Time to set the clocks back! I know a lot of people are sad about going off DST, but I'm not. It will be nice to have it light when I go in to work now. I don't mind it being dark in the afternoon nearly as much. And it makes that getting up at 4:30 or 5 to work out that much easier.

I had a considerable number of trick-or-treaters. Most of them were very polite, which is nice to see. A lot of them wished me a good night in addition to saying "Happy Halloween" and thanking me for the candy. My neighborhood is slowly becoming more diverse; tonight there were several Hispanic families as well as a couple of African American ones. Lots of tiny little kids dressed up and fewer of the teenagers-without-a-real-costume this year.

I did wind up going.

And I'm glad I did. Almost as good as having a food replicator - I walked into the produce department of Kroger and what did they have? Fresh Medjool dates. (I also bought a package of the dried ones off the dried-fruits aisle for when I eat up the fresh ones. I don't get down to Sherman as much as I used to).

I also found they are once again carrying the greatly-beloved-by-me Hamlyn's Scottish pinhead oatmeal. This comes in tins (which I think is even better - I have one of the empty tins holding pencils right now) and is really incredibly good. I don't even put sugar on it when I make it, that's how good it is just by itself. It has a much more complex flavor than regular oatmeal.

I had had part of one tin left (keeping it in the fridge - it has the bran intact so it does have the natural oils in it, and I didn't want to risk it going rancid) and was rationing it out to myself because I figured I wouldn't be able to get any more.

I will admit to squealing a bit when I saw it, and I picked a tin off the shelf and briefly hugged it to my chest before putting it in the cart. And, uh, a stockboy probably saw me, I didn't realize he was there. But I don't care. I don't ever want to become the sort of person who cannot be made irrationally happy by little things like that. (Of course, the flip side is that sometimes little things will make me irrationally sad, but I'll put up with the occasional sad if I get to have the happy.)

And I found the Interweave Holiday issue - it's a good issue though I kind of think a few of the patterns have appeared before elsewhere; they look familiar to me. But no matter. There are some nice sock patterns, and a cute pair of fingerless mitts, and a sweater made with 6 balls of Rowan kidsilk haze...(which I happen to have in my stash, bought very cheaply when Ewe Knit was closing out her Rowan stock, and I had originally destined for the Icarus shawl, but I'm wondering now if it might be nicer as a cardigan...it's a dark brown color, almost a chocolate brown, and I think it would make a lovely cardigan).

And I picked up some inexpensive "learner's" needles for the box to be sent off for the school knitting program, and some nice-but-on-clearance wool-ease.

And I bought a couple more skeins of sock yarn. Paton's now has a yarn that is called "FX," it is an ombre yarn similar to Mega Boots or the Trekking XXL colors. And I love ombre yarn for socks.

And I got to thinking about sockyarn. Sockyarn, to knitters, is kind of like chocolate chip cookies. Most people like it, it is small enough and generally inexpensive enough that a lot of people feel comfortable enough spreading it around (as gifts, as thank-yous, as "just becauses"). And for a lot of people, when they're going through a rough patch, a little bit of it can make things a little bit better. So I keep sock yarn on hand - it will eventually become socks, for me, for a gift for someone, or the yarn itself will be sent off as a gift.

And even if you don't want to make socks, you can make mittens or gloves or fingerless mitts or a hat or even a very short lace scarf out of a pair of socks' worth of sock yarn. So in a way it's almost a knitter's currency. (And if you have a LOT of a single color - or don't mind mixing and having stripes - you can make shawls and sweaters, even if they do take much longer to knit).

I also admit a bit of a siege mentality about sock yarn. I look at my (rather enormous) stash of it, and think, "Come the Zombie Apocalypse, I'll be happy to have this." (Or substitute "us being asked to take a pay cut" or substitute "outbreak of some virus that requires us to stay indoors until it's passed," or substitute "gas prices go way way up and I can't go out to shop for yarn, and postage becomes equally high" or "an asteroid falls into the Atlantic, causing a new Ice Age to begin" or whatever). Oddly, it's the thing I am kind of survivalist about. (I mean, in an irrational way. I do have canned goods on the shelf - these days, mostly as a hedge against either being too busy to get out to the store, a trucking strike, or me coming down with the piggie flu.)

Then again, in the past few weeks I've been able to despatch the odd skein to people going through rough times or as a "just because" and it seems to be well-received.

Right now I'm contemplating when (and if) trick or treaters might arrive (there are so many "safe" alternative events - and I admit a bit of irritation at that "safe" designation; it seems to imply that we homeowners are carefully spiking the candy or setting out punjee stakes in preparation for the kids. When really, I think they should call them "convenient for the parents" events - take your kid to the mall, get them candy, and oh, do some shopping at the same time. I don't know about kids today but I would have felt rather cheated by that.)

I'm also working on the current Clapotis. I have finished the "increase" section (I am making it wider than specified, as I have extra yarn). In a few rows I get to drop my first stitches - so there WILL be pictures either tomorrow or Monday for those people who have not made one yet and are still a bit put off by intentionally laddering a piece of knitwork.

I have to say I really love the Louisa Harding "Impression" for this, it is very light and drapey (and should ladder well) and it's shiny and it will be warm without being too heavy.

I figure this is a good thing to work on while waiting for trick or treaters (again, if I get any, and I HOPE I do, I have far more candy than I will know what to do with otherwise...I think there's a dentist in Ardmore who is collecting to send to the troops overseas, but much of the stuff I have is chocolate, which might not travel all that well). The Clapotis doesn't require complete attention (mostly stockinette).

Oh, and I experimentally sampled one of the packs of Sour Skittles I bought. Turns out they are regular Skittles coated with citric acid. (They claim, on the bag: "A good source of Vitamin C!*" Indeed.) I like sour things but I do not like these. They are so sour that they tasted almost salty to me. (And I am sure too much citric acid will erode dental enamel, something I am sensitive about these days.)

(*Seriously, this is one of the more ridiculous claims I have seen about a food. When we have to start touting the supposed health benefits of a candy?)

I need to sort my second tray of soil for the morning. But then I have a decision to make: do I go to Sherman, or do I pick up what groceries I can at the wal-mart and go home?

I had originally thought of going to Sherman because (a) I had one of those 40% off JoAnn's coupons and actually have something in mind to buy. And because I am preparing a "lovebomb" box for someone I know who is starting up a school knitting club and I wanted to see if I could find cheap size 8 needles anywhere, and possibly some decent but clearance priced yarn.

And also because I am craving dates, and NONE of the groceries in town have them. (In my town, you would come to believe certain products/foods do not exist). I figure, with even marginally healthful foods (dates have lots of nutrients; I have read that you could probably live on a diet of dates and water), a craving for something specific means that there's a nutrient it has that I'm lacking. (Yes, I am aware there is no scientific evidence to back that up). So if I want dates, I have to hie myself to the Kroger's for them.

(I know a lot of people who complain about how it's the future and they don't have their flying car, that they were promised a flying car. Well, with the way people drive with earthbound cars, I am not so much in favor of flying cars.

But I would like a replicator machine, like on Star Trek. So I could do something like walk in the door and say, "Earl Grey, hot" and there it would be. (Except I probably wouldn't ask for Earl Grey; it's actually one of my less-favorite teas). But on a day like this, I could say, "I would like some fresh Medjool dates, please" (and yes, I would say "please" to my replicator, even if it couldn't spit in my food or anything) and then I'd get what I wanted without having to make that long drive and stand in the long check-out lines. And they'd be fresh dates, instead of the dried ones I usually wind up buying. (I don't even know what the season is for fresh dates; all I know is once in a while I am lucky enough to find them in a store))

And also, after this week, I really do need to get out and have fun. Well, "fun" in the sense of running into the bookstore to see if the Interweave Holiday magazine has been put out yet (yeah, it's not November yet, but they might have it), and seeing a grocery other than the one I normally shop at.

But then again: it's the day after everyone got paid (shudder). Which means lots of people will be out, and it seems that the last/first of the month brings out the really annoying behavior in some people. And it's Halloween. And I admit to being a Halloween grinch in some ways, one of them being that some people seem to treat Halloween as an auxiliary April Fool's Day and play pranks on people. Even people they are expecting to spend money in their stores. Or hassle people (it's happened to me before) who are out shopping NOT IN COSTUME.

So I don't know. I don't know if my general desire to shop unmolested will win out over my desire to just get out of town for even an hour or two today.

The other complicating factor: there is an NCIS marathon on USA. And I haven't knit more than a few rows on anything for most of the week.

I wish I were sufficiently heartless to refuse to listen to students' sob stories.

I mean, I'm still docking points because it's late, but I would have been within my rights to dock more than I said I would.

I'm beginning to wonder if I was one of the rare "privileged" ones, in that I went to school as a single, with no children, no aging ill parents, and with (marginally) sufficient funds to get by so I didn't have to work (other than if I wanted more pizza/movie money).

On the other hand, anyone who claims to have the swine flu to get out of class/a test/handing something in on time, and is not actually sick? I hope karma bites them hard on the behind. Because many doctor's offices are not handing out notes and such, I can't demand proof.

I find that dealing with the "life stuff" my students deal with (and I, indirectly, have to deal with) makes me far more tired and cranky than any of the actual teaching/research/grading stuff does.

