Holy Week

In the Catholic Church Calendar, this is the most sacred time of year. Yesterday was Palm Sunday when we commemorate Jesus's entry in Jerusalem when the people welcomed him by waving palms and saying Hosanah (as most of you know, it all went downhill for him from there).

Palm Sunday also involves the reading of the Passion (the events surrounding the death of Jesus) which can be quite long depending on how the priest decides to do it. As a child, we spent this time making things out of our palm fronds--crosses and so forth. A friend of mine once said she never kept her palms because it was, "too much responsibility." See, having been blessed, the palms can never be thrown away. You can, however, burn them, and a parish will burn their leftover palms to use as the ashes for Ash Wednesday the following year. My grandmother says that her mother used to burn bits of palm during storms, and my grandmother still does this. I guess this was done to somehow keep your house safe, although I'm not sure how.

Holy Week is when the Church pulls out all the stops. It is ceremony and ritual as never seen during the rest of the Church year. It is during this week that the holy oils that will be used for the rest of the year will be blessed. All Catholics are supposed to be preparing for the great Triduum--Holy Thursday, Good Friday, and Holy Saturday which is when the Easter Vigil will take place.

As a child, my family never went to the Triduum services. This was probably a wise idea because no small child could ever hope to sit through the long and solemn services of those three days. Once, when I was in high school, we went to Easter Vigil and afterward, my brothers and I turned to my mother and swore we would never again attend a Mass that was three hours long.*

Now that I'm older, however, the services of the Triduum appeal to me, even if they are long. They remind me of Catholic heritage (if there is such a thing) and I am happy to go to them (provided I don't have to participate in the washing of the feet on Holy Thursday which still creeps me out).

Unfortunately, because I have been sick, I didn't make it to Palm Sunday Mass. However, I will do my best to make it to the Triduum services.

*I now know that in some Protestant denominations, a three-hour service is the norm. A typical Catholic Mass, however, is 45minutes to 1 hour; three hours of church feels excessive to the average Catholic.

New game plan

After fiddling around with different needles and patterns, I've decided to not do a fair isle pattern for my sockpal sock. I don't like how it looks with the larger needle size and I'm convinced I won't be able to get a complicated pattern done in time. Better to have a simpler pair of socks than a late pair of socks. So, I'm using just the Lorna's Laces yarn and doing the baby cable rib from Sensational Knitted Socks. I'm still working on the guage. Basically, I want to use this one set of circs and I am trying to get the right number of stitches to make the proper sized sock. I worked on it yesterday and last night while watching Pride and Prejudice, the miniseries version (all 5 hours at once--whew!).

So, I know you are all dying to know what I thought of this version of P&P, so I'll tell you. I liked the newer version better. Not just because it's shorter, but because I felt the characters were more real and it was more romantic. Oh and the mother in the miniseries version got on my last nerve. Her voice was too piercing! I know she is supposed to be constantly complaining but the screeching was just too much to handle. In the newer version, the mother has a lower pitched voice which helps, I think. Anyway, I felt that in some ways, the characters were caricatures of themselves. Caroline Bingley, for instance, looked unreal. I blame part of this on the makeup and costuming. This is not to say that I didn't like it at all, I did. By nature of it being longer, it had more of the book in it and I do think that added something to the movie. In the newer version, there's not so much of Wickham, so I don't think you get the best sense of how vile he is and how disturbing the situation is. I thought this version also did a better job of pointing out the real travesty behind Lydia's running off. The newer version made it seem as though the only problem was the ruin of Lydia. But, really, it meant the ruin of the entire family and that the other sisters would have very little chance of marrying well. Also, I liked the miniseries Mr. Bingley better, the newer version made him far too silly.

However, the newer one was less, oh what's the word I'm looking for? The houses were quite dark at night, as it would have been. The Bennett girls are not going around in immaculate dresses all the time. The farm is a real farm. It gives you a better sense of the difference between the Bennetts and the Bingleys or the Darcys.

Of course, Colin Firth was to die for, though I do like him better with shorter hair ala Bridget Jones (also, I can't figure out what was so amazing about him swimming in the lake that Bridget and her pals were playing it over and over again in the 2nd book--which of course doesn't show up in the movie for obvious reasons; I always thought it was amusing that they got him to play Mark Darcy). And he doesn't look nearly as good in sideburns as Matthew Macfadyen. But his features are more handsome. Right, enough of that.

So there you have it. If you want to rent only one version and get the basic gist of the book, I say go for the newer (and shorter) one. If you want to watch something that portrays almost the entirety of the book, then go for the miniseries one. Handsome men abound in both so you're pretty safe with either one if that's what you're looking for. ;)

avian flu

Call the CDC, I think I have the bird flu. Okay, maybe that's a bit of an exaggeration, but I sure as hell ain't going anywhere for awhile.

Perhaps it's simply a reaction to ripping out my sockapalooza/cirque du socks sock totally and completely last night. There is nothing left. I was in denial. It was so not going to fit on anyone over age 10. The problem is that fair isle is not in the least bit stretchy. I was deluding myself into thinking it would fit my sockpal. I'm not sure it would've fit on my arm. So, it had to go.

I was considering giving up on the fair isle given that I have to send this to my sockpal by the first week in May and because the sock will not be stretchy so I'm terribly worried about it not fitting. But, I decided to try it again. It's going to go faster this time because I'm using larger needles so I will be getting 7 stitches per inch and not the 11 spi that I was getting before. Gotta love the bigger needles.

So, if I can manage to stay awake for awhile today and not be glued to the toilet throwing up as one of my friends did with this latest bug, then I will hopefully make some progress on the sock. It's now been moved to highest priority. I'm even going to take it with me to seminars and stuff. I don't care that I won't be able to concentrate on the seminar so much, the thing has to get done.

I'm in love...

...with Mr. Darcy from the new Pride and Prejudice. Shhhh! Don't tell my husband, I don't think he'd take it very well even if Mr. Darcy is a fictional character. I've looked at some of the Matthew Macfadyen websites and concluded that I really only like him with longer hair.

I have always loved Pride and Prejudice, ever since I first read it. I realize it's a bit of a stereotype for a woman to love Pride and Prejudice, but I have always had a special affinity for books where the heroine's name is Elizabeth (I forgive them for spelling it wrong, it's not their fault). I always find it much easier to relate to the character if we have the same name. I must've read Little Women (another book with an Elizabeth) a million times and cry everytime.

I've never been one for having crushes on tv/movie personalities. I think I was the only girl my age who was not in love with Mike Seaver from Growing Pains. I could never understand what all the fuss was about. People found it odd, so I would profess a devotion to someone or the other just to keep them from bothering me. Michael J. Fox was a good one. Patrick Swayze was another (sidenote: my advisor is related to Patrick through his mother--no, he hasn't made an appearance in the lab, I'm not even sure they've met). Notice these were older men. I never found teenage boys very appealing, even when I was a teenager.

So, my infatuation with Mr. Darcy comes as something of a surprise to me, but I suspect it has something to do with my love of the book coupled with a handsome actor and the feeling that my husband and Mr. Darcy have a few things in common (a tendency to avoid small-talk, people misunderstanding his lack of conversation for condescension). But, I have to say, I especially like him at the end of the movie when *SPOILER ALERT* he tells Elizabeth he loves her for the second time. I loved this movie so much, I watched it twice in two days, then went out to buy it. I really feel like I could watch him propose to her over and over again.

I have yet to see the mini-series with Colin Firth (who I really adore from Bridget Jones), but it should be arriving from netflix today! Unfortunately, I won't be able to watch it tonight because I have a SnB meeting at my apt. :(

Daylight Saving is the Root of all Evil

Twice a year I am brought to my knees by a completely unnecessary observance called Daylight Saving. First there is the ridiculousness of the name, there are the same number of daylight hours in a day no matter what you do and there is no way to "save" daylight unless it's by some solar paneled device. Second, my body knows when the sun has come up and really doesn't care what time the clock says.

Some people claim that Daylight Saving was instituted for farmers. This is ridiculous. As I said, the number of daylight hours is the same no matter what you do. Therefore, if a farmer gets up at the crack of dawn in order to get everything done, he's going to continue to do that whether that time is 6am or 7am. As far as I can tell, the real reason is to save energy. And while I applaud our legislators for their dedication to energy conservation, I am a bit resentful of the fact that for most normal Americans to get this screwed up in their sleep schedule, they have to travel to Europe. At least they get to be somewhere cool while they are adjusting to a new schedule!

