This book has on the back cover several mentions of knitting. However, the item in question (the “afghan of death”) is not being knitted, but crocheted. Many knitters find this confusion indescribably irritating. However, I think the distinction between knitting and crochet can fairly be classed as arcane. Just as the Poster Queen knows about NASCAR racing and, presumably, how it differs from other sorts of racing, while all that I know for sure is that it does not involve horses.

Saturday’s open house gets mixed reviews.

The music was wonderful. 15 fiddles all playing together is a rare treat, and the Fiddle Choir contains all these extremely cute children, who are also good fiddlers. There was one little boy in a cowboy hat who had that bluegrass fiddler stance, and sure enough, when his solo came he just burned up the strings. Very impressive. The Celtic band was wonderful, and I loved it when a grandmother picked up her little grandson and waltzed him around as they played. They did a violin duet (with harp and guitar accompaniment) that was one of the most romantic things I have ever heard. The school choir sang a hilarious tune about cranberries which I would like to adopt as a Thanksgiving carol. We Chamber Singers got an extra rehearsal, which we surely needed. Steve let us sing along with him. And it was great fun to see everyone.

Unfortunately, the musicians outnumbered the audiences — never a desirable situation. And we collected less food than last year. I haven’t heard sales figures, and I was racing around bear-leading all day, but the Poster Queen said that we were busy. Were people just so focussed on shopping that they didn’t have time for music and charity? I guess that’s not something to complain of from a retail point of view, but it seems sad to me.

On Sunday, I cleaned and organized things and went to a Messiah rehearsal. The director has stopped saying things like “It’ll come together, we have three more rehearsals” and started talking about how important it is to make all the rehearsals. He has also given up discussions of phrasing and dynamics. Egypt kept saying we weren’t getting this note or that, it being “we” the altos as a group she had in mind. She generally knows what notes are supposed to be sung, but is never quite on pitch herself, so she may just be hearing that mismatch between herself and the others and thinking they are off. Or we may really be singing the wrong notes. I will be spending a lot of time listening to recordings of Messiah in hopes of fixing any errors I am making, and I can’t do more than that.

I have nearly finished the Thanksgiving table runner. It needs only to be quilted. Since I did a little bit of piecing for the back, the quilting for the front will look odd on the back — thank goodness I did not go to a lot of trouble for the reversible-ness. I had not thought of that. La Tenora says that curvy quilting always looks good on plain square piecing, and she should know, so I will just go with it. She also says that quilting around the applique pieces is a must, no matter what is on the other side. I pass this along in case you find yourself in a similar quandary some day. I had itnended to post a picture of it, but cannot figure out how I ever got the Toy Camera to work in the first place. I will have to wait for a kid to help me. In fact, the list of electronic difficulties I am expecting #2 daughter to help with over Thanksgiving break is getting pretty long…

 Dweezy told me the decreases for the London Beanie, bless his heart, so I finished it up. Another rehearsal tonight, so that may be all the knitting I get done today.

Emily suggests that the universe is conspiring against my knitting. While I do not think my knitting is that important to the universe, there is some support for her belief. For one thing, I am working next Saturday as well. So I called the LYS, thinking I might be able to arrange some quick transaction over my lunch break — and sure enough, they do not carry sport weight cream-colored wool, either. So there is a serious dearth of the one yarn I need.

For another, the pattern for the London Beanie has unaccountably disappeared from the site which feebeeglee so kindly linked me to. So here I am, ready to do the decreasing, and the directions are gone. I can just do it mathematically, of course, but I do not know whether the London Beanie has some special thing about its decreasing. And I suppose I will never know.

Sigh.

I have begun another Mystery Object and am perking along with the London Beanie. I am having a little yarn trouble, though. I may feel good, in general, about not having an excessive stash, but at the moment I am concerned that I will run out of yarn before completing the London Beanie. I also need yarn for the third DNA scarf and hat set. The yarn will have to come from the LYS — the local Giant Discount Craft Store does not carry any cream-colored wool and I do not have time to have any sent to me. Unfortunately, the LYS has hours which match the hours at the store I manage. Normally, I can go there on Saturdays, and that is what I had planned to do. I didn’t quite get there last Saturday, but I figured this week would be time enough — I would still have a month till Christmas. 

