I just completed the pink Mystery Object. This puts me very close to my goal of finishing a Christmas present object every five days, and it is not 8:00 a.m. yet. I have a lot of housework and baking to do and some music to practice and an open house to attend, but I may still be able to finish the burgundy MO as well today, thus improving my average enough to help accomodate the probable entire month required for the third DNA scarf. (Note the optimistic math here).

Yesterday a homeschool family came in to choose some materials for their high school senior. You will realize from the fact that they are just choosing materials in November that this was not a dedicated homeschool family. They also had an interesting philosophy: namely, they did not want anything that the student would not “need to know.” She dismissed algebra and geometry with a wave of her hand, history without even waving, and literature entirely.

I tried to suggest that she might enjoy some of the classic works (Ivanhoe, for some reason, was the book that seemed most likely to enchant her, and I pressed it into her hands, but she gave it back quite firmly) and even that a nice overview of world history might be handy for understanding current events. I suggested that she might want to go to college some day, and that she might like to have a smattering of knowledge so she could conduct conversations with people. “If you are at a job interview and someone makes a remark about Shakespeare,” I hazarded, “you won’t want to feel lost.” “I have NO interest in Shakespeare,” she told me firmly. And I could see that she would not be interviewing for the kind of job that involves airy persiflage about literature. Art, music, foreign languages, and science were all turned down as well. “If you read something in the paper,” I said, “a basic knowledge of statistics can help you know whether or not to change your behavior because of it.” Nope. They left empty-handed.

Later, as I checked in stock for the holidays (and admired the Empress’s order of Thai toys, including “Bumping Sumos” and the wooden monkey game which prepares children for ”your lifelong practice of hammering away at fixed objects”), I thought about this idea of need-to-know education.

After all, how many things are there that you really need to know? You need to be able to do all sorts of things, including basic reading and math and whatever physical skills your job might require. You probably need to be able to do household things like cooking and sewing on buttons and keeping some reasonable level of order in the house, changing diapers, training animals, repairing things, driving a car – although it is possible to pay people to do all these things, or even to marry someone who can do them for you. You need to be able to get along with people, to whatever degree your personal life goals require it. If you intend to do something for pleasure besides watching TV and shopping (the two main recreational activities in the U.S. today), then you might need some skills there.

But even if it can be said that you need some skills, do you actually need to know anything at all? In the course of my work day yesterday I had to use basic math skills, and I needed to know the name of the shape arrived at by slicing up an octahedron (I resorted to calling a mathematician or two, and have determined that there is no such word). We were considering using an article in our newsletter (the same one for which I needed that nonexistent word) until the paragraph in which the author claimed that many immigrant children “are not fluent in their native language” and “do not know the constructs of their own language.” So I suppose I needed to be able to read, and to recognize that the author’s claims were false. An apostrophe issue arose, and I know the rules on that, which was handy, but of course we could have looked it up. I needed to know where things were in the store and how one baby doll differed from another in terms of child development. I had to be able to keep up my end of conversations with customers, which ranged from women’s rights (in reference to baby dolls) to crafts to dogs to humpback whales – but I suppose I could have gazed blankly at all those people as they made their conversational sallies. I would not keep my job, but I could work at some other place.

After work, I needed to know the traffic laws of my state, and where my study group was meeting, and some songs, or how to follow the printed music. Then I needed to know how to read a knitting pattern. But again, all these things are skills rather than knowledge.

Aside from being able to converse with people, a fifth grade education would probably have sufficed for all the things I actually needed to know. (I am assuming here that the average fifth grader knows that everyone is fluent in his or her native language, that being part of the definition of “native language”.)

What then is the value of knowing all kinds of other stuff? Potential is one, at least for young people. “You might want to study physics,” I pointed out to the unwilling student. It is axiomatic that young people should learn all they can, because you never know what you might need to know about for a future choice. But, hey, I might want to study physics, too. You never know.

And pleasure is another. My family’s motto could be, along with Kipling’s mongoose, “Go and find out.” It seems natural to want to know things, to enjoy learning.

Our UPS lady once arrived with boxes while we discussing an article we had read which claimed that there was no longer any value in studying the works of Shakespeare. She said that her high school study of Shakespeare had been the beginning, for her, of a lifelong love of the theater. She goes to Shakespeare festivals. It is a source of joy in her life. That’s worth something.

