Turned the heel on the first of the "Pele's Socks" tonight. (That is what I am calling the "Rib Fantastic" socks being knit of yarn called "Kilauea." You may (or may not) know that Pele is the Hawaiian goddess of volcanoes and fire.

(This Pele, not that Pele)

(And I've seen the painting that's shown on the Pele page. I mean, in person - at the HVNP headquarters. And the Halemaumau crater - where, incidentally, people actually leave "offerings" to Pele - either flowers, or small bottles of liquor, or other items. I am not sure how serious Pele-worship is as an actual phenomenon; I was actually a bit surprised to see as many offerings as were there).

Anyway. There are a couple of phenomena in Hawaiian vulcanism named after her - there is Pele's hair (fine, glassy fibers, usually a bright gold - if you scroll down on that Wikipedia page, there is a photo) and Pele's tears (small drop-shaped bits of volcanic glass - they are, in fact, teardrop shaped). So if there's Pele's tears and Pele's hair, why not Pele's socks, as well.

Of course I hope I do not incur any bad luck by wearing Pele's socks. (There is an old legend - I think it was actually featured in a Brady Bunch episode as well - that removing volcanic rock from Hawaii brings bad luck. Or maybe it was a cursed tiki on the Brady Bunch, I don't remember. And of course the National Park Service, despite their mission to promote the scientific explanations of things, is perfectly happy to wink a bit at that legend, if it keeps people from toting home bits of a'a and pahoehoe in their luggage. I do think Pele makes exceptions for scientists; my father and some of his colleagues who were along on the trip had collecting permits which made it OK in the eyes of the NPS.

(Actually, on the Wikipedia site, it says the legend was actually created by an NPS employee - granted, one with a slightly "native" sounding name. But I like that idea...it's kind a modern version of the old dietary laws, where a lot of the stuff considered "unclean" to eat was actually stuff that, in those days, would have been unsafe to eat. That if you can't REASON with people, perhaps you can work on their superstitions.)

I just got a sadmaking phone call from a student...I'm not at liberty (I think) to give details, but it just blows my mind the sad/bad/violent situations some people have to deal with while going to college.

When I was a TA I once had a student who asked me if she ever missed class (without letting me know she was missing first) if I would call the police because it would possibly mean her violent ex-boyfriend had violated the restraining order she had out.

In some ways I am so much younger than some of the students I teach. And it makes me sad that they have to deal with this junk.

There was a package in my mailbox yesterday afternoon. I didn't recognize the source, I didn't remember having ordered it.

Inside, was a copy of "The Used World" by Haven Kimmel, ordered via Amazon through a used book store/charity shop in California.

I really knew I didn't remember ordering it - and it was also ordered on a day when I was out of town (and therefore away from a computer) so I KNOW I didn't order it.

I assume - since it was on my wishlist - someone found a copy of it and had it sent to me. So if it was one of you (as opposed to a relative or someone else who knows me but doesn't read here), thank you. It looks interesting.

****

I'm still thinking about the marking for the "next" quilt (even though I'm probably a minimum of a month out from completing the current one). I'm leaning towards a simple outline-the-main-patches with diagonals in the nine-patch-like sections. This has the attraction of not requiring marking. (I have a chalk "mechanical pencil" I ordered from Clotilde that I like, and I've also used soap slivers with good success, at least on dark fabrics), but I like not having to mark a top. And I tend to find that on tops where I want to emphasize the piecing and the fabrics used (like this one), mirroring the pieced design seems to work best.

I love Amazon so much.

I have a membership to their "Prime" service; it's kind of pricey up-front but it gets you a year's worth of second-day delivery for free (even on books sent to other addresses as gifts). Many of their things are Prime-eligible.

And today, I found something I'd been wanting.

My piano teacher had loaned me a copy of volume 1 of the Bastein "Piano Literature" library - it is the book that has Beethoven's Ecossaise in G (the first "real" piece I ever learned, and it will always hold a special place in my heart for that, I think). I've since more or less mastered the piece (memorized it even) and kept thinking she was going to ask for the book back...and I was (on my "own time") working on Bach's Minuet in G from the same book, so I was kind of loath to suggest returning it.

But then I decided to look for my own copy.

And yup, Amazon has it. Less than $5, even. (And they had others in the same series, which I decided to order as well). So now I have more books of fairly basic but "real" classical piano literature to work from. And I can give my teacher back her book; maybe there is another student who can be inspired by it.

(one good thing about the Bastien books for beginners like me is that they have fingerings marked, at least on the tricky bits, so you don't do it wrong, and so you don't do it inefficiently)

(Really, the Ecossaise and now, the Minuet are my "ice cream" pieces - they are what I play "for fun" when I've completed the teaching-pieces for the week).

They say money can't buy happiness but sometimes I think money CAN buy the tools for us to make ourselves happy with. Sitting down at the piano for 15 or 20 minutes before going to bed and slowly working my way through the Minuet in G or some of the other pieces I have is one of the surprisingly pleasurable things in my life right now.

I did a bunch more hand quilting this weekend. (Hand quilting is slow, so there's not really much progress from "a bunch." I finished one of the larger setting blocks, one of the full blocks, and one of the corner setting blocks).

I do like the sort of meditative quality of hand quilting. It's hard to multi-task while doing it (you definitely cannot read, and you can't even really watch television, because you need your eyes on your work). It's very focusing and good for thinking about things.

And there is also something deeply satisfying to me about those lines of tiny stitches slowly progressing across the top.

I'm already beginning to think about how I might quilt the Provence quilt; one thing I've learned is that I don't like quilting simple grid shapes (boring and I also find it hard to stay on a straight line). I also am not crazy about the 1/4 inch tape that's used to make sure lines are straight and distances are uniform. Part of it is that if you leave it on the quilt for any length of time, it leaves a little bit of sticky residue (and I wonder if that's good for the fabric), and also, it's just another thing to mess with. I like being able to quilt using as few additional tools as necessary - just the needle and thread and a thimble. (That's actually one of the other attractions for me about hand quilting; you don't need a lot of impedimentia to do it. True, it's generally not portable in the way knitting or crochet is portable...but for me, there's something very appealing about a craft that you don't need expensive or complex tools to do.)

I also like it because it's clean. I've come to the conclusion that the messy-crafts phase of my life is probably over (I used to do some pottery in high school, and as much fun as it is to throw on a wheel - and oh, is it fun - it's also kind of a drag cleaning the clay out of your hair afterwards. And you need a big place to set up that it's OK to get messy. And of course you need a wheel and access to a kiln, so throwing pots violates my "as few tools as necessary" dictum.). I probably won't ever do the dyeing (even using natural plants) that I've often thought about unless someday I get up the gumption to build myself a summer kitchen, because the mess of cooking gets me down enough.

But I like the clean, quiet, self-contained nature of handquilting. I dare say in some ways it is more like yoga than even knitting (much trumpeted as the "new yoga" a few years back) is. For me at least, it forces my concentration to close in in a way that knitting does not - I can (and have) knit while talking on the phone, while reading, while proctoring exams. None of those I can do while quilting.

I think of Patricia Weldon's instruction on the yoga video (which I never seem to find time to do any more these days - maybe I need to just tell myself once a week I WILL do it): "Draw your mind to the center of your heart, where it's quiet."

I always liked that image - I think I've mentioned it before - this calm quiet core where nothing can reach you from the outside world, where the YOU that is you is insulated from all the sludge the world tries to throw on you. Where you can keep who you truly are safe and protected. (Yeah, as you might guess, I've always had issues with "being vulnerable" and "letting people in." I'm too afraid, I think, of the me-that-is-really-me being hurt, or the person seeing who I really am and then laughing. Of course, if they were to laugh at who I really am, that's more a reflection on them and their limitations than on me, but still. Being laughed at hurts.)

So one of the good things about handquilting is that it gives me time to be alone with that calm quiet core.

*****

The other thing I did this weekend was not so calm and wonderful. I had to scrape a bunch more spyware ($#$*#&@$) off my computer. Really, I don't know how it gets in - I surf sites generally-designated-as-safe but I still get stuff now and then that trigger pop-ups (nothing horrible, not like pr0n pop ups or anything) and that sometimes try to redirect the browser. This seems to happen about every six weeks ro so now. This time I actually had to take the big guns out and use the Hijack This program someone told me to download and junk a couple of fake registry files. (I'm getting more ruthless at getting rid of stuff - if it doesn't immediately ring a bell of "something that should be here," out it goes. I suppose I may pay for that someday by removing a file that's supposed to be there, but there are enough online tutorials that I feel comfortable looking at the filecode and going, "oh, that looks like this thing over here they're describing as malware" and then getting rid of it).

