New Year's Eve

The end of an old year, the start of a new one. (Or at least, the calendar tells us; for me, it often feels more that the new year starts when the new academic year starts).

No one in my family really does the stay-up-late thing. We're all (pretty much) early risers, so a midnight bedtime seems far too late. We may have a bottle of sparkling juice (because of various medications various people are on, and because of the fact that I find migraines are triggered by alcoholic beverages, champagne is out) with dinner, and a few years we've done popcorn and sparkling juice (I know it sounds weird together, but popcorn has always been considered sort of a festive treat in my family) around 10 pm or so, and then all gone off to bed.

Usually my mother and I go to the Sewing Studio's New Year's Day sale the next morning, and while they start the sale later now than they did in past years (A few years they opened at 7 am, and had the best discounts then), still, it's better NOT to stay up late.

And besides, for me, I find it better to welcome the first day of a new year alert and clearheaded than to spend excessive amounts of time bidding the old one goodbye. I suppose it's that by the time most years come to an end I'm ready to see them gone, but the new year still feels full of hope and promise and I want to get out into it and start DOING things.

I guess 2011 wasn't all bad. Yes, a few people I cared about left this plane of existence, there was bad news globally and locally (when is there NOT?). But this was also the year I officially became Full Professor, so there's that.

I hope 2012 is a better year for many, many people than 2011 was.

Christmas ghost stories

One of the ways people used to spend time during the holidays was to tell ghost stories. (As near as I can tell, this seems to have been primarily a Victorian British custom - both because they seem to have been mad for ghost stories, but also because the magazines published at that time always had "Christmas numbers" and always ran short stories). Telling stories - except perhaps to small children - seems to be, if not exactly a lost art, one that's not widely practiced any more.

I have a couple books of ghost stories, including a nice Folio Press volume that's specifically Christmas ghost stories. Some of them are sad, some of them are kind of scary, some are comic (Joan Aiken's "Sonata for Bicycle and Harp").

One of my favorites, though, is a fairly recent (well, published in my lifetime, I count that as "recent" for a ghost story) is called "Saviourgate" by Russell Kirk. It's kind of hard to classify the story (some of Kirk's work is considered science fiction; I suppose in a way ghost stories have some science-fiction elements). But it also makes what I might call a theological point. I can't really say too much without spoiling the plot - though I think most astute readers will figure it out a few pages in -But I'm going to put the rest of this behind a jump. (I hope this works):

St. Stephen's Day

Today is St. Stephen's day, or as it's better known in Britain and its Commonwealth countries, Boxing day. The old carol, "Good King Wenceslaus" references this day...In the old calendar, where 12 days of Christmas were celebrated, this would be the second day of Christmas. It seems that both St. Stephen's Day and Boxing Day share the common theme of having been a day of giving alms to the poor. (Boxing day was also the day when servants were given their Christmas gifts).

In Ireland, they used to have The Hunting of the Wren on this day, presumably because legend states that a wren gave away Stephen's hiding place. Not sure how I feel about the idea of killing a wren just to commemorate the day...much better to use a  paper cut-out of a wren, maybe.

A blessed Christmas

In my family, this is usually a fairly quiet day. We will have church this year, of course, and our plans are to open gifts when my brother and sister-in-law arrive in the afternoon. (Christmas dinner is roast beef, which fortunately requires minimal work once it's in the oven).

One of the things I've really grown to appreciate as an adult about holidays is that they are a day where everything stops. There's no work to be done, everything is quiet, hopefully no one has to travel very far.

It's good, once in a while, just to be able to stop.

I hope, if you are celebrating today, that you are having a wonderful, peaceful day.

(Images are free Victorian-era clipart from Averyl's Attic)

Some historical links

I think one thing a lot of modern Americans who celebrate Christmas tend to forget is, not to very many centuries ago, many Christian groups DIDN'T celebrate Christmas - the Puritans, among others, in rejection of what they saw as decadence (and I suppose, some thought, a too-pagan or too-Catholic celebration) actually outlawed the celebration of Christmas in some locations.

Christmas in Williamsburg In Virginia, during Colonial times, there was some celebration, but it was largely limited to small gifts for children, a big meal, and church. (This essay compares colonial and modern Christmases.)

Here's a bit more history of American Christmases. I don't know how accurate any of this is, but I think it's interesting that they relate that before the Civil War, Thanksgiving was a much larger holiday in the North, and in the South, Christmas was more vividly celebrated.

There also used to be an "Old Christmas", which came from the old Julian calendar. (Interestingly, "Old Christmas" is the day those of us who follow the modern, Western Christian calender call Epiphany...and I know most of the Orthodox groups still use "Old Christmas" day. In fact, in some of the early days in parts of Illinois, people celebrated both "Old" and "New" Christmas, or so I have read).

I'm grateful that we're given the freedom to choose to celebrate Christmas as we individually see fit*. In my family - and in the congregations I've belonged to over the years - it's a big holiday. The church is decorated up, often there are parties of some sort (we have a CWF Christmas party, and they also have a children's party closer to Christmas), and Christmas eve service is both solemn and joyful, and this year we will have a Christmas morning service as well, since Christmas falls on a Sunday.

In my own family, as I've said before, our traditions are partly taken from our German heritage (stollen, some of the decorations, and one year we learned "Silent Night" in German), some from our British heritage (Roast beef and yorkshire pudding for Christmas dinner, a few years we did "crackers" - which are great fun, and some of the music), and then just a lot of regular old American traditions like having bubble lights on the tree and putting up lights outside the house.

(*Or not celebrate it, of course. I know some people who either don't celebrate because they find the frippery obscures what for them is important, and others who don't because of unfortunate things that happened during December in the past, and bad memories are brought up. And of course, some people are of different faiths (or no faith at all) and choose to celebrate different things)

But for me, it's Christmas, and Christmas done as "big" as I can do it, because I love it so much.

Favorite Christmas carols

I've said before I tend to be rather "High Church" in my preferences for how Christmas services are done. (Which is interesting, considering that the origins of the denomination to which I belong were at least partly in one of the Scots "dissenter" groups who were opposed to all the High Churchery. Well, my feeling is: there's so much in daily life that's so awful and mundane, that one in a while I want something that's special and solemn-in-an-enjoyable-way.)

Once in a while I've been lucky enough to catch the "Service of Lessons and Carols" from Britain when it's run on PBS or somewhere here in the states, and for a couple years, the church I was attending did a lessons-and-carols service.

So here's just a sampling of my favorites. I particularly love the British choral-music style:





I confess: I prefer the tune for "Away in the Manger" that's more commonly used in Britain to the one that's more commonly used here.

And the Sussex Carol! I LOVE the Sussex Carol, both the tune and the words. It captures for me the sense of "relief" that thinking about Christmas belongs, with remembering that what is wrong in the world now will eventually be sorted out and made right:



And another one I love, "Tomorrow shall be my dancing day." You can really hear the history in this one - I've read that it was inspired by the idea of taking the idea of dancing, and some of the romantic songs of the time, and applying them to Jesus' life ("I call my true love to my dance...")



I think one of the reasons I like these old carols so much is that you rarely hear them Muzak-ified or repurposed for advertising. (Garmin has pretty much ruined "Carol of the Bells" for me).

(Real-time post)

Yes, here I am, this is real-time and not an "embargoed" post.

It's been a good break so far - one thing I've found is that it takes me a couple of days to relax into "vacation" mode. I couldn't do that over Thanksgiving (the time was too short and I was also thinking of all I had to do when I got back) and I admit at times I was a bit snappish and short during that break. But this time, it's between semesters, I have time to relax, and it's a lot better.

I've been knitting away - it's really lovely to have long stretches of uninterrupted time to just knit. I've got two sets of socks going, finished the Sockhead hat. And I made a stuffed platypus. (As always, pictures will come after I'm home again).