You might think that a change of one hour is so small it can hardly make a difference. That's what I keep saying, too, but my body is just not listening. It seems to think I have subjected it to some sort of cruel and unusual punishment and now all it wants to do is sleep. Yesterday, my eyes were watering with the effort of keeping them open. I am not making that up. Today, I am slightly better, but still groggy and relatively nonfunctional.

So, what does this mean for my knitting? Well, folks, it's just not getting done. According to my schedule, I'm supposed to be done with my first sock for sockapalooza/cirque du socks and I'm starting to think this is very wishful thinking. I did manage to get the heel done last night. I like to do a wrapped short row heel instead of a heel flap + gusset (the link is to a toe-up sock pattern with a short row heel but I am doing my socks cuff-down--it's exactly the same procedure either way). It just looks nicer to me in the end. I know you'd love to see pictures and one day, I may even have some. Anyhoo, I still have about 8 inches to knit on this sock and with the way my body has been trying to make me sleep all the time, I'm not sure I'm going to get there by Sunday. We shall see.

Ever feel like God is trying to tell you something?

Like, for instance, you shouldn't have a career in science?

You know how it is--you're trying to accomplish something, nothing is working, in fact, everything seems to be working against you, and it starts to feel like God or the Universe or whatever Powers That Be are doing this to subtly or not-so-subtly tell you, hey, it's not a good idea for you to do that. That's how I feel in lab lately. Nothing seems to work properly, and tomorrow I have to present at lab meeting and I get the not-so-gratifying distinction of standing up there and saying that I have accomplished absolutely nothing in the last several months since the last lab meeting.

*sigh*

Why am I doing this again?

God has a sense of humor

Saturday afternoon, my SnB group went to afternoon tea at the Drake Hotel in Chicago. It was a really fun afternoon and we were lucky enough to have the vice consul for social affairs for the Chicago British Consulate join us and give us a history of British tea and tea etiquette (she's the mum of one of our members).

Prior to going to tea, I went to Target to buy a half-slip (a skirt slip) because my skirt wasn't lined and it stuck unpleasantly to my tights. Apparently, Target doesn't sell slips. There was nary a slip to be found. I ended up buying a silky nightgown to use instead (same basic concept as a full slip, really). But, I was appalled at the lack of such an important undergarment at a major department store. I privately pondered people's dedication to decency as I looked at all the women around me in the store and wondered how many of them owned slips. I called my grandmother and left a message on her machine saying I thought the world was going to hell in a handbasket. I told all my sister SnB members that it was a sign of the loose morals of today's society.

Here is a picture of us at tea:



I am the first person on the left wearing the grey skirt. You see that strip of black at the bottom of my skirt?

That is my slip.

F is for....

First-born.

This is a picture of me and my siblings from two Christmases ago. While I plan on giving each of my siblings their own entries, I thought being the eldest was an entry that could stand on its own.

I don't really remember being an only child. My brother J came along when I was 3 years old. I was 7 when E was born and 12 when M was born. Much of my childhood revolved around being the oldest child.

There are all kinds of theories about the personality types of first-born children. I do admit that I don't like to take orders. I understand that some Oldests have a bit of a grudge against their younger siblings because it was the Oldest who had to pave the way for the younger ones with Mom and Dad--break them in, so to speak. Especially during the teenage years. I never really had that, mostly because I never got to go out and do things primarily because it was my job to stay home and watch my younger siblings.

Both of my parents worked nights in factory jobs and with money being scarce and babysitting being expensive, I had a lot of the responsibility taking care of my sibs. A lot. I started being responsible for M when she was an infant (remember, I was 12 at that time). The way it would work is that my sibs would go to a baby sitter either after school or when Mom went to work (depending on whether they were old enough to be in school). Then, during her dinner break at 7:30, Mom would bring my sibs back to the house and I would watch them the rest of the night. I would change diapers, help with homework, and put them to bed.

As you might expect, this sped up my emotional maturing. I didn't really relate to kids my age very well. People always said I seemed older than I was. I always played the part of the mom in school plays. A speech pathologist once told me in junior high that I had adult speech patterns. I had a huge sense of responsibility (and still do). I didn't do a lot of the things that other kids my age did, like run around on school nights and go see movies, and spend lots of time at friend's houses. Hell, I didn't have a lot of friends. I didn't really date until high school and then not much. My responsibility of taking care of my sibs only lessened when I started waitressing shen I turned 16.

Consequently, for most of my adult-hood, I didn't want to have children. I had already raised children, thank you very much. Other girls my age thought it would wonderful to be pregnant and a mom and fantasized about the day when they would have their own children. I thought they must be smoking crack. Watching my mother go through 3 pregnancies, I knew it was no picnic. Can't sleep on your stomach, swollen ankles, going to the bathroom every 5 minutes, emotions jumping around like a ping-pong ball, no thank you. And kids? Raising kids is hard. You have to feed them, clothe them, change them, wash them, pick up after them, rock them to sleep when they're crying, clean off their wounds when they've thought it would be a really great thing to make a ramp and jump off of it with their bike (and act calm while you're doing it and somehow get them to sit still while you put the hydrogen peroxide on their open cut), and help them with their homework and force them to go to bed when they don't want to, and try not to freak out when it gets really dark and they're still not home, and somehow manage to be fair and loving and not take out your frustrations on them and not blame them for the fact that you're exhausted and can't do your own homework until 10pm.

So yes, being an Oldest had a significant impact on my life. I certainly had a lot more responsibility placed on me than my sibs. But you know what the alternative would've been?

Being an only child.

No siblings.

No J to exchange books with, no E and his big bear hugs, no M with her visits to Chicago and growing up there would've been no J to play soccer with and play "made you blink" (really sorry about that black eye, btw, it really was an accident), and no E with his drawings and his tattered old green blanket that one day got "lost", and no making a cake for M when she was born and getting letters from her in college. No thank you. It may have been rough, but I wouldn't trade my siblings for anything in the world.

The thing I miss the most about Iowa is being with my sibs (although J actually lives in Atlanta now). In the last 6 years, I can count all the times we have all been in the same place at the same time on one hand. That's why the picture at the top is so special. The last time we were able to get a picture like that was at my wedding four years before that. It hardly seems possible that these people I spent every day with as a child I now only see occasionally. And while we're all talkers in person, we're not so good at the long distance communication thing. Perhaps we should try to improve.

One last thing. Lest any of you become concerned, enough time has passed that I actually do want to have children now, despite all of those disadvantages I listed above. I guess I just needed some time without people being dependent on me.

Third time's the charm

After a couple of false starts, I finally have a sock I can live with. I think this pattern is much more complementary to the yarn. I also think it will be the right size. This is the progress I made at Monday night's SnB meeting. I worked on it a bit more last night. My only concern now is that it's going to be a damn warm sock to be wearing in May. Oh well. Maybe my sockpal lives high up in the mountains or something.

I have decided the socks will be 7 inches from cuff to bottom of the heel, and needs to be a little over 9 inches from heel to toe to fit my sockpal. This is 15 inches of sock multiplied by 2, making it 30 inches of sock to be made by the end of April (6 weeks from now) to be finised on time for Cirque du Socks which is good because I need to mail them during the first week of May for Sockapalooza. So, I need to knit 5 inches per week. This seems doable, I just have to stay focused on them (which is hard for me--I tend to jump from project to project).

In the mail on Monday, I received this:


It's a handmade book (made by Mim) that I won in the secret contest held by Norma a while back. I love it. It's beautiful and lays nicely on the table. Now, I just have to come up with something special enough to use it for.

No progress

I have no progress to show for the weekend. I did try the new pattern for my sockpal/cirque du socks socks, and I like how it looked, but I got panicky that they wouldn't fit my sockpal and I ripped back again. I based this on the fact that I had difficulty pulling them on. I forgot my sockpal has a smaller foot than me. Doh!

The weekend was really emotionally stressful. My grandmother has been having a hard time ever since she broke her ankle last fall. It really crushed her spirit and even though the ankle is fine now, she is still down. Now, her arthritis is really hurting her in her back and hips and that's limiting her mobility and everything has made her emotional problems rise to the surface. I definitely inherited my problems with anxiety and depression from her.

This weekend, we had to deal with the two most pressing issues: my aunt who believes the world centers around her, and getting my grandmother to go to church on Sunday. My aunt is a nice person for the most part, but she has her problems and stress and she tends to take them out on my grandmother, primarily by guilt-tripping her if things aren't going her way. This weekend, my aunt decided to visit for the day and this threw my grandmother into a tizzy because having too many people at her house at once is upsetting to her and my aunt was bringing her 4 year-old son and her dog. The other members of the family have nicknamed this dog the devildog. Last fall, he walked right up to my mother and peed on her leg. He is now banned from my mother's house. My biggest fear was that he was going to knock my grandmother over. Anyway, despite the fact that we had already planned that I would bring my grandmother to my mother's house that day, Grandma stayed at home so that Jean (who had thrown a little temper tantrum) could visit her and I went to Mom's so I could see my siblings.