But I tire of having to go all Xena on spyware's backside. I should probably break down and buy a more restrictive firewall program to try to keep more of it out in the first place. (I do run Spybot Search and Destroy weekly, and that gets rid of some, and always have McAfee running in the background, and I have an anti-malware program I run if something seems hinky).

****

I rewarded myself for dealing with the spyware in a (mostly) grown-up fashion. (I will admit to saying a "HA ha" a la Nelson when I realized I had successfully removed most of it) by purchasing a couple patterns I'd been looking at.

They're from an etsy seller: DangerCrafts. I bought Albert the Absent Minded Monster and Maddox the Mischievous Monster. I like these kind of patterns - any yarn should work, it won't take a large amount (I'm sure I have some in my stash, either as leftovers or as "I love this but there's only a couple skeins of it but I'm buying it anyway" yarns.

(Yes, I bought toy patterns to reward myself for acting like a grown-up. I know.)

Music to my ears: an advertisement for an "All-New" Mythbusters (I had been concerned the show had perhaps run its course, and they just weren't telling us, lest the fans be tragically disappointed).

However, I've heard a rumor that (recently-hitched) Kari Byron is expecting, so I suppose she may step back from the more dangerous bits, and perhaps let Grant "allegedly changed his middle name to Danger" Imihara take over for that.

(Maybe they could do baby myths? Like the gender-prediction ones? They'd probably need more pregnant ladies for a decent sample size, but I'm sure, the Mythbusters fan base being what it is, they'd find no shortage. I know of two gender-prediction myths - one involving dangling a ring over the lady's belly and looking for the direction and kind of movement, and one involving mixing a sample of her urine (? I think) with some other substance and looking for a color change - I'm thinking one I read said Drano, but that sounds horribly dangerous. I'm sure there are others out there.)

I also wonder - have they ever done the myth about putting a sleeping person's hand in warm water? That's one I've always wondered about (When I was a kid at slumber parties, we all TALKED about it but none of us was actually willing to brave the wrath of a friend if it actually WORKED.) But I can totally see them pulling that on either Adam or Tori.

I guess I promised at least a short summary/review of "The Last Flight of the Scarlet Macaw," the second book I read over break.

This book is the story of a dam project in Belize - the fight between government/industry forces, scientists, and advocates for nature.

One big thing I learned from the book is what Belize is like as a nation. I did not know much about it before. It is a Central American nation that defines itself as a Caribbean nation - if it could make itself an island in the Caribbean Sea, it would. Culturally it identifies far much with that region.

It is a former British colony, one that basically dropped off the crown jewels by attrition - in the early days it was a source of timber and other resources, and by the time those resources' value dwindled, Britain was willing to cut (most) ties. (There are still some; at the end of the book a Privy Council hearing plays an important role).

Like a lot of smaller nations, it seems pretty beset by corruption. (or maybe, "Like a lot of nations." Or maybe, pessimistically, "Like any other nation..." and the ones we think of as non-corrupt, we just don't see). Nepotism in government is fairly rampant.

It's also not exactly a wealthy nation; and the have vs. have-not divide is pretty steep.

Into this, comes an American woman - Sharon Mattola.

Now, I was not prepared to like Sharon, from the way she was described. Because I've dealt with some people like her - people who don't really have a lot of educational or research credentials, people who are not scientists (and proudly trumpet that fact), but who will take on the mantle of a Defender of Nature because they claim some mystic gnostic knowledge of how nature works that scientists have (so they argue) willingly blinded themselves to. It's kind of the New-Ager view. And as I said, I've worked with people who have that attitude - who are actively disdainful of what science have done, because it's more comfortable to keep their fuzzy gnostic beliefs and to claim some "received knowledge" from "communing with nature."

I know scientists can be arrogant - I know a number of arrogant scientists - but there's also a hearty arrogance that comes from this group - the belief that they somehow feel more deeply than other people, and because of those deep feelings, they have a deep knowledge that even someone who has studied and worked with a system for 40 years does not have.

Luckily, Sharon Mattola turned out to be the "other" kind of "non-credentialed" science-person: the person who actually HAS worked long and hard, who HAS put in the observations, who knows what a field scientist knows - and really, the only difference between them is a piece of paper listing formal coursework. (I've known a few people like that, as well). She's willing to enlist the help of experts; she knows when she doesn't know something. (That's my big issue with the first group I described; a lot of them are unwilling to admit ignorance - maybe even to themselves - and they wind up sort of blundering through things and sometimes do more harm than good).

Sharon has wound up in Belize after traveling about (literally; she left her husband by hopping a freight train). She has kind of inherited a research station, which she has turned into a zoo/rehabilitation center. Her mission, as she sees it, is to connect the people of Belize with their native fauna, both so they will be less inclined to randomly shoot (and sometimes eat) any animal they run across, and also to help instill pride in the nation.

Her personal love is a subspecies of the scarlet macaw which is apparently found only in Belize. A macaw whose nesting site is threatened by a planned dam development for hydroelectrics.

The majority of the book is given over to the fight against the dam.

Now, first, a disclaimer: the book presents mainly the anti-dam side. So there could be some bias involved. (Probably there is).

However, the dam is not just a bad idea on the grounds that it will drown a big part of a forest that is important not just to macaws, but to tapirs, monkeys, and other species. There was also apparently some hanky-panky in the geologic reports; when two independent and unconnected-to-the-dam-project geologists reviewed the cores and the maps, they concluded that the particular area was NOT a safe place for a dam because of seismic activity and unstable rock. There was also a lot of concern that the dam would not generate the level of electricity expected for the price expected - that the costs to the Belizean people would go up (in the postscript, the author noted they had).

There were not many other options for electricity in Belize - it has no coal or much in the way of other fossil fuels; wind power is not viable, and it seems solar is far too expensive. The Belize electrical company was buying power from Mexico but that was costly. (There was also an option to buy from Guatemala, but because of some political things in the past, that would never happen - Belize actually feels somewhat threatened by Guatemala).

So most of the book chronicles what might be seen as a quixotic fight against a foregone conclusion - the dam WOULD be built, no matter what. No matter the arguments made, no matter the legal fights.

(At one point it looked like they might succeed, but no, they did not).

Along the way, there are lots of maddening tales of governmental/industry (I lump the two because it seems they are lumped in this case) obfuscation, lying, and retaliation - at one point a dump was slated to be built next to Sharon's zoo, despite the fact that it would pollute a river many villagers used, because she had been fighting the dam. (Small victory - the geologists got the dump moved by pointing out the clay on the site was totally unsuitable).

I found myself getting frustrated and angry at a lot of points in the book. I know, abstractly, that governments do things that are stupid. That no solution to a problem is ever going to be optimal. But the way the people at the power company and in the government offices treated people who were asking questions, trying to get information - very frustrating.

I will admit my own tiny example of dealing with obfuscatory legislation and government/industry that lacks the will to do the "right" things - I've been on a committee that has been charged with trying to beautify the town where I live. I have nearly quit, twice (and have since decided that I will do "grassroots" stuff like going out and pickup up litter, but never again will I try to actually CHANGE things) because on both occasions we tried to draft up some very simple, and not very restrictive suggestions (like: if you are a business with a parking lot, you should have a trash can available in that lot to try to cut down litter. Or like: you cannot blacktop your ENTIRE property, you need a little green space), lawyers "were sent" to tell us that we were going to "hurt business" with what we were suggesting, and that we needed to take it off the table.

(And the litter continues to build up. It's really bad this spring).

So anyway. I can sympathize on a very banal level with Sharon Mattola and her compatriots. And I don't think I could do what they did, even in a big serious situation - it's too maddening and too heartbreaking when you lose. Which you nearly always do.

So while I continue to do the volunteer efforts - picking up trash, talking to schoolkids, doing the little band-aid sort of things - I find I just don't have the constitution to "fight the power" that some people do. Which may be why I found this book fairly agonizing to read.

Oh my is it good to be home for the evening.

The Science Fair was good - it pretty much always is - in the high-school group we had a hard time picking a "top three" because there were a lot of good projects (one of which - a SOPHOMORE in high school did it - and I would be all excited if one of my college SENIORS managed a project like that).

Getting home was not fun - torrential rain, horribly bad drivers, someone riding my tail for miles and miles (hint: if I don't speed up when you first get right behind me, it's not gonna happen).

I am teetering on the edge of declaring this a Weekend of Slackdom. It's supposed to be cold and nasty tomorrow (they have snow up in western Oklahoma and it sounds as if OKC is getting sleet), my two exams for the start of next week are done and ready to go, my grading is all done. I have one more exam to write (for Friday), but I could do that DURING the week next week.