I've also been baking and making candy. Some of the things are the good old familiar things I do every year, and without which it would not feel like Christmas - I made my grandmother's cut-out cookie recipe, and I am waiting for the butter to soften to make the almond bars I always make. But I'm also trying a few new things. I tried making "pretzel bark" (like almond bark, but with pretzels). Not entirely successful. I also made the Lebkuchen and they turned out very well - after I realized that in older British recipes (it's a long story, how I got a German cookie recipe out of an older British book) that list flour in ounces, they mean ounces of WEIGHT, not of VOLUME. I wasn't thinking about that and at first the dough came out unworkably sticky. (For the record, a cup and a half of self-rising flour weighs somewhere around 7 1/2 ounces - or at least, for the atmospheric conditions of the day I made the cookies, it did - so it wasn't the "12 ounces" the recipe specified.).

I also did a batch of something called "buttermilk candy" which is actually kind of like a caramelized-sugar fudge - you mix buttermilk and baking soda, then after 20 minutes add the sugar and corn syrup, cook heck out of it (adding butter once it starts boiling) and then after it's cooked to soft-ball and then cooled back to 110 F, you beat it and beat it until it loses its gloss and starts to set up.

Making fudge is sort of an exercise in faith. At first you think, as you are beating, "Oh no, I started beating too soon" or "Maybe I didn't cook it long enough" even though you KNOW you cooled it enough, and even though you both used a candy thermometer and the old drop-a-bit-in-cool-water method, you doubt. But if you keep beating, all of a sudden, the stuff starts to change color and look more opaque than clear (and then you need to move fast, to get the nuts in and get it in the buttered pan, before it totally sets up). I also forget how much labor is involved in making fudge from scratch, at least the old fashioned kind that's just made from sugar and milk and butter.

We've also got the tree in, if not decorated just yet. And today my mom and I made a trip to the local pet shelter- my parents, though they don't think they are going to get another cat, make regular donations out there to help them out (my dad roughly estimates how much they'd have spent in the past 4 months or so on a cat if they had had one, and donates that much). They have a cat-viewing room where you can go in and pet and visit "mature" (not kitten - none of the ones today were very old) cats who are ready to be adopted. So I got some kitty loving today...there was one cat, probably part Maine Coon, who was a really pretty beigish orange and who purred like crazy when you petted him. (I hope he finds a home soon).

So, thus far, it's been a good break, even if we're not going to get snow for Christmas. (It's been raining - that cold wet rain that almost seems colder than snow.)

More Christmas ponies

Sorry, these are so cute, that I can't resist using them as "filler" while I'm on break:


see more My Little Brony

Gifts for children

I admit it, I'm not that much in love with technological gifts, especially for young kids. I think toys that do "too much" - don't leave stuff to a kid's imagination - probably aren't that great as the "major" toys for kids to play with. If you have a doll with fifteen programmed phrases, that sort of limits play.

Also, I never liked dolls or soft toys with too much in the way of mechanical or electronic "guts," it made them heavy and less cuddly. And more prone to break.

So, here's my probably-idealistic list of things that I think would be good toys for kids. It's strongly shaped by my own memories of what *I* liked:

1. Stuffed toy animals or rag dolls. These were my #1 favorite toy as a child. Just a plain old simple stuffed animal - not one that "did" anything but sat there. There were a lot of different ways to play with them; most often I made up 'stories' for them and moved them through those stories. But I also toted them along (the small ones were especially nice - I could tuck them in a pocket when I was climbing trees or something). Also, the smaller ones, I could build houses for with blocks or cardboard boxes. And of course, a soft toy is a nice thing to have to tuck up in the crook of your arm at night when you're reading in bed, or when you're getting ready to go to sleep. And you can even toss them around like bean-bags, though I rarely did that with my soft toys because on some level I thought of them as "alive" and deserving of the same respect I'd give a "real" animal. (Oh, I knew they weren't really-really alive; it was more, like I said, the idea that they REPRESENTED something alive, and so I didn't want to mistreat them).

I also made clothes for them, or furniture, or dishes, or any number of things. Some of my stuffed animals even had their own toys.

And yes - I still have stuffed toys. I haven't outgrown them yet and I'm coming to accept the idea that I probably never will. Well, I suppose there are worse personality quirks to have.

2. Blocks, or Lego bricks, or Tinkertoys or any sort of building toy: Again, these are lots of fun. You can make "things" out of them (like I made "houses" for some of my toy animals), or you can build towers just for the fun of knocking them down, or you can make patterns with them (mosiacs of blocks on the floor). Tinkertoys also could be moved - I remember building a sort of windmill with the set my grandmother had - and while you don't exactly learn principles of engineering from playing with them, still, I can't help but thing there's something educational about them. (We never had Erector sets or Meccano when I was a kid, but I suppose those would be even more-so in the engineering realm).

3. Boxes. Yeah, boxes. Especially big boxes like refrigerator boxes - you could make forts out of them. We rarely got new appliances in my family when I was a kid but I do remember having a cardboard box "playhouse" that my mother ordered from the Pals vitamin company (I wonder if they still make Pals?). And along with boxes for box-forts, you can also build forts with chairs and blankets - I remember doing this many rainy days when I was a kid. Either to actually PLAY I was in a fort or a cave or a tent, or just to have a quiet private place to read. (And yeah: this would make an odd Christmas present, but I bet there are some kids who would be thrilled to get a "fort kit" for Christmas.)

4. Small plastic animal sets. These were my #2 favorite toy as a child. Again, lots of different ways to play with these. Also, you could take them outside and play in the sandbox with them (or, like me, play in the mud with them) and then wash them off at the spigot before taking them back in the house. And you could build houses for them or "zoos" or farms out of blocks. These kinds of animals used to be very common in stores like Woolworth's or Kresge's....they'd come a dozen or twenty to a plastic bag, usually with some kind of theme - farm animals or zoo animals or, I once had a set of Dog Breeds of the World. I also liked these just because of all the different animals...I was really into learning about animals as a kid. I suppose for kids with different interests, the little plastic army men or the Western sets (cowboys and Indians) would play a similar role - but I liked the animals.

5. Art supplies. I think these are great for a lot of reasons - especially at Christmas when the kids are likely to be out of school for at least a week, they can help prevent boredom. (And NEW art supplies are especially appealing - even just a box of crayons where the points aren't worn down yet). This can be just about anything, considering the age and the interest of the child. Even fun coloring books and a new box of crayons would be appreciated by many kids, I think. And for older kids - there are lots of cool coloring books out there, based on designs or mandalas or Celtic patterns. I know I had some that were sort of tesselated designs that looked kind of like abstract geometric stained-glass windows (golly, I wish I remember the names of those books: geodesigns, maybe? They were a "long" format - shorter, wider books - and were printed on regular paper rather than the newsprint-type paper most coloring books were printed on). And one year I got a set of 36 Faber-Castell colored pencils in a special tin box from my dad (I still have them. The box is a little bent up and a few of the pencils are missing, but I really USED that set over the years, both for entertainment and for things like hand-drawing graphs or report covers for school.)

Also, "kits" can be a lot of fun....somewhere online I saw an idea for making a bracelet-making kit for a girl, where you pick out chunky glass or semi-precious stone beads in colors she likes, and pack them in a tin with enough hemp cord or waxed cord or whatever you want, and instructions for stringing the beads, and if you want to get very fancy, findings to finish off the bracelets. And there are all kinds of kits for different crafts in the stores and from places like Hearthsong...or if you're a knitter or quilter, you could put together a kit from your own "stash" if the child in question either knows how to, or has expressed a desire to, learn whatever the craft is. (And of course, a coupon for "lessons" would make a nice addition to the kit).