That was Saturday. Then, Sunday morning, I had to convince my grandmother to go to Mass. Normally, this isn't a problem because she's a devout Catholic. However, she has problems with social anxiety and due to the closing of several churches in her area her church is now full to the rafters and it totally freaks her out. And she's afraid she'll trip and fall in front of everyone.

We didn't even really get into the fact that she needs to move out of her house because you can only do so much in a weekend.

All of this falls to me because, as I said, my aunt is too self-centered, my other aunt lives in Colorado, my uncle doesn't want to get involved and my mother has a hard time pushing her mother to do things she doesn't want to do. And it has long been known that my grandmother can refuse me nothing. And I don't take no for an answer anyway.

So, that combined with driving 5 hours Friday to get to Grandma's, 1.5 hours each way back and forth to Mom's on Sat., and then another 5 hours to get back to Chicago on Sunday (by the way, I visit more often than my aunt who lives 3 hours away, can you tell I'm not real happy with her right now?), I'm beat. I am emotionally and physically exhausted.

I know many of you can understand--you have aging parents to take care of. I just thought I would have a lot longer before I had to deal with this kind of stuff. And I would if my mom and her siblings weren't dropping the ball.

May those who love us love us.

And those that don't love us,
May God turn their hearts.
And if He doesn't turn their hearts,
May he turn their ankles,
So we'll know them by their limping.


May St. Patrick guard you wherever you go,
and guide you in whatever you do--
and may his loving protection be a blessing to you always.


HAPPY ST. PATRICK'S DAY!!!

When a problem comes along...

...You must rip it


Despite this looking very pretty and loving the colors, the yarn wasn't doing the stranded pattern justice (though it does look pretty good in this picture--better than in person, actually!), so this morning, I ripped back to the cuff. I'm going to do another pattern in that book (brilliantly named pattern 1). We'll see how it turns out. It could just be that this yarn makes too many color changes to work well for any Fair Isle design, in which case, I'll get another yarn. Then, I will have this poor little Lorna's Laces Shepherd Sock yarn sitting there and I'll have to knit it into socks for myself. Oh darn.

As I said, I've been working on a baby sweater. I finished the bottom part of the sweater and now have to do the sleeves. The sweater is constructed such that I knit the sleeves to the yoke all in one piece (okay, that probably makes no sense. I'll take pix of the process). So, now I'm working on the sleeves. After having some issues getting the eyelets to look right, I have gotten this far:

I probably need to do another 5 rounds or so and then I will be done with this sleeve. I have already knit the cuff of the second sleeve. Originally, I was thinking I would knit them in parallel, but I think to make that really work, I should've switched between the two every vertical pattern repeat. Oh well.

The question is: what do I take with me to Iowa? Yes, I am going to visit the family this weekend. Unfortunately, I'm driving myself there so I won't be able to knit during the drive (well, I suppose I could try driving with my feet, but I've never done that before and we've had a bit of snow in this area today so now might not be the best time to try it), but I'll be staying with my grandmother and we usually just hang out and talk or watch tv, so I'll have some good knitting time. I'll probably just take everything and see what I feel like working on while I'm there.

Pictures

So, Mr. Martensi (he asked me to call him Arc) was supernice and brought back my camera no problem. I helped him download the photos off of it and burn them to a disc. You know, when you're a giant squid, it's a lot easier to take pictures of yourself--all those long tentacles. So there were pictures of him with the Beluga whales(the pregnant one seems to be craving cooked seafood and she's having a devil of a time trying to communicate that to the trainers) and in the Amazon exhibit, and he tried to get someone to take a picture of him in the shark tank, but the sharks all scattered when he got in. He had a good time and now he's on a plane back to New Zealand. He said he'd send me a postcard.

So, now I can show you some pictures!

Since yesterday was knitalong day, I'm going to show those first. I started my sockpal sock and did a few rows of the fair isle pattern. The pattern I'm doing is the green one on the cover of Sensational Knitted Socks:



I have been using the strand separator, and I love it:


Here's my progress as of yesterday morning:

(Ghiradelli really wanted his picture taken!)

I worked on them some more last night and this morning and I'm not thrilled with the way they are turning out. I love the colors but the changing colors are obscuring the pattern. It's not that it looks bad, it's just not the look I was going for. I briefly considered buying (yet more) yarn (one with fewer colors), but I've decided to switch patterns. There's another one in there that will work well for this (if you go back to the picture of the cover, it's the dark blue and yellow one), I think. Fortunately, I'm only about 1.5 inches into the fair isle bit, so it won't be too painful to rip out.

I had also mentioned that I made a hat and socks for the Afghans for Afghans newborn project:



I used the pattern from Ann Budd's Handy book of Patterns for the hat, and I made up the socks using some baby sock patterns as guides. Apparently, babies have really stubby feet (I have confirmation of this from a mother of a newborn, so I know the pattern is okay).

That's it for the day, I have to run off to see the opera!

Mother Nature is Cruel

This morning, it's 63F out. It's supposed to get down to 40F by 5pm and tonight it's supposed to snow. Don't you just love March? I get a kick out of seeing people wandering around campus wearing skirts and flip-flops, knowing they are going to be freezing their asses off in just a few hours.

I did get a bit of knitting done this weekend. I finished the second sock for Afghani babies--it's part of a set: hat plus socks. I started a hat for the Dulaan project, and am about a third of the way done with that. I was going to start another baby hat, but then I remembered that one of my Lenten promises was to make two Dulaan hats and Lent ends before the baby hats are due, so I better get crackin' on the Dulaan stuff. And, I very nearly finished a sleeve for the baby cardigan I am making. Nevermind that the baby I was originally making it for will be too big to wear it by the time I have finished it. I'm sure somebody else I know will have a baby one of these days. And I started my sockapaloooza socks, but I'm going to talk about that tomorrow since Tuesday is knitalong day.

Where are the pictures, you ask? Well, see, I met a giant man-eating squid while waiting for the bus this morning and I lent him my camera. Apparently he was a tourist on his way to the aquarium and had forgotten his camera at home. I know it sounds incredible, I mean, he was a perfect stranger and I lent him my camera, but he seemed trustworthy and he let me keep his passport to guarantee he'll bring it back and anyway, he shouldn't be too hard to find if he doesn't. I mean, how many giant squid are running around Chicago, right? So, anyway, he's bringing it back tonight and I should be able to upload some pictures tomorrow.

Right. And as long as we're at it, I have some property in Florida I'd like to sell you.....

Want an Orange?

Apparently, one should never grocery shop online while sick. Instead of getting 5 navel oranges, I got 5 bags of navel oranges. Hubby was a little baffled, but thought maybe I just wanted a lot of vitamin C since I wasn't feeling well. Oh Lordy, what am I going to do with 5 bags of oranges? Is there any way to knit with them?

Puking and Winning and a LYS visit--all in one day!

I'm not exactly sure what got into my system this morning (no comments about morning sickness--I know it's not that!), but it all went down the toilet. Literally. Yuck. And now I'm not nauseous anymore, but my stomach still doesn't feel all that great--it feels like I've been doing sit-ups. And we were supposed to go to a Luau (sp???) this evening and I was really looking forward to getting some yummy tropical drinks, but I don't think that's going to happen. Especially since I basically haven't eaten all day (well, I did eat, but, well, you know...). One sip of a daquari and I'll be on the floor. Oh well.

However, I am pleased as punch (a very tropical one, while we're at it) to have won Norma's secret contest! Hooray! I feel as though I should put up a little genetics explanation here, but I don't want to scare people off.

And, I did manage to get out to my LYS today (see how my priorities are? too sick for a party but not for a LYS!). As I have said, I've been participating in sockapalooza (well, I signed up for it--so far not much participation). I picked a pattern from Sensational Knitted Socks and I had my yarn and I ordered a yarn guide since I was doing Fair Isle (which arrived yesterday, btw), and I was ready to go. And then, it dawned on me: if I was knitting Fair Isle, I was basically knitting double-layered socks, so I would need more yarn than usual. Doh! So today, I went to the LYS I bought the yarn at, hoping I could get yarn of the same dye-lot, or exchange it and buy two of the same dye lot (unfortunately, the Lorna's Laces yarn was all wound up, so I wouldn't be able to exchange that--I figured I'd have to buy two more skeins). I guess God wanted to make up for the whole hurling incident this morning because both of my yarns had more skeins in the same dye lot! Even the Lorna's Laces! Hooray! So, here I am, at home, with all of my materials--I should get to working on those socks!

