answer would be a lot more LIKELY to be "yes."

Ah, to have someone who felt like that about you. (And yeah, yeah, my cynical side is saying that it's so much shaving cream, the side of me that still harbors some romantic hope cannot help but be charmed by that passage - and really hope that the ADORED darling of the gentleman in question said "yes" to his proposal)

Oh "hai,"*

I finished Julius Caesar the other night. Standard spoiler warning, but (a) I doubt there are few who don't know the story and (b) you don't read the play for its suspenseful outcome anyway.

So I'm going to give a few random scattered "beginner's mind" impressions on this. Understand, I know about as much about Shakespeare as I know about changing the oil in my car (I know how to do it in theory and could do it if I have to, but I prefer to leave it to the experts). So if I sound like an idiot or if I'm restating the eye-rollingly obvious, please forgive me. But these are things that struck me:

- Although the play is about him ("you're so vain, you probably think this play is about you"?), we see very little of Caesar. And we don't hear from him at all until Act II. So most of what our impression of him is from Brutus, Cassius, and others. (And that impression is not so good).

- The reason Cassius gives for why Caesar must die: "He is too ambitious." This is an interesting thought, living in a time and a place where overweening ambition is often seen as a GOOD thing, and not-being-ambitious (or even being somewhat modest) brands you as a bit of a loser. Considering the times when the play was written: Elizabeth I was, from what I remember from school history, quite ambitious (at least as far as keeping the throne and not sharing power overmuch was concerned). And wasn't there some question about who would succeed her, seeing as she was the "virgin queen"?

- I kind of knew about the civil war that took place in the vacuum of power after Caesar's death (though hadn't he sort of appointed Antony to be his heir?). But I wasn't prepared for the level of carnage and people running their own selves through.

- That's something very different between ancient Greece/Rome and modern Western society, no? The idea of suiciding when facing defeat or dishonor in some way. (Although Brutus, maybe it was partly in response to Cassius' death).

- I presume Act IV, Scene iii, is the origin of the (sadly, little-used now) interjection, "Great Caesar's Ghost!"

- I still find Cassius' motivation interesting: yes, he is essentially a republican at heart, but it seems to me that his envy of Caesar - and his feeling that Caesar is weak and unworthy - also play a role.

- Brutus seems more honorable (and perhaps less bright/conniving) than Cassius

- I wonder if the Pennsylvania/Ohio pizza chain "Noble Roman's" took its name from the description Antony gave Caesar of Cassius ("...he's not dangerous/He's a noble Roman and well given"). Yeah, I feel kind of ill-read for not realizing that before.

- I have to admit I was surprised at how sad I felt at the conclusion of the play. So many people died. (Oh, I knew the basic historical outline. But it is somehow different when it is characters you have been "hearing" speak for many pages.)

I think I need to read one of the comedies next before either re-reading King Lear or tackling Henry III.

(*it amuses me to use a LOLism in a discussion of Shakespeare).

Here's another one for the tea lovers:

One of my relatives (one I never met; my mother told me this) used to have a saying:

"If the water not boiling be, filling the teapot spoils the tea."

I don't remember if it was my great-aunt, or my great-grandmother (my grandmother's mother, whom my mother described as "full-blood Irish, down to the red hair") who said that.

I'm sure it's one of those "old sayings" that lots of people know, but I had never heard it before.

I like that saying and often think of it when making tea. And I keep thinking I should sit down and draw up a little "sampler" sort of thing to embroider with that saying and perhaps a couple of teapots on it.

Wow, here's a new one, I think.