I started the flap on the "Fortune Cookie" bag last night. (I remain unconvinced that it will "work," but I am following the instructions as written). I also worked a bit more on the endless-seeming cuff of the Mini Mochi socks.

All my projects seem kind of endless right now.

But that might just be the weather, and the fact that it's been grey most of the week, and I'm tired.

****

Finally, a NYT story that doesn't "upset" me: I actually probably worry TOO MUCH about how healthful my diet is. Yeah, the guy essentially lives on candy. And he's healthy. And he's a "reasonable" weight.

Oh, and the whole "Halloween" idea of the article: I tend to agree. I have a big bag with Three Musketeers bars, and little packs of Skittles, and Whoppers and M and Ms and some other things to hand out to whatever kids roam by Saturday night. Even though they have already begun the "Here's how to avoid gaining weight over the holidays!" barrage of news stories.

I don't know; I remember Halloween as a kid and it really wasn't entirely about the candy - for me, it was mainly two things:

getting to dress up in a strange outfit
getting to go out and run around the neighborhood after dark.

The candy, really, was secondary. The main excitement was walking around the place where we lived at a time of day when I normally wasn't outdoors. (And granted, my brother and I had either our mom or our dad with us, but still). And we did really go ALL OVER the neighborhood - we lived on a very long street and we probably walked a total of two miles or more - all the way up nearly to the country club on the one side, and all the way down to where our street technically "ended" (at least, as a residential street) on the other. We saw people we normally only rarely saw. And most everyone handed out candy - practically every porch light on the street was lit. And really, I think for me - as a shy little kid - getting to go and visit people (if only for 20 or 30 seconds each house) with a 'sanctioned' reason, was every bit as exciting as the candy.

Oh, we enjoyed some of the candy - we never ate to the point of being ill (as some of my classmates obviously did; usually the day after Halloween there were at least a few kids out of class), and usually we spaced out the consumption of the "good" stuff (chocolate, the brand name candy bars, the "big" swee-tarts, and a few other things) over the next couple of weeks, but once the good stuff was gone (heh. Once we had "optimally foraged"), the rest of the stuff hung around until Christmas, when our mom usually threw it out. (Lots of people gave away junk like sour balls or those wrapped peppermint starbursts. Peppermint starbursts are fine if you've just eaten a lot of Chinese food and need to get the garlic and stuff off your breath, but they're not really Halloween candy, in my eyes.)

So I always kind of cast a jaded eye on adults who claim that Halloween is simply "training kids in gluttony" and suggest it be banned or something. Even though I don't remember our parents strictly limiting what we were "allowed" to eat on the evening, we'd have a couple of fun-sized candy bars, and maybe a caramel or two, and then decide we were done. (I suppose the fact that our parents insisted on the typical "healthy" supper before we went out trick-or-treating helped with that; it seems to me that when I'm eating more healthfully I seem to crave the not-so-good-for-you stuff less).

The only thing I'm doing for Halloween this year is handing out candy to the kids. I've never been a big celebrate-Halloween-as-an-adult (one year I did go to a "grown up" party and it was OK, but I'm not really a party person). I think that's because my first observations of "adults" celebrating Halloween were the drunken routs (rather than what I termed a "grown up" party, earlier) that used to happen on my college campus (waking me up as they came back from whereever) and I was rather turned off by the whole thing. (Well, that, and the idea that the costumes featured for adult women seemed to follow the mode of "Sexy [X]" where X could be any quantity from Vampire to Little Red Riding Hood. There are some of us who are adult women for whom the "sexy" vibe is simply ridiculous and undignified...And it would have been even when I was in my 20s.)

I know for a lot of people, Hallowe'en has become a favorite holiday. And that's fine, for them. It's just, I don't quite have a Hallowe'en "niche," so I probably enjoy the day less than I might.

We're supposed to get OH NOES GIANT STORMS WITH HAIL THE SIZE OF BABIES' HEADS!!!11!!" later today.

While I am at work.

I know I said last week that I wanted a "dimplemobile" like the golf-ball divot car the Mythbusters made, but I don't think I want a "dimplemobile" in this way.

I knew something was wrong when I walked out my front door just before 7 am and found that it was warmer than it had been all week. That's always a sign of something bad here in the fall - warm temperatures early in the morning: Gulf air is getting sucked up by an oncoming massive cold front.

I realized last night that if I was going to do ANY sort of Christmas-gift crafting, I had better get on it, because the way my time goes these days, I have so little free time.

So I wound the three skeins of Cascade 220 (dark denim heather, light denim heather, and a light grey) and began the Fortune Cookie Bag from the most recent Interweave Crochet. It's a tiny little felted bag with a flap - I guess the shape suggests a fortune cookie, hence the name.

I'm going to do one for the AAUW gift exchange - it comes in under the $10 price limit if I do not count my time (I NEVER "count my time" on knitting and crocheting a gift. I might if someone hired me to make something boring - I counted my time when my colleague the ornithologist hired me to sew bird bags - but not for something for a gift.)

I might also make one for my sister-in-law if the first bag turns out nicely. And if this first one comes out a little lumpy or wrong while I'm still learning to follow the pattern, well, I intend to make one to keep for myself because it will be a good way of carrying my keys and chalk-chock* and flash drive on the days when I am wearing a dress or skirt that lacks pockets.

(I don't like taking my big purse into classes - too much chance of forgetting it or something bad happening to my wallet)

(*A chalk-chock is one of those little devices - they used to be metal but now are mostly plastic - that holds a stick of chalk so your fingers don't get all chalky when you write. And also, if like me, you tend to get tense and have gorilla-grip, you don't break the chalk. Before I got the chalk-chalk, chalk would regularly snap in my hands, which, while I suppose there's some heuristic value for the student in seeing it as the professor's response to their request YET AGAIN of how one calculates the variance of a data set (five weeks after it SHOULD have been learned), still it's unsettling enough always to be breaking chalk.

Incidentally, the chalk-chock I use is metal, it's older - Dorothy gave it to me not too long after I started teaching. So I particularly treasure it it and don't want to lose it.)

I just barely got a start on the first bag last night. I do have to say the Clover ergonomic crochet hooks are GENIUS - my hand does not hurt this morning, and usually it did in the past after crocheting. I am sure it is the larger handle and the more hand-friendly shape of the hook that gives that improvement.

I may have to track down the other sizes and buy them. I have a G, an H, and a J - which are the sizes of hooks I use most commonly with yarn, but there are times when you need another size.

(For thread-crochet - which I have not done any of lately - I may be able to jury-rig something using narrow tubing wrapped with batting or something to make a more hand-friendly handle. Or maybe just buy some of those "cushions" they sell to put on the hooks.)

****

It's been a really busy week, and I've not had a lot of time to myself. I find I get a little bit melancholic when that's the case.

Last night, I dreamed about dollhouses. Including one I made for a toy mouse I had (named Guinevere) as a child. I think they probably symbolize a sense of control in my life; one thing I liked about dollhouses was that I had control over the arrangement of the furniture and the "schedules" of the inhabitants. (You would think from that that I had a chaotic childhood; quite the opposite).

It made me sad though, thinking of dollhouses long gone. (And thinking of those hours in childhood spent trying to scrounge matchboxes and spools to make the furniture). I also - in the dream - had a Fairy Castle dollhouse, all pink and pearl colored, which sounds kind of stupid in the waking world but in my dream it was really quite beautiful.

(I wonder if also my occasional distress at ugliness in the world - in my town there's been a quite horrific child abuse and murder case going on - makes my brain, in its own defense, dream of simple and pretty things).

And "minuscule" of a different sort:

Children's television shorts about insects. (You have to click on the tiny white 'spokes' on the right side of the page...down near the bottom there is a link to the "video of the month" which is "The caterpillar who wanted to see the ocean" ("La chenille qui voulait voir la mer").

The sound effects are by turns lovely and amusing (the caterpillar "burps" tiny little burps after eating leaves). (And no, the story doesn't have a sad ending, which I somehow anticipated).

Okay, so it is "minuscule." Funny, when I typed "miniscule" into Word, it acted like it was spelled correctly. (So maybe Word is stupider than Google?)

(Word is my "this word is showing up as misspelled by Google; is it really misspelled or not?" check. I am a fairly good speller but there are a few words that always defeat me and I have to check on them.)

I thought "minuscule" only applied to fonts, I guess.

Still, I'm irritated at myself for not knowing the correct spelling.

(some sites seem to accept that "miniscule" is a word, a few even calling it a "variant spelling." But then again, I am sure there are sites out there claiming that "ur" - as showed up in my e-mail from someone the other day - is an acceptable variant for "your." No. In my book Ur is ONLY valid as the place where Abram used to live.)

So maybe I need to write "minuscule" fifty times (the standard way of dealing with misspelled spelling words when I was in school) so I remember it.

Does anyone who read this know much about Rossini?

Was this a "real" piece he wrote (using "meow" as the lyrics), or is this a later joke?



It's like the "Pavane pour une Hello Kitty Defunte..."

(OK, one site calls it "Duetto Buffo di due gatto..." but then they append "spurious" to it...so maybe it is a made-up thing. Or maybe it's for-real of that era, but Rossini did not write it...)

I finished reading Louise Dickinson Rich's "We Took to the Woods" the other night.