You might also want to play trivia games some day. Or talk with people. Or think about things, to keep yourself amused while you use those basic skills learned before fifth grade.

This is not a homeschool thing, by the way. There is a school of thought in public education which holds that the amount and kind of information needed for modern life is incalculable, so all that can usefully be taught is the skill of finding things out. This is a good skill to have, but it still seems sort of like agnosticism applied to education.

Fortunately, a little boy came in with his mother and told me all that he knew about whales, and how he had decided to build a model whale for his school project. He was very excited about it, and particularly about the fact that the assigment required an index card with facts on it. He and his mother liked the idea of making their own modeling dough, and we had quite a lively discussion of how they might represent krill, barnacles, and the whale’s blowhole. They bought $75 worth of books, only one of which was specifically for the project at hand. It restored my faith in humankind.

While textures don’t come up properly on dark colors, I think you can see the pink Mystery Object, in a simpler variation on the King Charles Brocade.This is in Sugar’n Cream, very soft and good for texture stitches.

The Witty Knitter ( http://manainkblog.typepad.com/ ) has come up with a good word to express a concept in trendy knitting. Mayflower says she won’t knit if it gets too trendy, but I think it is not that knitting itself is trendy. That would be like saying that food is trendy, or reproduction, or music. Something people have been engaging in steadily for millenia can’t be trendy. However, some types of knitting have become trendy. There are some knitters who follow their favorite blogger or knitting celebrity or knitting trend slavishly enough to do always and only what Everyone Else is doing. For this type of knitter, the Witty Knitter suggests the term “knitlemming.”

If you read the knitting blogs, you will have instant recognition of this concept. Part of it is fashion. You see enough ponchos around, it is likely that at some point you will begin to consider making one yourself. Or you read about Koigu enough times, you get curious and go track some down. My desire to make felt clogs (ah, yes, where are those felt clogs?) is like that.

But some aspects of knitlemmingdom (knitlemmingitude?) are about peer pressure.

In my study group, we had a question about peer pressure. Now, all young readers know about this. Peer pressure is when you are persuaded, shamed, or bullied by your supposed friends into snubbing the unpopular kids, smoking behind the barn, or having sex on prom night. Or whatever. I think there are lots of opportunities for peer pressure when you are young.

But the women in the study group are in their 30s and 40s. We were a little at sea on this question. “What do you do because of your friends’ reactions, that you don’t want to do?” For the life of me, all I could think of was housework — and that is clearly a good thing. If it takes peer pressure for me to clean my house, then good for peer pressure.

Then one woman came up with gossip. And yes, it is very easy to get sucked into gossiping. You don’t want to be left out. The temptation to add that little morsel of information or judgement can be enormous.

Swearing is another. If you are surrounded by people who use rough language, it becomes easy to do so yourself.

Copyright infringement is another. It is hard to refuse to make illegal copies of the sheet music or knitting pattern for someone, isn’t it? You don’t want to sound self-righteous. Make that the DVD, CD, or software, for that matter. It is very easy to lift stuff nowadays, and people don’t hesitate to ask.

Materialism is another sin it is easy to get pressured into. As the holidays approach, we are surrounded by pressures to do more and buy more. If Everyone Else will have new clothes for that party, if All the Other Kids are getting new computers for the holidays, if the neighbors’ houses are more elaborately decorated — all of these are peer pressure.

So — are you adding to your stash just so your blog will have stash pictures like the others? Are you making those ugly variegated socks just because All the Other Bloggers did? The Witty Knitter includes Rogue in this group, but I disagree. Rogue is a beautiful sweater. You can make it just because it is a beautiful sweater, that’s all.

As the government toys with new shapes for the food pyramid, #1 son has shared with me his idea for the two essential food groups: sweetitude and meatitude. He may have felt he needed to explain this to me because I fixed oatmeal for breakfast. Or perhaps it was that I had looked through Ozarque’s (http://www.livejournal.com/users/ozarque/ ) large collection of food magazines and was considering making a nice ricotta and beet tart for Thanksgiving. In any case, his system is simple and easy to learn: meatitude and sweetitude, in equal amounts.

The Water Jar ( http://www.xanga.com/home.aspx?user=TheWaterJar ) has expressed the concept of meatitude much better than I could, in his 11/9 entry. Don’t miss the pictures. If they make you slightly ill, then you are not a candidate for this system. Or you may be female.