6. Some kind of "outdoor" toy. This would depend greatly on the climate but I remember one year we all got cross-country skis. And while we didn't use them as much as we probably wanted to, still, it was a lot of fun gallumphing around on them out in the yard on Christmas day. Saucer sleds are also a lot of fun but they seem to cause injuries. (I broke my nose at 13 by colliding with another person who was sledding). I think snowshoes would be fantastic if you lived somewhere with a lot of snow, and good hiking trails to take them out on. Or even those "snowman kits" I've seen that come with the eyes and buttons and a fake carrot for the nose.

7. Books. Again, you have to be sure of the interest; some kids claim to "hate" reading. But, for kids who like to read, a new book can be a great thing - especially on Christmas break, especially if the weather is bad and you can't go outside. If the kid likes to do crafts, craft books are good, too. Or magazine subscriptions: I got "Cricket" for a while growing up and really enjoyed it, and for many years, "Ranger Rick" and "National Geographic's World" were magazines that family members gave me subscriptions to for Christmas. Magazines were nice because they were mail (I always loved getting mail) and you got one every month, so you had that to look forward to.

8. Games. As long as you could entice someone to play with you (in smaller families, where the kids were pretty far apart in age, that could be difficult). Or if it was a game you could play alone. Board games. Or word games. Or card games. (We had dedicated sets of cards for "go fish" when I was a kid - they were fish-shaped, and instead of matching suits/numbers, you matched colors. I think they still make those). Or Nerf stuff. Nerf was fun, I remember, because we were allowed to play with it indoors (Well, maybe not in the living room...). Or, as a big family present, if you had space for it, something like a ping-pong table would be a KILLER Christmas gift, especially if the kids' friends didn't have one...or air hockey, or something like that. (Or, yeah, videogames, I guess, though I admit my interest in videogames is kind of limited to Tetris and Super Mario Brothers....though some of the new motion-sensing games like the Kinect system look intriguing).

Apple Family Christmas.

I'm a long-time fan of the wonderful movie "A Christmas Story." And in this past year, I've become quite a fan of My Little Ponies: Friendship is Magic.

So what happens when you put them together?

This..

I laughed out loud when I saw that.

Little Christmas Memory

A while back I made scarves for my Pony amigurumis, and remembered the childhood fondness of having clothes for my soft toys - even the animals, who, though they were covered with fur, might have gotten 'cold.'

One of the very earliest "Santa" presents I remember - I was probably 3 or 4, because I know my brother wasn't on the scene yet - was a whole set of handmade doll clothes, just very simple things (mostly tops and slacks). They were delivered to me - showed up on Christmas morning - in a big brown paper bag with swoopy handwriting on it in a red pen (Now that I think of it...I must have been 4, because I was able to read) noting that they were a gift for me made specifically by "Mrs. Claus." There were a few unfinished items (! Yup, everyone who's made handmade gifts has been there) with a suggestion that maybe my mother and I could work together on finishing them.

A couple of years when I was a kid I got notes from Santa or Mrs. Claus, in that same swoopy handwriting (that was so different from either my mom's or my dad's handwriting...)

It's funny...it's almost 40 years later now (Wow, time does fly...well, actually 38 years, but whatever) and I still remember that almost photographically. I should tell my mom that I remember the year "Mrs. Claus" made doll clothes for my toys...


(This is the first of the "embargoed" posts - written before hand and doled out while I'm on break)

On the road...

I *think* I've got everything packed that I need. (And at any rate, if I don't, it's not like I'm heading into the wilderness. I know I have my tickets, my ID, my dress shoes, and medication I take...all of which would be things that would be harder to replace if forgotten.)

And I have books (multiple): A Georgette Heyer mystery, one of those Beatrix Potter themed mysteries, the book on math theory I was reading, one of Georgette Heyer's "historicals" (We'll give it a go; I'm not really a fan of romance but Heyer writes dialog well enough that I may find it entertaining) and an enormous biography of Beatrix Potter that I almost left out at the end because it was so heavy but decided after all that I really want to start it after I finish that maths book.

And an embarrassingly-great number of potential projects, or projects-in-process. But so many days during this last push at the end of the semester, I heard Twilight Sparkle in my head going "This is MY book and I'm gonna READ it!" or "this is MY yarn and I'm gonna KNIT it!" (Okay, the actual Twilight Sparkle never said the second phrase, but whatever. I can tell I've tried to do too much all at once this semester).

I need to learn to be more protective of my time, I guess.

I admit I kind of groaned when my dad called last night and remarked that there were "a couple things he'd (and my mother) like my help with over break" but he was mostly joking as one of those things was putting up the Christmas tree. (The other was sorting through canned goods and any with too much sodium for him, gather up to take to the food bank).

But yeah. I need a break. I have a few last things to do (water the plants, refresh the mint oil under the sink in the desperate hope of keeping mice out) and then I can take off. I do have some pre-written posts that will show up over break, so the blog won't be totally shuttered. I'll be back early in January.

Oh, so many things I want to do over break:

Knit
Bake cookies
Make candy (I only do it once a year, at Christmastime, partly because that's the only time the humidity tends to be low enough for the sugar-syrup based ones to work, and it's about the only time I have time)
Drive around my parents' town at night and look at all the lights people have put up
Go to the Winter Farmer's Market they're having. It's not QUITE the Christkindlmarkt, but it should still be fun.
Read
Help decorate my parents' house
Go window-shopping in some of the little downtown stores just for fun - I don't have any more Christmas shopping to do so the pressure is off.

Just a test

Checking to see if the "Put it behind a jump break" feature works on this blog.

Tea Time Socks

I finally finished the Tea Time Socks. (These are from that "Around the world in knitted socks" book). These socks use some of the traditional Aran-type patterns (particularly, the almost argyle-like diagonal pattern of purl diamonds) on them.



I used a Sanguine Gryphon yarn for these - Bugga, in the color Bog Fritillary. (Apparently Sanguine Gryphon, as such, is no more - they are in the process of splitting into two different companies, but it's my understanding most of the yarns will still be offered. They are quite expensive but are very nice yarns - this one has a small percentage of cashmere in it and it knits up into a nice dense fabric.)

This photo shows the color of the yarn, and a bit of the patterning:



This next photo is dark, I took it without flash, but I think it shows the stitch patterns better than the ones taken with flash do. One thing that frustrates me a bit about my camera (And yes, I am still thinking about buying a new one someday, if I can go more than six months without some kind of house-or-car emergency that makes me have to reshuffle my budget) is that any kind of fancy-stitch pattern gets washed out if you have to use flash. And since most of my photography is done late in the evening, I usually have to use flash.



I'm glad I finished these; one less project-in-progress to consider whether I want to haul it along or not. (I have quite a stack of things I'd like to knit, I'm probably going to have to winnow it down so I don't have an overloaded suitcase.)

Pie and Santa

(Flickr is apparently having problems so I'll just load this up using Blogger's photo tool).

Tonight is the CWF Christmas dinner and I decided to do a dessert this year (after several years of doing vegetables, and one year when there were very few desserts). This is a buttermilk pie. (Yes, it's supposed to be that brown on the top. It's kind of like a chess pie or a custard pie, just not quite as rich.). I even made the crust from scratch.

I am unduly proud of that. I think this is the first pie crust I've ever tried that actually turned out (as in: I could roll it out and it didn't totally crumble). And yes, I'm proud/cross-grained enough to want to be able to make the crust from scratch instead of buying the already-made kind. (I used them a few times; my biggest complaint is that they are not rolled out thin enough and make a rather heavy crust. I suppose I could roll them thinner but part of the point of buying them is that they are fast and easy...)

The filling is mostly eggs and buttermilk and sugar, with a little flour to thicken it, and some lemon extract. Oh, and butter.