So, between the LYS magic and coming home to find out I won a secret contest, I'm feeling pretty good (as long as I don't look at food).

Can't we all just get along?

I am the de facto leader of a Stitch 'n Bitch group (de facto because I started it and nobody else wants to organize). Because of this, I am in contact with SnB leaders from many groups.

As many of you know (all three of you reading this), a company known as Sew Fast Sew Easy has trademarked the name Stitch & Bitch Cafe. They actually did this some time ago, but lately it's become a national issue because they hassled yahoo to send cease and desist orders to all yahoo groups that had Stitch 'n Bitch in their names or group descriptions. Which yahoo did and those of us who owned the offending yahoo groups did as we were told. This was at least a month ago. However, groups are getting harassed yet again. This time, the problem was that the phrase Stitch 'n Bitch was present in their archived messages (which should not have been surprising since these groups had, until recently, been calling themselves Stitch 'n Bitch). Fortunately, I haven't received such a notice, but I am now keeping a back-up copy of our member list should our group just disappear one day. However, I sympathize with my sister groups and cannot blame them for their acrimonious comments. And believe me when I say some of these people are hopping mad!

In the first cease and desist order, we all pretty much knew what it was about and went through and removed the phrase Stitch 'n Bitch from every thinkable location on our sites. However, in this second wave of c and d orders, people had no idea what the problem was. As far as they knew, they had removed everything in violation of the trademark. These people called yahoo who told them to call SFSE. SFSE refused to answer their calls. Some people were hung up on. Finally, after many, many calls and emails, people started getting responses with specific details about what was wrong. For many, that was messages in the archives. For some, it was their listing in the yahoo directory because yahoo hadn't gotten around to updating their group description.

Hence, "Can't we just all get along?"

Doesn't SFSE have anything better to do? Is there now someone there who job it is to monitor yahoo 24/7 to make sure no nefarious group of knitters is using their trademarked phrase? (And we won't even discuss how their trademark is for Stitch _and_ Bitch while we are saying Stitch 'n Bitch.) The party line from SFSE has been that they have a right to protect what is theirs and we would do the same. And I could see their point--if any of us was actually making any money off the name. However (leaving aside the Debbie Stoller books), we are all non-profit groups of stitchers who merely use the name because it is cute and because it's been around since the Depression, if not before. It's beyond me how using the name for our groups is hurting them enough to put this much time and energy into stopping us--if it is indeed hurting them at all.

What is hurting them, though, is the fact that there are now thousands of knitters out there, who previously had no feelings of ill will toward SFSE, who now want to find the owner of SFSE and burn her at the stake. In other words, it'll be a cold day in hell before any of us ever buys a single item from them.

I realize that there are other, more important, more depressing things going on around the world (war, ethnic cleansing, people dying of starvation), but somehow this saddens me more than other current events. What's happening on a global scale is too far removed for me to cry over. But this is in my own neighborhood--it affects my very own support group, one that has been so good to me. And what is so wrong with the world today, and the people in it, if a group of (mostly) women can't get together, talk and knit and help and praise and comfort, while calling themselves anything they want? What have people become if they are so worried about what is "theirs" that they are willing to harrass people thousands of miles away, people they have never met, people who are not even trying to sell something and therefore are not competitors? It reminds me of a small child, holding tight to her doll, shouting, "Mine!" while mother says, "No, you have to share." Nobody is saying the other child is going to take the doll home, nobody is saying the first child will be out of a doll at the end of the day (unless it's the mother who takes the doll to punish the child for not sharing!). I mean, is it really reasonable to expect peace in the middle east among people who have larger grievances if we who are living comfortably in the States are being harrangued for the names of our local knitting circles?

I don't know. I don't have the answers. And part of me says I should just completely change the name of the group just to get out of the line of fire. But that feels like giving in to bullying, and I am firmly opposed to that.

And so, tonight, I will get together with a group of friends at a gathering devoted to making holiday gifts entitled Holiday/Gift SnB and try to forget there are such petty people in the world.

E is for....

Eric (shown with his girlfriend Alicia)

Hah! Bet you thought it'd be Elisabeth, didn't you!

Eric is the younger of my two brothers. He was born May 8, 1981, which makes him almost exactly 7 years younger than me. According to my mother, I was quite worried that "the baby" would come on my birthday and she wouldn't be around for my birthday. Instead, when he was 2 years old, he tried to stand on a ball, fell, and broke his leg the day before my birthday which meant my birthday was celebrated 11 days after the fact. Delayed response, I guess.

Eric is the only one of my three siblings I have no memory of visiting in the hospital when he was born and therefore, I don't think I did (if I can remember seeing Jason at the hospital and I was only 3 years old, I think I'd remember Eric).

I have things in common with all of my siblings. With Eric in particular, I felt a certain kinship growing up because we were both much more emotional than Jason. And we weren't athletic at all, and Jason was. My sister didn't come along until Eric was 5 and I was 12, so that made Eric the youngest for quite some time, so I guess it's not surprising that we would be more highly strung than Jason who was a middle child.

All of my family has some creative interests, but this was much more pronounced in Eric. He is so right-brained he practically failed algebra (a left-brained subject), but aced geometry (a right-brained subject). Academics were never really his strong point, which was probably hard for him since Jason and I did so well and Eric had many of the same teachers we had. But, he was really brilliant at drawing, and pottery, and painting, and any kind of artistic endeavor. Personally, I can't draw worth sh*t, and I've never tried pottery, and I'm pretty sure I'd be miserable at painting.

Eric isn't shy about giving hugs. And when he gives hugs, they are enormous, rib-crunching bear hugs. They are real hugs, not the kind acqaintances give each other. He is so loving and understanding, I think more so than the rest of us (siblings, that is). Which is sort of funny because he was the one who was most angry when my parents got divorced and really took that anger out on the rest of us. But, then he got counseling--people would call it anger-management these days--and ever since then, I think he has been more well-adjusted than most people I know. Perhaps the world would have fewer problems if all of us had anger-management counseling at an early age.

Eric shares my love of fantasy science fiction (as does Jason) which is great because we can exchange books. His ideal job would be the owner of a used bookstore. As it is, he currently works at a gas station, sometimes at the counter and sometimes making pizzas for delivery, which is perfect for him because he can read while on the job (gas stations in small towns in Iowa are not particularly busy). He has taken college classes, but he's fulfilled his general requirements and he's not sure what he wants to major in, so he thinks it'd be a waste of money to take more classes just to be taking them--a much more practical approach than me or Jason who both went to college right away, majored in a subject we found interesting and didn't think about what we would do with that information until after we graduated.

Eric lives in Iowa, not terribly far from my mother, and I don't see him all that often. Particularly since I stay at my grandmother's which is much further away and he has a busy work schedule. And neither one of us is particularly good at keeping in touch with people. But when we do see each other, it's like no time has passed at all and that's really great.

In due time (when we get around to J and M) you'll get to meet my other siblings. It seems kind of odd to be talking about Eric before Jason since we automatically describe each other or list each other in chronological order! But, I suppose it's kind of like at school when they start calling people off from the end of the alphabet instead of the beginning--Eric gets to be first for a change!

Just call me Albus

I love these little quizzes. Apparently, I am:

Harry Potter Personality Quiz by Pirate Monkeys Inc.

D is for.....

Depression

Honestly, this was the first word I thought of when trying to figure out what to write about D. I wasn’t sure if I was going to use it because there is still a lot of stigma associated with mental illness--despite the best efforts of advocacy associations--and I’m not really sure how I feel about having the information just out there on the net in front of God and everyone. Which is ultimately why I chose to write about depression. If people who have the disease are afraid to talk about it, that feeds the stigma.

I have suffered from depression since I was a child and didn’t have a name for it. I was totally against both talk therapy and medication until circumstances became so bad, it was either therapy and meds or a straight-jacket and a padded cell. After a long and painful, but illuminating journey, using a combination of therapy, drugs, exercise, nutrition, self education (through books), and knitting as therapy I am in remission. But, still taking my meds. Depression is a progressive disease. The time between episodes shortens while the episodes themselves lengthen and become more severe. Depression can also be fatal. A horrifyingly large number of depressives kill themselves. In cases where a patient has had several episodes of severe depression, medication becomes a preventative tool. There are people who might disagree with this strategy, but to them I say, would you normally tell someone with a progressive, potentially fatal, disease to stop taking their meds?

