martinimade

Please keep the suggestions of knitters coming. I have Ann and Kay and Stephanie on my list. Someone suggest Cheryl Oberle, which is a great idea. Anyone else? There must be more.

Starmore progress:

Yup, I'm just zipping along. It is faster now that I'm past the purl rows -- but faster is totally relative. 

New sock, which is what I work on when the Mary Tudor makes my brain hurt:

It's Lorna's Laces "miata" that has been kicking around the stash.

This will be going in the stash:

Purchased from my LYS. Even tho Noro is scratchy, I can't resist the colors.

And the promised cat. Barney would desperately like to go outside. The squirrels are mocking him.

I don't have the heart to point out that those squirrels would kick his ass in nine different ways. Oh -- and that despite all of the green out there, it is only about 45 degrees outside.

Speaking of Barney, Neil Patrick Harris is interviewed at EW.

* Question for the knitters -- who is a knitting personality that you'd like to know more about? I'm working on putting together my dream list of interviews for the book and could use more input. No request is too silly. Except for Elizabeth Zimmerman. I'd love to talk with her, too, but being dead has its disadvantages.

* Radiolab's Pop Music installment. If you listen to nothing else, listen to the segment on Schoolhouse Rock.

* Mentally ill people might be more creative. So there, all you psychiatrically standard people.

* At the next neighborhood BBQ, I'm going to have to make a batch of Palomas. The last summery drink was citrus spritzers from Everyday Food (which I can't find a recipe for online) that were dangerous and delicious.
 

* These books are gorgeous. Horrifically fragile -- but gorgeous.

* Anyone local want to split an order of canvas grocery sacks with me?

* Clay Shirkey on "Gin, Television and Social Surplus." There's also a video linked at Making Light but I couldn't get it to play in some kind of fashion that didn't make we want to smash my computer. You might have better luck. Regardless, this is the money quote for me:

"The way you explore complex ecosystems is you just try lots and lots and lots of things, and you hope that everybody who fails fails informatively so that you can at least find a skull on a pikestaff near where you're going. That's the phase we're in now."

In short, yes, a lot of what is going on online right now is going to fail. That's not the point. Eventually, we will fail better. Then a little better. Then a little better. It's not about not failing. It's a good rule for lots of facts of life, especially when you are working without a map.

I love the P.O. * The P.O. -- the big evil one in NYC not my little local one where I know all of the clerks by name -- let me down. So now instead of my agent having a set of contracts in her hands, those same contracts are back in my hands, because the letter carrier decided to just deliver them to one of the offices in her building but not the right office in her building. Grrrr. And, alternately, arg.

Off to Office Max I go, since they have a DHL outlet.

This will amuse you while I'm gone. I can't seem to remember that Opus is on Salon on the weekends. This strip is especially amusing.

*I also love Eudora Welty, but this has nothing to do with her.

From the local almost-daily, a story about my second home.

"(b) If publication is delayed beyond the time set forth in Paragraph 16 (a) because of acts or conditions beyond the control of the Publisher or its suppliers or contractors, including (by way of illustration and not by way of limitation) war, shortages of material, strikes, riots, civil commotions, fire or flood, the publication date shall be extended six months following the removal of the cause of the delay."

-- standard book contract boilerplate that amused the heck out of me, cos, seriously, if we're in the middle of a "civil commotion," I'm thinking my book will be one of the last things on my mind.

Off for a bloodletting. Carry on without me.

I'd intended to take a picture of the socks I just finished. My camera, however, is in the hands of my husband, who isn't here. So, in your imaginations, visualize variagated blue socks knitted toe-up with ribbed tops and slip-sticked heels. The yarn is Koigu, for those who might care. My love for Koigu is great and quiet.

Shortly after finishing the Juno wrap -- thanks for all of the kind words -- I realized that I had a sock on the needle that just needed another few rounds before it was done. So I finished it, just so that it could meet its mate. Get me -- I'm a sock yenta.