And it would be nice to be able to sit at home this Saturday and:

1. do some work on the quilt-in-the-frame
2. make a batch of honey-baked lentils (I had wanted to do that earlier this week but Tuesday night - the best night for it - I just didn't feel up to it)
3. maybe, make a batch of bread
4. get caught up on reading the several issues of Trends in Ecology and Evolution that have stacked up (I took out a subscription with the promise to myself that I need to keep up with AT LEAST ONE journal in my field, instead of just reading articles as I need to for research projects)
5. not have to go out. (I am so glad I did my grocery shopping yesterday afternoon).
6. work more on either the Bird's Nest Shawl or my newest socks.
7. start reading the book on crow behavior I bought recently

(Oh - my "newest" socks. Here's a not-very-exciting progress shot:



This is the "Rib Fantastic" pattern from the new "Socks from Handpainted Yarns" book. The yarn is from Rock Creek Yarns , one of many of the "small" dyers out there. The color is called Kilauea (like the volcano, get it?) and the challenge is to make something out of such a contrasty yarn. While the pattern's not working out QUITE as I expected, I still like the effect. And it's a nice yarn to work with.

I'm thinking I might also use this same pattern for a skein of Bearfoot that Anne, my "sock book winner" decided to send to me as thanks for the book - it's called Mystic River and is mostly dark blues and purples with little flashes of amber in it and I think it would look nice in this pattern. (Even though I don't often use the same pattern more than once, I do think in this case I will - it's a fun pattern and I think it will look very different in a short-repeat variegated versus the stripey yarn I have here.)

I DO think I am going to end the evening tonight with a hot bath and my current mystery novel (#2 in the William Monk series, and no, I don't remember the title right now). I'm kind of tense and stiff from the bad drive, and it's cold out - this may be the last good opportunity for a real hot bath before the weather gets too hot to make it seem worthwhile.

I've pretty much beaten the cold. I don't know if it's just that I have an awesome immune system, or if the combination of zinc gluconate nose spray/lots of herbal tea/vitamin C/extra sleep did something.

I'm glad. I was really congested Tuesday and yesterday and I HATE that feeling.

Lydia, I have done the salt-water gargle in the past. I tend not to think of it unless someone nags me to do it because I don't like it. (Another thing I've tried, on others' suggestion, and just can not do: the Neti Pot. Yes, I know it's an ancient remedy. Yes, I know it works really well. The problem is, my OH NOES I'M DROWNING reflex kicks in and I wind up spitting salt water everywhere and possibly aspirating some of it.)

****
Today is a busy day, even though my classes are cancelled (it's Curriculum Contest, which is a day when high schoolers from the area come in to take a standardized test. The ones who give a (bleep) about it are in the running for a decent scholarship; the ones who don't get a day out of school and a chance to walk down to the Sonic or Braum's with friends for lunch.

(I helped out with it last year. It's pretty much a nightmare because the kids who don't give an expletive-deleted outnumber those who do. Or perhaps they're just so much more obvious).

But I have an exam to write (well, as of this point, it's half-written) and a bunch of grading to do (when I felt too ill to do it the other days). And I go over mid-morning to help advise new students into classes.

And tomorrow is the State Science Fair - I travel up to Ada for that. (I really hope the predicted bad weather - including SNOW SHOWERS - does not get as far south as Ada but they are saying "Pontotoc County" as part of the area of concern. And I also hope the bad weather doesn't keep some of the people away, or prevent them from getting home safely).

****

I'm back to hand-quilting more on the quilt again. The problem with these long-term projects is they don't have attractive, photogenic "stages" you can capture and show as pictures. (And as we all know, some people will not read a craft blog unless it's full of pictures [eye-roll]). There's also not as much to talk about in the doing - how can you come up with something to say about hand quilting that is clever and entertaining and has not been said before?

That said: I really do want to finish this sometime. I keep looking at that Provence quilt folded up in my craft closet and really want to be working on it. So I keep soldiering on with the quilt-in-the-frame (it's going on 6 1/2 years now). The change is that now I can actually envision a time when it will be finished - I do not have that many of the "full" blocks left to do, and only a few of the "half" blocks that were used for setting. (And then, of course, there's the whole border, but it's easy to ignore that fact for now).

see more Lolcats and funny pictures

This is one of the funniest (well, to me at least) LOLcats I've seen in a little while. Part of it is the picture is just so perfect.

Yay, I fixed the problem. It's always satisfying to be able to fix something. (Though I am annoyed that some folks, depending on how they get here, may be subjected to ads).

I'm starting to beat the cold - I think yesterday must have been my "worst" day, I had a bad sore throat and lots of congestion. I can't take most cold medications because I tend to react badly to lots of OTC meds (I like to claim that it's because my liver is so clean and pure that when it gets some kind of funky chemical thrown at it, it goes "What the heck?" and goes into detox overdrive). So I've been relying on hot herbal tea, that zinc gluconate spray stuff (I don't know that it actually does what it claims to do - shorten a cold's duration - but it does seem to at least temporarily relieve symptoms), Cherry-Honey Ricola cough drops (the BEST cough drops that I've found), and Vick's Vapo-Rub.

At least the cold does not seem to be doing either of the bad things colds can do to me- either totally congest my sinuses and lead to a sinus infection, or move into my lungs and go to bronchitis.

****

Here's the second thing I finished over break. I like these even better than the socks I posted yesterday



These are the "Caledonian Mists" socks, made using the Damselfly Design's winter yarn club "January" yarn. The dyer named it "Shadowed Snows."



This one's a little out of focus because I used the long-exposure "extreme night setting" because I couldn't get the stitch pattern to show up using the flash.

This is really a neat pattern to knit up - it's very easy but not boring or frustrating. I could see doing another pair of these sometime out of a different yarn. (I wonder how they'd look out of a striping yarn).

Hey...if someone could drop me a comment letting me know if they can see the blog and it's coming through OK, please?

I got an e-mail from one of my readers saying the blog was doing some kind of wonky thing and tripping her anti-virus software. The only changes I've made of late was to insert a little tiny script that would disable an "ad toolbar" that seems to come up on the blog if you go to it through one of those "blogrolling" systems. I object to my blog - which I write for free and would never post ads on - being used as advertising space, but apparently the "insert this code to disable ads" code doesn't work across the board, or maybe it INTENTIONALLY doesn't work...

***

The first thing I finished over break were the "Little Child's Socks." (It feels odd calling it that, but it's the pattern name - but the pattern has been resized to fit a woman's foot, in part, apparently, because the original pattern called for such fine yarn and tiny needles that probably no one in modern times would make it).

This is one case where Joe Coca's photography (he's the Interweave default photographer, it seems) fails a bit - the socks in the book look misshapen and sad, with tops that seem kind of stretched out. I would never have considered making them until I saw a couple other bloggers' photos of them and saw how nice they actually were.

This is not a GREAT photo (and I always think that "disembodied leg" shots look weird), but here they are:



I like this photo better:



You can kind of see the stitch patterns on those. It's just simple knit and purl, sort of a moss-stitch pattern, but it's very effective.

I used one of the Dream in Color sockyarns for this - the color is called "Cool Fire," sort of a bluish-red (as you can see from the photos).

I really like these "Vintage" sock patterns - they are simple, yet not boring. I suppose Nancy Bush chose the "best" of the socks from Weldon's, but seeing these patterns makes me want to dig up/invest in a set of the Weldon's books to see what else is there.

Well, crud.

I seem NOT to have dodged the cold my dad caught. (Or I caught someone else's). The good news is I'm far less sick than he was (though that's generally the pattern - anything respiratory that he gets goes bad very fast). Right now I'm mainly fighting a sore throat and that kind of half-addled feeling I always get when sick (I forgot to bring the exam review sheets to class even though I had them sitting right in the center of my desk).

No fever of yet.

I can never remember if it's "Starve a cold, feed a fever" or "Feed a cold, starve a fever" but it seems to me that starving yourself when you have any kind of respiratory thing is probably not such a great idea. (I could see withholding food being desirable if it were a GI thing). Fortunately I have some chicken soup at home...

I decided, kind of at the last minute, to take the Bird's Nest Shawl (but not the Cobblestone Pullover) with me as a "large" project.

I added another half-repeat to the shawl. (The pattern has a very long repeat; 46 rows of something like 340 stitches). The shawl is about half-done now.



As always, lace shawls don't look like much on the needles - it takes getting them finished, and especially blocked, to stretch everything out and make the fabric lie flat.

The pattern is nominally based (I guess) on a Tibetan design; the name ("Bird's nest") comes from the fact that women will roam the fields in the area where cashmere goats live and find tufts of the shed hair (even in things like old birds' nests) and will then spin it up. (The implication being, these are women who could not afford to buy even basic wool yarn in a shop). I've also read of something similar that poor Scotswomen did - roaming the fields looking for tufts of wool that would get caught on bushes and such. (It's kind of heartbreaking to think of how long a person would have to scour the countryside to accumulate enough tufts of wool to spin enough yarn for a sweater, even for a small child.)

