* I decided that since Hitchhiker was a fun knit, and since I have enough time (as of now), I'm going to do a second one for my mom for Christmas (don't worry, she doesn't read here). I ordered some Heritage handpaints SILK for it. The colorway is one Simply Sock Yarn calls "Violas" - it's a dark blend of purples, blues, and a deep reddish pink. Those are all colors that will go well with many of the things she wears, and also that should go well with her coloring. And also that I think she will like.
* Ordered a bunch of books off of Amazon....one on the city of Cahokia (an early Native American site). I'm still fascinated by pre-history, whether European or American. (Ah, if only I could go back and take some basic archaeology classes so I could be sure I was understanding the terminology and methods right)
* Another book is a Brit-Lit book called "Miss Mole" which I saw discussed over here. I couldn't quite resist ordering a copy, given its designation of "Spinster Lit." (Though when you do a Google search on that, rather than getting lists of the sort of midcentury British or 19th c. British novels I might want to read, you get stuff like modern books where women fret endlessly about being unmarried. I'd much rather read about women who muddle through life given their "fate," rather than who spend great amounts of time bemoaning it.)
* And a book called "Shaping Shawls" because I still have an idea or two rattling around in my head for a triangular shawl of my own design and I want to read about different ways of attacking the pattern of either increasing (if you start at the point) or decreasing (if you start at the top). I mean, I have an idea of how to do it but I want to see more of what others have done.
* Also ordered the Cake Family Playset off of Amazon. Because it has Nurse Redheart in it as well as the Cakes. (And I'm really hoping a playset with either or both Scootaloo and Sweetie Belle in it is in development....)
* Before I left on break, I ordered the new "Unofficial Harry Potter Knits" magazine special-issue Interweave put out. It's quite nice. I like the Ginny Weasley cardigan, but I also like both the Hagrid and the Severus Snape sweaters. (Though if I did the Snape one? I'd do it in a slightly lighter color - maybe a lighter grey or a brown. Because I'm not going to do all that cabling in black yarn!) The patterns are nice because while they are referential in a way that is explicable, neither do they scream HARRY POTTER GEEK! to the world when you wear them. (Okay, one or two might, but they tend to be accessories, which you have more leeway with). (And actually, I must confess: I'm not a REAL Harry Potter geek; I have not even read all the books. Someday I plan to, though).
They also advertised a 2013 version of Jane Austen Knits (Hurrah! I was wondering if they were going to do one or if they felt the ideas had all been used up). I will be ordering that once it comes out (in October).
They're also doing a Downton Abbey (unofficial) Knits magazine. Don't know if I will order that one because I've actually never watched the show. Not because I think I'd dislike it or anything, just....when it was on PBS, it came on at times too late for me to want to stay up watching, given the hour I get up in the morning, and streaming video at home is not so great for me as I don't have a particularly comfortable set up where my computer is, and also I have an older machine that might hang up while trying to stream, I don't know.
Also, those kinds of strongly-episodic shows are not that great for me to watch "in real time" (I mean, as they are broadcast) because there's a good chance I will miss a week because I'm busy or have a meeting or am traveling or something, and then you lose the thread of what's going on or someone posts a spoiler online or, or, or.
***
They (the administration) provided us with a free lunch today in return for our sitting through the meetings (which really weren't that bad, and had a fair amount of actually useful information*). It was from the best restaurant in town (IMHO, but apparently not JUST my O): an Italian place.
And I realized: whoa. I just had my appointment yesterday. Where I was told my bp was good, where I hadn't gained any weight since last time, where everything looked good. So I decided to play my once-a-month Get Out Of DASH Diet Jail Free card, and I just sat down and ate without worrying. I even got the house dressing (a spicy Italian which probably has a lot of salt) on my salad (rather than taking it dry, which would have been the only other option: at the restaurant I can get oil and vinegar but of course with a catered meal they didn't have that). AND I had a roll. And spaghetti with meat sauce. And even a piece of cheesecake at the end.
While I think it's good to be careful most of the time about what I eat (and I do notice that I feel better, and my bp is lower, when I generally stick to the diet), I've also noticed that the odd higher-sodium meal (like when I was traveling) does not seem to appreciably pull up my bp. Oh, I won't go eating Big Macs and salting my macaroni now - but it does tell me that a rare restaurant meal, or even perhaps a TINY shake of salt on scrambled eggs or in a pot of soup is unlikely to kill me. (One of the problems I tend to suffer from is all-or-nothing thinking.)
(*There was also one Eeyoreish talk on the "pending takeover of MOOCs" in American education and how can we try to stay viable by offering an alternative to it. After the talk, during break, one of my colleagues opined, "Well, gee. Wouldn't it be great if we had, I don't know, an educational model featuring classes with fewer than 50 people, all of whom had direct contact with the instructor, who could come in and talk to him or her face to face, and in which the instructor did the grading for the students....Oh wait, we already have it. Maybe we just need a cool acronym for it." But still. The whole looming idea of MOOCs does scare me a bit because while it is a very "cost effective" way of offering instruction, I think there are a lot of issues with quality control, cheating prevention, credentialing, and also with students being able to get help when they need it. I see MOOCs as maybe being kind of like a glorified version of the books I read: "Want to learn about Proto-Indo-European? Take our massive online free course....you won't be tested or likely receive college credit, but you still can learn if you put in the effort" or perhaps as being like those "Great Courses" things I regularly get catalogs from (and keep saying, "I should order the dvds on The Calculus or on The Revolutionary War..." or on some other topic I feel I have insufficient knowledge on). But for hands-on type stuff like lab or field sciences? You can't learn to identify plants from a MOOC any better than you can learn them just from photographs in a book - you can kind of maybe do it in a not-really-that-great way, but in order to really know them you have to work with them a lot, ideally alongside someone who already knows them well. But MOOCs are damned attractive to the bean-counter legislative types. And right now, it seems the market for making them (in which the instructors are apparently unpaid) is sewn up by the "elite" universities that can claim the "superstar" profs.
I don't know. I admit I worry from time to time that I will finish up my career as some sort of peripatetic professor, carrying a sign saying, "Will teach plant identification for food" or "Will teach the two-sample t-test for food." I don't know.
And I admit, the very claim some make that only the "master teachers" (i.e., superstar profs) should be allowed to "deliver content" and that the rest of us should devolve into, I don't know, graders or something - well, that brings up all the old issues I have that I had mostly squashed down by remembering the proverb, "The woods would be very quiet if only the 'best' birds sang." But if the "best" birds are being recorded and have their songs piped in everywhere....well, the rest of the birds might as well go and become alligator food.
The whole concept of there being "superstar" profs (and the corollary, that the rest of us are even less than chopped liver) makes me sad. Because I will never be a "superstar" but I'm pretty good. And it sucks to be moving to a model where you have "Superstar" vs. "Doesn't deserve a job" but that's what it seems to be where we're moving these days.)
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