However, this week I will be working on Saturday. We are having an open house and food drive with music.The Fiddle Choir will be there, and the Chamber Singers, and the Mudlarks, and several local choirs and individual musicians, and there is no way I will be able to slip away to the yarn shop. It is not that I didn’t know I was going to be working, mind you. It is just that I forgot. Or didn’t think about it sufficiently. Now that I am thinking about it, it occurs to me that a little local shop might even close for Thanksgiving weekend. Or indeed that they might not have any cream-colored sport-weight wool, either, since the trendy knitter prefers chunky wools and novelty yarn.

In talking with the Empress yesterday, I had to admit that I had everything entirely under control for the holidays, so long as nothing unexpected turned up. I hope this does not fall into the category of unexpected things turning up.

On that ominous note, I will bring up the topic that has been vexing me most this week. Oh, I know I have been writing about theology and the publishing industry and Renaissance music and the dangers of blogging, but the thing that has been most constantly on my mind has been the question of what backing to put on the Thanksgiving table runner.

For a while I had the mad idea that I would make a Christmas one to put on the back, so it would be reversible. I have a very cool Thimbleberries pattern that I have been wanting to make, which involves only 15 fabrics, 9 separate and different pieced blocks, and — never mind. With one week to Thanksgiving, I have put away that idea. However, I might still want to use a Christmas fabric — this would accomplish the same thing, roughly, without all that extra work. But I also have some of the fabric I used for the dining room valance, so it would work all year round. I also scooped up some vegetable prints at a dollar a yard, and could piece something quick for that awkward Indian summer spell when fall colors look silly but it is not really summertime any more. Or I could be a sensible person and back it with a coordinating fabric and just get the fool thing done.

With any luck, I will finish the embroidery today and this evening, when I actually have no rehearsal of any kind, I can cut and sew the backing, leaving me the weekend to quilt (minimally) and bind the thing. Then the beginning of next week can be for cleaning and finishing the baking.

Oh, and contemplating the Trinity.

I sang through the Gibbons piece for the director last night. He told me that he had never before given this solo to a woman, a statement which I decided to take as a compliment. He also asked me to “do the voices.” “This is the Record of John” is a story, a report of the conversations of John the Baptist with the Levites asking him “Who art thou?”, and the director wants the sections different enough to make it clear that there is a conversation going on. This I see as a welcome challenge. I started out singing ballads, and I always like to get the story across.

We have a little difference of interpretation on the lines, though. When John is saying “I am not the Christ” and answering “Art thou Elias?” with “No,” I had thought of him as answering with quiet certainty. The director wants something more dramatic. Sort of “No, chaps, ‘fraid you’ve got the wrong end of the stick” versus “WHAT is WRONG with you guys?!”

You will remember John the Baptist. He was the one who cried in the wilderness, roaming around eating locusts. Then up come the priests, quizzing him about his identity and asking for his papers and whatnot. You can imagine that he would be a little bit peeved. So I am going to come up with ways to convey his emotional state in nice little melismas and a two-count low A.

This movie contains what may be the only nude knitting scene in a major motion picture. It also has an amusing use of music. They sing one hymn — “Jerusalem,” which has an intriguing background — over and over. But then they rag it up in the background as the plot thickens.

Last night at Bible study we sang “Away in a Manger.” This was a little shocking for me and Partygirl. Her priest gives parishoners what-for if they have any sign of Christmas showing before December 20th. I’m not that strict, but singing a Christmas carol before Thanksgiving is a little unseemly. In rehearsal, yes, but this was in public.

Then we sang “Holy, Holy, Holy,” and the speaker made her point. In our culture, we prefer Jesus to be as he is in “Away in a Manger” — quiet in a manger, not bothering us or interfering with our Christmas shopping. We prefer a God who loves us not just with divine love, but with silent tolerance for all our little ways. In fact, we could just skip Jesus completely and go with angels, which have become something like fairies to us — supernaturally cool things that watch over us, guard us, take care of us, without making any demands on us. They look great on our cards and trees and have no effect on our lives.