The yarn I am using on this is a camel hair yarn - the shawl in the book WAS made using a cashmere, but camel was a lot more affordable (seeing as I neither spin, nor live in an area where I could wander around and pick bits of cashmere from the shrubbery.)

I finished two books (both of them Directed Readings books - students chose them) over break.

The first is Roy Porter's huge "To the Benefit of Mankind." It is a history of medicine, literally starting with ancient Egypt and going (almost) to present-day. (I think Porter wrote it around 1998, and on the back cover he's identified as "the late Roy Porter" so the book is a few years old).

It's interesting. And once again, makes me grateful I live in an era of:

1. tetanus vaccine. You really, really do not want to contract tetanus.

2. polio vaccine. Ditto. Though I already kind of knew this, because some of my older female relatives had young children during the "polio summers" of the 40s and 50s and they talked about how fearful they were.

3. antibiotics. I actually might not be here today if it were not for antibiotics - I've had scarletina, I've had several bouts of strep, I've had multiple ear infections - any of which, had it been the 1800s, could have carried me off in childhood, but because we live in the times we do, I could go back to school in a couple days after taking the mold-derivatives known as antibiotics.

4. "Listerian" antiseptic measures. Seriously. Doctors didn't want to wash their hands in the past, because of a mixture of arrogance and the sense that it "made patients uncomfortable." And interestingly, one of the big pieces of evidence suggesting that microbes could be transferred on hands was the difference in maternal survival rates for mothers delivered by midwives vs. by "regular" doctors - survival was a lot higher for midwives because they weren't interacting with really sick patients (and also, I suspect, some midwives figured out the "clean hands, low infection" link on their own). Eventually the doctors came round to the suggestions that they clean their hands (and change their smocks) between patients.

5. Anesthesia. There's a harrowing passage written by the novelist Fanny Burney about having surgery to remove a cancerous tumor from her breast in the days before anesthesia. Also, a lot of surgeries that are life-saving now, were not possible before the days of anesthetic.

6. All the analgesics. Even aspirin was not widely used before the 1890s. I can't imagine dealing with migraines without something to dull the pain.

Another thing that Porter mentions, that strikes me as interesting, is the changing attitudes towards disease - in the very early times, it was seen as a punishment from God - either you or your parents had sinned. But as knowledge of disease became greater, as people began to realize the reality of contagion, ideas shifted, and in a way, illness became more "egalitarian" - a duchess was as likely as a pauper to be carried off by an infection; viral diseases struck fairly broad swaths of the population.

However, as we've conquered many infectious diseases, there does seem to be a swing back of the pendulum - the idea of "lifestyle medicine" and, even worse, the concept of the "cancer personality." The idea that maybe chronic diseases develop because of something the patient has done - or not done.

I'm not necessarily saying you should drink and smoke and all that - but I'm saying it seems terribly unfair to me to blame someone who gets cancer for having the "wrong attitude." Which I've actually seen some people do. And not only is it unfair, it's distinctly unhelpful. (And besides, of all the people I've seen who've contracted cancer, and just as much, all those I've seen beat it vs. not beat it - there is NO common personality trait I can see. So to "blame the victim" for their cancer is wrong and misguided and even kind of evil, in my mind).

But I do worry that "lifestyle medicine" will be the wave of the future- Porter writes of "bully[ing] people into health" and I think that's a thing that could happen - already we see it with the scare-stories about obesity or mothering behavior or diet or sleep patterns or WHATEVER. It's almost as if society is building up to be able to blame people for whatever goes wrong with their bodies - they ate too much, they ate the wrong things, they didn't sleep "right" - and so it's their "fault" they now have Type II Diabetes or cancer or congestive heart failure. And I suppose, in a dystopian future, it would be easier to write such people off, not provide them with care, because after all, "it's their fault."

Feh. I really don't want to live in a world where either every trip to the doctor for anything is accompanied with long lectures on food, sleep, exercise, and leisure habits, or, worse, to have some kind of a "card" where the foods I am "permitted" to buy for my body type and metabolism are recorded, and forget buying anything not on the "permitted" list.

But then again, I'm not sure I want the pendulum to swing back into a horror of unchecked infectious disease.

It's just, it seems that for many of us, we live in a time of unprecedented health - but instead of society being grateful for it, they look for new things to scare us about.

I'll talk about the other book - The Last Flight of the Red Macaw - later.

I'm back.

Break was mostly good, except my father caught a nasty respiratory bug (which hopefully I managed to avoid). He's now on antibiotics (he has to be extra careful because of the fake knee; apparently microbes can, in rare cases, travel to the replacement joint and wreck it) and Prednisone. (Not fun. I remember being put on a brief course of the stuff to keep me from coughing myself to pieces during an attack of asthmatic bronchitis. I don't think I slept for a week and my appetite and attitude were rather like a bear preparing for hibernation). He also had to scrap a trip to the AAG meetings in Las Vegas (he had been invited to give a paper, but there's no way he could fly with the respiratory bug he has).

Also, coming back, the train apparently hit a deer somewhere north of where I was to get on. I knew that deer could wreak havoc on a car (one of my colleagues totaled a university minivan when he could not avoid hitting a small deer), but it can also apparently mess up a diesel engine. The train had electrical problems, which made it very late (and made dinner even later). But thank goodness, they managed to fix it (I had visions of a repeat of last year's bus fiasco, but I figured when we pulled into St. Louis and I saw no buses waiting, I was safe).

I will say the whole episode makes me wonder, sadly, if the "special snowflakes" (as some call them) are starting to take over the world. An example:

When I got on the train, my car attendant handed me my dinner reservation. "It says 6 pm," he said, "But because of the electrical problems it's gonna be a lot later than that. They'll call the time, but they'll probably call '6 pm reservations' around 7 or later." [it was actually 8:30, but no biggie]

I thanked him for the info and sat down with my book. During the time I was waiting, I heard no fewer than four rather exasperated announcements on the part of the dining car staff asking people to please WAIT until their time was called, and explaining the reason for the lateness and promising that they would call people when it became possible. (And no, this was not after a bunch of people had got on - at least three of those announcements took place between two stations).

Seriously, people, it is NOT THAT HARD.

They also had to keep announcing:

"Don't flush trash down the toilets"
"If we find you smoking, you WILL be put off the train." (This is on a train with prominent no-smoking signs, and it says right on the schedule that it is an all-no-smoking train)
"Wear your shoes to protect your feet when you're walking around the train." (Now, I ask you. I understand barefooting is a lifestyle choice, and heck, I like to go barefoot at home or even outdoors (provided I'm in an area free of fire ants or ground-nesting wasps). But on a nasty mucky train car, where all kinds of people - farmers in work boots, people who've trotted the dirty city streets, little kids who have accidents - have left all kinds of indescribable MUNG on the floor...I'd probably be a lot less suffering-fools-lightly and would say something like, "The floor in these cars is full of germs and other slop. If you choose to walk barefoot even knowing this fact, we are completely absolved from any responsibility if you contract a HORRIBLE PARASITIC FOOT DISEASE." Of course, they probably AREN'T absolved, and there's the problem, some idiot will walk into the bathroom barefoot and step in something nasty and try to sue Amtrak)

So I don't know. I feel sometimes that the more I am out among people, the more I am driven to hermitage. As I said: IT IS NOT THAT HARD to understand and abide by the relatively few things they ask you to do (or not do) on the train.

Oh, and they had to remind people not to use cuss words in cell phone conversations. Because there are children "and others" who "don't need to be hearing that."

But anyway. Otherwise, it was a good trip. Despite the frustrating conditions they surely had to work under, the dining car waiters were their usual jovial selves (Or maybe they're just jovial to me because they know me and know I tip and also don't make Special Snowflake requests) and we got to our destination safely.

And I'm glad to see my bed. The beds on the train are far better than the coach seats for sleeping, but nothing beats your own bed at home.

This is for everyone who is sad, who is distressed, who is having a hard time.

I know it's been used a lot in ads and such, but it still makes me feel a whole lot better whenever I listen to it. It calms me down when I'm upset about something, makes me more hopeful about the world and people in it, and makes my shoulders drop back into their normal position when they've gotten squinched somewhere up around my ears.



Enjoy. And feel better.

I'll be back in a week.

Spring break starts today! This afternoon I drive down to Mineola to catch the train.

I really need this break. This is the time of the semester when I just start to get so tired...so much weighing on me.

I'm taking the couple of Directed Readings books I need to read with me, plus the other books in-progress. I've got Pickwick Papers (Still, but I'm nearly done) and the "first" Campion novel (and it gives no more hints to his origin or who he "really" is...I suspect he may have been a secret younger brother to the King, or perhaps a wrong-side-of-the-blanket relative..but his "real" name is never given). And I threw in my copy of the "Not So Small Life." It's something I've been thinking about lately...about the idea of a life being "small" but good.