At our house, at least, eating large pieces of flesh is a guy thing. Our males are all serious meat-eaters. My husband was watching the Discovery channel and saw a large tarantula, displayed in close detail. He immediately began telling me how to cook it, and how delicious it would be. He does eat plenty of rice and vegetables, but makes up for that by also eating bones and internal organs. My sons eat meat — just slices of meat — for after-school snacks. #2 son makes shopping lists that specify “meaty pieces of chicken.” #1 daughter does not eat red meat, and #2 daughter and I are food-pyramid eaters.

I know that there are many male vegetarians and doubtless there are women who eat ribs, but I am still inclined to think of serious carnivorous behavior as most characteristic of young men. Something to do with the Warrior Spirit, perhaps. The meat market where I shop was opened in the first place because the owner had four sons.

Meatitude also includes such things as frozen pizzas, corn dogs, and egg rolls. Even cheese can be included in the meatitude category, as long as it is not used as a substitute for meat.

Sweetitude covers sugary cereals, sodas, ice cream, and candy. You don’t find these things very often at my house. If we are going to have sweets, I feel, they should be worthwhile sweets. Chocolate Nemesis, perhaps, or a really good pecan pie. Fresh fruit tarts with frangipane, or crisp spicy cookies. Homemade only. I am not supposed to eat sugar at all, so I am not going to squander my occasional indulgences on things made of corn syrup and chemicals.

My sons do not agree, and they are very fond of the Schwann’s man, who brings sugary things right to the door, where they can jump in and persuade me to buy them without the interference of shopping lists and nutrition labels.

The blog of X-Entertainment (http://www.x-entertainment.com/updates/ ) may best express the true appreciation of sweetitude. You will notice, in his very funny reviews of foods, that quantity and sweetness are the criteria.

The meat market I mentioned (http://www.richardsmeatmarket.com/ ) specializes in sweetitude and meatitude. My sons say that they have all the groceries a guy needs: meat, spices for meat, a few packaged side dishes to go along with the meat, pies, and candy. And cheese, chips, and soda. There is even a small display of vegetables in the middle of the room: potatoes to bake with your meat, onions to flavor your meat, and an occasional real vegetable looking lost.

Please feel free to adopt these food groups for your own. They will simplify your shopping enormously. Using the terms will add an air of seriousness to it. “Do we have enough sweetitude?” you can say, casting a practiced eye over your shopping basket. “I think we may have a preponderance of meatitude.” Agreeing, your roommate adds a bag of M&Ms and a few boxes of snack cakes.

I say “roommate” because adults cannot thrive on sweetitude and meatitude. We have to eat beets and parsnips, and possibly even kale. Not to mention oat bran. If you are old enough to have a spouse and children, it is time to give in and embrace the food pyramid.  Or whatever the government decides to replace it with.

My cotton brocade Mystery Object is coming along at a rate of about four rows per day, which is not fast enough to finish it in five days. I will try to put on a burst of speed this weekend, when I will also be making the London Beanie to go with the second DNA scarf and, with any luck, beginning the third DNA scarf. The sad truth is that texture stitches in dark colors do not make nice photographs, so there is no point in my showing you a picture. Even if it weren’t a secret.

Here is a picture of unidentifiable people having fun. If you look very closely, you will see them. They are throwing puffballs at one another. It is this sort of pointless cheerful behavior that keeps us all pleasant and kind.

If you have not done something pointless, fun, and physical today, go do so right now. The result will be greater pleasantness and cheerfulness on your part. You will then be nicer to the people you meet, and the overall pleasantness of the world will be increased by just that little bit.

This is a puffball, horse apple, or — as the fellow from Oklahoma calls it — a snake apple. It is properly known as the fruit of the Osage Orange tree, or hedgeapple. But I have never heard anyone call it that. It looks like a hard chartreuse brain. The Oklahoman claims that it will keep snakes away from your property, and this amazing website (http://hedgeapple.com/ ) claims that it is a good insect repellant. In fact, the amazing thing about this website is that they suggest uses for puffballs and sell them. They have excerpts from Martha Stewart saying you can decorate with these things and an announcement that they are not toxic, though they offer no recipes. As far as I know, the only thing you can really do with a puffball is throw it. Once the trebuchet is repaired, it should be excellent for tossing puffballs.