The first half of the book or so is mostly an account of how their lives worked, of things she had seen and done out in the woods (including giving birth to their son Rufus).

The second half (or so) is a series of chapters answering questions she knows people have about life in the woods -- "Don't you get bored?" "Aren't you afraid?" (Her answer to that last being, the biggest threat to you in the woods is yourself - inattention or over-daring caused far more injuries than wayward bears do)

The last chapter, though, raises a couple of interesting philosophical (if I may call them that) points that I think have broader application.

The first is, she observes, that no one asks her the question "Is it worth while?" However, she notes, she asks HERSELF that question occasionally, when the stove acts up, or it's midsummer and the ice is gone and she'd almost sell her soul for a glass of ice water, or her son Rufus returns from going to observe a lumber camp with a new store of dirty words he's happy to share. But then again, she notes, a lot of the time she doesn't even THINK of the question:

"It amounts to this. "Is it worth-while to live like this?" is a question I never ask myself under fair conditions. I ask it only when exasperation or discomfort or exhaustion pre-determine No as an answer...Happy people aren't given to soul-searching, I find. Revolt and reform, whether private or general, are always bred in misery and discontent..."

While I am not so sure about happy people never doing soul-searching, I do agree that it is at the times when I am most at the end of my rope that I find myself asking myself, "Why didn't I apply for that research post in Alaska?*" or "Why didn't I decide to go to library school instead and maybe wind up as a cataloguer who rarely has to deal with the Specialer Snowflakes of the world?"

(*there's actually more to it, which I am putting as an aside because I am going to use a rude word I normally NEVER use, but there is no other way to convey the joke I turned it into otherwise. It would have been measuring body temperatures of caribou. And I always assumed those were rectally taken...so I used to joke, occasionally, in grad school, as I was working on my doctorate (the caribou job would have come after my Master's) and teaching, and dealing with several very demanding students: "If I had gone to Alaska, I would have still been working with assholes, but at least not the kind that can talk back to you!" I still think that occasionally, when some of the Specialer Snowflakes I come into contact with get me down)

But I do think we have a predisposition to see the worst and assume the worst when we're already stretched to the limit. And when you're happy and engaged (she later talks about how she never even contemplates the concept of "worth-while" while attempting to land a large salmon, or while she is swimming, or while she gets to see deer drinking from a quiet forest pool.

I do know for myself, my "am I wasting my life at this?" questions tend to come up most in the semesters when I have a class containing several "difficult" personalities, or when research is going badly, or (as happened once) I got two different manuscripts rejected from two different journals in a single week.

And actually, I do think too much asking of "is it all worth-while?" or "Am I wasting my life at this?" - well, that way lies madness. Or at least deciding to watch Jerry Springer to convince yourself that AT LEAST you are better off than THOSE people.

****

A related point (really, it is) is when she speaks of freedom. She remarks that in the woods, she can be "herself," without feeling pressure to dress a certain way, or act a certain way. Money doesn't matter (well, above and beyond being able to buy necessities). Her identity is not based on all the foolish things that women's identities used to heavily be based on (and I suppose, in some circles, still are).

She describes it as "being free," but then notes (remember, she is writing in the middle of World War II):

"To define freedom, for which men and women and children are dying all over the world, in terms of indifference to clothes and social contacts and popular attitudes seems to trivial and irresponsible a thing to do that I am ashamed of it, as of a gross impertinence; but that is what living here adds up to, for me. I am free."

I have to admit, I enjoy some of that same freedom in academia. You can wear the same dang old sweatshirt you've worn for the past ten years and no one will say anything. You can disdain whatever is currently popular and it's just fine. You don't have to golf. (one of my brother's objections, to life in the corporate world: "You get a raise because you do good work but then you're expected to go out and spend it on a better set of golf clubs to impress your higher-ups with when you all go out golfing together." Needless to say, he didn't golf, and he didn't stay all that long in the corporate world)

She goes on:

"It adds up to more than that. All ordinary people like us, everywhere, are trying to find the same things. It makes no difference whether they are New Englanders or Texans or Malayans or Finns. They all want to be left alone to conduct their own private search for a personal peace, a reasonable security, a little love, a chance to attain happiness through achievement. It isn't much to want; but I never came anywhere near to getting most of those things until we took to the woods."

That's actually one of the better descriptions of "freedom" I've seen lately - being left alone to search for your own personal peace and a chance to attain happiness. Or at least, it's a definition that resonates with me.

Received an e-mail that makes me glad I'm not one of those old-time professorial types who keeps a bottle of rum (or whatever) hidden in the bottom file drawer, because I'd be tempted to take it out. (Or maybe I'm confusing old-type professorial types with old-time newsmen.)

I can't tell if it's an e-mail genuinely apologizing for poor performance in my class, or if its subtly designed to shift blame from the student to me (because my tests are "too hard.")

I'm going to have to try and forget it because it's the kind of thing that will make me low-grade crazy if I let it. And because dammit, I am not going to let myself feel guilty just so a student can feel better about themselves.

I also have an upset stomach this morning. I SWEAR there is something in that buffing compound they use on your teeth at the dentist that, even though very miniscule amounts are actually getting into my system, is enough to make me feel ill. (It's probably got some kind of industrial version of sorbitol in it, that's even more powerful than regular sorbitol.)

(Huh. Firefox's spell-checker doesn't know "miniscule." I wonder if, in a few more years, there will be increasingly more words that are real words that spell checkers don't "know," because so few people use them. Maybe we need an endangered species act for words.)

I am now up to the armhole decreases on the back of the Honeycomb vest. At last, this feels like I'm getting somewhere:



You can see them at the very top of the photo. I have a few more (the simple, one-stitch decrease per row) left to do. But I'm getting there. Soon I will divide to make the neckline and the "straps" that go up to the shoulders.

This will also go faster by virtue of there being fewer stitches now per row.

I also have the first few patches cut for the Pie Crust Pileup quilt:



I really like the colors in this one. And I've always been fond of landscape pictorial fabrics (like the one on the very top of the top block, or the bottom of the leftmost block). I have a bigger piece, slightly different, in colors more like the fabric with the little birds in it, to be the border of the quilt.

This one does go pretty fast, it seems, though my blocks are a tiny bit off-size (a tiny bit small). I hope that doesn't totally ruin the look of the pattern; I hate it when you have to be so-super-accurate to get something to come out that 1/4 inch of "offness" spoils it.

I have been granted a six-month (at least) reprieve on all things dental.

Nothing wrong with my teeth this time, thank goodness. (At one point the dentist was scraping and blowing air and "hmmm"ing over a spot, but he concluded it was a stain.) And the x-rays were clear. And no old fillings had decayed to the point where they needed replacement.

I will say they "sonicated" a couple of places that had tartar, and no sir, I didn't like it. High pitched whiny thing that gets warm and has a point on it - pretty much my trifecta of things I do not want in my mouth.

And the insurance re-enrollment went amazingly easily. The only change is that I will pay a dime less per month for my dental coverage. (No scales, or blood tests, or long scary lists of "wellness" initiatives and being told to pick three off the list to do...)

So I'm back in my office (I kind of, um, promised myself and the Universe that if my teeth were OK - therefore not necessitating going home and lying down in a dark room with a cold compress on my forehead while I contemplated the horrors of a crown or filling replacement - that I would start writing the ecology exam I need to give next week.)


****

And this is why I like having a stash of both books/patterns and yarn: I was flipping through what I think of as Clara Parkes' Big Book on Yarn (it's really called The Knitter's Guide to Yarn or somesuch) and spotted a pattern for a simple, worsted-weight, pullover vest with what are known as XO cables running up the front. And I thought, "Gee, that's kind of cute." And then I thought, "Gee, I have some nice Nashua yarn I bought the last four balls of on sale over a year ago thinking I might have enough for a vest."

I went and found it. I have 880 yards of the yarn; the largest size of the vest (46") takes 780. (And I think - given that a couple of the 46" sized things I've made have been a little bit too big on - I would do the next size down, which is 42," so it would have zero ease and be more fitted.). So, hooray: I found a pattern for yarn bought more or less "on spec," and I have "free" yarn (once it enters my stash, it becomes "free" to me, as I've already spent on it. Illogical, but whatever) that I can use for the vest.

Oh, I do have to finish a few things first, and I really should aim for finishing the Honeycomb vest before starting yet another blue-green vest. (The Nashua yarn is in a color called "blue pine.")

But I really do love - and find one of my greatest sources of happiness is - looking through my books of patterns, and my pattern magazines, and the patterns I've bought/printed for free off the Internet over the years and daydreaming about what I want to make "next." Periodically I take the books off the shelf I've not looked at for a while and flip through them, and I often see patterns I've looked at numerous times before with new eyes.

I know lots of people dislike going off DST, but wow, will I be grateful for it next week. It felt like the dead dark middle of the night driving in at 7 this morning. (The fact that it's totally clouded up contributed).

It's also just under 20* C (67 F or so) in my office. It's funny, I keep my house that cool and I'm just fine, but sitting at my desk at that temperature, my fingers start to freeze. And I'm wearing fingerless mitts.