For me, depression was a fog that covered everything I did, everyone I interacted with, everything I saw. And it became more and more oppressive until something had to be done. Fortunately, the something I chose was to get counseling and start taking meds. Too often, that something is suicide. Because I was highly functional (or at least I appeared highly functional) when I was depressed, most people never knew. And now that I’m in remission, people doubt I was ever truly ill. To those people I say, try going up to a breast cancer survivor and telling her you don’t believe she had cancer because she’s still alive.

Unfortunately, there are too many people out there who do not truly understand what it means to have a mental illness. They think it means that the person who is suffering is lazy, making it up, being melodramatic, or seeking attention. Or, perhaps they don’t believe that mental illness is all that serious. However, it seems to me that, as bodily organs go, the brain is a pretty important one and if it’s malfunctioning, that’s a serious problem and one that requires treatment.

However, as bloggers tend to be a kind, sympathetic lot, I'm really preaching to the choir here. And I'm not posting to get sympathy. I am posting to share the D word that is most significant to my life and to stand up and say, I have a mental illness, and I am not ashamed!

I just want to leave you with one last thought. It’s one of my favorite quotes from one of the first books I read on depression which actually quoted it from another source.

"If there were a physical disease that manifested itself in some particularly ugly way, such as pustulating sores, or a sloughing off of the flesh accompanied by pain of an intense and chronic nature, readily visible to everyone, and if that disease affected fifteen million people in our country, and further, if there were virtually no help or succor for most of these persons, and they were forced to walk among us in their obvious agony, we would rise up as one social body in sympathy and anger. We would give of our resources, both human and economic, and we would plead and demand that this suffering be eased. There isn’t such a physical disease, but there is such a disease of the mind, and about fifteen million people around us are suffering from it. But we have not risen in anger and sympathy, although they are walking among us and crying in their pain and anquish." (The Far Side of Despair, Russell Hampton, 1975, quoted in Understanding Depression, Klein and Wender, 1993)


I would be remiss if I did not have a list of resources for you.

Some of my favorite books:

Understanding Depression, Klein and Wender, 1993. An excellent, short book describing depression as a biological disease. It’s not so keen on talk therapy, but I think that is a product of its time (recent studies have shown that talk therapy in combination with medication is the most effective treatment).

Feeling Good: The New Mood Therapy, Burns, 1980, 1999. Another good book that explains depression, but also describes both talk therapy (particularly cognitive-behavioral therapy) and medication. It has a wonderful section on medications, listing the characteristics and side effects of each, and every few years, that section is updated and a new edition is printed.

A Mood Apart, Whybrow, 1997. A slightly more intellectual look at mood disorders (including manic depression), but still very accessible to lay people. The author is a psychiatrist and usses clinical cases to illustrate points which makes it something of a memoir as well.

The Noonday Demon, Solomon, 2001. This book has it all. It describes itself as “An Atlas of Depression,” and rightly so. This book has the same biological and psychological descriptions of depression that the previous books do, but it also deals with the author’s personal experience (and therefore is part memoir) and addresses socio-economical issues (gender, sexual orientation, class), has a special section on suicide and even talks about mental illness and politics. A truly comprehensive work.

Websites:

http://www.nami.org/Hometemplate.cfm

http://www.dbsalliance.org/

Mardis Gras/Ash Wednesday

Happy (?) Ash Wednesday everyone. Today is the first day of the Church season of Lent, the (roughly) 40 days before Easter (roughly because it Sundays don’t count in the 40 day calculation). It is a time of fasting and abstinence, prayer, and almsgiving.

The day before Ash Wednesday is called Mardi Gras, or Fat Tuesday. Traditionally, you party and stuff yourself silly because the next day you are supposed to start fasting. Well, since I don’t fast (I start to shake and get faint—-it’s really not good), I had to come up with an alternative. I am fasting from yarn. No yarn-buying during Lent. Consequently, my Fat Tuesday celebrations consisted of making my last yarn purchase before Easter. What did I buy? Washable wool for Dulaan hats, and the yarn separator from Herschner’s (I had to buy the yarn because it seemed silly to pay shipping for just a $3.00 item).

My Lenten plan consists of the following:

Fasting: No yarn buying
Abstinence: No knitting for myself, no cookies, candy, or ice cream
Almsgiving: Finish the blanket for stillborns project I was working on, two hats for the Dulaan project, and half of my slush money for the month of March goes to charity
Prayer: Say a rosary every Friday, go to daily Mass once a week.

Oh, and the traditional no meat on Fridays.

Between the charity projects I just mentioned and the gifts I already have on the needles, I should have plenty to knit during Lent. I have been working on a sweater for the baby of a friend, and I bought yarn on Sat. for socks for Roommie (he’s so good about coming with me to yarn stores and giving a ueful opinion about the yarn and the projects I’m working on [unlike a certain other man in my life. ahem] I figured he deserved a pari of handknit socks). And since he was with me, he got to pick out the yarn. I have measured his feet and cast on for the first sock, so I am good to go. This will be my “seminar sock” project for Lent (I have to work on something during seminars, or I will go to sleep, or just not pay attention because I get too antsy). I was working on a pair of socks for myself. Last night (as part of my Mardis Gras of Fiber), I worked on the sock until I had the heel finished on the first sock. Now, it will sit in the knitting bag with my shawl until April. And, of course, I have my sock pal socks which I will start as soon as my yarn separator gets here.

Speaking of which, yesterday in comments, Imbrium said she was determined to master two-fisted knitting. I think, ultimately, that's my goal as well. But, I'm not going to do it until I get much better at English knitting. I think that's why my floats got so tight on my last project--my tension was all off in one hand. So, what I should do is switch to English knitting for awhile, but I don't think I'm in the mood for re-learning how to knit. Although I guess I could add that to my Lenten goals. "So, what did you give up for Lent?" "Cookies, ice cream, candy, and knitting continental." I can just see the look on the priest's face now!

Tuesday is Knitalong day

For sockapalooza. I have the yarn and a pattern but I foolishly left my flash drive at home and can't upload the pix, yet. If I get inspired, I may go home in the middle of the day and get it and come back to upload pix. Otherwise, I'll edit this post tomorrow to add them. You may ask why I'm posting now if I'm thinking I'm going to edit it later. Well, I'm worried my sock sister may be getting concerned since I haven't said anything about sockapalooza except that I joined. So, here is an update.

The sock pattern I've chosen is from Sensational Knitted Socks. I'm knitting the green fair isle sock on the front cover, but I'm using Lorna's Laces Shepherd Sock yarn in a pastel colorway and a purple washable wool as the base color. This will be my second attempt at fair isle and I'm a little nervous about it because I pulled the floats too tight on my first attempt and it didn't look very good. Ah well, you live, you learn, you loosen up.

To help out with my fair isle knitting, I'm buying one of these jobbies. I tried doing the two-fisted technique, knitting continental in one hand and English with the other hand, but I hated knitting English. Therefore, I'm going to try the strand separator, holding both strands in the left hand and see how that goes.

So, that's all the further I've gotten with the sock pal socks. Stay tuned for future developments.

Tragedy

I am sorry I haven't been blogging, but personal tragedy has reared it's ugly head and I was too sad to post about it until now. If it were much later in the year, this post might be named T is for Tea (but it's not, I know, I'm supposed to be doing D, and I will, I swear, but I have to cry about this first). I will save the particulars for that post, but I just wanted to let you know that I am something of a tea freak drinker.

So, imagine how I felt when I came home from the knitting guild meeting Tuesday evening and walked into the kitchen to get the scissors and found this:


In my horror, I screamed. And then, I turned, and my eyes fell on this:



I then screamed even louder. From the living room, my husband (who was home during the horrific incident) shouted, "The teapots had a fight!" To which I responded, "How could you let me just walk into the kitchen without telling me?!?!?!?"

What is responsible for this carnage, you ask? Well, in the words of my husband:

"I was rearranging things on the top of the refrigerator when the [small white teapot with cup] jumped off the fridge and attacked the other one. I tried to stop it, but I was too late."

Yes folks, it was a battle to the death. I had never realized that the white teapot harbored such ill-will towards the black teapot (which is actually a clay tea kettle). I feel like a bad teapot guardian, as though I might have prevented this terrible tragedy. If only I had paid more attention to the little white teapot and maybe gotten it into therapy, this horrible murder/potticide might have been avoided. Of course, hindsight is always 20/20 and I shouldn't blame myself, but I still feel slightly guilty.