(Part of my midlife plan to rid myself of guilt feelings about not having done the "Great Good Thing" that everyone predicted I would when I was an so-called "gifted" student in school. Life as it really is, is a hard thing to live up (or perhaps down) to, when your high school "Most Likely To.." is "discover a cure for AIDS." No, I am not ready to surf over to that French FAILlifeBLOG that Charles posted about a couple days ago, because I tend to think anyone (including myself) who has managed to avoid compromising their moral principles while at the same time being capable of keeping a roof over their head and food on the table is NOT a failure, but still...there are days I wonder what I could have done if I had only been willing to work harder and enjoy less leisure time...And those sort of maunderings are not good for one's sense of equilibrium.)

On to knitting. ("Small" life, indeed.)

I'm planning on finishing both the Little Child's Sock and the Caledonian Mists sock. I also pulled out a couple wound-off skeins of sockyarn - one of deep blues and one in a color called Kilauea (you can see it here). I love the idea of the color, that it's inspired by volcanoes (and a place I've actually been), but never knew what to do with it.

Enter the Rib Fantastic sock in the "Socks from Handpainted Yarns" book...which is designed for these "wild" colorways. (And if things go like I hope they will, it will look like streams of lava intermingled with the rock).

Still not sure on the dark blue, which is a lot more sedate. Perhaps the Herringbone socks from the same book, or Nancy Bush's "Fancy Silk Sock" (which is a lacy sort of pattern).

I've not totally decided on the "big" project, whether it's the sweater in-progress or the Bird's Nest Shawl. The sweater has the virtue of being closer to done. But the shawl has the virtue of being something I could actually wear this season if I finish it soon. I still have to decide but I don't have to leave here until 2 pm or so.

If things go as I would hope they do, this time tomorrow I will be eating breakfast a bit south of St. Louis. (If things aren't going quite as I would hope, I will be eating breakfast somewhere in Arkansas. But at least I'll be on the train and on my way)

I have my tax stuff, I have the birthday present for my dad (whose birthday is actually today, but who said that a present a day late but delivered by the giver is preferable to a mailed present on-time) as well as the next few birthdays' worth of presents (my brother's, my sister-in-law's) to take with me and pass along.

I'll be back in about a week.

I'm embarrassed to admit I didn't get the joke in this XKCD comic immediately.

But now that I have, it's been printed out and it's gone up on my Wall (door, really) of Fame - every time I find a stats-related comic (that is not something that would offend the overly sensitive; I do teach on a college campus after all), I get a copy of it and put it up on my door.

I don't really have any works-in-progress or finished stuff to show just now, but I think I will share photos of something I made a number of years ago that I never posted about here.

This is one of the little creatures that lives on my bedside table.

Years and years ago - it would have been perhaps 1975 or so - I read a book in school (it would have been first grade for me) about a girl who was part-fairy. She was (apparently) orphaned and was sent to live with her aunt. She had a sort of guardian or fairy governess in the form of a tiny dog named Gloria.

I remembered the book very fondly...I read it, as I said, during SSR ("Sustained Silent Reading") time in school. I forgot the title but remembered Gloria and the basic outline of the story.

And one haunting bit - which I remembered as the end of the story, but I guess was not. Annabel (the girl) had done something that displeased Gloria - perhaps she even denied her fairy nature (?) But at any rate, Gloria did something that struck me and kind of haunted me, because I think it was the first instance I experienced of the idea of self-sacrifice, at least written in a way that would make sense to a child. (Of course, I had heard the Easter - or rather, the Good Friday - account in church, but I think I was still too young at the time for it to make a big impression on me).

Anyway, Gloria, having decided that Annabel had no more need of her, sat down in the glass case of mechanical animals (Gloria's aunt collected small wind-up animals), adjusted her gold collar, and willed herself to become inanimate.

Thinking about that as a child made me profoundly sad. And angry at Annabel for her stupidity at hurting what was such an excellent and wonderful friend in that way.

(The book does, as it turn out, have a conventional happy ending. Though what I remembered was Gloria turning herself to stone for the sake of Annabel.)

Anyway. I don't think the book I had had pictures; I always imagined Gloria as a beagle-sort of dog, as that was the kind with which I had the most familiarity.

I forgot the title and the author (and apparently most of the story), but I still kept that image down through the years. And one day, in grad school, surfing bookseller sites I ran across Loganberry Books, where the owner posted information about books people remembered but could not find.

And I rediscovered the book!

It is - if you've clicked the link (or if you were a kid or had kids in the early 1970s and have a better memory for titles than I did) - No Flying in the House, which is apparently far from being an obscure book, is one remembered fondly by many kids (mostly girls, I'd guess) who were of the age to read it in the early 70s when it came out.

(This is also the book where supposedly the hallmark of being of fairy blood is the ability to kiss your elbow. I don't remember trying to kiss my elbow when I read the book but I suppose I did. I think it's a pretty safe test to use as I have never met a human who COULD kiss their elbow.)

So I went out in search of a copy of the book, armed with the title and the author. And almost immediately found a copy at Babbitt's Books, the wonderful used-book store in the town where I lived at the time.

This was a 1982 edition with illustrations by Wallace Tripp. And in it, Gloria is shown as being a terrier sort of dog - perhaps like a white Jack Russel.

And even though I was in my mid-to-late 20s when I re-found the book, I felt the inspiration to make my own little version of Gloria. (I had always wanted a tiny toy of her as a child, but never had quite the skill to make a good one. But as an adult I did:)



This is her side view. She's felt, with embroidered features, and a gold collar (that is an important part of the character).

I also added other details - tiny paw pads worked using a pigma pen



Gloria has "thread jointed" limbs (a technique I learned from making tiny teddy bears and that works pretty well on a toy that's really more for display than active play). So she can stand, sit, and lie down.

Even though it's not "canonical" to the book, at the time I was making some Christmas gifts for people out of a delicate leopard-print polar fleece, so I made a little puffy bed for Gloria out of the scraps.



You may have guessed from the perspective in the photos that Gloria is fairly small. One of the things I really wanted to do was to try to make her "actual size," that is, the size the character in the book would have been if she was "really real." So I think she's about 2 1/2" long. Here's a photograph for scale, with her standing against a standard mass-market sized paperback.



I love being able to do this kind of thing. I haven't done it in a long time but it's one of those funny skills I have - I can start with making a paper pattern of what I want, and then I just cut and adjust and change things up as I go to get what I want. The drawback to this is that everything I make this way is a one-off and I would never even have patterns I could give out or sell based on the creatures I make, nor could I make one just like it. But it's how I know how to do stuff - doing pattern drafting to have a "permanent" pattern is different from how I do things (and not quite as fun or as "loose").

This is one of those hilarious and wonderful things you find on the Internet:

(Edited to add: crap, it's apparently just a clever April Fools' joke from several years back. I suppose the temperature issue should have clued me in. Well, dammit. Maybe someone will make a USB port thing with a step-up transformer or something)

PC E-Z Bake Oven. It's a tiny version of the old E-Z Bake oven (you know, the lightbulb one) that fits into the "spare" 5 1/4" driver bay on a PC. And it plugs into the power source.

So you could bake little cupcakes, or muffins, or I suppose, tiny pizzas (just don't let the melted cheese get down in the PC) while you sit at your desk.

I will say I never had an E-Z Bake Oven as a child; when I asked for one, my mother said, "Why do you want to play with a fake oven? I'll teach you to use a real one, instead."

Still, you know? It would be kind of nice to keep a batch of refrigerator cookie dough on hand, and then at 3 pm (or whenever) bake yourself a single, fresh cookie.

Yes, "invigilate" sounds like you are holding a vigil; "proctoring" has that proct- root in it (which may be a false association, I don't know) so it sounds like you're sitting on your, um, prat.

Besides, "invigilate" sounds much more Harry Potter.

***

There is something a little bit wrong about it being 40* F out and it being DST. I know, I'm complaining about DST again, but I really hate the "extension" of it into times of the year where it should not occur. (And I will not get to see the sun today, looking at my schedule. Yeah, it's really 'saving' me a lot of daylight.)

On the upside, we're finally getting a bit of rain. We need considerably more.

***

The NYTimes had a story the other day on grey hair. Apparently researchers have figured out the reaction (interestingly, it involves hydrogen peroxide...hair bleaches itself from the inside. Gives one pause to think about Marilyn Monroe and the others that were often called "peroxide blondes").

I've said before, and I'll say again: personally, I think for me, getting a dye job and its subsequent touch-ups is more trouble than I'd be willing to go to. (And at any rate, it seems like at the rate which my hair is turning, it will be at least 5 more years before I need to contemplate that).

Then again...perhaps this is my tiny chance to rebel, considering that the trend seems to be for every woman between 40 and 65 to continue to strive to look like she is 30. I never rebelled as a teenager - no fuchsia hair, no half-shaved head, no piercings (though I was a teen a bit before non-ear piercings became really hot).