Today does not promise to be a fun day. It's Mandatory Insurance Re-Enrollment day for me, and we're switching carriers, so I am anxiously anticipating either being told my allergies (the ONLY thing I get regular treatment for) are a "pre-existing" condition and I'm out of luck on having my serum and testing covered, or that prescription coverage has been dropped, or that they roll out a scale, blood pressure cuff, and blood testing apparatus because they want to see what kind of a "risk" each of us is. Or, worse, the adjuster looks me up and down, mentally weighing me, and tells me that there's a "wellness program" (read: diet) he's going to suggest I enroll in.

(Edited to add: Printed out the re-enrollment form; all they ask for are my name, social security number, DOB, and address. So maybe we have a few years yet before the hamster wheels (and related pelletized controlled-portion food dispensers) become a part of our lives).

And then I get to go for a dental checkup. (but thank goodness my good dentist is a "provider" for our new dental insurance. Because I expect one of these days - I sincerely hope not today - I will be told I need yet another crown).

Also, last night was a fish fry at church. I am coming to conclude that I generally dislike fish because it does not agree well with me. (I suppose it could also have been the "fried" that is causing the stomach troubles, I never eat anything fried, normally.). A person's gut transit time is like six hours, right? I ate the fish over 12 hours ago. Why should I still have indigestion?

I finished reading "The Tempest" last night. I enjoyed it very much (I know I have never seen it produced, but Prospero's summoning of the spirits towards the end is very familiar - I'm sure I've heard that recited somewhere). It still does not QUITE displace "Twelfth Night" as my favorite Shakespeare play, but it comes very close. (Perhaps seeing a production of it would change my opinion.)

I was casting about for what to read next. I had originally planned on reading "Hamlet," seeing as not very many weeks ago I saw a production of it on campus. But now I see by the calendar that today is St. Crispin's day...which tells me that perhaps Henry V should be the next one to read.

(I know very little of the play aside from the famous speech:

"This day is call'd the feast of Crispian.
He that outlives this day, and comes safe home,
Will stand a tip-toe when this day is nam'd,
And rouse him at the name of Crispian.
He that shall live this day, and see old age,
Will yearly on the vigil feast his neighbours,
And say 'To-morrow is Saint Crispian.'
Then will he strip his sleeve and show his scars,
And say 'These wounds I had on Crispian's day.'
Old men forget; yet all shall be forgot,
But he'll remember, with advantages,
What feats he did that day. Then shall our names,
Familiar in his mouth as household words-
Harry the King, Bedford and Exeter,
Warwick and Talbot, Salisbury and Gloucester-
Be in their flowing cups freshly rememb'red.
This story shall the good man teach his son;
And Crispin Crispian shall ne'er go by,
From this day to the ending of the world,
But we in it shall be remembered-
We few, we happy few, we band of brothers...

)

So it seems apropos. Also, I think I am more in the mood right now to read of heroism and sacrifice* than I am to read of what is (essentially) a dysfunctional family with a broody, indecisive main character.

(*Yes, I know: one reading of the play is as an anti-war allegory. I'll make up my mind when I actually read it.)

(I'm sure there's a considerable body count in Henry V, but somehow it's different when someone "dies in battle" in a play, than when they're all sprawled dead because of family dysfunctionality (stabbed or poisoned or both) across the stage at the very end. Or at least I tend to think so.)

And once I finish the two "non fiction" works I am reading, I am going to begin reading that book I bought over my break, about the real-life storm that apparently inspired "The Tempest."

The two books are "The Victorian Internet," which is VERY good and is far more interestingly written than "Jacquard's Loom," and "We Took to the Woods," which is Louise Dickinson Rich's account of her family's WWII era stint living in a cabin in the Maine woods...I admit that running away to a cabin in the woods is a fantasy of mine, but I know intellectually that I would probably go mad were I that isolated (living in a cabin alone). Rich talks about the real risk of going "woods queer" - a sort of stir-craziness that comes from spending too much time alone and not getting Outside, "Outside" being the larger world of shops and towns. I do think I'd be at risk of going "woods queer" - I know if I spend even a couple days - like during a school break - by myself too much I tend to brood and focus inappropriately on small things (Rich cites an example in herself, where she became overly agitated by the loss of a particular pencil she favored). The other thing that would stay my hand from running off to the woods is what I might call the running-water issue. In the Rich's home, there was no running water: drinking water had to be hauled from a well, people bathed using water heated on the stove (I tried that in 2007 when my hot water heater went out; it's a rather unpleasant effort). And they used an outhouse.

That in itself is enough to keep me in town. I have commented here before that I don't camp. Part of that is I sleep badly away from my own bed, even if I am staying in a halfway-decent hotel. But sleeping in a sleeping bag, on the ground, surrounded by allergens and (as has always been the case the few times I tried camping) with a cold rock that shows up under my sleeping bag somewhere in the vicinity of the small of my back in the middle of the night. The other reason I don't like to camp is the bathroom issue. Unless I deliberately starve myself of fluids after 4 pm, I will have to get up at least once during the night. And if you're having to trot off to a pit toilet (or worse, a latrine you yourself had to dig), well...

I know, that sounds picky and excessively "soft" and that as an ecologist, I should not be bothered by the discomforts of camping. But I am. I prefer to sleep in a nice bed, with a toilet a few steps down the hall AND hot water in which to wash my face the next morning.

So anyway: cabin in the woods, nice thing to dream about, but most likely not ever going to happen.

I finished the second of the puppy-dog print quilts (that will eventually be donated to Project Linus after they are quilted and finished):



I think this one came out even cuter than the first. It's a little bit bigger as I had more of the fabric that I had intended to use for the border on this one.

Here's a close-up of one corner:



Now what I have to do are either find or get backings (I'm leaning towards picking up a couple yards of the extra-wide muslin you can use for backings; I think my local quilt shop has it, because that's easy) and find the time to drop them off with the quilter. (I do also need to prep the backing for that Mary Engelbreit fabric quilt as well - because it's kind of an effort to find time to get to the quilter (she is not open on Saturdays), I like to drop off several tops at once.)

I'm hoping that maybe early next year - I usually make an early-spring-semester trip to McKinney - I can take these down and drop them off at one of the drop-off points.

And in preparation for that (a trip to McKinney and its two quilt shops), I'm trying to work on the stash some - I cut the pieces for, and started sewing on, the "Pie Crust Pileup" quilt today. This one should go fairly fast. (Which also makes the pattern - which is fun to make, at least thus far - another good candidate for future Linus quilts or future gift quilts. (One of these days I am going to make a small quilt for my mother.))

One of the people on Ravelry who is a health-care worker observed that "eye protection" (even wearing eyeglasses) provides good anti-flu protection, because droplets can get in your eyes and glasses will stop them.

How happy I am that squeamishness won out over vanity and I never got contact lenses but continued to wear glasses instead. I will never complain about wearing glasses (well, I don't anyway) if they do help protect me from H1N1 and other bad "bugs."

(Also, of course, not touching your eyes or nose or mouth without washing your hands first helps. And of course with contacts you are touching your eyes more frequently - at least, I would be, as I have allergies and would probably get lots of itchies from contacts)

Besides, I don't think I look so bad with glasses. The old stereotype notwithstanding.

(Didn't Dorothy Parker or someone say, "Men who don't make passes at girls who wear glasses are asses"?)

I LOVE the free rice game. Not just because I'm good at it.

I'll have to check out those other resources when I get a little time (i.e., when I'm done doing a treasure-hunt for soil invertebrates).

And once again, I think good old "reading a lot" (especially when you are a student) is a great thing to help vocabulary. (Though it's rare these days that I run across a word I do not know).


***

I hate spam where the subject lines play on one's insecurities or ego. I got one this morning that said, "Star Teacher, I always love your class." As the sender was not any name I recognize (stanislaus0.0), I know it had to be spam. (And because someone used the phrase "Star Teacher." I will never be what passes for a "Star" teacher these days)

I also had a particular blinding hate for the ones that would get sent out around Valentine's Day, suggesting that one had a secret admirer. Now, I know - the concept of secret admirers pretty much dies when it's time to put away your high school letter sweater and enter the World of Adults, but still, you know? It would be nice sometimes.

"This longwool knows that taking it easy isn't just a good idea; it's a great one. With an open mind and a dependable attitude, Perendales always make the best of any situation. Flexible and adaptable, they are great negotiators and compromisers as well."

(Actually, I think the "open mindedness" is just "I love so many different kinds of wool and knitting projects, I can't decide.")

You can take the quiz here. (The book it is to advertise is definitely on my wishlist.)

Yet again, I recaption a "LOL" to serve an ecological purpose...


moar funny pictures


I don't think I'm quite brave enough to include this in my powerpoint slides on predation and optimal foraging, but it kind of amused me none the less.

It's funny, how certain things a person learns in school keep coming back and being useful (if you're lucky).

One of the biggest, most useful things I ever learned was "how to take notes" (and yes, we were explicitly taught this, as high school freshmen).

Another was the note-card method of taking reading notes: you put the name of the author and year of publication (and depending on citation method you're using, page number) at the top of the card, and then write the fact you will need to write your paper on the card. I had boxes and boxes of these cards for my dissertation but it was much easier to go, "I KNOW I read that somewhere" and find it on the card than it was to hunt back through the article you "thought" it was in.