Now, it is a measure of how much I like tea that there are three other teapots in the apartment (don't worry, I have instituted teapot counseling and am watching them closely as I know potticide can be something of an epidemic). But, the white teapot was the smallest one--just a two-cup pot, and came with it's own cup that it sat atop ("But the cup's okay," my husband assured me, "it's just that the handle was broken off"), and therefore perfect for brewing a little chamomille tea before bed. I can hold off finding a new one, and give myself time to grieve. But, the tea kettle, I can't go without that for very long (although my husband never did understand why I needed one when we had a microwave and could heat single cups of tea in there). Roommie says I should buy a ridiculously expensive one and dare hubby to comment on it, but I really loved that clay one, so I may get another just like it. (Btw, I'm saving the bamboo handle so I can knit a little bag and use that as the handle, thus memorializing the kettle--I haven't figured out what to do to memorialize the white one).

So, such is the state of affairs in our household. However, there was a ray of light recently. Here is a pic of Roommie just moments before he went out the door to get that thing on his arm removed (which he had suffered through having for several weeks due to having minor surgery on his arm):

P.S. It's a good thing I proofread my posts. I had composed this in html, and during the proofreading realized I had accidently switched the pic of Roommie with the 2nd murder/potticide pic. Go back and read the post imagining the two pix switched. That was the best giggle I had all day!

Hmmmmmm.....

I just realized there seems to be three of my red scarf posts on my blog. Not sure how that happened???? I'm trying to delete them, but Blogger doesn't seem to be getting the message.

Happy Valentine's Day!

With Valentine's Day being on the exceedingly inconvenient day of Tuesday, and because DH has a proposal due on the 16th, we are putting off our celebration until the weekend. The good news is, we'll be able to buy Valentine's boxes of Godiva chocolates cheap. The bad news is I'm going to have to cook dinner tonight because we won't be going out. Oh well.

But, I figured it was okay to celebrate V-day on the blog so here's a pic of me and my Valentine:
I figured I'd put in our Christmas pic since we never did end up sending it around to people. This was taken on Christmas Eve, just after we had decorated the tree and it took us 4 attempts to take a picture using the timer that had both of us and the tree in it.

In other news, the Red Scarves should have been received by their recipients by today. There is a report about it here. I looked through the photo gallery and I think I may have seen one of my scarves
. I'm about 90% sure it's my scarf. Even if it's not, I still like to think it's my scarf. :)


Edit: Apparently I made a boo-boo in downloading that image of my scarf--I wasn't supposed to do that! So, I have deleted the image. But the link is still there and you can go puruse the pix and see if you can identify my scarf. It's the multicolor one. Sorry about that!

Red Scarves

As promised, here are the pix of the scarves for the Red Scarf Project.

Cabled Scarf


This scarf was a lot of fun to make and I managed to finish it without getting bored with the pattern. I can see a lot more cabled projects in my future (but first I need to learn how to cable without a cable needle, because I want to be one of the cool kids). It ended up being 11 inches wide and about 7 feet long. This is a picture of it while it's blocking. The pattern is out of a Vogue Knitting Scarf book. The yarn is Caron One Pound acrylic. Super-ultra machine washable. :)

Multicolored scarf


This is the second scarf I whipped up real quick when I finished the cabled scarf before the deadline. It's two skeins of Patons Melody, a bulky weight yarn, one skein red, and one skein rainbow colors. Basically, I just knit garter stitch alternating the two yarns at will until I ran out of one of them. This one was probably about 6 feet long.


SSNB Red Scarfers


And these are the scarves knit by the Southside Stitch 'n Bitch group, modeled by their creators. I am the one second from the right in this picture. We didn't have time to pose creatively because our beautiful and talented delivery woman had to leave 2 minutes ago.

I'm looking forward to next year's project for the Orphan Foundation of America, whatever it may be. I'm thinking probably not red scarves again because then the kids who are still in the program will end up with two red scarves....

C is for.....

Cell Biology



As the photo boldly proclaims, I took this picture. What the hell is this picture you ask? These are yeast cells magnified 100 times. I work with yeast. Unlike people, it's a lot easier to grow large numbers of yeast and you don't feel bad when you kill them. The glowing dots are structures within the cell that I have made glow under UV light by adding a fluorescent protein.

This picture took 1.5 years of my life to get.

And people wonder why it takes so long to develop a new drug.....

So, cell biology. It's the subject I'm getting my PhD in. Ironically, it also happens to be the worst grade I got in college in any class (a C- ; don't even get me started on multiple choice questions that have five blanks in them that's only worth one point total). You may be wondering how cell biology came to be my subject of choice. Well, that's something of a long story. As a kid, I had been interested in physical sciences until I crashed headlong into physics. After that, I decided I would be a chemist. I most certainly was NOT going to be a biologist. I really and truly hated my life sciences class in 7th grade. We had to go out and collect leaves and bugs and things and properly label them for a class project. You had to get a minimum number of points and the kind of thing you brought in was worth a certain number of points. A live animal was worth more than, say, a leaf from a tree. Now, I was never one to like reptiles and amphibians and bugs and those are the things that are easiest to catch. I had to find and identify an obscene number of leaves to get the requisite number of points. We also had to dissect animals. At the beginning of the school year, we got a Big Bag o' Preserved Animals. I don't know where these things came from, but I tell you if I ever run into a grasshopper that large in the wild, I'm turning tail and running away fast. The smell of the clam dissection made me so ill I refused to even try mussels or clams for years afterward. Nope. Not going to be a biologist.

Then, in 10th grade biology, we studied genetics. Just your basic population genetics, but it was enough to get me interested. You mean you could be a biologist and not touch icky things? Bonus! So, when I went to college, I came in Undeclared because I couldn't decide between majoring in biology or chemistry. And I never did decide between the two. BU came up with a Biochemistry and Molecular Biology major that very year (great! I can do both biology and chemistry). So, that's what I majored in and that's when I took cell biology for the first time and I learned to hate multiple-choice exams with the red-hot fury of a thousand suns. I almost changed my major to chemistry after that year, since I seemed to be doing better in my chemistry classes (where they did not have multiple choice exams, btw). But I stuck it out and the next year, I was thrown into a Molecular Biology class with graduate students (I was a junior at this point). Essay exams. I got an A-. (And if not for the bad grade in cell and the one in genetics--which had the same kind of exams--I would've graduated magna cum laude, but as it was, I missed it by 0.01 points. Grrrrrrr)

When I graduated college, I couldn't decide what the hell I wanted to do, so I worked as a research tech for awhile and eventually decided to go to graduate school. I had applied to a cluster of departments that included a Biochemistry and Molecular Biology dept. and a Molecular Genetics and Cell Biology dept. I entered in BMB, but quickly found out that the department should have been named Biochemistry and Biophysics and high-tailed it out of there (I'm so bad at physics, I married my physics tutor so he could take care of any physics I might encounter in the future). So, I ended up in Molecular Genetics and Cell Biology. Then, I ended up joining a lab that studied cell biology and my fate was sealed. For good or ill, I am a cell biologist.

I really do like it--there are so many fascinating things going on in the cells of every living thing. Structures are made and destroyed. Cells reproduce themselves and program themselves to suicide. They have their own waste disposal system, postal service, power plant, and library. And all of those processes are so incredibly complicated, it boggles the mind.*

Mostly, though, when I finally get my PhD, I want to teach cell biology, not research it. The life of a research scientist is stressful and not the kind of life I want to live. The life of a teacher is also stressful, but I believe that I will love it enough to put up with the bullsh*t, unlike with research.

So there you have it. Cell Biology. Sounds a lot friendlier than Molecular Genetics, doesn't it? People still look scared when I tell them, though. I've tried to find a way to break it to them gently, but no luck so far.


*And, as I typed that last sentence, I realized that I had inadvertantly just written a line than is often used to justify the idea of Intelligent Design. And, lest anyone read my blog and think that a scientist has just agreed with them about ID, I want to state very, very clearly that I do not agree with the idea of ID in any way, shape or form. In fact, I believe it is horrible science at best and a fraud and a ploy to try to get schools to teach about creationism at worst. This is not any kind of statement about my religious beliefs or lack thereof. Science and religion are separate disciplines that employ radically different ways of exploring the natural world. You are free to disagree with me, and if it offends you in some way, then you are free to stop reading my blog.

I'm back

Well-rested, feeling recharged, and on the verge of being overwhelmed again. But, that's the way life is around here!

I got the name and info on my sock pal for:



This is my first sock exchange and my first internet exchange and I'm very excited about it!