***

Spring break kind of sneaked up on me this year: it's next week. I need to start planning what to take with me. (I will need to take my taxes; before I could sit down to do them my mom called and said that some more investment-related paperwork came for me. We all use the same brokerage so it's just easier to have them send all the stuff to the same address. Most of these are investments I inherited from grandparents and while it's nice to know I would have an emergency source of income (well, maybe not now, the way the market's going) if I needed to sell them, still, they do tend to complicate things).

I do plan on taking the various socks and finishing them, and either the Cobblestone Pullover or the long-stalled Bird's Nest Shawl. I will still need to think about that.

***

I picked up the temporarily-stalled Little Child's Sock and worked on them last night; got midway through the heel flap. One of the things I love about the various craft stuff I do is that you can DO that - you can set something down for weeks, months, or even years, and (provided you kept reasonable notes on where you left off) pick it up again later and start back up.

You can't do that with everything. As much as I enjoyed doing the stuff with pottery in high school art, you can't stop throwing a pot midway through and put it away. And once you've fired up the kiln, you're pretty well committed to finishing the whole process.

I've also been picking at the quilt in the frame. Yeah, I missed the self-imposed "finish it before I'm 40" deadline. I've missed every self-imposed deadline on this one so I've decided to stop with the deadlines.

This sort of thing is why I cringe a little when I hear of someone deciding to give a "creative" name to their baby. ("Ethnic" names excepted. If you want to give your child a name reflective of your culture, even if it's uncommon in the culture where you live, I don't have a problem with that. I do have a problem with naming children "Apple," or with some of the names that are mashups of a couple names of people in the family that wind up with a distinctly infelicitous sound, that kind of thing)

It can make their path harder. Even kids without names like Marijuana. I've stumbled over my share of "invented spelling" names on the course roster; it embarrasses both me and the student. (And yes, apparently the woman in question has made a good life for herself, and she considers having overcome the stigma of the names a badge of honor. But if it were me? I probably would have been down at the courthouse once I was 18, making that into something like Maria Patricia or some such.)

There are a lot of good names out there - Martha, and Lydia, and Dorothy, and Joseph, and Edward, and Henry that are hardly being used these days.

IIRC, there is a linguist out there with the name "Bambi Schiefelbein." Can you imagine? Being a woman named "Bambi"? It's a wonderful name for a cartoon baby deer, but if you're trying to be taken seriously as an adult woman, I can't imagine but that it makes it harder.

It's just a case, I think, with parents choosing a "distinctive" or "stickin' it to the man" name (which Marijuana arguably would be), of parents thinking of THEMSELVES and not of their child.

(FWIW, I like my given name (Erica). It's not so very very common that you hear it daily, but it's not far out enough to be weird, either. And it doesn't lend itself well to demeaning nicknames. And it doesn't sound like the sort of name an exotic dancer would take for herself.)

I had something odd and unpleasant happen yesterday.

I have a two-hour break between my morning classes, and in the second class I was giving an exam, so I needed no prep time. So I finished sorting through the LAST (thank goodness!) of the 20 soil samples. (This will become important later; I didn't realize its importance until this morning).

It was unnaturally warm and humid here yesterday. (And yet: no rain. Boo.)

While invigilating* the exam, I began to notice my chest feeling tight. I didn't worry too much at first - it happens sometimes when my allergies are bad and goes away almost immediately.

This time it didn't. It got progressively worse. I started to feel a bit light headed but by that time I was down to 6 scattered students so I felt I could sit without worrying about anyone being able to cheat (besides, I use "form A" and "form B" with cleverly scrambled-up questions; it may not defeat cheating 100% but it would make it harder, and thus, I hope, more recognizable by me).

I began to worry - sure, this is chest, which for me usually means lungs (or rather, bronchi), but there's other stuff in the chest. Like heart stuff.

Dear God, could I be having a heart attack? (I had no other symptoms - no tingling, numbness, fatigue, nausea - none of the other symptoms. Plus every doctor that's bothered to check my cardiovascular system has found no evidence of anything wrong).

So I sat there, willing the students to finish up, telling myself if it didn't get better I'd drive myself to the ER and be checked out.

The students finished. I hadn't keeled over yet so I decided (and yeah, this was probably stupid, except in retrospect it wasn't) that our local ER being what it is, unless I was actively dying, I'd probably be sitting there four 3-4 hours, so perhaps it would be wise to run home and get a book. (And I still wasn't convinced this was anything worse than bad allergies).

I walked in the door of my house.

Immediately my chest opened back up, the tightness and pain went away, and I could breathe normally again.

I should note my house was a good 10* cooler than my classroom building (seriously; my office over here reached 30* C yesterday afternoon) and considerably less humid (part of the caretaking of the piano involves keeping humidity in a narrow range and monitoring it).

So, it must have been asthma. And I realized this morning that bending over plates full of wet soil for two hours probably was the root cause of the problem. So I'm glad to be done with that.

The really weird thing, and what clinched it for me as being allergic-related? When I went back on campus to teach the soils lab (which my TA could have done in my absence were I sitting in the ER hooked up to a nebulizer or whatever), I developed really bad eczema on both my hands and my feet - I get allergic eczema once in a while, not often.

It's all quieted down now (thank goodness for a jewel-weed/lemongrass salve I had at home), but I still feel kind of "fragile," like a bad exposure to dust could set me off again.

I know I said my allergies were mostly an "annoyance" but once in a while they do rise above that and become a little scary. (And yeah, I took my meds this morning, I guess I have to take them for a while now, even though they cause sleep disturbances for me).

(*Yes, I know, "invigilating" is one of those "affectation" words but I like it better than "proctoring." "Invigilating" sounds Latinate and smooth, "proctoring" sounds more angular to me and rougher. Though I suppose "proctoring" also has Latinate roots (though one etymology lists it as coming from Middle English))

Some extreme cuteness, courtesy of someone on CPAaG on Ravelry:

ZooBorns. It's what it sounds like. Baby zoo animals.

If I thought it were at all possible (maybe in some kind of alternative cartoon like universe), I would want a baby giraffe. The baby giraffe is my favorite. But the Tawny Frogmouths (a type of bird) are awfully cute, too. As is the baby penguin. And the baby anteater.

(Edited to add: oh, noes, they have a baby tapir on there. I am dead from the cute. [Tapirs are one of my favorite "unusual" animals and the babies are absolutely adorable]).

In other animal news, I've decided I can never again eat calamari (as much as I love it). Squid and octopi are too smart to be eaten; I feel too much sympathy for an animal that plays with Rubik's Cube and that will shoot a jet of water to short out an annoying spotlight. And supposedly they are as smart as dogs. (Which, yes, I know, are eaten in some cultures.)

Cows and chickens, I will still eat. Cows are pretty dumb, at least in my limited experience, and chickens are not only dumb, they can be MEAN.

Sometimes, you read something that hits you right there.

I think our downfall comes when we care about the opinions of people of lesser integrity, or the comments made by internet trolls, or the gossip of people who don't deserve us. Caring about the opinions of those who either don't like us or people who carry grudges, only gives them power and they know it. That's what they prey on. Well, I've learned and I'm taking away their power over me.

(from this post over at Incurable Insomniac).

That's a pretty powerful statement to me, because I've ALWAYS been a people-pleaser. (And I think an interesting sociological study would be to do a longitudinal examination of teenagers and see if the ones who are "people pleasers" rebelled less. I suspect they would; I know that I was so desperate for ANY approval - and in my case, the approval mainly came from adults; the other kids thought I was a lost cause - that I didn't DARE do anything to upset the adults).

The question comes, how does one STOP caring so much. I mean, I wouldn't want to go too far in the other direction and become the cranky uncollegial person, but I also do find I give people - sometimes people who are simply crackpots or who don't like me for some ridiculous reason - too much power over me.

And as she said: caring too much about the opinions of people of lesser integrity. That was the part that really got me, because I consider myself a person of high integrity, and of course it is right: why should I twist myself in knots over the opinion of someone who chooses to be a jerk because they think it's funny or cute, or someone who sees nothing wrong with cheating their way through life, or who will duck responsibility every chance they get?

Anyway, something to reflect upon.

I finished the first of the Caledonian Mists socks this weekend:



This pattern works up pretty fast. I turned the heel Friday night and had it done by Sunday evening. I've cast on for the second one already.

I also finished cutting the "theme fabrics" and cut some of the sashing for the County Lines quilt. (I think I'm going to only cut sashing as needed; it's an awfully big amount of "boring" cutting - lots and lots of 1 1/2" wide strips - to do all at once).