A third, I realized today: word roots. I jokingly remarked on Twitter that teaching biology would be much easier if we could force the students to take Latin in high school. For example, today we were looking at sea sponges and the students were trying to find the osculum. I remarked to a couple of them that it "wasn't a mouth, but it kind of functioned like one" (Well, not really. It's actually probably more like an anus, really). They looked at me kind of goggle-eyed: how do you know "osculum" means something like "mouth?"

I guess they wouldn't get the jocular semi-hipster usage of "osculation" to mean "kiss," then. (From an old Daffy Duck cartoon: "Greetings, gate! Let's osculate!" You know, those Looney Tunes provided far more of an education than I ever realized, sitting watching them Saturday mornings over my bowl of Cocoa Puffs.)

But actually, I never had Latin. (I had French, which is kind of the great-grandbaby, or maybe the great-grand-niece, of Latin. And had I but world enough and time, I WOULD learn Latin. Just because it's there.)

But I did have teachers in school who impressed upon me that if you know what one word means, and you find another word made up of similar parts, chances are you can guess what the new word means. (Yes, there are "false friends" out there. I can't think of any in English at the moment but I know that in German, "das* Gift" is not something you want to receive...)

(*argh, that may not be the right gender. I can't remember now)

I also remember spending a lot of time in classes learning "word roots." (And actually, some of that may have been spelling-bee prep. I went as far as my regional spelling be when I was in 8th grade. Didn't make it very far though; didn't have a shot at the national.)

I always liked those things about my early education that equipped me well to go on and learn more stuff on my own; stuff that made me more independent. (I was one of those little kids who would wave her arms at the teacher and go, "I want to figure it out fooooorrrrr myyyyseeeeellllllllfffff!")

So, word roots have served me well. (And continue to serve me well. One of the things I've seen written about Shakespeare's writing that allegedly makes it "challenging" for modern folk is that the vocabulary is supposed to be more "Latinate." Well, as a biologist who hangs around Latin-derived (or Greek bastardized with Latin) words all day long, the vocabulary is actually often quite familiar.)

Anonymous, that's interesting, about the blood pressure spike. (I always like finding out that there's a physiological reason for what used to be dismissed as "all in their heads").

And as for chronic fatigue - having known one or two sufferers - it always seemed to me that it had to be something "real" in the sense of having a physiological cause and not being "all made up," as some doctors dismissed it to be.

I should read more of the migraine literature. I read Oliver Sachs' book about it and found it not to be quite as user-friendly as some of his other works. (And also, he discussed - and seemed to ascribe to, a bit - a theory that migraines were something people "did on purpose" to get attention. Which annoys me. Because, you know, I live alone? So what "benefit" do I get from crushing agony a couple times a year? Supposedly the idea is that migraineurs "willed" their condition because in the past they got attention or pity for it. That seems like bunk to me - or at least, bunk in some of the cases - because I didn't start with migraines until I was out living on my own - so I have no one to "pity" me for having them or give me attention. And secondly, I'm one of those "I'm sick! Leave me alone!" types. I mean, it's nice to have someone there in case you spike a bad enough fever you need to go to the ER, but other than that, I prefer to be left alone to recover in peace, rather than having someone poking their head in the door every 30 minutes to see how I'm doing.)

I don't know. It seems to me that migraines have a pretty obvious physiological cause.

I am very happy with the new season of Mythbusters so far. Two weeks, two great "builds."

I totally want a car with golf-ball dimples now. (One of my colleagues had his pickup parked out during a hailstorm several years ago and so for a while referred to his truck - until he got the bodywork fixed - as The Dimplemobile.)

As for the other myth - well, I've never had a hangover (never put myself in the position to get one), but the symptoms of one are startlingly like the symptoms of a migraine: sensitivity to light and sound, difficulty concentrating, tendency to hurl.

Not that I think they are in any way related - a hangover is the aftereffects of poisoning yourself (trufax; that's what it is) and a migraine is (if I understand the stuff I've read on it correctly) some kind of weird vascular phenomenon.

(Actually, I wonder if anyone's looked at people's blood pressures over the course of a migraine. I wonder if they spike up at all during it - not just from the pain but from the vascular weirdness that apparently causes the headache in the first place).

And another thing they might have tested with the hangovers, but did not: sensitivity to smell. I know when I'm getting a migraine, that's actually one of the ways I know I'm getting one - my sense of smell is even more sensitive than it normally is. (Normally, I'm "Oh, that person who just stepped in my office to talk to me must be a smoker." With a migraine I'm "Oh, my gosh, that person who just WALKED BY my office reeks like a tobacco factory. Make it stop!")


****

I'm trying to work on one of my (many) ongoing projects (all of very fine yarn, and now I'm irritated at myself for doing that. I should have at least one worsted-weight project going on) per night.

Last night it was Thermal. Which I am also bringing with me today - I give an exam and can use it as "invigilating knitting."

Thermal, as much as I love it (and will love the finished product) grows VERY slowly. I have 5" done of the body - you divide for the fronts and backs at 14".

I've decided I want to finish at least one of the many ongoing projects (hint: it won't be Thermal) before I cast on for something new.

***

FINALLY the Lane Bryant bill came (uh, yeah. I signed up for a credit card when I was there; they were offering 15% off, and I pay all my cards off well within the grace period so I don't rack up interest). I was starting to get concerned, but it seems I happened to shop there at the very "beginning" of the bill-cycle.

I do worry about that when I take out a new credit card - what if there's something I misunderstood in the fine print and there's zero grace period, so I'm paying interest from the day I bought the thing (though I think that would jump out at me from the fine print). Or what if I don't get the bill on time?

I do think I need to get back down there some time and consider "foundation garments," the "BRAUMS" minus the "-UMS"* I have right now are starting to lose some of their elasticity and that is not good.

(*The local Braums - a dairy store/ice cream shop chain - well, its big pink neon sign, the UMS was burned out yesterday, so it said BRA instead. And because I'm well in touch with my inner 12 year old, it made me cackle when I saw it while driving to work.)

It's funny; I seem to becoming more girly/more clothes conscious as I get a bit older. When I was in my 20s - well, I didn't dress BADLY (well, not most of the time), but I was less concerned about my appearance. And now, as I'm at what is generally thought of as the Invisible Age, now I care.

(I'm sure part of it was that when I was in my 20s, I had an even more screwed-up body image than I do now, and I was mainly interested in doing the best I could to hide what I perceived as my unattractiveness. If it wouldn't have been too attention-getting to wear a veil, I probably would have).

The exact form of the quotation I was referring to this morning is this:

"What you eat is like how you pray: your business. Not to be forced on others. Worship at Burger King or Chez Panisse, depending on your tastes, wallet, and personal needs...Just don't make me go there." - Sheila Himmel.

One thing I do fear sometimes is that we are turning (back?) into a nation of busybodies, where everyone else's business is our own. Like the fabled small towns of old, only with the noxious veneer of "I'm telling you what I think you should do for your own good." (I really don't think small towns were as suffocating or as stultifying as some people made them out to be.)

God preserve me from people who would tell me what I "need" to do "for my own good."

Because we are now being dumped on by (apparently) the remnants of TS Rick, I had to make other plans for lab (besides, it's turned kind of chilly. And I already have one student out with "hamthrax." I know, I know, getting cold doesn't MAKE you get sick, but I do think it can lower your immunity)

So I did a tree identification lab using herbarium sheets. I sat down during my lunch break and quickly made up a list of the "diagnostic" characteristics (e.g., whether the leaf edge is smooth or toothed, whether the buds are clustered at the branch tips or single...) that I look for to help identify trees when I need to. And I several specimens each of about a dozen trees common in our area.

And I wrote all the diagnostics up on the board, and told the students to figure them out for each species, plus draw an example leaf and branch. And I said, "You will want to be able to identify these from your notes, in the field."

By which, I really meant: "When we do the for-real tree sampling lab, I DO NOT want to have to be running over hill and dale to identify trees which you, as Conservation majors, should really already know at this point."

Well, apparently thanks to misinterpretation on a couple people's part, a rumor got going around the class that what I really meant was: "You are going to have a field quiz on this next time we're out in the field."

I realized that about midway through the lab when I was walking around answering people's questions. (No one asked me directly but I overheard references to "field test" and "there's going to be a quiz on this.")

And then I was met with one of those little ethical dilemmas professors face sometimes: Do I let them know that we are not, actually, going to have a field test on this (there simply isn't time)? Or do I allow them to labor under the mistaken assumption that they will be actually tested on it, like grade-type tested on it?

Well, I decided it was okay not to tell the whole truth in this case - if I had said, "Where on earth did you get the idea I was going to do a field exam on these? I just want you to KNOW these for the field sampling in a couple weeks." I would be willing to bet that at least a few people would stop putting in an effort there and then, and a few more might complain about being "tricked" into working harder.

So I just kept my mouth shut. If someone asks next class time, I'm going to go all innocent and say, "Field exam? Whatever gave you the idea that I was going to TEST you on these?"

Although, I admit, you can really only get away with something like that every couple of semesters because otherwise, word gets around.

FWIW, I never made any mention of an exam; I just told them that they would "want" to have the information later on, which in my mind does not equate to "you will be tested on this." But whatever. If it means I don't have to wear myself out running all over to identify trees people should know but don't in a couple weeks, it will have been worth it.

I'm almost up to the armhole decreases on the back of the Honeycomb vest.