So, now I just need to choose the yarn and pattern and get started!

Well, I tried

I was going to upload the red scarf pix today, but my connection is abominably (sp?) slow. Therefore, you'll just have to wait until I get back from sunny Arizona!

Two red scarves in two weeks

I finished knitting Red Scarf 1 on Friday evening, then blocked it on Sat. Then, I cast on for a second one. This time I cheated and used bulky yarn and a size 15 needle. I only had two days, you know! This one is made out of Patons Melody (?) yarn--one skein bright red and one skein variegated rainbow colors. I alternated the red and var. yarns at different intervals and I like how it turned out. It's pretty bright--hopefully it doesn't go to some incredibly conservative college guy! On the other hand, maybe he'll decide to wear it anyway and feel so good about, he'll branch out into brighter colored clothes. Just leave me to my delusions, 'kay?

So, I bet you want to see pix of these babies. I haven't uploaded them yet, sorry. Also, I'm hoping to take pix of everyone with their red scarves and SnB tonight, so I'll show them tomorrow.

On Wed., I'm leaving for Arizona for reasons of my health (seasonal affective disorder--must get some sun), so I won't post much. Not that I post much anyway. I guess I just wanted to brag about going to Arizona.

So, what am I knitting now? Well, I've got a sock on the needles as usual. I'm still working on a shawl (which I haven't picked up since starting the red scarf endeavor). I have another fingerless mitt to make for hubby (but it's been so warm in Chicago, his office hasn't been that cold, so he hasn't needed them). I have a red scarf I'm knitting as a holiday project for my Holiday SnB (but I'm a little tired of red scarves for a moment, so I'm not picking that one up for awhile). On Sat., I bought a pattern and yarn for a bonnet, booties and cardigan set for a friend's baby (my first sweater, ever--yikes!), and I bought more sock yarn (not that I needed it). So, I've got plenty of options. So many, in fact, I'm not sure which to choose. So, I'm knitting the sock by default since I don't need a pattern for that and it's portable.

Chickens

Do me a favor. The next time you are at the Chicago M*useum of S*cience and I*ndustry, go to the chick hatchery in the genetics exhibit and shout, "They're sending the baby chicks to be used as food for the animals at the Lincoln Park Zoo!" Run up to the hatchery, pound on the glass and scream, "They're using them as snake food--help me free the baby chicks!!!"*** Got that? Okay.

You may wonder what prompted this little bit of PETA action. Well, I'm doing a part-time internship on the museum presentation of science through the university and I'm putting together a proposal for a demonstration on chick developmental genetics for Science and Industry (hereafter known as MSI). My original proposal was to use live chick embryos from days 1-4 for the demonstration. How cool would that be, to see live embryos??? The Exploratorium in San Francisco does it and it is the grand-daddy of all interactive science musuems. But, it has come down from on high (within the museum, not On High, on high because I don't think He cares if we look at chick embryos for educational purposes) that live embryos exhibits are not allowed at the museum. They have not even read my proposal but they have quashed it. Grrrrr...... Yes, the those higher-ups are too...

wait for it....




CHICKEN to use live embryos. Hardy-har-har. *snort*

This information came to me yesterday. My proposal is due on Friday. I've been trying to get information from the museum about this for ages. And my team leader wants to see a draft of my proposal tomorrow. And, here I am writing you. Well, I did work on it all day, and I'm just sick of chicken development at the moment. Because it occurred to me that while I took a developmental biology class, I still know very little about it. I'm probably overpreparing as usual, but I've been picking people's brains, using the internet (and for some reason, the connection at the lab is abominably slow today), and two textbooks. I know, this is for lay people, but I'm having a hard time finding the particular information that I am looking for.

What? Knitting? Oh yeah, this is supposed to be a knitting blog.

I have almost 60 inches done on my scarf. The question is, do I stop now (since I was aiming for 60 inches in the first place) and start another one, or do I make this one longer? I don't like my scarves too long, but this seems a little short. And I can't decide about the fringe. And, if I do fringe, do I block the scarf before or after fringing?

And, I didn't make it to Stitch 'n Bitch last night because I was too busy working on my proposal that I left work late and couldn't eat dinner before going to my Curves class and I couldn't eat the food at Borders because I am on the Curves 6 week solution and the food at Borders is so unhealthy, so I had to go home and fix dinner after Curves class and by the time I got done, it was pointless to go out.

Which is why I'm doing my bitching here, of course.

Now go home and eat some chicken, but for Godsake, don't look at the eggs, just in case they're fertilized. No live embryos around here!



***Which they do, btw. Many of them go to happy farms, but they have so many, some of them are shoved off to the zoo.

Red Scarf

Well, the opera on Tuesday really knocked me out. Therefore, I only got one pattern repeat done on the scarf. Here is what it looked like Wed. morning:



This picture is a fairly good representation of the color (if a little fuzzy). Mostly, I've been working on the scarf in the mornings when I sit in front of my light box. It's a good time to knit because I can think about my upcoming day.

This is my first major cable project and I'm really liking it. The pattern has been easy to memorize.

The opera was wonderful but long. Very long. Not as long as some Wagner operas, but when you are used to going to bed at 10pm and the opera doesn't end until 10:45pm, it feels long. I didn't get home until around 11:30!

B is for.....

At first, I thought that B was going to be for Beth which is what my family calls me and I would just tell you about myself. Then, I thought B might be for Boston University which is where I went to college and met my husband and I would tell you about my college years (ahhh the memories).

But one morning, I looked up from my cereal and realized that:


B is for Books.

In my dining room, I have four 7 foot tall bookcases crammed so full of books I've had to start stacking them on top of each other. These are most of our fiction books and most of the books on these shelves are mine.

And then, there are these:




This is in my living room, and these are most of our non-fiction books, although those are really spread out among various other small bookshelves in the apt. depending on where they might be most useful (old textbooks next to the computer for instance, self-help books in the bedroom....STOP THAT--that's not what I meant! *blushing* it's just that I don't like the rest of the world knowing how neurotic I am so I keep psychology-related books in my bedroom, geez get your mind out of the gutter!).

I know you are still giggling. *stern look*

Anyway, I have loved books ever since I first started reading. Reading became my obsession, and my escape from the world. It didn't matter what was going on in real life, because I had my books. Reading probably saved my sanity in my youngers years (and still does on occasion). Parents fighting? Go read a book. Problems at school? Go read a book. Bad breakup? Go read a book. Reading was and is my cure for everything (that and chocolate, but that's another story). In another life I might have become a librarian. Or a used bookseller. When I was younger, I read obsessively and when I was reading, nothing else could get my attention--I was in a completely different (and more interesting) world. My father was the same way. You could literally stand right next to him and say his name and he would be oblivious. My two younger brothers read in this manner, too, but my younger sister missed out on the crazy, obsessive reading gene. I still become completely absorbed in what I'm reading, but I don't read as much as I used to (which was at least two books a week).

When I first started reading, I liked mysteries. I had stumbled across The Boxcar Children books in my school library and loved them to death. A little later, Trixie Belden became a favorite, and also Nancy Drew (the classic ones, not the new ones). In middle school and junior high I read a lot of teen romance paperbacks--Sweet Valley High and Couples (couldn't find this on Amazon--you should see what you get when you just type Couples into the amazon search engine!)--as well as Beverly Cleary, Cynthia Voigt, Paula Danzinger, Judy Blume, and my all-time favorite, Madeleine L'Engle. By late junior high, I found my true love. Fantasy.

I started reading David Eddings and got hooked. When I started reading, his first series, the Belgariad, was finished, and his second series, the Mallorean had just started. I remember when the last book came out. All of this time, I had been patiently waiting until the books came out in paperback to read them, but with this one, I just had to read it. Right now. So, I bought the hardcover--the first hardcover book I bought--and started reading. It was over Memorial Day weekend, and I had to march in the parade in band, so I brought the book with me and while I was waiting in the band room, with my uniform on, I read the book. There is no way I can ever forget this, because a reporter from the town newspaper was there and took a picture. The caption says I was studying. Right.

Fantasy fiction pretty much dominated my life until about 7 or 8 years ago when I decided to give some of the classics a go. I had tried reading Dickens in high school and hated it, but I thought that maybe my tastes had changed a little bit. But, before I got into Dickens, I decided to make a small foray into Jane Austen territory with Sense and Sensibility. That was it, I was hooked. I read the other five in very short order and bought them all in hardcover (that's how you know I really love a book--I buy it in hardcover). Then, I decided to try Dickens again and I loved A Tale of Two Cities, David Copperfield, and Great Expectations. I tried the Bronte sisters. Wuthering Heights made me want to throw myself out the window (I have never read a book with such disagreeable characters--I hated every one of them), but Jane Eyre was lovely and so I also read Villette.