Here are the beginnings of some of the blocks, so you can see the colors:



****

I'm trying to adapt to DST but not doing that well. I went to bed an hour "early" Saturday night, but I still find I'm not hungry at the times I'm "supposed" to eat (and with my schedule, if I don't eat when I'm "supposed" to, I may not get a chance later), I'm not tired when I get into bed, and my body REALLY wasn't ready for the five am workout this morning.

I know, I know: more light in the evening. That'll be great come May when I have time to enjoy it, and when it's no longer dark when I drive to work. I don't like DST starting in March.

I wait in fear that some elected official, firm in his/her belief that it "saves energy" (I don't think it actually does), lobbies for year-round DST. Because the thought of driving to work in the dark for eight months out of the year just makes me feel despair. (Though then again, I wouldn't have the discombobulating effect of losing an hour each spring. That messes me up far worse than "gaining" the hour back in the fall does).

At least this year I didn't schedule an exam in my 8 am class for today. (I can never remember when the DST change comes and it seems excessive to me that I should have to plan for it when making my exam schedule).

We have Ben Franklin to blame for this. Ben did a lot of good stuff but DST is not my favorite idea of his.

(If they really wanted DST to save energy? They'd shave an hour off of everyone's workday in addition to messing with the clocks. Otherwise - I still have to get up at 5 am, dark or not.)

I did the drawing!

(I wrote everyone's name on slips of paper, folded them up, mixed them up, and pulled one out).

The winner is Anne "from the Jersey shore" (I know not if that is New Jersey, or "old" Jersey, as in the British Crown Dependency. But it matters not.

Anne, if you send me your mailing address, I will get the book out to you early next week. (e-mail me at ecorbett@netcommander.com)

Oh, and:

I'll do the drawing for the book either this evening or tomorrow morning and either let the winner know by e-mail (if I have an e-mail addy for them) or by posting here on the blog.

I probably should have just made the chocolate cake FIRST, instead of trying the fancier cake, based on the response I got. Everyone (or at least everyone who likes chocolate and cake) seems to like that cake. (It IS a good recipe - not too fiddly, nice crumb, nice texture, and the resulting cake isn't overly sweet).

****

Grace, thanks for the article link! That's what I was talking about. I think it's interesting how they are combing through old maps (and doing what we GISers call "ground truthing" - going out and looking at the site to see if what's on the map is actually there). And it's an unusual use of GIS.

That said, I'm not sure how I'd feel if I owned property with one of these "ghost roads" on it. I'd be uncomfortable if it were my homesite, thinking the state could come through and decide that I'd have to cede a portion of my property close to my house for a road.

And I do think it again brings up the issue of "what is civility? How do we manage to live together?" I keep thinking about that hay farmer and his comment about how 90% of the people who came through his land, he was perfectly happy to give the right of way to, but that there were a few who made him re-think that choice because they behaved badly.

I think that's one of the big challenges we face as a society. I don't know if the "special snowflake" problem (people acting as if they are the only ones that matter and doing things that abuse the hospitality of others) is an increasing problem or if we are just becoming more sensitive to it.

Oh, and Charles - I think is is a White Owl cigars ad. Now that I think about it, I believe one of my grandfathers used to occasionally smoke White Owls.

I should just go out some day and take some photos in my town; there is some interesting stuff to look at and right now when a lot of the ornamental trees are flowering there are some pretty plants, too.

***

One thing I did this past weekend was decorate my mantel.



I found a couple more pieces of "cottage ware" at an antique shop in McKinney (it's a newer shop called "Heirlooms" and I'm happy to see that it has kind of taken up the mantle of the dear departed Antique Collection in terms of what it carries and the style of how it's displayed).

I like this stuff. I suppose there's more of it out there - I'd be willing to bet there's at least a teapot in this style.

And I suppose, because once you have more than two of anything, you're a collector, I will probably now start looking for more of this stuff. But it does make me happy; it's just so cute.



I also put up a few Easter things. Decorating for Easter is something I've never really done; it seems to me that if you observe Lent (which I do, in kind of a half-hearted way), you don't put stuff about Easter up until the day of - and by then, it's kind of a lot of effort for a short time. But I decided to, this year.

The big bunny in the middle is from a Wee Wonderfuls free pattern; he was made using scraps my mom had saved from a dress or top I had when I was a little girl, so the fabric is (I guess) "vintage" (more than 35 years old - I probably would have been about 4 - counts as "vintage" now, I think.)

The "chocolate" rabbit is actually resin but it looks and feels very much like the real thing. And the fuzzy chick was so cute that I had to buy it - that's what made me want to do an Easter mantel.

(The sparkly eggs are covered with German glass glitter. Now that I think of it, it probably would have been cheaper to buy the foil-wrapped chocolate ones. But leaving them out might have attracted ants.)

Not too bad, considering it was a last-minute "emergency" cake:



I frosted it today when I ran home at lunchtime. And I'm happy to report that the mint frosting is one of the better frostings I've made. I usually don't use a recipe; I do it how my mom taught me - you soften up a few tablespoons of butter (you can add cream cheese if you like; I didn't have any on hand). Then you slowly add powdered sugar, beating as you go, and thin it down with milk as needed. Somewhere midway you add the flavoring and the color if you're using it.

For once, the frosting didn't come out sicky-sweet. I think that's because I was more generous with the butter - usually if you use more milk, you have to put in SO much powdered sugar that it becomes kind of unappealingly sweet. And the mint helps cut the sweetness. (I was very careful not to put much in; I've had mint frostings that had so much extract in them they tasted like mouthwash).

The decoration is just chocolate chips melted with a little more butter. At first I tried squeezing out "squiggles" from a baggie with a corner cut off, but that looked ugly, so I dragged fork tines through it to spread it out more.

I'm just glad this is DONE. I've never had more trouble, I think, with baking.

I have a friend who has been known to say, "Some days are just a waste of makeup."

Well, I could have said that about yesterday afternoon but I wasn't wearing makeup. (The different schedule - no classes yesterday - meant I forgot to put it on; I was kind of dressing in a hurry, thinking about getting over to work on research).

The first cake I tried - a date-nut cake that is quite elegant and is one of my favorites - totally failed. I think, in retrospect, it's because it's a recipe that doesn't double well - it's kind of a heavy cake, and I think the pan I put it in was too small. (It's an old recipe with relatively few guidelines.) It rose up high, foamed over the edge of the pan in the oven (which meant burning goo dripped on the oven floor before I could get a cookie sheet in there under the cake). The edges burned but the center never cooked.

I should back up and observe that I did this "last" thing - I probably should have done it "first" thing, but I wanted to get a good start on cleaning house and then leave the kitchen to be cleaned while the cake cooked. (And now my inner demon is yelling at me: you put YOUR priorities above other people's, because you wanted to clean before you baked the cake for your meeting. You deserved to have the cake fail. Which of course is not true, but when it's 6 pm and you're already tired and you're staring at a half-burned, half-raw cake, it's easy to think that.)

So I regrouped. Went out to the store (I had to; I was out of flour and could think of no dessert I could compose from what I had on hand). This time, I decided to make that simple Hershey's cocoa cake that I've given the recipe for on here before.

That one worked. (Which was a relief, because I was wondering after the first cake, if my oven was broken). Of course, I had to scrape the burned goo out of the oven first. But at least I had success by 8 pm when I pulled the finished cake out.

(I am going home at lunch and making a mint-flavored green icing. For St. Patrick's Day. If I can't have my "elegant" date nut cake, I'm just going to be goofy and have a cake with green frosting. So there. And if anyone doesn't like it, they can go without.)

And, of course, I now have a grimy oven. And a once-again grimy kitchen floor. (I HATE cleaning the kitchen floor because it seems every time I do it, something comes up within an hour of my cleaning it and it gets stuff spilled on it, or I happen to walk through in wet shoes, or something. If I could have one futuristic thing? Forget flying cars - I want a self-cleaning kitchen.)

I've got a pan of vinegar sitting in the oven - supposedly if you put a pan of vinegar in a cold oven over night and let the fumes work, it makes it easier to clean the grease off (I don't like using the commercial oven cleansers; I'm sensitive to the chemicals in them).

I managed to get the "public" rooms clean (well, except the kitchen isn't perfect now, with the crumbs of burned goo on the floor I need to mop back up). My bedroom is half-cleaned. And the guest room is still a nightmare but at least I found all the tax stuff I have - I think I'm going to do my taxes this weekend. I don't expect a refund so there's no point in doing them super-early. (Though perhaps this year I have enough capital losses to actually generate a small one).

But, gah. I had hoped to be done with stuff by maybe 5:30 or 6 and have a nice relaxing evening. What's the old saying? Man proposes, and God disposes? Though I kind of doubt God had anything to do with the failure of that darn cake.

Giveaway reminder!

Let me know by midnight tomorrow (i.e. the start of Friday) and I'll put your name in the drawing (Kucki, I'll add your name to the list).