Having a large number of projects (really, all of my projects at the moment) being knit of fine-gauge yarn is not a particularly wise idea.

***

The new Eating Well came yesterday. And there was a great quotation in it, from a former food critic (who had, with her daughter, written a book on recovery from anorexia). I should have written the quotation down so I could get the wording exact (and remember who said it - it's not a name I'm familiar with) but it went something like:

"How you eat should be how you pray. Worship at the church of Chez Panisse or Burger King as your wallet, tastes, and needs dictate...but don't make me do it too."

(And I think that "how you pray" comment is also designed to include an allusion to the Pharisee standing up in the temple, loudly saying "I thank God I was born a Good Person, and not that dreadful tax collector over there in the corner.")

And that pretty much sums up how I feel about the whole "foodie," "local foods" "healthism" and everything else movements - which seem often aimed at subtly pressuring or shaming people into eating what some other person thinks they should eat.

(I am, unfortunately, a person too easily susceptible to the shaming of others)

One thing I've learned in life, is that a one-size-fits-all solution, which is what many of these folks propose, really doesn't fit anybody all that well, and it fits some people extremely badly.

I mean, I'm happy to hear about other people's experiences. I'd be happy to eat more local, if I could, but it's just not really possible where I live. (to get "local" eggs, I would need to drive some 40 miles). And I like reading interesting new recipes. But I don't appreciate being told stuff like, "you know, that sandwich would be so much better for you if you used tofu instead of the turkey and put on some raw sprouts and sliced beets and a couple slices of mango." (an exaggeration, but still) I made the sandwich the way I did because that's how I want to eat it.

I would love to see a truce called in the food wars. I would love an end to the bashing of foods that Certain People don't like. Or that they think are "downmarket" (sometimes I wonder if some of the food commentary is thinly veiled snobbery: I have heard enough, "The poor in this country are the people who are obese" snark to last a lifetime). I'd like some of the Health Police to realize that yes, in fact, most of us realize what is "good" for us and what is "bad" for us, and while it would behoove us to always choose what is "good" for us, we don't. And for them to just make PEACE with that.

In other news, a goodly part of my dinner last night was pimiento cheese on crackers. (I think it's funny that pimiento cheese - at least the kind I buy at the store - is mostly made in Wisconsin, but I never ate it or never even really saw it served before I moved down here. It seems to be a very Southern thing, especially sandwiches of it made on very thin-sliced bread and served at casual receptions and such.) And whatever the foodies may say about it, I rather like pimiento cheese.

****

A small piano update: It's time (apparently) to start learning a Christmas Piece. My teacher handed me a book and told me to flip through and find something I liked. I wound up choosing an arrangement of "It Came Upon the Midnight Clear." (Partly because most of the other things had tons of arpeggios in them and I just don't feel like messing with arpeggios right now). It turns out it's a rather pretty arrangement, so I'm glad.

I'm also working on an arrangement (the bane of being a semi-beginner: everything is an ARRANGEMENT. It feels to me like reading abridged books) of the theme from "Mission: Impossible," which I think I once said somewhere was the coolest television theme song ever.

It's written in 5/4 time. It took me a while to get used to this. I'm slowly managing to improve on the piece, though.

One thing the piano has really taught me is the need to be patient with myself. I'm too used to "getting" stuff right away and when I have to work at something, and I can't successfully do it after a little trying, I get frustrated with myself, my perceived lack of talent, my not-having-kept-up-with-lessons-from-when-I-was-a-kid, everything. But in the end, you just have to calm yourself down and keep working on the dang thing, even if you mess it up 80% of the time you try it.

Mary, the yarn for the socks is Online Circle Color #1055. I got mine from Simply Sock Yarn, they have it on a really good sale right now. (I paid more than that, I think. I bought it a couple months back).

I also think I've found a pattern for that green and black sock yarn (well, now it's GLOVE yarn...). I want to try Nereid, provided it doesn't fight too much with the color patterning. I'll have to try it and see. If that doesn't work, I may either do just plain gloves, or do some kind of zig-zag lace, like the one sock pattern in that Handpainted Yarns sock book.

I have a student out with H1N1. (And he's someone I believe; he e-mailed me this morning). So it's arrived. Ugh. I hope anyone who comes down with it can stay home and can get better.

This is going to play hob with my exam-giving schedule; I'll have to write make-ups, I guess. Ugh.

***

I would really love to take today off, go home, curl up with a big stack of knitting-pattern books and dream about future projects.

Really, what I probably need to do is not pay attention to news at all...not on television, not on Internet, maybe not on radio (but somehow, news on the radio seems more tolerable to me; maybe it's because it's aural rather than visual and I tend to forget stuff I hear better than stuff I see).

I wonder if some of the anti-swine-flu stuff is overblown. We have those hand sanitizer things in every lab classroom, but studies have shown that washing your hands with soap and water (which we have in every room that has the hand sanitizer thingies - because they're LABS) is just as good. And if you get chemicals on your hands (which frankly, most of the time, concern me more than getting microbes on my hands does - seeing as I work with soil all the time and am breathing in and getting soil microbes all over me), soap and water are a much better bet for removing them.

And I was at the grocery last night and there was a little kid coughing. All over the place. In the produce section. And her mom wasn't bothering to tell her to cover her mouth or anything. It made me twitch, but I'm always reticent about saying something about stuff like that to parents, lest I awaken the Mama Bear response.

My students are actually pretty good; we have boxes of tissues in all the classrooms and if someone is going to cough or sneeze, they usually manage to run up to the front and grab some tissues to cough or sneeze into. Though I think for the vast majority of them, it's allergies, as they don't seem sick otherwise and the coughing/sneezing has persisted for several weeks.

***
I finished the first of what I'm thinking of as the "Roller Derby Socks" (because of the colors and the wide striping) last night:



It fits really well. I remain somewhat amazed at how well a "just simple" 64 stitch sock done on size 1 needles fits me. (The colors are brighter in real life).

I've also been plugging along on Clapotis; I am on the last repeat of the "increases" before I start the midpoint. (And yes, Ellen, I'll photograph the stitches dropping and laddering when I get to them. It's not as scary as it sounds).



It looks kind of triangular there but it's bunched up on the needle; it will eventually be a mostly-rectangular shape (it is just slightly biased into a slight parallelogram but not enough to recognize it as such when it's being worn).

And now I've kind of got onto a fingerless-mitts kick. No, I haven't started any but there are SO many patterns on Ravelry and in some of the books I have that I'm now looking at yarns I bought for other things and wondering how it would look worked up into mitts. (At this rate, I may have to start wearing them all winter long even during class. Which yeah, maybe even that's a bit too eccentric for me).

But I saw this:



And thought of mitts. It's a Damselfly Yarn, from a yarn-of-the-month club I belonged to last spring. I never knit it up because (a) I already have a pair of black-with-bright socks, (b) I was thinking of doing a lace scarf (but now meh, I've got too many going on) and (c) I just never really found something that appealed pattern-wise. But I'm thinking it might make fun mitts - and depending on the pattern, I would be left with enough for either a SECOND pair (gift or swap item) or for an accent yarn on socks. So I might wind it off and consider which of the nifty sockweight-yarn fingerless mitt patterns would work best with it.

I really should have brought a pair of fingerless mitts today. It's supposed to hit 78* outside today but right now it's about 66* in my office, and that's just chilly enough to be uncomfortable when you're sitting. And I can't prep for teaching or review the exams I wrote on Saturday mid-migraine while doing jumping jacks or something to keep the blood flowing. (I'm going to have to go over them to make sure I didn't make any really bad errors; migraines make me almost dyslexic sometimes).

For that matter, I'm not quite wearing the proper garmentage to be doing jumping jacks. My shoes are all wrong for exercise.

Flu fears curb life's rituals.

I am not quite so sure about the outrage over children no longer being allowed to visit relatives in hospital: I am QUITE sure that I wasn't allowed to see my newborn brother because of a rule about "no kids under 12." And I didn't get to go see other sick relatives until I was after 12. I thought that was a long-standing rule anyway.

But the food thing, yeah. That would hit home pretty hard; in my department we have lots of stuff that people bring in - either someone will bake bread at home and make an extra loaf for the department, or they'll make soup, or something. And telling us we either couldn't, or we had to individually wrap stuff would sort of kill the whole thing.

The biggest thing, though, is the sort of "casual contact" stuff. This came up at Board Meeting the other night at church - one person raised the concern about the fact that during the "passing of the peace," it's standard to either shake hands or hug, and both of those would be off limits if you really wanted to prevent the spread of flu. I (jokingly) suggested we "tater up" instead - I guess most people don't know that term but it's slang for a fist bump - and people kind of went with it. I don't think it will actually happen, when the rubber hits the road, so to speak, but I do think people are now concerned about hugging or handshaking.

And you know, I understand limiting the spread of flu. And I have, myself, abstained from handshaking when I knew I might be infectious, like when I was starting/finishing a cold. (And if I'm REALLY sick, I stay home)

But on the other hand - some weeks, the ONLY physical contact I get (not being married, not having boyfriend, not having kids, not being near family) is shaking hands or being hugged at church, or the brief moment when the nurse touches my arm to administer the allergy shot. And I'm sure that for even a touch-averse person like me, being totally cut off from human contact is probably not healthy. (Cue the scary-news-stories about how not being hugged or such increases your risk of developing Alzheimer's "36%" or some such).