I got an e-mail from a "Mary Mueller." Now, I vaguely know someone by that name, but anyway, it's a vague acquaintance at best. I can't imagine the person I know e-mailing me begging money. But the e-mail is pretty brazen:

Hello,
How are you doing ? I hope you are doing fine, I'm sorry that I didn't inform
you about my traveling to England for a Seminar.
I need a favor from you as soon as you receive this e-mail because I misplaced my
wallet on my way to the hotel where my money,and other valuable things were kept, I
will like you to assist me with a soft loan urgently. I will be needing the sum of
$2,500 to sort-out my hotel bills and get myself back home.
I will appreciate whatever you can afford to help me with, I will pay you back as
soon as I return,I'm counting on you on this,Kindly let me know if you can be of
help so I can send you my details to use when sending the money through western
union.I look forward to read from you later today.
Your reply will be greatly appreciated.

My sources say: SCAM.

I'd be tempted to email the person back with a curt, "Have you tried Traveller's Aid?" except I know that would then register my e-mail as a "live" one.

The e-mail I received said, "I need your help." in the subject line. The Mary Mueller I know is involved with one of the churches in my region...so I thought maybe it was going to be a request for something like, "Save your empty paper towel rolls for VBS crafts" or something. But no, it's a poorly-worded plea for money.

The thing is: it's just on the veriest verge of plausibility...I had to think quickly before deciding it was a scam. (oh, and the header information looks suspicious.) It's e-mailed from a Hotmail account, no idea if they crack down on scams at all, so it hardly seems worth forwarding.

Oh, and the Mary Mueller I know speaks less stilted English than that - "Soft loan"?

But I can totally see someone less cynical/less knowing than I falling for it - especially if they knew someone well by that name.

I never mentioned the outcome of the two stabbing cases that had me worried last week.

Case #1: suspect still apparently at large, but they are now saying it was not a "random" crime. (It was also briefly mentioned that the wife of the man killed had an ex, but apparently he is deployed in Iraq.) So serial killer = unlikely.

Case #2: Still may be a "domestic." Man stabbed another man after an argument. The paper says the argument was about "sexuality." There are a great many things that could mean; I am assuming the paper is being as euphemistic as possible about it. So again: serial killer = unlikely.

(And that last reminds me of the old dictum about how in polite society, you never discussed politics, religion, or sex. Though I doubt Emily Post ever said that you faced the risk of being stabbed if you did.)

At least now I feel like I can go out and move the sprinkler around without having to look nervously over my shoulder.

But still, two stabbings in one week in a town of ~12,000 is a bit worrying.

I finished the sock monkey quilt binding last night:



I'm really happy with it; it's very bright and colorful. As I said earlier, I'm going to keep this quilt close at hand for those times when I'm sad or feeling ill (lots of people I know, as kids, had some "special" blanket or quilt. In my own family we had an extremely heavy green crocheted afghan - I think it was made of the old Red Heart wool yarn - that was used in that role. Not sure what became of it; bugs may have eaten it up over the years).

This is a close up of my favorite fabric in the quilt; it's like a portrait gallery of different sock monkeys:

Interesting: a chakra/charka* improvised from a cardboard box.

I still harbor vague fantasies of learning how to spin, despite not having time for another hobby and despite my few experiments with a drop spindle not going very well.

(*sources seem to disagree on how this should be spelt. I've seen "charka" in some serious fiber publications, but Craftzine blog uses "chakra," which is also the word for the "energy centers" some yogini believe in.)

"Strong, milky, and sweet."

Seeing as my British/Scottish forebears (at least what I know of them) were mostly working-class, perhaps that's why I like my tea like that in many cases. (Maybe it's my Irish forebears that make me drink the Lady Grey "straight"? How do the Irish prefer their tea, anyway?)

I also like that how in a lot of the "Golden Age" British novels, the standard treatment for some kind of life-shock (from minor domestic issues to finding a dead body in the gardener's shed) was a strong hot cup of tea (with or without milk and sugar). Of course, tea is a stimulant, so if someone's already jittery, I'm not sure how much it would help physiologically, but it seems to psychologically.

I also understand that tea - its availability and provision of it in shelters during the Blitz and such - was a necessary part of British morale during WWII.