That’s fine if you celebrate Christmas as a secular occasion. But if you are a Christian, she said, then your preparations for Christmas should include meditation upon the Holy Trinity.

So, this week I have finished knitting three Christmas presents, gotten two batches of holiday goodies into the freezer (I should manage another today), bought the fabric and pattern for my black performance clothes, completed the applique and piecing and most of the embroidery for the Thanksgiving table runner, and done a little minor holiday shopping. I have also gone to work and to the gym and rehearsals and been a wife and mother. But I have not meditated upon the Trinity at all.

Here is a detail of the table runner. I hope you can see the sinuous curves of the embroidered vines.

At the store, we are easing into Christmas. We mostly wait until after Thanksgiving, but we have the merchandise out in a modest way. So yesterday a lady saw a stocking I had made as an example and asked me to get the kit out for her. “Is one enough?” I asked. “Oh,” she laughed, “we’re Jewish, so one is probably too much.” We agreed that a stocking wasn’t a very religious item. Neither is anything else we’re spending our time on, those of us who are preparing for the holidays now. We’re cooking, cleaning, baking, shopping, and decorating — most of us — way more than we are meditating.

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The author of this book came into the store a couple of days ago. Her goal was to persuade us to carry her book. There are some problems with the book (sentences like “How could she find out what they were doing without exposing herself?” and “Feeling empowered, she turned away” do not belong in children’s books, if indeed they belong anywhere). There are also problems with the distribution of the book (Lightning Source, at a 20% discount, which means that for a store like ours, each copy we sold would cost us).

But the thing that was really striking was that the author did not know who distributed her book. At first, she said “Amazon.com”, and then, after thought and further questioning (I changed the question to, “If we want to buy this book, where would we get it?”), was able to agree that the major wholesale book distributer might have it. She had it written down somewhere, she said, and could call me with the information. I assured her that I could check that. She didn’t know the terms, didn’t mention the price, and couldn’t even tell me what age group her book was intended for. When I asked how to get hold of her, she had to search for a scrap of paper to write her number on.

Now, I know nothing else about this woman. She is older than I am, so she must have some way of supporting herself and is presumably competent at many things in her daily life. She seemed nice, too.So this is not really about her being clueless. It is about the technological miracles that allow all of us to be authors.

All of us bloggers, for example, are published right here on the web. And anyone who feels like turning it into paper can do so — at so little effort, it seems, that we don’t even have to know the least little thing about the process.

I’ll tell you frankly that, of the many self-published books that are brought in to me each year, none has yet been a good book. I don’t like all the commercially-published books available, either, of course. Madonna’s children’s books, for example, manage to be both trite and bizarre at the same time. And that’s just one author — but she is also an example of the extension of the idea of authorship. Anyone famous, for anything, can have a children’s book published.

This freedom in the presses ought to increase the number of available books and it ought to increase the number of good ones just as much as bad ones. It should give us all more choices of reading matter. Once we get past the distribution problems.

Mystery objects. Experienced knitters may be able to identify them, but will not be on my Christmas list. Texture stitches, the patterns made by arranging knit and purl stitches, are remarkably varied. Here we have Diamond Brocade, King Charles Brocade, and Windowpane, but there are many more. You could also find here the more usual Garter, Stocking, Seed, and Moss.

Polperro Musician, Laughing Boy, Marriage Lines, Vandyke Check. You could decide what to use based only on the names, and end up with some curious results, but knowing that your creations had poetry in them. The common ones are easy to understand: stocking for the stitch used for stockings and Garter for the stitch used to make the garter at the top of the stocking. Seed and Moss (opposite sides of the same stitch) are probably named just on their looks. But who in Polperro (a town in Cornwall) gave Musician its name? Who saw the Organ Pipes in a clever bit of knitting, or decided to commemorate their plowing Ridge and Furrow in a sweater?