I don't know. It seems to me SO much has changed in recent months - with the economic turmoil, the "new frugality," H1N1 flu, all of that. And I am one of those people who just doesn't like change, especially when it's change that seems likely to be bad or change that requires me to re-pattern my life in some way. ("We fear change" - Garth Elgar). So the thought of departmental potlucks having to cease - or no longer being able to shake hands (or having one of the older ladies who apparently see me as a sort of surrogate daughter grab me and hug me at church) - is not something I really like thinking about.

It's the loss of what I think of as the 'small comforts' of life that bother me the most...I was talking a month or so ago about the new "sugar guidelines" about how you're supposed to sharply limit sugar intake even if you're a healthy person, and how not being able to occasionally have sugar in my tea just felt like...I don't know, a tipping point or something, like "DESPAIR COMMENCE NOW." And I kind of feel that way about maybe the whole "passing of the peace" ending at church, or it devolving into something silly like blowing kisses (that was another suggestion but that seems even more lunatic to me than fist-bumps). And the thought that we might not be allowed to share food in my department any more.

It's good to be careful, but there's a point at which you have to say, Stop, we cannot bubble-wrap the entire world.

I finished two quilt tops this weekend (despite being felled most of Saturday afternoon by a really bad migraine; the worst I've had in over a year).

The first one will eventually go to Project Linus when it's completed:



This is just a simple, smallish (I think it came out about 44" by 48") four-patch-with-alternating plain blocks quilt. It's all dog-print fabrics, including a couple of the cute Debbie Mumm dog prints.

Here is a close up of one corner, showing the fabrics better:



(The top border is not bleached or washed out; it just looks that way because the sun is shining through it and the rest of the quilt shows up darker because the fence is behind it).

I'm going to do a second one, similar style but with different fabrics (the border fabric on this one will be the "alternating block" fabric on the other one, and the four-patches have different fabric in them.

It turned out cute, I think, and I hope eventually it will make some little kid a little happier.

I also finished a quilt top that will be for me:

I hung this one up by its long edge so it wouldn't drag on the ground. It came out larger than I anticipated it would:



It's all light green, bright clear red, and bright yellow prints, sort of a vintage 1940s feel, I think. Some of the fabrics are Mary Engelbreit designs.

Here's a close up:



I have a big piece of that outer border fabric to be the back on this, and I think I'm either going to bind it in solid red or solid yellow.

I have my next quilt planned; some very cute pastel "Christmas" (but would also work for "winter" - there are some that are trompe-l'oeil knitted-fabric look ones, a couple with snowflakes, one with cute birds, and another that's a snowy landscape) fabrics, and I'm going to do a new pattern (well, new to me) called Pie Crust Pileup (I am doing the "thick crust" option; it's the one shown on the left in that photo). The "background" fabric is a mottled warm yellowish tan, which is the only color that didn't either wash out or clash with any of the theme fabrics.

It should be fun because the cutting is pretty simple (That's a feature I like about a lot of the Atkinson patterns) and it's a "different" pattern. I'm thinking if this one turns out well I might use the pattern again, with some of the juvenile fabrics I bought because I "liked" them and then realized I'd never use them in a quilt for me, for another Linus quilt.

A fun little online test: Color acuity test

It tests to see how good (well, I suppose, also considering monitor quality) your color vision is. You are given a series of blocks of color, and you have to arrange them in hue order (for example, from green grading over to yellow). It's harder than it looks.

The score can range from 0 (perfect) to 99 (severe "impairment" in seeing colors). I scored a 3, which doesn't surprise me. (I will admit to "cheating" in that I squinted at the bars when I had finished them to see if anything "jumped out" as being in the wrong place...I do that when trying to match clothes or fabrics for a quilt too).

It also tells you where your color vision is "weak," if you don't make a perfect score. My 'weakness' was in the greenish-blue range. Interesting.

Non-knitters' responses are always interesting.

I suppose a mile of yarn is long. (Picturing Napoleon Dynamite dragging his action figure behind the school bus on an extra-long string). For a long-sleeved sweater for a not-tiny woman, though, it's not unexpected. The pattern I am using calls for 1700 yards of yarn (well, based on the number of balls required) for my size.

(This is why I never try to estimate how many stitches are in something I'm working on; I would despair too fast.)

Usually I wind up with yarn left over; I assume that designers knit up the smallest size and then extrapolate for the bigger sizes, and they tend to err on the conservative side. Because it's better to have people have yarn left over than to have people irritated because they don't have enough yarn, because of the dye-lot issue. And because yarns get discontinued unpredictably, and if you're like me, a yarn may marinate in-stash for a couple years before you get around to the sweater.

Leftover yarn is a lot less of a problem. You can make hats out of it, for yourself, for gifts, for charity. Or mittens. Or you can do odd-ball projects where you combine several coordinating yarns.

I do have a lot of oddballs hanging around. I sent a few off to a Ravelry friend who was planning an odd-ball project, and once in a while I drop a few off at the day-care center run out of my church if they're doing a craft project that requires yarn. Or I use them for toys. Or put them in the bag for the long-stalled multicolored striped crocheted afghan.

***

I spent most of yesterday working on quilt tops. I got all the blocks sewn together for that Mary Engelbreit-themed fabric one (the red, green, and yellow quilt) and I got most of one of the dog quilts done and sewed up all the 4-patch blocks for the other. I still have to put the borders on the Mary Engelbreit quilt and I do want to finish both the dog quilts if I can this weekend. (The dog quilts are very cute and very pink. I am going to have them quilted and ultimately donate them to Linus Project, and if they let you donate in someone's name, they're going to go in Faith's name.)

I also want to run to the local quilt shop today; I have some cute Christmas themed fabrics I bought last year that I want to use for a quilt but I need either a plain solid or very subtly patterned background fabric for them.

But first, I need to finish writing these exams. (GenBio, which is about half done at this point, and Biostats, which will take longer)

And a little link, I didn't want to bury this in the previous post, but this is a fun little thing:

Literature Map. It shows, supposedly, what people who read one author apparently also read. So you type in the author's name and it shows you other authors (presumably) that you might like.

(Oddly enough, one of my favorite authors seems to stand at a distance from others.)

Yes, once again, it was a good day.

I am definitely one of those people who is not a thrill-seeker; instead, I prefer what is familiar, what is traditional. I sat down before I went out yesterday and figured up - this would be Grand Day Out (Longview) VII. (started in 2001, but didn't go in 2002 or 2003, but have gone since).

I drove through the cold front on the way down. It was 55* here and windy, then I drove through lots of drizzle, then it was 82* and unbelievably muggy in Longview. (Coming back, I think I passed the front around Emory, so it was getting closer to them).

I went to Barron's first, never knowing how busy they get over the "real" lunch hour (I can eat lunch anywhere from 11 am until 2 pm. Though the 2 pm time is never my choosing and I am usually pretty cranky/shaky by the time I get to eat if I have to wait that long).

I spent a while shopping. I found something good for a Christmas present for my dad, which made me happy, as he's often hard to buy for.

They also had a rack of "retro style" gags and magic tricks (you know, like the fly-in-the-ice-cube and the nails-through-a-coin bits). So I wound up buying a whoopee cushion to put in my brother's stocking. (My brother and sister in law and I have a little tradition of slipping silly things into each others' Christmas stocking).

Yeah, I know, I'll probably regret giving my brother a whoopee cushion, but it seemed like the pretty perfect "silly gift."

Then I got lunch. I wound up going with something called "Mixed Fruit Plate," which is a baby-greens salad with strawberry vinaigrette dressing, cut up fresh fruit (mostly cantaloupe and pineapple, this time of year) and a scoop of cottage cheese. It was good. (And it came with good bread on the side). I also had a cup of chocolate chai tea, which is one of the most wonderful things on the menu there. (I suppose they make it with full-fat milk and that's why it tastes so much better than the chai I make at home with sad old skimmed milk)

I also ate most of a piece of "Ultimate Chocolate Cake." I say "most," because after the large salad, "all" would have been just too much. (I wound up peeling off the remaining cake of the part I didn't eat and finishing the chocolate mousse that was in the center).

I also bought a couple of books, more about that later.

Then I went on to the yarn shop. (Stitches N Stuff). I love this place. Not just because it has YARN, but because the people who run it are so very nice and friendly. (Again, I have never encountered the stereotypical "snobby and mean" yarn shop owner. At least not in recent years).

And I found yarn for Potter:



Yes, just two skeins. Those are 400 g skeins. They contain 892 yards each - easily enough to make my size of the sweater. (No joins! No wondering where I put that last ball that I need!)

Besides, I like big skeins and I cannot lie.

Because I am a geologist's daughter, I feel duty-bound to also include a photograph of these with a quarter for scale*



(*I assume other geologists did that as well. My dad always was bumming quarters off of his kids or off of students when he photographed stuff, for scale. (Most of the time we got the quarter back). Or he used his Brunton compass. Or something else that people would recognize as being a particular size).

I had been envisioning doing Potter in either a brown or an oatmeal color, and when I walked into Stitches N Stuff and saw this yarn, I knew it was it.