***

We were talking about Santa and Santa-believing on CPAAG - one of the members got a letter from Santa for her daughter. And people were doing the old joking thing about "When you stop believing in Santa, you start getting underwear for Christmas."

And I realized something: I was about 9 when I stopped believing in a literal Santa. That seems very old to me now, but I did have a younger brother (which probably helped me keep up any shaky belief I had). And also, I didn't want to give up on the idea of a literal Santa, I think. It was too beautiful.

And also, I think my parents did an amazing job of shielding my brother and me from some of the uglier things in life when we were children...I've said before the first really big scary news story I remember is the Jonestown massacre, and I was almost 10 at the time...and we found out about it mainly because we were at a relative's house and they had the news on. (I think I remember my dad being irritated at that relative for exposing us to it). So I think a lot of the sweet imaginative stuff of childhood stuck with me longer. That's probably both good and bad...I'm still a  somewhat idealistic adult and prone to be disappointed in the uglier aspects of life, but then again, I can still be charmed by simple silly little things. (And I still like fairy tales and things like the really sweet childish sort of cartoons.)

And I said on the post, and I do think it's true: in a way, I still believe, but in a more "metaphysical" sense. If that makes sense. In that there is a spirit of generosity out there, there is something in us that wants the people we love to have at least some of the things their hearts desire (actually, it's probably not good for a person to get absolutely everything their hearts desire).

We did "secret Santas" a few years when I was in grad school and I have to admit I miss that. It was so much fun to find little things for your person, and then sneak them into their mailbox or onto their desk when they weren't looking. One year I had a labmate and I was SURE she knew it was me, but it turned out she never guessed until the final "reveal" at the holiday party.  (Getting stuff was fun, too....but for me the real fun was the sneaking around and trying to deliver the stuff without getting caught).

Actually, you know? I never came out to my parents with the big declaration of "I don't believe in Santa." I think part of it was a desire to protect the belief of my brother (or younger cousins who might be around), but I think part of it was that I didn't want to openly say it to myself. (And you know? Both my brother and I still get "Santa" presents - and I am 42 and he is 37, and my sister-in-law gets Santa presents in my family now that she's a part of the family....and we still do stockings.)

Beatrix would approve...

...Or at least I'd like to think so.

I finished Potter this morning. (And yes, this sweater being from the "Bright Women" pattern collection, it is named for her.)



I'm very pleased with how it turned out. It fits well...the sleeves, especially, I was concerned that they would be too large (sometimes a problem with raglan style sweaters) but they are not. I made the 44" size, which is just about right for a coat-type sweater you wear over other things.

The buttons are recycled plastic; I chose them partly because they're very lightweight (don't drag down the front of the sweater) but also because they look something like the old tortoiseshell buttons that were sometimes used on sweaters.

One thing that strikes me about the sweater is that it does look vaguely Edwardian (perhaps in keeping with the fact that it's named for Beatrix Potter?) I know I have seen sketches of similar double-breasted women's sweaters in reprints from Weldon's Magazine and other places.



I didn't notice that with the model sweater in the booklet, but it was done in a bright yellow (I like the color I chose a lot better) and also it was on a very slender model, and I think I have a more "Edwardian matron" type of build, so maybe the style allusion of the sweater becomes more recognizable.

At any rate, I really like it: it turned out very nicely and it's a comfortable and warm sweater (I wore it to church this morning).

Leaves are gone

Got home from graduation today, ate lunch, ran a few errands, and then was prepared to sit down and relax the rest of the day.

Then I thought about the leaves in my yard. (And cue my neighbor running his lawnmower. And: I'm sorry, I know this is me being a recalcitrant Northerner, but it just sounds SO wrong to hear a lawnmower this close to Christmas...) And then I felt guilty about not getting them raked up. And I thought about how bad the yard looked. And then I thought about being gone for several weeks, and would the place look less lived-in and maybe invite thieves? (I live next door to a police officer, so that's probably less likely than it might be)

So I groaned, got dressed again (I had put on an old floppy pair of pajamas I wear around the house when I don't have to go out again), and raked them up. Well, in the front yard at least - the back yard has fewer leaves, and besides, no one but me ever sees it, so I figured I could leave those.

I used the same old technique of raking them onto a large (6' by 4') tarpaulin and rolling it up into a sort of "leaf burrito" and then carrying them back to the leaf pile at the bottom of my back yard. (Well, it's not really the "bottom" any more; it's probably 6" higher than the rest of the lawn, thanks to the buildup of humus over the years.) It took me about an hour and a half to do.

I'll probably pay for it with being sore tomorrow (and I am ever so slightly wheezy right now, it probably didn't do anything good for my asthma). I could have hired someone but, meh. This is one of the ways in which I am cheap - I tend to feel if I can do some kind of manual task myself, I should. (I draw the line at changing my own oil, though - ruining one blouse while doing it would be enough to eat up any cost savings*). Also, I think this is how my parents maybe raised me to be a little too "egalitarian" or something - I feel like it's MY mess, and I should be the one to clean it up, not hire someone else and make them do it. (Never mind that there are probably people in town who'd be happy for the work. For a couple years I hired a youth group kid and a couple of his friends to do it, and in return made a donation to help out with the cost of their marching band trips, but somehow, that felt different).

(*And yes, I'd probably forget and try to change my oil in my good clothes one day. I think it's genetic. My dad used to do all kinds of household tasks after coming home from campus, sometimes not even taking his tie off....and HIS father is famous in the family for changing the oil in his Mercury (he always drove Mercuries...) while wearing a white dress shirt.)

At any rate: the leaves are cleaned up now. So that's one more thing done that was hanging over my head.

an old favorite

I think, of the non-religious Christmas songs, this one has to be my very favorite, and this singer's version is my favorite version:



I've heard it by others, including Mel Torme (who was one of the composers), but to me it just sounds so right by Nat King Cole.

I guess this is one way in which Randall Munroe is correct. And you know? It really doesn't bug me. I like the Bing Crosby/Dean Martin/Nat King Cole versions of Christmas pop better than I like most of the more-contemporaneous-with-me versions*; I think too many of the recent versions become more about the singer's vocal acrobatics or the electronic sweetening rather than the song itself. Or I may just be being crabby about it because the 1940s/50s versions are what my parents had on records when I was a child, and that's what I remember hearing.

(*though I will admit to not being very fond at all of "I Saw Mommy Kissing Santa Claus," it seems too knowing and coy by half.)

collars take long

I only got about an inch of the collar knitted on Potter last night. Poo. I always forget how long some of the "finishing" steps take...I'm not sure if it's because being done feels so close that they seem longer, or if I just forget how boring things like collars or hoods are to knit.

Fine-gauge sweaters

Potter is almost done. I have to get back to the sewing-up of it, and then knit on the collar, then attach the buttons.

I'm still thinking about the "next sweater to start." I've kind of narrowed it down to the Hampton Cardigan from New England Knits (I have some very pretty coppery-brown Louisa Harding silk-wool blend for it - that was from this summer's trip to Stitches N Stuff), or the "Classic Lines Cardigan," which is a kit from KnitPicks I bought over a year ago.

What these two have in common - besides both being cardigans - is they're made of lighter weight yarn. The Hampton cardigan is a dk weight, and the KnitPicks one is actually knit of doubled (? maybe tripled) laceweight.

But I'm coming to the conclusion that finger-gauge sweaters are more practical for me. For one thing, they breathe a bit better - which is a consideration when it may be 40 degrees when you leave the house, but 60 when you return. And they're MUCH easier to pack when traveling. And...I discovered this this week - easier to wear under coats. We've had a pretty cold snap here (though it's warming up now) and a couple days I wound up wearing my Kenobi cardigan (which was knit of doubled worsted weight!) under my coat...and I wound up like Randy in "A Christmas Story," where I felt like I could not put my arms down.