Recently I read an essay on the dangers of blogging. The writer, not herself a blogger, complained that no one ever told her anything any more, since they assumed she had read it on their blogs. The other side of that coin is the danger of telling someone something, assuming that they do not read your blog, only to bore them silly because they did already read it. There is also the danger of feeling that, since you read the person’s blog regularly, you are in touch with them, and never actually calling them or visiting them any more. And the danger of failing to communicate with people because — if they wanted to — they could read your blog and thereby know what you’re up to.

I first encountered blogging in the form of #2 daughter’s blog, which I read every day. I also read all the comments — I mean, I even go back after I have already read and commented, to see what other commenters have said. This leads me to another of the dangers of blogging — excessive time spent on it – because I then find myself clicking on the commenters and reading their blogs, and the blogs of their commenters.

It happens that my daughter and most of her commenters actually know one another in real life. So reading their blogs gives multiple perspectives on real-world events. It begins to exercise a certain fascination. Although I have never watched soap operas, I imagine the appeal of a soap opera would be like that. You want to find out what so-and-so did when so-and-so did such-and-such.

In a way, this is good. It allows me to keep up with #2 daughter’s stories much better. She doesn’t believe in telling stories in chronological order, and all the people she knows seem to have roughly the same names. So her stories go like this: “Well, Keith is in big trouble now.” “Oh, is that Keith from your math class?” “No, it’s Keith who was dating Ashley, but then I saw him at the bonfire.” “What bonfire?” “Well, it was the one where Ashley — the other Ashley, the one who Keith gave all those mice to – saw the ghost, except Ashley doesn’t think she really did. But all that was before the explosion, which is what I was trying to tell you about.” “What explosion?” “Well, it was at rehearsal — did I tell you I have a solo? It was going to be a duet with Ashley, but not the Ashley who was shipwrecked, except that then she decided to do a duet with Keith instead. So I have a solo, but Dr. X is going to have Keith do it even though he has pitch problems.” “Is that why Keith is in trouble?” “Not that Keith.” 

So, now that I am able to drop in and spy on these people at their xangas, it is easier for me to keep them clear in my mind.

On the other hand, with keeping up with those blogs, and reading the knitting blogs, and also the blogs in the blogring and all my subscriptions, it is difficult to get the housework done. Not to mention knitting. Which I sometimes don’t.

Today we had the Kirkin’ of the Tartans in church. I really enjoy the Kirkin of the Tartans. The wild skirling of the bagpipes, instruments which should never be played indoors, playing “Scotland the Brave,” in a church in which secular music is forbidden at weddings. The defensive apologia for celebrating the Scottish heritage of a church which is filled every Sunday with a multi-racial group, the oddly pagan business of blessing pieces of cloth, the lame children’s message in which the pastor tries to hook the tartans of families up with our all being part of the family of God, the annual singing of Scottish songs and recitation of Scottish prayers which we otherwise rarely use. It is not theologically defensible, but it is one of our most colorful and noisy Sundays, so I enjoy it nonetheless.

The tartan above is the McKenzie tartan, the one which I and my children would be allowed to wear if we wanted to join in the ceremony. Mary Henderson, daughter of  Scots immigrants, married a carriage maker from New York in Alabama and then died tragically young in childbirth, leaving a daughter who provided for us almost the only Scottish twig on our family tree. The other was Aoife McMurrough, a medieval woman who had quite an exciting life, but so long ago that we can hardly feel entitled to call ourselves Scots because of her. This tartan might be hers. Who knows, though? It was so long ago.

The point of having tartans to declare your clan identity might well have been the same as the supposed reason families had their own knitting patterns. The story is that a particular pattern of cables or other stitches would identify drowned sailors for their families. Perhaps a tartan would allow a family to recognize their war-torn soldiers. Or perhaps they allowed one to pass safely through a war-torn area, in spite of the bagpipes whipping everyone up. In recorded history, the tartans were a sign of nationalism.

It’s a far cry from there to our modern way of wearing other people’s advertising on our bodies, isn’t it? Does displaying the words “Old Navy” on your chest or “Mudd” on your bottom express such noble sentiments? Maybe it is more like wearing your school sweatshirt.