It's a mostly-acrylic yarn, though, and I tend to be a wool snob. But it does feel nice, and I think it will be lighter in weight (useful for a coat sweater, especially a double-breasted one) than pure wool would be. And I really liked the color, and the price was good.

The other two big yarn-things I bought were for fingerless mitts for me:



Both are Auracania yarns - the blue is Aysen, a worsted-weight, and the green is Ranco, their entry into the sock-yarn market (but it's hand wash only, which means I'd rather make fingerless mitts of it). They are both VERY soft yarns, which is a consideration for mitts, I think. (My hands tend to be more sensitive to scratchiness than even my feet are).

I picked up a few other things, but they may be destined to become gifts for people who just might read this, so I will remain silent on my other purchases.

(Except: yes, I did get the needles I was talking about. Plus several more sizes of the lovely Clover "ergonomic" hooks - after wondering if I'd have to give up crocheting because it bothered my wrists, I discovered that with the fatter handles on the ergonomic hooks, I can continue to crochet without pain. So, yay Clover!)

I also bought books various places (both at the Barron's and also at the absolutely huge and wonderful Books a Million - it's at least double the size of the one nearest me, meaning also double the choices).


I have to say, it's dangerous enough for me to walk into a bookstore. But it's even more dangerous for me to linger on the "history" aisle. I tend to buy a lot of books about history. Part of it is I enjoy reading it, part of it is (as I've noted just these past couple of weeks) there are such holes in my knowledge that I'd like to plug. And also, I think the people who write titles and design covers for books about history somehow are able to tap into just what appeals to me, to what says to me, "You know, this would be the perfect thing to read some chill, rainy Saturday while you listen to Brahms and drink tea."

Never mind that many of my Saturdays are spent working, or that I tend to "waste" more time online on the weekends than I spend reading, but still...it's a seductive fantasy, the huge library full of at-least-semi-scholarly books, the chance to read and learn.



The top book is a novel about the Whiskey Rebellion (again, an era of American History that I dimly remember learning about, but know little about). It also concerns one of Washington's former spies, so it's a story of intrigue. And I like intrigue, especially when I can read about it while cozy in my own house.

(I guess I never mentioned my little "test" for whether I buy or reject a historical or "historical fantasy" novel: I open it randomly to three places and read a paragraph. If a graphic sex scene turns up in any of those random places, I put it back on the shelf. Because, I know, I'm kind of a prude, but I'm not that interested in reading random graphic sex scenes. This book passed the test. Doesn't mean it won't "fail" it while I'm reading, but I figure that if I randomly hit a Do Not Want scene by reading three paragraphs in a 300+ page book, there must be a number more of them. That's why I've never read any Diana Gabaldon books even though I know she's popular and well-regarded: one of her books failed my random "test.")

The other "historical" book (actually straight history here, not a novel) is supposed to be about the storm that inspired "The Tempest" - I had read somewhere that this book was coming out and was intrigued by it, and of course as I am now READING The Tempest, I decided I needed to read that one too. I rarely buy these kinds of books in hardcover, but I decided I wanted this one NOW, and in hardcover is how it comes now.

(Yes, I know: my town has a library. My university has a library. And I do check books out sometimes. But they often don't have the specific book I want, and also, I read sufficiently slowly and with enough interruptions that I would have to keep renewing the thing and that would frustrate me. And besides, I like having books AROUND, even ones I've already read).

I tend to be frugal in a lot of ways but yarn and books are not two of those ways.

I also bought a copy of "East Knits West" which is yet another sock book. And yet another book I contemplated from afar on Amazon and thought, "No, it will be full of 'weird' patterns that I would not want to make" (Judging by its cover: I know some people like toeless "pedicure" socks but they are not for me.)

Instead, it's a book of mostly-standard socks, but with some very beautiful lace patterns, some from Japanese stitch directories where the patterns are DIFFERENT from ones we Westerners use. (There actually IS something new under the sun: there are stitch patterns that are not just re-named versions of ones people in the Shetland Isles or whereever developed. There are a couple new techniques to learn - a type of passed-over stitch that the author (Judy Sumner) calls pkok or "peacock", and a different type of wrap-stitch).

But a lot of the socks are really lovely and wonderful. (And there's a sock called Ninja! How can you not love a sock called Ninja? There's also a sock called Samurai; I would guess you probably don't want to wash Samurai and Ninja in the same load as one might eliminate the other.)

I bought a few other books but these were the most interesting looking ones. (Also, I don't want to reveal the embarrassingly large number of books I bought that day).

Oh, I also bought a Fake Book. Not a "fake book" like what you hide valuables in, but a Fake Book like you can use to quickly learn popular songs. One thing I will say: they are all transposed to the key of C, and I KNOW some of the pieces were not originally in C. But whatever. It's a book of lead sheets of the melody and suggested chords. (Though I will observe with some irritation that the person who put together the book assumes the users automatically can work out inversions; he proposes going from a C chord to an F chord instead of suggesting going from what I think of as a I chord to a IV chord, which is the same thing, just an inversion of the F major, but is more efficient to do. But whatever.)

It delights me to have the melody lines of so many songs so I can "noodle around" and play stuff. It's mostly "standards" like "The Way you Look Tonight," and "Stardust" and "Skylark" (probably my favorite pop song ever). And also a few Beatles songs (I presume this book, though I know Fake Books are notorious for not respecting copyright, did, seeing as I bought it in a "legit" bookstore). And "Amazing Grace."

And what I think of as the "sad animals" song ("Will You Remember Me?" - which is used on, I think it's the Humane Society ads? The ones where they show all the animals that are being rescued or that have been abused and which always makes me cry a little, which I suppose means it's an effective ad.)

I also went to Michael's; wound up buying a Paton's book of patterns for knitted and crocheted sock monkey toys. (Faux sock monkeys? Seeing as you knit them rather than take socks that have been knitted and reconfigure them?) And I got some of the yarn needed for them. And I bought a couple of "Toobs" of small toys: one of frogs and turtles (just in case we do a Cajun lunch in the future and I do make Bayou Cake) and one of "baby jungle animals" to put on the shelf just in case there is an over-three child that needs a gift sometime.

Gearing up to head out (squeeee) but I have to comment on last night's Mythbusters:

Loved the "duct tape" special.

And the duct tape sailboat was, I think, one of the most WONDERFUL builds they have ever done. It was just beautiful. (As they were putting it in the water, I said to the tv, "I SO want this to work!" And it did! It was sheer awesomeness. I was chuckling with delight the whole time they were sailing around in it.)

I mean, the duct tape cannon was nice and all, but you kind of expect things involving projectiles and black powder from the Mythbusters. You don't expect a working sailboat. Made out of duct tape. (The fact that they named it the "Stuck on You" made it even better).

Tomorrow



Tomorrow



Tomorrow

It is my day off! It is my day to go to Longview and spend time around yarn and books and nice soap and gourmet supplies and all manner of things that make life GOOD. It is my day to go out somewhere nice for lunch, to get a big cup of real hot chocolate or chai tea with my lunch, to get dessert if I want it. It is a day when I am only responsible to ME. It is a day when people who have problems I "need" to fix will not be able to reach me and pull me away from what I want to be doing.



I'm thinking, in addition to looking for yarn for either Potter or the fake-Cowichan sweater from the newest Knitscene, I'm going to contemplate yarn for some more fingerless mitts. Because it occurs to me, just like you can have many colors of socks to match your clothes, it would be nice to have more than a pair or two of fingerless mitts...again, to match clothes. The chilly season is coming on and it will be nice to have them for when my office is cold. Or when the classrooms are cold. Or at home, for when I read in bed with the heat turned down. And how much more fun to have ones that match what I'm wearing.

And fingerless mitts are really fast and FUN to knit. They're one of those things that look far trickier than they actually are to do, which makes them fun.

So, I'm going to keep an open mind: I have a nice pattern or two for worsted-weight yarn, but there are also lots of lovely ones for fingering-weight as well.

And for that matter, one of the Ravelry groups I'm in is talking about a January swap, so I might get some yarn with the thought of either doing mitts for me or mitts for a swap-partner.

Oh, and I want another set of size 1 sock needles. And a short #3 circular for when I get to the sleeves on Thermal. And look to see if they have the other Norah Gaughan books that Berroco did. And and and. I am bouncing around with anticipation. It's almost like Christmas!

(Oh! And I need to write down how much yarn that felted Fortune Cookie bag in the new Interweave Crochet takes...I'm thinking about doing one as a Christmas gift for my AAUW gift exchange. And maybe doing one for my sister in law, if the AAUW one turns out well).

And thanks to all the various publishers who hired me to fact-check/proofread/evaluate textbook chapters this fall, the trip will be quite nicely funded.

(And yes. I called Stitches N Stuff just to be sure. They're open tomorrow. I think I have that small-town mindset - being used to times when stores sometimes unpredictably close - and I didn't want to get down there and be Horribly Disappointed. Because if I got there and they were not open, I WOULD cry. And it would be an ugly cry.)

From the Because I Am Really A 12-Year-Old Department:

The Prime Number Pooping Bear, NOW WITH SOUND EFFECTS!!!.

I laughed for about five minutes when I realized that sound effects had been added.

(And yes, 12 both in the sense of finding poop funny and being fascinated by odd math phenomena)