I also like white tea, which, like the green tea, I drink without sweetener or milk.

And then there's the whole issue of what one should eat with tea. I tend to be of the opinion that tea is best with fussy little sandwiches and a nice impressive three-tiered stand of tiny baked goods (fancy bar cookies, cream puffs, little scones) but of course I never have that on hand, so if I eat something with my tea it is more likely to be a shortbread cookie or something like that.

A few times in my life I have been able to go to a tea room for the full treatment. It's lovely but sadly happens very seldom. (Some day, some day I am going to go to a city that has a Ritz hotel and take tea at the Ritz.)

I also like dunking windmill cookies (one of my favorite types of cooky) in hot tea. But that seems less refined than the type of tearoom-tea I'm talking about; it's almost nursery-food behavior.

It always intrigues me what topics generate lots of comments.

Who knew putting sugar or milk in one's tea could be controversial? (Though as I said, I have met a few Britons who claim that the "only right way" to drink tea is with a little milk and no sugar).

Actually, what I take in my tea depends partly on the tea. Chai is pretty much the only tea I consistently put milk AND sugar in.

Green tea - no milk, no sweetener. I tried green tea with honey in it once and didn't like it at all.

Lady Grey tea (another of my favorites): no milk, no sugar. It tastes best to me that way.

Other black teas: sometimes take them black, sometimes put a little milk in them depending. Or, I will often put lemon in them. Especially if it's tea in a restaurant or on the train and they're using semi-generic tea bags, which tend to be a bit more astringent - somehow the lemon ameliorates that.

Herbal teas (well, the few that don't contain chamomile, which I'm allergic to): no milk, no sugar, and I usually steep them longer than recommended because herbal teas are so weak.

Oh, and the "Coconut Thai Pearl" or "Sweet Coconut Chai" or whatever Celestial Seasonings is calling it now is a decaf black tea - but it also has a little rooibos in it. I've never tried rooibos straight (from what I've read, I'm not sure I'd like it), but it's good mixed in black tea.

I did try the "crazy easy" eggroll recipe I posted about last week (go here for the recipe). They are really pretty easy and they are good (I personally think they are better with olive oil as the oil, rather than the spray stuff - I tried it both ways).

Note there is really very little detail of amounts given in the recipe. I used one of the regular-sized bags of coleslaw, and 8 ounces of raw mushrooms, and maybe an equivalent amount of bean sprouts. I put in maybe a teaspoon and a half of ginger, and cut up 2 cloves of garlic for them.

I did probably put in too much soy sauce; I find soy sauce tends to overpower things. When I make them again, I think I'm going to try a combination of rice wine vinegar and the toasted sesame oil (and very little of that) in place of the soy sauce (and that would also be lower in salt, if that's a concern.

They do cook up just fine after being kept overnight in the fridge; it remains to be seen how they are after freezing but I cannot imagine it would greatly negatively affect them.

I used plum sauce at first as a dipping sauce, then used a mild (more traditional, not that bright red syrupy stuff that some restaurants use) sweet and sour sauce later. I think I liked the sweet and sour better.

****

One of the pieces I am learning for this week is a (greatly simplified and arranged) version of the chorus from "New River Train." And I thought, I wonder if that's the New River Train that runs through the New River Gorge in West Virginia.

Apparently, it is:



It's an old bluegrass song. (I had never heard it before and from the arrangement couldn't tell if it was bluegrass or blues). I think I like it a little better knowing now that it hails from the same state that I originally do. (It's not my favorite arrangement of something ever.)

(I was born in the University hospital in Morgantown, W Va, but moved to Ohio at four months when my dad took a new teaching position).

***
I'm slowly sewing down the binding on the Monkey quilt. Even though it's hot and I'd rather not have the whole thing in my lap to work on it. But I'm motivated to finish these quilts so I don't get a bunch piled up in need of binding like I sometimes do.