Also, finer-gauge sweaters are less bulky ON, which is a consideration when you're someone with, ahem, "huge tracts of land." And you can knit them more fitted. (And a note to myself: make future sweaters smaller. Some of my earlier sweaters, I was thinking like sizing for woven fabrics, and they came out a bit big. The Cobblestone pullover - which I wore one day this week, I put it on and said, I should make more sweaters in this size - and I know I made that a smaller, more fitted size.)

Knit your bit

Today is, of course, Pearl Harbor Day. (In fact, it's the 70th anniversary of Pearl Harbor Day).

One of the people I follow on twitter posted a link to a poster of the era ("Remember Pearl Harbor: remember, purl harder." Of course, in those days, knitting for the troops was probably more urgent*)

I wonder how many people my age or younger think much about this day. I remember as a kid, my dad saying he knew something was up (he would have been a very small child in 1941) but didn't know what, he just knew the grown-ups were worried about something from the tone of their voices. (My mother is a bit younger and doesn't remember this day, but also - her family lived in a rural area and probably weren't as plugged into the media as my dad's family were; I think his father was still working for the Chicago Tribune at that point in time).

My fifth grade math teacher (Mrs. Krause? I think that was her name) was about 10 years older than my parents and she told us how she remembered hearing them break into a radio broadcast of the New York Philharmonic to announce the attack.

(I remembered that, and got a bit of commendation in eighth grade American history when my teacher asked "Does anyone know why this day is important?" and I did.)

Many years later, our AAUW Christmas party fell on the 7th. Some of the women vaguely remembered the attack from when they were kids, but my friend Dorothy (who was in her late 80s and was probably the oldest member) remembered the attack, and remembered learning to drive during WWII when she was a college student, because she was needed to transport...I think it was medicines? To a hospital near her college, and the men who would normally do that job had all enlisted or been drafted.

*It's funny...at the start of the Iraq war back in '03 or thereabout, I wondered if we'd see rationing, if there'd be any kind of home-front type stuff like in WWII. Because really, what I had heard about WWII from older relatives was pretty much the only "war knowledge" I had (It was assumed, I guess, that Korea and Vietnam were either "police actions" or were much smaller and didn't affect people at home).

Well, what we got - instead of rationing and odd things like limitations in the number of flavors of ice cream for the duration (Oh, can you imagine the reaction to that today?) was an exhortation to continue to go out and spend, and then stuff like TSA searches at the airports. I guess the world has changed greatly, and at any rate, whatever wars are going on in the world they are smaller than the World Wars. (And if we had another World war...well, there might be none of us left around to write the history of it after it was over. Maybe the cockroaches, but they don't seem to have developed a written language, and they might not care all that much what happened to the people...at least until the supply of cardboard and wool and other edible stuff ran out)

Things and stuff

I lined up someone to drive me, so I'm taking my car in today for them to figure out why the air bag light won't turn off. I also went out early in the cold and dark to clean out the car - get all the papers out of it (I tend to get my mail and drop any junk mail in the car, where it piles up) and moved all my field stuff (long sleeved shirt, Ivy Block, dbh tape, plant identification books) to the way-back of the car, since they said they might need to take out the driver's seat. I'm going to take it out after my exam today and leave it, with hopes of getting it back Friday. (Tomorrow I don't give any exams so I can just stay home).

***

I'm closing in on finishing Potter...I started the decreases for the raglan sleeve on the second sleeve last night but didn't get terribly far. I contemplated bringing it to finish while invigilating the exam this morning, but the ball of yarn it's being knit off is one of those giant Stylecraft balls and lugging it around the classroom was unappealing.

I'm not sure what sweater I will start next. I do plan on pulling Ropes and Picots out of its stall and taking it with me over break, hopefully to get a bunch more done on it. I'm not sure whether to do a vest (the Skye Tweed Vest has been on the to-be-knit list for several years) or the pretty feather-and-fan mohair sweater that I got the kit for a couple birthdays ago.

***

Caught the last few moments of a program on Elbert Hubbard (The Arts and Crafts guy - don't confuse him with the Scientology guy)

Interestingly, he was born in the town (well, the other town of the pair of towns) where my parents live (but is better known from upstate New York, where he established his workshops).

He was an interesting guy...some people claim he was kind of a fraud or a charlatan, others say he was sincere in his beliefs. I don't know. I've read some of his writing and find his ideas interesting...he doesn't really seem to come down in any kind of cut-and-dried political stance, at least not in the sense of the caricatures that political stances (or at least, the current definition of "liberal" vs. "conservative") have become. On the one hand, he wound up (after an early flirtation with being fond of it) a staunch rejector of socialism...and yet, he still had the Roycroft shops, where things were made by hand, and not necessarily as quickly or cheaply as could be made...I guess I find him interesting because he seems like he was a complicated man, and you can't just explain what he thought in a few soundbites. And I have to admit I like the idea of honoring craftsmanship, of there being a place in the world for people doing things well and the "old fashioned" way. Perhaps you might call him a Populist, but he didn't have the same rejection of and revulsion for big business that many Populists do.

He went off on the Lusitania to cover the war in Europe... he and his wife wound up dying when that ship was sunk. (I wonder what went through his mind in those last minutes...he had, after the sinking of the Titanic, written an essay praising Ida Straus, for rejecting a place in the lifeboat so that she and her husband could perish together.)

***

Amazingly, so far no "how on earth did I earn that grade?" e-mails, but we shall see.

***

I'm starting to think about projects to take on break (it's about a week now, before I go on break. I still can't quite believe it). Definitely the socks-in-progress, also some yarn for other socks not yet started. Ropes and Picots. Maybe some yarn for fingerless mitts: I have a couple of the colorways of the "Bloomsbury group" inspired yarn that Shaefer yarns did a few years back and could never quite bring myself to knit them up into socks (because socks can WEAR OUT!) and these colors are too pretty.

And toys. I'm already thinking of taking a couple of Rebecca Danger patterns and some sockweight yarn and making a couple of small toys.

And then someone posted on Ravelry how they knit up the Kath Dalmeny platypus pattern in dark teal and gold Red Heart yarn and voila, Perry the Platypus.

Now I want one. So, as I drove to the local mart of wal (I needed to stock up on milk and such, seeing as I was going to be without a car for at least a day and a half), I said to myself, "I know what I'm going to do today." And I found the yarn I need. (I now see that to be truly show-authentic, I should do the tail in sort of a light brown, though I suppose I could just use the gold for that too). I think I might just photocopy the pattern out of my book (to save room) and carry along the yarn and pattern and make myself a Perry.

(I'm becoming far, far less of a wool snob for things like toys and pillows, especially after finding a teddy bear I knit, that had sat on a shelf for a while...well, the carpet beetles I THOUGHT I had got rid of found the wool yarn and that bear now has a hole in its butt. Better an indestructible plastic-type yarn for something like that, I think now.)

The semester's end....

Yup, I've already had a couple. What kills me is, if this request had been made in, say, the fourth week of the semester, I'd be all "Sure...let's line up some tutoring and why don't you come to my office hours every week, and also be sure you can answer the questions at the end of every chapter we cover." But now, all I can do is shake my head sadly and say, "Sorry, no."

(Really, I think a lot of them are not-very-well-disguised requests for extra credit. And we all know how I feel about extra credit.)

The cookie plate

This is a photo grabbed yesterday morning before I took the cookies over to work. The plateful was mostly-demolished by yesterday afternoon.



We have 10 faculty in the department, but several of those are (still fairly) young guys with fast metabolisms, so stuff like cookies gets eaten fairly fast. Luckily I saved a few of each out in a tin at home for myself, so I could eat them at my leisure. (As one of my colleagues, who came from a large family, said: "He who eats last eats least.")