My most recent new area of literature is non-fiction. I enjoy learning and reading about things I did not know about before. I'm particularly interested in epidemiology and read The Hot Zone and The Coming Plague (we're all going to die in a flu pandemic any day now, btw). I also love history and if it's history of science, even better.

I don't just love reading books, I love owning books. I love having an obscene number of books in my house. I almost always buy books instead of going to the library (this is also because I have a leeetle problem returning books on time and run up huge fines). I love the smell of books. Old books smell different from new books--have you ever noticed? I think it may have something to do with the ink. Madeleine L'Engle once commented that books from Britain smelled different that books from the US (at least when she was a child). I read my books more than once. There are some books I've read so many times, I can practically recite them from memory. There are some authors I read specifically when I'm feeling very overwhelmed and frustrated with my lab work. Terry Pratchett comes to mind. He writes delightfully absurd parodies based in a fantasy world. It's perfect for getting my mind moving in a different direction. He's a fairly new find to me, so I haven't even read all of his books yet.

So that's it. B is for books. Or bibliophile. Or bibliomaniac. Your call.

Red Scarf Project

I have joined the Red Scarf Project as mentioned on Norma's blog. It is a charity project centered around sending scarves in Valentine's Day care packages to former foster children who are now in college. Since they need the scarves for Valentine's Day, the due date for collection is Jan. 31! Not a lot of time. Consequently, I have been spending all of my knitting time on a red scarf. I am doing a cabled scarf pattern from my Vogue scarves book. The yarn is Caron One Pound yarn in a very reddish cranberry. Yes, one pound. No dye lot. Don't judge me. It's a sturdy worsted weight soft acrylic yarn and it is knitting up beautifully. I didn't even want to try something that would have to be handwashed. I would love to pamper these kids and send them something made in a luxury fiber, but the fact is that these are college kids, some of them male, and the odds that they will take the time to handwash a scarf are slim to none. I can see the average college male simply throwing it in the washing machine and will have to end up putting it on his teddybear (real men have teddybears!).

I have finished 23 out of 60 inches of the scarf and I'm right on track as far as schedule. I decided if I knit 15 inches each of the weekends in between now and then (counting last weekend, because I got the yarn on Sat.), and 4 inches every weekday, it will be done in time. This is easy to figure out because 4 inches is approximately 2 pattern repeats. Frankly, it's coming out so nice, I'm going to have a hard time giving it away. I'm pretty sure I'll have yarn leftover (gee, you think?), so I could make myself one, but I suspect after knitting 60 inches of this scarf, I'm not going to want to do another 60 inches.

Picture? You want to see a picture? Well I haven't taken one yet.

I know, I know, Bad Blogger, Very Bad Blogger!! *thumps self on the nose*

I'll try to take one tonight and post it tomorrow (or the next day because I need to do B for the ABC-along). However, I won't have much time for taking pictures this evening because I am going to see the Magic Flute! Some friends and I (John didn't want to go) bought tickets way back in the early fall, and finally the time has arrived. I haven't been to the opera in two years, so I'm quite excited. It's really the feast after the famine because I'm going to the opera again on the 31st to see Rigoletto. Roommie is taking me as a Christmas present.

So, actually, I'll have to have my scarf done before the 31st because there's no way I'm going to get to an Einstein's Bagels before the opera on the 31st!

A is for Astrophysicist

I've decided that it might be nice if other people read my blog so that I'm not just talking to myself here, so to that end I've joined the A-B-C-Along ring. It's pretty straight-forward: every two weeks, I post a photo about something that means something to me. So, without further ado, let me introduce you to my first one:



This is my Astrophysicist, aka my husband (standing next to a space capsule at Kennedy Space Center; I took the picture when we visited there once, he doesn't actually have any professional relationship with the Space Center). There are two general types of responses when I say my husband is an astrophysicist: intimidation, or confusion. Sometimes both. The confused ask, "What's an astrophysicist?" to which I reply, "A rocket scientist," which is completely inaccurate, but at least it's something people have heard of. Inaccurate, because he doesn't build or study rockets. The intimidated, well, there's not much I can do for them. I try to comfort them, I try to let them know that he's not scary, I try to tell them that it's okay, you can just go back to talking about the weather, but alas, they simply back away. They might try and ask me what I do, to which I reply, "I'm a cell biologist," (which is the least scary title I can give myself, technically I'm getting a PhD in molecular genetics and cell biology), and that pretty much clinches the deal. It happened just this past weekend at a New Year's Eve party, actually. But I digress. I'm supposed to be talking about my astrophysicist, not how people react to his profession.

I met John in the dorm lounge at college. He was smart and funny, and helped me with my physics homework. Eventually, he became my physics tutor. For various reasons, we didn't actually "get together" for a couple years. I can honestly say that all of the good things I experience in my life today started then. We were married in the spring of 2000 and I have never been happier. I'm not saying it's all been one big party, there are ups and downs as there are in any relationship, but my life is better for having him in it.

John grew up just outside Boston, but was fortunately spared most of the accent (he pronounces all of his r's, but he has a few funny words: sawr [saw], idear [idea] and arnge [orange] ). He has always wanted to be an astronomer, at least since junior high or so, and he majored in astronomy and physics in college, then got a PhD in astronomy and astrophysics at U of Chicago. He studies cosmic dust. Yes, that's right, dust, you know, like the stuff that collects on your figurines. To do this, he uses a telescope with a special device on it that lets him see infrared light . STOP! DON'T RUN AWAY!!! It's not scary, it's like you see in spy shows on tv or in movies when they have a device that lets them see people because of their body heat and they show up like little red people moving around, that's really infrared light. I don't really understand it all, but basically what it means is that he goes to Hawaii (just left this morning as a matter of fact), way up high on a mountain (where it's very cold--he brings his winter coat when he goes, there's no laying on the beach for him), staring at cosmic dust. Which is pretty zen when you think about it.

He likes to read science fiction and political humor (I got him an Al Franken book for Christmas). He hates George Bush (don't we all), and is a democrat as only a half-Irish [non-practicing] Catholic from Boston can be. He likes to play cards, Trivial Pursuit, and Parchisi. He's tall and skinny and has a really great metabolism, such as I can only dream of. Don't get him started on the Vatican and the Catholic Church (please, really, don't do it). He pretends not to like our kitty but I've seen him petting him when no one was looking. At his most stressed-out, he resembles what I look like at my least. In an effort to get him a hobby, I bought him a toy train once and my mother now buys him train things every Christmas without fail. It's amazing how many books about trains there are out there. Now, if only we could set up the train set again, it would all make more sense....

So that's it. That's my Astrophysicist/husband John.

Stitch 'n Bitch Revival

As I said before, I've hit the knitting blahs. This is probably related to the January blahs I always get due to my seasonal affective disorder. Anyway, last night, I went to our weekly stitch 'n bitch meeting and I feel a little bit revived. I sat and worked on my shawl while chatting and planning our Holiday/Gift Stitch 'n Bitch group that I am starting [in a feeble attempt to get a jump on holiday knitting, I have started this spin-off group that meets once a month at my apt.]. It reminded me how soothing I find knitting and how enjoyable it can be.

Additionally, I straightened out a corner of my bedroom that had my knitting stuff in it and got some WIPs sorted out. Most of them are now in plastic boxes, ready to be picked up. There were some I had completely forgotten about (like a drop-stitch ribbon scarf), and some that were completely knitted but lacked finishing (like a scarf knit from yarn I bought in Paris). I also got a halogen lamp for my bedroom which will make it more enjoyable to knit in there. I spend quite a bit of time in there since my husband watches tv in the living room. I try to moderate my tv watching habits because when I watch too much tv I don't sleep well. And I cleared off the chair that was in that corner so I don't have to sit on the bed to knit.

Finally, today I decided to subscribe to Cast-On, a knitting podcast. I thought it might inspire me to listen to it while knitting.

I still haven't started the second mitt for my husband. I have second mitt syndrome I guess. Speaking of which, someone in my group last night said she knew how to knit two socks at a time on one circular needle. I have got to learn how to do that.

Ive been feeling pretty blah in general lately, and it's been hard getting things done. For instance, I still haven't mailed my friend's birthday (from Nov.) and Christmas gifts. I think about it, then end up putting it off. Procrastination is a really big part of my life right now. I should really do something about that. Maybe tomorrow..... :)