***

I hope I can sleep better tonight. Last night, I don't know what it was, sometimes I think when it's hot out EVEN WITH air conditioning, I just can't get cool enough to sleep well. I was sleeping in about 2 hour shifts, then waking up and being awake for a while. (It may also have been the pajamas; I bought some really cute pajamas but they have an Empire waist which, while it looks very cute, has a seam that tends to put a bit of pressure on the rib cage and that bugged me, I think).

So tonight, I took a shower, used lavender soap (it's claimed to have soporific qualities though I've never really noticed it for me), avoided watching the news, put on a clean (and loose everywhere) nightdress, and hopefully will be able to sleep better.

I also made an effort to eat more protein today. It's funny, in the summer I find I crave protein-rich foods (or maybe it's just iron-rich; maybe I'm anaemic). That's not the case in winter when I tend to want more carbohydrates. So I bought some sliced beef and had that along with a big spinach salad for dinner.

And I also made an iced chai tea (or, "masala chai," if you want to be really correct. My sources say that "chai" is just the Hindustani (IIRC) word for "tea," so if you order "chai" in many Indian restaurants you get just plain tea, and "masala" is the spice mixture that makes what Westerners think of as "chai" into chai.)

I used a HUGE tea mug I have (I rarely use it because it is ridiculously big) and did a double-strength infusion of my favorite decaf chai: the Celestial Seasonings "Thai Coconut Pearl" (it may be called something slightly different now; they had a major redesign/renaming a month or so ago). And then I added sugar (which scandalizes a couple of my British friends: I put sugar in my tea! Well, at least in chai) and some cold milk and a bunch of ice (the reason for the double-strength infusion).

And oh, was it good. I realize now that one of the things I had been missing these hot days was my daily cup or so of tea. I really especially miss chai, which is one of my favorite things to drink, ever. But maybe as long as I have ice on hand, I can occasionally make myself one.

Thanks for the nice quilt comments.

Lydia, what I call a "lunch kit" is just an insulated bag. The one I has has a separate zippered lower compartment - I presume that's either where you can stow your tuna fish salad sandwich (if you like tuna fish, that is) so it doesn't stink up the rest of your lunch. Or, for someone like me (who doesn't like stinky food), it's a place where one of those little "blue ice" blocks can be placed to keep things cool.

Oh, and I think I am going to hand-quilt the "Avalon" quilt - I'm probably going to do some kind of large semi-intricate design (maybe a many-petaled flower?) in each big block, and one of those linear designs (which look kind of like Celtic knotwork) in the sashing.

I finished another quilt top. (And I realized that if I want to take outdoor pictures, I have to change the settings on my camera. Yeah, it's been a while since I took "serious" outdoor pictures, like for research...)



This is "Avalon," from the Material Obsession quilts book.

It's a super simple pattern - just big squares with sashing - but with the right combination of fabrics, it's very effective. I am really happy with this. I used the Jennifer Sampou "Folklore" fabrics that had been hanging out, loved but unused, in my stash for some 10 years.



The colors in it make me think of Scandinavian folk art, or perhaps something Heidi would have on her little bed up in the Alp-Uncle's (that's what he was called in the translation I first read) loft.

It makes me happy.

It is, as I said, a very simple pattern - it would be good for any fabric you love but don't want to cut into tiny bits, because the squares are so large. (The pattern calls for 18" squares, but I wound up doing 17", thanks to the wonky way some of the fat quarters were cut. I suppose you could also re-configure doing more 12" squares, or you could do a child's-bed sized quilt using 14" squares).

This quilt would also be nice made out of flannel. I've never done a flannel quilt (I get warm enough with regular fabrics) but I do know that flannel is stretchier (and ravellier) than plain cotton and so simpler quilt designs work better for it.

I think this pattern would also be cute done in Christmas fabrics with either a coordinating color (red, green, or gold) as the sashing, or perhaps a plaid sashing.