(The cookies on the right are the chocolate-chip refrigerator cookies, and the ones in the middle are the good old almond bars, which are one of my favorites. This year's batch was especially good; the last time I ran out of almond extract I wound up buying the Watkins' product as a replacement - I can actually get that at the local Mart of Wal - and I think it's superior to the other grocery-store almond extracts I've had in the past).

I may comb through my books for more refrigerator cookie recipes. I always forget how EASY they are - no dropping what feels like ten thousand tablespoons-full worth of dough out on the cookie sheets; you can just slice off as many cookies as you want to bake and do them. (A friend of our family when I was growing up would keep rolls of several kinds of the dough in her freezer, and pull out and slice off part of one when she wanted fresh cookies). Which means refrigerator cookies would solve another problem I have with baking cookies: most batches make too many for just me, and I wind up with far more cookies than I want to eat, and they go stale. But with refrigerator cookies, I could keep the dough frozen and bake up a dozen at a time.

I suppose these types of cookies have largely been supplanted by the tubes of dough from the store, but I think the homemade ones taste better (But I don't think they're cheaper to make any more, at least not if you use real butter and real nuts and stuff like that in them). I think my Farm Journal cookie book has a chapter of recipes for refrigerator cookies (Or "icebox" cookies, as we often called them - my grandmother called them icebox cookies because when she was first married, her "refrigerator" literally WAS an icebox.) Typically these cookies have more shortening than drop-type cookies so they will stay set up in a roll.

***

And here is a little regression to childhood. One of the toy books I have - it might have been the wonderful Jean Ray Laury one - talks about how children cherish their soft toys and often ask for scarves or vests for them because the toy 'feels cold.' Yes, that's a familiar memory. (Though often, as a child, I made the scarves and vests myself - after my mom taught me to sew, knit, and crochet. You can actually make a vest pretty quickly out of felt as felt does not need to be hemmed).

In fact, my very first knitting project ever was a scarf for my Kermit the Frog doll.

This weekend, in between pulling cookie pans out of the oven, I got to thinking it would be fun to knit some toy scarves up out of scraps of sockyarn I had on hand. And so, I did. Just cast on about a dozen stitches and knit until they were "long enough," then bound off (and how much easier binding off comes for me NOW, than it did during my early days of toy-scarf making: binding off was one of the hardest things for me to successfully learn). And then I knotted on a fringe on each end using a crochet hook to "latch hook" the yarn in.

Just a silly little thing but fun. And sometimes it's good to remember the happy times of childhood.

Here's Fluttershy. I used the scraps of the Deborah Norville "Serenity" sockyarn (it has bamboo in it).



I didn't think my Fluttershy amigurumi could get any more "D'awwww!" than she already was, but that scarf ups the cute factor even more.

I couldn't leave little Derpy out, so I knit her a scarf, too. This is from a - I think it's an Online yarn, maybe? It's one that I described as making my "roller derby girl" socks out of because of the pattern of striping. I made this scarf longer and it's a bit more rustic looking:



Though actually, I'm not sure how good a scarf would be as an accessory for a flying horse. I'm thinking of Isadora Duncan here.

(Also, I'm now thinking of Derpy as a Roller Derby Girl and laughing...and you know, it *almost* fits. (Sometimes she is portrayed in the "disaster girl" sort of meme)).

back to animalcules

One nice thing about exam week is more free time to work on research. I'm finally getting to this fall's samples from the soil-invertebrate collection. So far, not much - the drought seems to be affecting the population sizes, which is totally unsurprising.

There's this, though:

On a festive red background. (I use a piece of red cellophane over the lighted stage of the microscope: it increases contrast and prevents me from burning out my eyes so fast). I can't quite tell if the caption for this one should be "JAZZ HANDS, EVERYBODY!" or "COME AT ME, BRO!"

It's unexpectedly cold

Yup, it's snowing just a bit. Of course, the pavements are too warm for it to stick to them. (I don't give any exams today, so I'm spared the phone calls about "do we have school today?" "What do I do if I think it's too hazardous to come in to campus?" (And that one coming from a dorm-dweller...)

My furnace was throwing a code at me this morning; it wouldn't kick on. I groaned inwardly and contemplated calling the furnace guys, then I realized I hadn't changed the filter in a while. The old filter was pretty dust-encrusted, and when I changed it out and hit the reset button - everything was fine. (The last time I had a problem, the furnace guy commented that I'd be surprised by the number of people he got called out for "emergency calls" on who just hadn't changed their filters). Of course, now I have to buy more - my cold-air return takes an odd size (12" by 20") that no stores in town (as far as I know) sell any more. The last batch were mail ordered through Lowe's and I wasn't super pleased at the quality. (And I wasn't super pleased that the DHL guy left them sitting on my front porch in a rainstorm; several of the filters got damp and warped).

Hm. I wonder if Amazon sells furnace filters....

Edited to add: yes, yes they do. For a price - they're more expensive (twice the cost) of the crummier ones I had been using. But they're a brand name and are supposed to filter out pollen. AND they are eligible for Amazon Prime, which I have, which means I get 2-day delivery for free....

You know, I griped about the "wal-mart-ization" of Amazon when they started branching out into stuff other than books and dvds. But you know? It's not like wal-mart. Wal-mart has, by virtue of the size footprint of their stores, a limited amount of stuff they can carry. And often you find ONE brand of item (or a small number of sizes of furnace filters in this case). Sort of the majority-rules sort of thing: if only a few people buy it, it doesn't merit shelf space any more. But Amazon must have cavernous warehouses (and beyond that, many 'allied sellers' who work through them - though it's not clear to me if the allied sellers have their own warehouses or they use Amazon's space).

For people like me, who kinda-sorta live in the boonies, it's a really nice thing - 99.5% of the time, something I can't find locally, I can find on Amazon (or one of the other online sellers I frequent; Amazon is not so good for yarn but I have many other fine sources for that).

I guess it's kind of like the Sears and Montgomery Wards catalogs of yore - I know my mom, who grew up in a small town in a rural area of Michigan, talks about how they relied on the different catalogs for things, that her father even ordered books from one of the major merchandiser's catalogs. (You used to even be able to buy houses - well, kits for houses - from Sears).

Icicle making tutorial

I mentioned this the other day. This is a type of ornament I've made over the years, modifying the original instructions (as I said, I think they were from one of the Better Homes and Gardens craft publications) as I went. Also, Susan Waggoner's "Have Yourself a Very Vintage Christmas" lists these as a "quick craft" in her chapter on the 1930s.

The original description of these had them made on a framework of sewing thread. They also used a lot of buttons to make up the icicle. That can be nice - in fact, some of the original ones I made, I incorporated clear glass/plastic or opaque white buttons that came from my grandmother's button box. (My mother, rightly, currently has custody of these icicles). But I've modified the recipe for these to be simpler and not require buttons. (You can use buttons if you like, especially if you have a full button-box, extra-especially if you have vintage or sentimental buttons you'd like to put on display). I did replace the sewing thread with fine-gauge wire, which I think is preferable. The sewing thread is hard to successfully tie off, and over the years (especially if stored somewhere humid) could weaken or rot...and you don't want icicles breaking open and spilling on the floor off the tree.

The current version I make uses beads. You can use plastic, glass, or crystal/semiprecious stone (like quartz) beads depending on your purpose and budget. The glass and crystal beads are pricier but I think they have more shine and gleam and I mostly use them.

If you make bead jewelry, you may already have a lot of what you need in your leftovers. If not, I will say a really fun part of the craft is going to the craft store and picking out beads...there's a huge diversity available right now.

The good thing is that making bead jewelry is in right now, so most craft stores (and even places like the Mart of Wal) have quite a bit of stuff. So here's what you need:



Wire. In the Waggoner book she suggests 24-gauge, but I recommend using the finer 32-gauge wire. You'll also need scissors you don't mind using to cut wire (NOT your wife/mother/sister/companion-who-sews' fabric shears. Not their embroidery scissors either!)