There are not very many people so far so your chances are good.

****

Today is "assessment" day, which means the students (well, a "randomly" selected group of juniors) go in and take the ACT again, ostensibly to prove that we are actually teaching them something. So there are no classes today. I have my two soil samples to do (and I need to get to those); then I'm going to go home and clean house (it needs it). I also have a cake to bake for the AAUW meeting tomorrow night. (I'm amazed I was organized enough to remember that it was assessment day today when I volunteered to co-hostess back last spring - actually, I probably didn't, and I just got lucky.)

I'm still missing my home computer. I hope the guys manage to find the piece of spy ware and take it off.

This is a post I meant to do some months back, but never got around to. And I was reminded of the subject for two reasons - first, this month's Yankee magazine had an article on "Vermont's Sleeping Roads" (the phenomenon is briefly described here). The upshot is, there are hundreds of old roads - mostly old wagon tracks used as farm-to-markets - that have kind of fallen off the maps, but still have traces out there. There's a new law coming on the books that will make these traditional "rights of way" revert to the landowner (and so the right of way goes away) in 2015 unless communities claim them.

Yankee puts its own spin (which, irritatingly, I am noticing more and more) on the story: newcomers moving into the area are aghast that people have traditionally used these as free rights-of-way for hiking and hunting. Newcomers decided they OWN the land and post it. The locals aren't happy. Those darn newcomers!

(Though as one hay farmer who regretfully decided to post his land - at least for certain activities - points out: "90% of the people are great; 10% are a nightmare" and goes on to observe that people who drop bottles and cans along the trails can mess up his haying machinery, plus, "Who wants to buy hay that has trash in it?" So I would actually lay blame not so much at the "newcomers'" feet, but at the feet of those people who - like "special snowflakes" everywhere - think the common rules of decency and politeness (like, not littering on someone else's land) don't apply to them. Though of course some of them may well be newcomers).

Anyway, the idea of abandoned roads is pretty fascinating. (And also the fact that they are using GIS - one of the things I teach - to help find and plot the roads, and then figure out what to do about them.)

And then Lynn posted a link to a site about abandoned power plants (some of them quite creepy and romantic)

So I was reminded of the link I "saved up" from back when I was reading "The Artificial River" - about the Erie Canal. Canals have always fascinated me.

See, I grew up in Northeastern Ohio. I wasn't far from the old, old site of the Ohio and Erie Canal. I learned a little of its history in school (but not all of it; I had not heard of the 1913 flood that destroyed much of the canal before I read some of the online history sites). I've seen some of the old canal sites. Deep Lock Quarry was a favorite place for school field trips, and also my parents would take me hiking there a lot.

That was where I think - as I've said before - I first really developed my interest in history, particularly the more "everyday" sort of history - what people ate, how they dressed, how they made a living. Standing on the edge of the deep lock (one of the few that held water - cold-looking, slimy, algae-filled water, which was all the more scary to me because of a childhood fear of deep water (though the lock's water was probably only 4 feet deep or so)) I would think about the people who USED to live there - who had worked and traveled and lived and died some 140 years before me - even before some of my ancestors were in this country (though I didn't know that at the time). And how I would never know for sure who they were, and how they probably never thought that so many years later a little girl would stand on the edge of the lock and look in and wonder about what life might have been like for them.

So, thinking about old canals again, and particularly the sites not too far from me, I searched around a little. And I found a fascinating site, which I spent a late-afternoon-into-evening sitting in my office looking at. It is called Abandoned Ohio (and it's done in a very evocative black-and-white theme with Gothic typeface). It has a lot of links, or you can click on the pictures for different subjects - buildings, covered bridges, canal locks. (You may need to scroll down below a picture to get the clickable links. My one complaint is that the "menu pages'" pictures are kind of large and you don't see the links below them immediately). There's a whole page on the Ohio and Erie canal itself, with some history and links to as many of the locks as could be found. Deep Lock Quarry also has a page, but they focus more on the quarry (which I also remember) than on the lock (which is what I remember more - again, I think it's that water-fear that burned it into my mind.)

And if you're in to old canal photos (this being the Internet, I'm sure there's someone out there who is), there's a really good collection - viewable online - from The University of Akron's Canal Photo site

I've often thought it would be interesting to take road trips - especially if one had a good camera or was talented with a sketchbook - to some of these "abandoned" places, and to make records of them, either photographic or artistic. (Of course, it's more complicated in a lot of cases than just getting in a car and going; for some sites you need to get permission, and probably sign waivers agreeing that you will not (a) remove artifacts from the site and (b) sue the landowner if you step through a rotted floorboard and break your leg).

I was going to say that I'm sad there's not really any "old" stuff of that sort in my town - that it's not much fun to drive out of town friends around and say, "Yeah, that's where the Papa John's Pizza franchise used to be" as our own form of Abandoned, but now that I think of it, a lot of the downtown merchants are spiffing up their buildings, removing the old ugly aluminum false fronts that were put up over the brick in the 50s or 60s, and trying to recapture the old "ghost signs" that still exist. I had someone honk at me one day because I didn't see a light was green because I was so intent on looking at an old sign that had shown up on a recently renovated building - I think the building had once been a grocery and the sign was an ad for (I think) Owl Cigars. (I should walk down there some day when I have time and photograph the sign and put it up here; it's pretty interesting).

But, the places (like Ohio) that have seen longer continuous European settlement seem to have more interesting Abandoned stuff. (Though that might just be my personal prejudice). I wonder what Abandoned stuff exists in Europe, or if (because they have more of a premium on land), a lot of it's been taken down or renovated into something useful?

My home computer is back in the shop.

It seems to have picked up a "browser hijacker" somewhere. A very specific one - it affects Google and Yahoo searches (but not Altavista) in Firefox and IE (I was not driven enough to try to download and apply some other browser; Firefox is my favorite and though I could probably learn to tolerate another browser, most pages seem to look good in Firefox).

What the hijacker does, is when you search - say, Ezekiel Chapter 11 commentary which is what I was doing my Sunday School lesson on - instead of taking you to whatever site comes up (say, "biblegateway.com"), it takes you to a "shopping" site.

Offering "Great Deals on %whatyousearchedfor% clothes" (so: "Great Deals on Ezekiel Clothes!")

Lovely.

I think that the %expletiveadjective% hackers need to have an%expletiveadverbing% %expletiveverb% done to their %expletiveadjective% %expletivebodypart%.


Because such things worry me - might there not be a keystroke logger attached? Might not this be an open portal through which other Bad Things might come? - I tried to remove it.

Man, how I tried. Reran McAfee, with it set to the highest protection level. Downloaded Spybot Search and Destroy after deciding my existing anti-spyware wasn't finding it. Ran Spybot followed by MalwareBytes several times.

Nothing.

Tried downloading HiJack This, looked at the logs, and realized even with the online cheat sheet explaining some of them, I was out of my depth and in danger of deleting something the computer would actually need to run.

Then, trying to do one last check (having prayed my last run of the anti-bad-stuff programs had done something), I could not even get Firefox to open.

So I took it back to the friendly computer guys and conceded defeat. They think they know what it is; I hope they do.

I'll be politer on here than I was on Ravelry but I'll say that I wish the guys who wrote these programs would get sent to a deserted island without Internet access. I mean, seriously. This kind of thing makes me irrationally angry, just like vandalism does. It wastes time and money for people, it causes frustration and agony, and (apparently) in many cases, it's done simply for the "lulz" (which seems to be hacker-speak for "My friends and I feed on the misery of others! So we spread misery, and then we laugh!")

Honestly, if these people used their powers for Good - if they worked, say, in the ciphers department of the State Department, or if they worked with a software company to figure out and fix security breaches, they could probably make lots of money. Because that kind of junk takes skill.

But some people just can't use their powers for Good, I guess. So the rest of us have to Deal. (I had this high-speed connection for nearly 2 years, nary a problem. Now I've been hit twice in two months. It's very frustrating.)

Giveaway reminder:

either e-mail me, or leave me a comment saying you would like my extra copy of "Knitting Socks from Handpainted Yarns" by the 5th (well, really, the morning of the 6th - I'll give it until midnight CST) and I'll enter you in the drawing.

The three people who commented on the earlier post - I'll assume you want in the drawing unless I hear otherwise? (Yes, even Brenda from Australia. I'm willing to mail the book overseas if someone overseas wins it. In fact, airmail to and from Oz seems to be very fast - I ordered a couple kits from Louise Elliot and they were here almost unbelievably fast. And the shipping was not that much).

I worked a bit on the Caledonian Mists sock this weekend:



I'm now finished with the heel flap and ready to turn the heel.

Both the pattern and the yarn are lovely and they go together so well. The yarn is dyed very nicely and it's also a good texture - a tight twist without being "hard" - for making socks.

I'm really happy with how this is turning out.