And this would be a good first-quilt pattern - either for a beginner-adult (it goes fast, and the seaming isn't that hard) or for a child learning to make quilts.

I also think it would make a good 'simple' top to be done for Project Linus. (I should dig in my stash and see if I have any packs of 12 fat quarters that are too juvenile for me to want to use for myself - having now set the precedent that the ONLY baby for whom I am going to make a quilt is the hypothetical baby of my brother and sister-in-law, and that hypothetical baby may never actually happen...)

But anyway: it delights me that these fabrics have now found their purpose. This may just be another quilt top I keep to hand quilt for myself. (I really do need to get back to the quilt in the frame, now that I'm stacking up "next projects" to hand quilt)

***

I'm writing up the final stuff on the chapter this afternoon. It was generally OK save for a few really awkward places (Apparently it's not only scientific journal articles that can be bastions of opaque writing) and a few places where more clarity is needed (Type II diabetes is NOT solely the fault of "poor diet" and that kind of thinking frustrates me; it's just part of the OH NOES OBESITY idee fixe, IMHO).

But hey. About 8 hours of work....it's about $25 an hour, which seems pretty fair. Not quite "consulting" wages but considering that I was able to do most of it sitting at home in my comfy armchair listening to Brahms on the stereo...

***

I did a bit of shopping along with getting the quilt tops on Friday. I had one of those 10% off Target coupons that you get for using the Target visa card (which, I hasten to add, I pay off in full each month to avoid the rather high rates of interest such cards can carry).

They already had school supplies out. I'm sure it makes kids groan about it being too early, but seeing the school supplies made me feel a bit better, thinking of a time when it would be below 105* outside and when the rain comes back.

I did buy a new lunch kit. My old one, which I'd been carrying since grad school, was really battered and had reached the point where washing it, while it might improve its hygienicity, doesn't do much for its appearance.

I briefly considered one of the Hello Kitty kits on display; they had one that was actually in the shape of her head (the zipper ran from ear to ear). But I decided against it, on the grounds that it was really too small to accommodate the cup of yogurt and cup of fruit or salad and crackers and boiled egg or cheese stick and bottle of water that I carry. (Oh, yeah, I suppose it probably lacks sufficient gravitas for someone who may be bucking for Full Professor in the coming year).

So I bought a plain one in a similar style to what I have now. (Except the new one is pink. I have to make SOME concessions.)

Turns out "arrange a time to pick up quilts" = "I'm not going to necessarily keep regular shop hours in the summer."

Yeah, once again my fears were unfounded. So the top made from the "jelly roll" of strips (this one) is down there and will be quilted for me.

And I have two finished quilts to bind. I might do that this weekend, or at least do the machine-stitched part of the binding and then work at the final bit of handsewing as I have time.

I'm happy with how both of them came out. The Sock Monkey one, in particular - I'm really pleased with it. I think I'm going to keep it somewhere handy for when I'm feeling ill or when I'm sad about something: it's one of those quilts that I think will have the power to make me feel better, just because it's so bright and funny.

I have another quilt in progress: I got all the 17" squares cut for the Avalon quilt, and have the strips sewn together (it was fast to lay out; there was really only one arrangement that looked good). I do still need to piece the rest of the sashing and then sew the quilt together, but this one is nearly done.

I think the next one will be a top for Project Linus: I have some very cute dog-print fabrics and I'm going to make just a simple top with it. I haven't decided yet whether to have the top quilted (and pay for it; that gets expensive when you make a lot of quilts), or whether to tie the top and make it a comforter, or whether to see if the places that take the quilts will also take just completed tops, and then have someone else do the quilting or tying.

But first, I need to finish the textbook chapter I agreed to review. I'm about half done; I did a lot on it last night.

Ever had one of those days where about half of what you say comes out wrong and makes someone irritated with you, or when you seem not to be able to communicate?