Then you need beads. Lots of beads. Lots of different beads. Mostly clear, but I also like to mix in a few "frosted" or opaque white beads, and a few pastel beads. (Just steer clear of yellow, if you have people around you who might make "yellow snow" jokes). I tend to use mostly blues as the add-in colors; that seems right for an "icy" look, but I also have used pink or sort of a smoky color.

Be forewarned: there's a fair amount of initial outlay for this project. Beads, especially the Swarovski-style ones, are NOT cheap. However, once you've invested in the beads, you can make dozens to scores of ornaments off of your kit.

I suppose also some folks living in more populous areas that have a dedicated beading store, you might be able to buy beads in small quantities. Because I just have big-box type stores near me, I have to buy things like beads in mass quantities. However, as I said - you can make tons of icicles off of the initial outlay for the beads. (Also, as I said, if you're a beader, you might have leftovers you could use). Also - I suppose if you're a lucky sort of person when it comes to thrift shopping, you could probably find old bead necklaces you could take apart and use. Or if you had old jewelry from you or a family member you don't wear or that is broken...

And you need something to put the beads in. One nice thing about this craft is that it's super portable and not messy (unless you upset the container of beads onto the floor.)

I like to store mine in a divided plastic box that's roughly 10" by 10":



This is a craft you could do with kids - provided they're old enough to safely handle the wire and not do something like put beads up their noses. (In some cases, there might be adults you'd want to watch out for, who might do that*)

As I said: it's not messy, it's quiet, the results are pretty, and you don't have to be particularly artistic to do it.

(*Remember: I work on a college campus so I see all KINDS of behaviors).

To start, you cut maybe an 18" piece of the wire. Then thread a bead onto it. What I like best to do is to have some beads with the hole drilled near one end - kind of like the "drops" on an old-time chandelier. Then, once the bead is on, you fold over the wire so it's doubled - the bead you just put on is like a "stopper" that will hold the other beads:



There are other options. If you don't have the chandelier-drop type of beads, you can just use a very small regular bead and have it be on its side because of how the wire runs through it.



I particularly like the little holly leaf. I forget where I got the package of those.

Now, you start adding beads. Ideally, you work from smallest up to largest, but I find it difficult to find larger beads (especially in glass), so I don't tend to have a lot of size variation in mine.



Another thing I like to do is mix a few opaque or colorful beads in with the clear ones. It looks less monotonous. This year, I found a pack of "beach glass" looking glass beads and I used them in some of my icicles.



This is a very low-pressure craft. If you don't like the way a bead looks, you can take it off and exchange it for another one. It's easy to get "in the zone" with this. Or at least, it is for me.

You just sort of keep adding beads until you think the icicle looks big enough. I tend to limit mine to being about 3" or so long. (The original instructions from the magazine had you make them longer). If you have one of those vintagey style artificial trees where the branches are really far apart, you could certainly make them longer.



To finish off the icicle, I just wrap the end of doubled wire around my finger (not too tightly!) and then wind the ends around the wire just above the topmost bead. A more satisfactory solution - especially if you make jewelry and have them on hand already - would be to use a crimp bead to capture the ends of the wire and finish the icicle off. But this works for my purposes.



Et voila.



This is one I made pretty much entirely of plastic beads. As I said, the plastic beads are a lot more reasonably priced, and you tend to be able to find more large beads (for the icicle top) among the plastic beads. These would also be good if you needed to make a ton of these (like, if you were doing them with a Scout troop or youth group), or if you have particularly rambunctious pets who might knock over the tree. I've never had an icicle break, but I suppose the glass beads could smash if roughly treated. Also, the plastic-bead icicles are a lot lighter, which is a consideration if you have a "real" tree that's a fir or something with soft branches that will get bendy under heavy weight, or if you want to make really large icicles.

And really, the plastic ones vs. the glass ones don't look any different from a distance. They're both pretty.

Making these things is kind of like eating salted peanuts: it's hard to stop after just one. Luckily, as I said, you tend to find beads for sale in mass quantities, so you can make lots of icicles. They also work up fast so you can make a ton of them in a day or so.



One of the reasons I got into making these was that my family realized one year that they couldn't have tinsel on the tree any more. The old cat we had when I was growing up - Sam - never really went after the tinsel, but the cats who followed in his pawsteps (Cleo and Patty) would try to eat it - and ingesting tinsel can be very dangerous for an animal. So we cut out the tinsel and replaced it with icicle ornaments, both handmade ones and some purchased ones. (Some places you can find molded-glass icicles; I know my family has a few that they've got over the years from artists who work with glass). I think a whole bunch of these, all over a tree, as a finishing touch instead of tinsel, would look nice.

The icicles tend to pick up the glow from the tree lights.





There are a lot of other things you could do with these - you could tie them along a garland and hang it off the mantel, or you could hang them from a chandelier, or you could make small ones and use jewelry findings (like French wires and stuff) and make earrings and pendants and stuff. And they make nice package tie-ons, if you have friends or family who appreciate homemade tree ornaments.

I think another fun thing to do with these - if you were into doing crafting get-togethers - would be to invite all the people you invite to those things, and then tell them each to bring some quantity of clear beads (and frosted, and pastel) and then let everyone swap beads as they made their icicles...so you're not stuck with three hundred plain globe-shaped beads, and the person next to you doesn't have to figure out how to use all their pink Swarovski-style beads and make the icicle look "right." The host could supply the wire (that kind of wire is super cheap) and maybe some extra beads for people who didn't bring as many or whatever. And people could just sit around and make icicles. It's a very restful sort of craft, I've found.

More cookie thoughts

Tat, never made pain d'epices but I have seen recipes. One recipe I do want to try this winter - but will have to "translate" (it's from a British book and has the amounts in mL rather than in cups) is for Lebkuchen, which is sort of similar. I have a recipe elsewhere for "pan lebkuchen" (made like bar cookies) but it doesn't look as appealing, and they recommend cutting up candied cherries to make poinsettia shapes on the top of them to decorate them but meh, I don't go for that kind of thing at all...too fiddly for me.

I made the hard-type of pfeffernusse (the ones that are very small and don't have egg in them) one year but they didn't get eaten up because they were kind of hard - you had to soak them in tea to make them easier to eat.

I thought about doing roll-out cookies, but I always do those up at my parents (using my grandma's recipe) and I'm not sure I'm up for doing two batches this year. And also - in my department (where I am taking the cookies), the plainer cookies (which the rollouts are - they're just a butter cookie) don't get eaten as fast as the stuff with chocolate or frosting. (Yes, I could frost the roll outs but again, meh: I much prefer them the way my grandma did them, just shaking on a bit of colored sugar before they went in the oven. I like the way that tastes better (not a big fan of frosting, here), and also, frosting cookies is kind of a big production.)

I have the rolls of refrigerator chocolate chip dough chilling right now but got wrapped up in other things and didn't start the other cookies. I think I will still do them tonight - it's chilly and rainy out and my house is a little chilly so having the oven on for an extended amount of time will be a plus.

Christmas baking time!

I cleaned my house up yesterday afternoon, especially the kitchen and dining room. (I even cleared the dining room table enough to put out my Christmas tablecloth - it's one I made from a fabric with a design of pink poinsettias and pale holly leaves. It's subtle enough I could probably leave it on through January.)

So my house is clean now, which feels good. I even washed the throw rugs.

This morning, on my grocery run, I bought the supplies for the cookies I want to make for FFFFFFFFFFFFFFFF. (probably too many F's there, but it's the Five Festive Finger Foods Feast...uh, days. During exam week, we all bring in snacks and put them in the break room, in acknowledgement that our exam schedule is weird and on some given days people may not have time for a proper lunch, and also in celebration that we've survived another semester.)