I was able to complete three of the smaller Mystery Objects yesterday, and to begin one more of them plus the London Beanie. The London Beanie doesn’t have to be a Mystery Object, because I am quite confident that the recipient does not read this blog. I got about one third of the housework done, and none of the music practice (oops!), but after all in this life we cannot do everything, can we? I should be able to fit in some practice before this afternoon’s performance.

Back when I worked as Education Director in a museum, I read a thesis someone had written back in the ’20s for a Home Economics degree. The writer had interviewed the old pioneer ladies still living at the time, in an effort to determine whether they continued to make their own stuff as a “thrift practice” or not. She had focussed particularly on quilting, which was at that time about to experience a revival. Younger women, however, tended to take advantage of the opportunity to buy ready-made blankets and such. The older women continued to make their own quilts, mattresses, clothing, soap, baskets, and pretty well everything else they owned. The thesis concluded that the homemade things did cost less, but that the thriftiness wasn’t the whole story. The social value and the sense of pride in their abilities were equally important.

If you read this blog, then you know the quasi-philosophical reasons I have for making my own stuff, and I won’t repeat them. But at this time of year there is a lot of discussion about whether making your own gifts is a thrift practice or not — we don’t use that term any more, of course. But does it save money to make gifts?

The answer is a resounding “yes and no.” In a store yesterday I saw one of those cookie-in-a-jar mixes, which is a decorated canning jar with cookie ingredients layered prettily in it, selling for $14.95. Obviously, the ingredients for this gift don’t cost anywhere near that much, and anyone at all can make such a thing in just a few minutes. Sure, it’s cheaper to make your own. You can also buy a hat very like the London Beanie in a Dollar Store. A neophyte knitter who had to go buy needles, pattern, and yarn would be lucky to spend less than ten times that much. And then the time must be factored in, on top of the materials and tools. So no, it isn’t cheaper at all. And, without getting down to specifics at all, we all know that there are many things sold in stores nowadays the price of which is not enough to cover the cost of the materials — and also things whose price is hundreds of times more than the materials, and based more on the cost of advertising. The value of items has become so divorced from the price that it is hardly possible to say what an item is worth. And handmade gifts in particular are all about saying “You are worth my time and effort” which is always worth more than money.

But suppose you want to make gifts for people in the most economical way? Suppose you intend to use your skills to give people the most value you can for the funds you have budgeted for holiday gifts?

The first thing is to use what you already have the skills and equipment for. I own very large quantities of needles and patterns for knitting, so my cost for a knitted gift is only the cost of the yarn. I also own lots of molds and scents for soap and spa things, tools for paper crafts, and equipment for sewing. If I decided to make ceramics, on the other hand, I would have to start from scratch and make quite an investment.

The second, and related, thing is to make multiples of whatever it is you make. I don’t go so far as to make the exact same thing for everyone, but those who do are sensible. The trial-and-error and decision-making get done with the first thing, and then you can just keep going smoothly on, getting faster as you go. You can also use up all your materials, rather than having leftovers from many different projects. Better yet, pick something that you can not only give to everyone, but give to them afresh each year. Everyone in the Northern Hemisphere could enjoy a new pair of hand-made socks each year, after all, because they wear out. Give it to your friends in the Southern Hemisphere for Midsummer’s Night, and you’re set. People will begin to look forward to that gift, and feel disappointed if they don’t receive it.

The third thing is to present your stuff really well. That jar of cookie ingredients cost $14.95 because it looked like a present. Zip-lock bags of cookie ingredients thrown into a paper sack would not have the same effect. So make snazzy labels for your scarves and wrap your socks in clever ways. I think Martha Stewart is the best source for ideas for this. Hand-made things in her magazine are always presented in ways that make you completely forget that they are made out of pipe cleaners and paper. Last year I made spiral socks out of Polar Spun yarn for all my favorite females and made tags for them that said “Polar Bear Paws.” Using a pattern from Martha Stewart Living, I cut little polar bears from flocked paper and put them on the tags. Tuck those slipper-substitutes into a basket with homemade cookies and hot chocolate mix, and you have a gift that shows the lavishness of your fondness for the recipient.