Sometimes I wonder if there's something wrong with me; about 3 or 4 times a month I have a day where I wind up inadvertently ticking people off with stuff I say. It's not on purpose and I don't realize they're going to react badly.


see more Lolcats and funny pictures

Well, there has been no further news of stabbings. (And the one that apparently happened most recently, absolutely nothing about it anywhere - so either it was a Bad News Error, or else it was a "domestic" and therefore beneath mention).

Also, some have commented how the fatal stabbing (the first) happened in a part of town known to be high in crime (I live in a small city but sadly not one small enough not to have its "high crime" neighborhoods). The general conclusion is to wail about "why don't the police patrol more," which I have no response to other than: times are tough all over.

Also, given the propensity of news to spin things up to panic mode, I'm going to assume that the absence of panic means the situation really isn't dangerous for ordinary citizens: thinking critically, if the news people aren't telling us we are in Mortal Peril, we surely aren't. (At least not from this incident). And if they are telling us we are in Mortal Peril, chances are we aren't, but it might be intelligent to be a bit more attentive to one's surroundings.

Still, it irks me that we get Stupid Celebrity News and OH NOES THE ECONOMY and OH NOES SOMETHING YOU HAVE NO REAL CONTROL OVER MAY DESTROY YOUR HEALTH stories instead of local news.

****

My two quilts are done; if the quilter is in today I am going to go down there and pick them up. (And hopefully drop off the next quilt: the way she worded the phone message - "arrange a time to pick them up" - gives me a tiny fear that she might be going out of this business and won't be taking any more. Which is too bad because I like her work, but it's not TOO bad, as I think there are several other people in the area now who do quilting - I think the local quilt shop has names).

Then again, I should not assume the worst of a situation. (Though I often do; in a twisted way I find it preferable to be mentally prepared for the worst, because anything less than that is a pleasant surprise.)

***

It is still hot here. We are under a "heat advisory" until, I think, Sunday night. Ugh.

Hello Kitty is 35!.

(And her forehead is still so SMOOTH...I wonder if at some point it was "hello Botox"?)

That's interesting - so she's been around since 1974. I remember her being very popular when I was in fifth grade, circa 1979.

That website has different colored bows, each with a supposed meaning:

red = friendship
pink = cute
yellow = heartful (huh?)
green = wish
lavender = sweet

And yes, I'm a bit embarrassed to realize I actually care about this.

I haven't done much cooking recently (it's been HOT and summer school takes most of my energy), and that made me sad. So when I ran out to the grocery this afternoon after my piano lesson, I picked up the necessaries for making those egg rolls I linked to the other day.

(Well, except garlic. THEY WERE OUT OF GARLIC. Seriously. So I'm going to run by Braum's tomorrow and see if they have garlic. Yes, I know the recipe uses garlic-in-a-jar, I'd rather use fresh cut up and sauteed with the mushrooms).

I did buy fresh mushrooms (baby portobellas) rather than the canned/jarred ones, and I'm going to saute them a bit to cook them down while the slaw mix "sweats" in the microwave.

I also bought the "optional" bean sprouts, thinking they might be good in the rolls too. (And the leftovers, I can make stir fry or something like pad thai with them).

So I think Saturday afternoon, I'm going to give these a try and see how they are. I hope they freeze well, because they would then make a super-simple entree, or something to have along with some fruit or something when I don't know what I feel like eating.

***

Yesterday I took the ecology class out to do forest sampling. Man, was it hot. And sticky. But there was one really cool thing - we saw lots and lots of tiny toads. I described them to the herpetologist today and he said they were probably Dwarf American Toads - he referred to them as "toadlets" and said they were probably newly emerged young toads who had just metamorphosed from being tadpoles.

I always like seeing stuff like that; it makes me happy to see an "unusual" animal or plant. And the toads really were pretty cute.

***

I'm glad the week is over; I'm tired. I'm going to relax this evening and then tomorrow and Saturday work on a textbook-chapter evaluation I'm getting paid to do.