I usually make cookies as this is one of the rare times that I have time to bake, plus an "audience" to bake for.

So, my plans are to make:

the good old Almond Bars (from a Better Homes and Gardens Christmas cookies book I have)

Peanut butter/chocolate kiss cookies (I made some last year and people went crazy over them; the recipe I have IS pretty good)

Chocolate chip refrigerator cookies (with the tiny chips, so they're easy to cut).

I also MIGHT do a batch of Millionaire's shortbread; I have everything needed for that but I'll see if I feel like doing it.

And I'm going to play Christmas music while I do it. And not think about schoolwork.

(You might think it odd that I clean my kitchen BEFORE a big bout of baking. Well, in my case, "cleaning" largely means "putting away the stuff that occupies the counters" - during the semester, I'm in a hurry all the time, so when I pull out a box of tea to make tea, it stays pulled out, or I don't always get the stuff from the high shelves back to where it belongs. And also, a "dirty" kitchen makes me twitch a little; it feels unhygienic (though in my kitchen, only the floor probably ever really is). So I like cleaning first and THEN cooking. And then if I need to I can sweep again or clean the counters again.)

I also bought some more goodies for the beaded icicles I was talking about; I'll probably make some of those this afternoon and post the photos later.

A 1980s teen....

(I promise. I am really trying really hard not to have this blog wind up being ALL PONIES ALL THE TIME but it's the end of the semester and looking at pony pictures is my stress-reliever of choice right now. And I think this is awesome, cool, and radical, because I was a teen in the 1980s:)


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Even though I am a firm supporter of FLUTTERSHY IS THE BEST PONY, I think I would have dressed most like Rarity of the ponies here. Well, Rarity or Applejack.

(ETA: LL, if you're reading this, do you remember that deerstalker hat I had and wore in high school? Dang, I wonder at that now...in some ways I was kind of a pretentious show-off.)

(I wonder what a 1980-ized Derpy would look like? Would she be nerd-chic, or would she look like something out of Napoleon Dynamite? Or would she slide even more into Cyndi Lauper-at-her-most-polychromatic-state than some of the ponies portrayed here?)

Last school day

This is the last day of classes for the semester (I still have exams to give and grade next week, but in the Gen Ed class the exam is an all-machine-graded and one of the other faculty is even going to do the curving of it, so I'm pretty much off the hook for that one).

On the agenda this afternoon: clean up my house. (I had thought of running down to Sherman just for a fun afternoon, but meh, it's raining and my house really needs the attention more).

I'm considering baking cookies this weekend to bring in during exam week. I may also make the cheese ball I got a mix for at the AAUW meeting last night. (My "blind bag" gift was a decorative plate with a cardinal on it, and a mix for something called "Banana Split Cheese Ball." Um, OK. You make it with cream cheese so I guess it's a sweet, rather than savory, cheese ball. I think I will make it up and bring it in here because even if it is something I really like, I could not consume a whole one before it went bad. I guess you get vanilla wafers or something like that to serve with it).

I've also decided I want to finish Potter this weekend. The second sleeve is about half-done, so I just have to finish that, assemble it, and knit on the collar.

***

I'm also planning on doing a little illustrated tutorial on a type of Christmas ornament I've made over the years. I talked about these, oh, way years ago, before I had a camera to photograph them. They're little icicle-chains of beads that you can make. The original idea I found in one of the Better Homes and Gardens craft publications sometime back in the 90s, but I've made modifications to the idea.

(And a book I recently bought on "Vintage Christmas" has instructions for something very similar in one of the chapters - this is the book and it's a pretty wonderful one. It covers the era from the 1920s to the 1960s and talks a bit about each decade. It seems that a lot of my family's celebration incorporates some of the 1940s traditions (dressing up, the type of music) which would kind of make sense as that is when my parents were kids....

The author also talks about the old clear-glass-with-stripes balls (of which we have one or two, from my dad's folks) and how they were made during WWII as a way of doling out scarce paint so instead of a few people getting pretty ornaments and a lot having to do without, they kind of invented - necessity being the mother of invention yet again - a new style)

The author talks about the beginnings of the "nature" movement and the "Americana revival" in the 1960s. Which strikes me as interesting; I thought maybe that was a bit later. I guess I tend to think of the 1960s style more in the early 60s, pillbox-hats and "Camelot" style. But I do remember natural-materials ornaments from my 1970s childhood; my mother has a huge wreath that has pinecones and sweet gum balls and other things wired onto the form (I think it must have been coated with some kind of preservative; it's shiny and also it's survived summers stored in a garage where there were mice). And we still have some ornaments I made as a child, where I glued glitter and beads onto milkweed pods.

And the whole Americana Revival thing is very familiar to me; as much as my parents' house followed a particular "style" when I was a child, that was it. I thought that came in with the Bicentennial but I guess it was earlier.

The author also talks about how the 1960s tended to be the beginning of the era of "theme" trees - where all one color, or all one style of ornament was chic, and how some of the "nature movement" people went against that, and tried to bring back "granny's" tree (though she points out - not so much THEIR grannies, as people-who-would-have-been-grannies-at-the-turn-of-the-20th-century.) And I definitely fall into that second camp. Themed trees are fine for some people, but I like more of a gallimaufry of stuff on mine - some handmade ornaments, some purchased figural ornaments, and especially, on the tree my parents put up, ornaments I remember from my childhood.)

Earthquake detection kit

From Failblog's "WIN"

This would be very easy to make, and I think it would be a wonderful "gag" gift or stocking-stuffer sort of thing, especially for Oklahomans after this fall:


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Five best toys

This is pretty funny, but like a lot of things, it's funny partly because there's truth to it:

Geek Dad presents the Five Greatest Toys of All Time.

Personally, I still enjoy playing with #3, especially if it's made out of wool, and I can have a couple of #1s to use with it. And I like #5 so much that I teach an entire class on it...

Duckweed and ponies

I had wanted to do a lab involving duckweed this fall. The problem was...the local duckweed sources had dried up because of the drought, and the one that still had water in it, the duckweed was way out in the middle of the stream, and the day I was out there, I didn't feel up to wading in after it. (Also, it was in one of the not-so-great parts of town, and I could hear dogs barking and wasn't entirely sure that one of them wasn't going to tear after me or if they were all fenced in).

But, one of my friends on Ravelry came through...she cleaned out an aquarium she had and sent me some. (Yes, I suppose because duckweed is invasive some places, we may have broken Da Rulez by doing that, but I solemnly swear that I am not up to no good with the duckweed...it will live in an aquarium in my lab and not leave the building).

In addition, she included a surprise for me...wrapped up separately from the duckweed (so they wouldn't become duckweed-flavored), some Smarties (the U.S. kind of Smarties....the ones that are like SweeTarts. Which I happen to like) and a PONY!!!!11!!!eleventy!!!

I'm guessing it's one of the "Gen 3" ponies - not the first run ever, but one of the older ones. And she she's had a modification paint job...so she's unique. (Kathy, who sent the stuff, says that her daughter did the modification paint job...)



I'm naming her Calypso, after the Saturnine moon, because it looks like her "butt symbol" (cutie mark) is Saturn.

She's on my Christmas tree right now and seems to fit right in. I will admit to squealing a bit when I found that there wasn't just duckweed in the package. And yeah, I realize, it's kind of silly for someone of my age and alleged gravitas to be so stoked over a little pony, but you know? I'd rather be the kind of person who can be made happy out of all proportion over a little thing like that, than someone who's sufficiently jaded not to find it funny or charming or happy-making.

Also: I got an email last night saying my Victorian Christmas Crafts book has shipped. Yes! I'm looking forward to being able to flip through this one again, and have my very own copy for my very own craft shelves.