Other than that -- I got nothing. Work calls. Laundry calls. I'm going to hear Dana Spiotta at Hartwick tonight. If you're local, you should to.

Here's is my homage to that famous National Geographic cover:

Only more in need of a haircut.

The Juno Regina stole is done!  The specs: 2 skeins of Malabrigo Lace (which is my new favorite laceweight yarn ever) in Dusty. Purchased from The Loopy Ewe. No pattern mods other than that. The only tricky bits with the stole are the ends, which look like this:

And this:

It's more pink and less red in person. It is also delightfully squishy.

You can't come to my house to squish it, tho. This particular stole will be auctioned off on the 27th to raise some funds for Heidi's Breast Cancer 3-Day Walk. If you are interested in owning this bad queen (or, of course, contributing to the cause) contact Heidi. I'm sure she'd be happy to take your money.

The next thing I'm knitting for someone else is a surprise. I can tell you that two of these three yarns will be used. I'm just not sure which two yet. Thoughts?

Lastly, my progress on the Starmore. Yup, just breezing along now!

I think it'll go much faster when I get past the purl rows. That's what I keep telling myself, anyway.

* Moleskine art, which is amazing.

* My generation: Steadfast and earnest. Sounds about right. Perhaps also with a soupcon of bitterness.

* The Farmers Diner might have to be my next road trip. It also dawns on me that it might be on the way next time we head to Maine. Hrm.

* Real Life Bones. What I love is the detail about the remains being stored with the Christmas ornaments.

* All of the world's knowledge collected on 3x5 cards.

* Scott Miller has an old song (which I can't seem to find online, sadly) with the line about Pee-wee football that goes like "his helmet fit down on his head like a bucket on a pea." That line just jumped into my head this weekend when we had our first grilling of the season. Can't think of why...

EXTREME close up:

I think this weekend makes it official -- we are now officially white trash.*

This is what the back passenger door of the car I drive the most (a '97 Saturn) now looks like:

The door has had a long history of not latching quite right. Once the Featureless Saint got it closed and locked but good, we simply didn't use that door. The situation degraded last week, when the aformentioned Saint lent the car to a student who needed to make a laundry run. He failed to mention the thing with the door -- and as she was coming back from the laundromat, the door flew open and spilled her clean clothes everywhere. We are all very happy that she hadn't decided to put her toddler on that side. We try to not think about that, in fact.

The latch is now broken for good. I've been driving around with the door held closed by a chunk of that yellow cord that lashed the handle to the front seat. It was distracting -- but not overly dangerous. My commute doesn't even involve a stoplight.

Only on Friday, the husband's cunning fix failed. The rope loosed, the door flew open as I was pulling into a space and the damage could have been very expensive had I not had cat-like reflexes. There was also, I have to be honest, cursing.

So the spouse fixed it but good this time. He levered off the decorative door panel and used Tech Screws** to bolt the thing in place. He briefly toyed with welding it -- but the amount of plastic around the door's frame makes that untenable.

Once you couple that with the driver's side mirror held on with duct tape -- which was totally my fault and not the car's -- and, well, it's a picture. 

The engine is great, however. The cosmetics, not so much.

Given that the spouse and I both work in our chosen fields because we love them and not because we'll make lots of cash,*** a new car is not in the offing until we pay off the van we bought when Cory was born. We need to get at least another 18 months out of it, before we put it up on blocks in the front yard.  Ah, the glamour.

----------------------------------------------------

* I say this with love, not scorn.

** That's what the name of the screw sounds like. Not sure if that's how it's actually spelled.

*** We're fine and doing better than we'd ever dreamed -- but, still, there's not a lot extra just kicking around. We both, however, have awesome health insurance. So there's that.

One of my students, who has been too sick to come to class all week, is featured in a picture in today's paper. She was hula-hooping out in the sun yesterday and having a grand old time. Too sick, indeed.

Oh -- and it's now officially spring! Scott saw his first beer pong table yesterday. Around here, it's not the daffodils and crocuses that clue you in to the changing seasons.