My Mysterious Object (it is a Christmas present, and the recipient might read this, for all I know) continues very slowly, as I have very little time to devote to it this week. It is now 45 days till Christmas, so I must average one finished object every five days if I am to complete all the presents I have planned. I also have to make a black dress for a performance next week, complete the Thanksgiving table runner, finish organizing and publicizing a food drive/open house for the following week, prepare for houseguests and Thanksgiving dinner the week after that — and of course from Thanksgiving till Christmas is a blur for those of us who work in retail, and for moms in general. With all that, it might be best to follow the examples not only of the people in the picture at the top of the page, but also of the dogs at the right. Having done pointless, cheerful, physical things, they then loll around and let someone else take care of them.

I compromised on the knitting. I resisted the siren call of Fair Isle (though I’m still thinking about it), and am also not immediately leaping into the next cream-colored cable project (though feebeeglee (http://www.xanga.com/home.aspx?user=feebeeglee ) sent me the perfect hat pattern). Instead, I am knitting a Christmas present with cotton yarn in a handsome shade of burgundy. Instead of cabling,  I am doing a texture stitch. Texture stitches, which use knit and purl to make designs, are strongly associated with gansies, the traditional sweaters of Guernsey. CheriM ( http://www.xanga.com/home.aspx?user=CheriM ) reminds us that families were said to have their own patterns, there and in the Aran Isles, so that they could recognise the corpses of drowned sailors washed up on the shore.

This is not the gory knitting story for today, however. We had drowned bodies yesterday. Today, I am working with the texture stitch known as King Charles Brocade, named for the waistcoat worn by King Charles I at his execution.The waistcoat was knitted in this pattern, and it is in a museum in London, washed perhaps of its bloodstains. Since the body of Charles was left out for several days after his death (so people would be sure that he was dead), this seems like a very nasty souvenir. The death of Charles was of course the boundary between the Age of Kings and the Age of Revolution, and you will doubtless remember it from history classes, where they may have neglected entirely to tell you that the knitting pattern of his waitcoat is well-known still today.

 People who always read this blog and have total recall will also remember that there was another gory knitting story: the story of the Luddites, many of whom were hanged for breaking up the sock-making machines that were (they felt) taking away their livelihoods. While I had always heard these guys described as weavers, they were actually knitting socks on frames much like the spool knitting frames kids use to make jump ropes. You can find the details on August 9th.

With all these exciting tales of knitting history, it should be possible to make a good movie. Unfortunately, the Spanish shipwreck was mid-1500s, King Charles was executed in 1649, and the Luddites were in the early 1800s. Time travel is popular in movies  now, but I think we can do it with a multi-generational family saga miniseries.

We can begin with a late medieval master knitter. We include his adventures as he travels and goes through the arduous process of being a Master in his guild, and then jump to his granddaughter, played by the latest spunky blonde. She learns all her grandfather’s skills, but is unable to further herself in the profession, since she is a girl. She refuses to go along with the life path chosen for her, and runs away from an arranged marriage (Jack Nicholson plays the groom), ending up in Fair Isle, where she is just in time to see the knitters learning the patterns from the sweaters of the drowned Spaniards. She sees the old women hunkered down over the distended corpses, and is repulsed — yet recognizes in them the same knitting fever that possesses her. Horrified, she stumbles away — only to encounter a survivor of the Spanish shipwreck (played by Keanu Reeves).

Touched by her fastidiousness, he teaches her the Spanish knitting patterns and they settle down together to make a life for themselves, knitting. They have a daughter who is, when Sir Walter Raleigh visits Fair Isle, a lovely young woman. She is smitten by him, but after all, he is a pirate. He leaves her pregnant and enslaved by tobacco. She can be played by Catherine Zeta-Jones as she dies, leaving her son to be raised by her parents. As it happens, Raleigh wrote about the hose (socks) being made on Fair Isle when he visited there, but not about the special patterns — one reason that the Spanish shipwreck story is not generally believed. We will overlook this.

The young man is not contented, though, and stows away on a ship leaving Fair Isle when he is still a boy. He is adopted by a female pirate (Jamie Lee Curtis) and grows up on the sea. His rather ambiguous relationship with her leaves him confused and lacking in social skills. Perhaps he can be played by Owen Wilson. He reaches England just in time to see the execution of King Charles. The knitted waistcoat worn by the erstwhile monarch touches his heart, as does the gallant self-possession of the condemned man.

He decides to remain in England and carry on the textile trade, enriching it with all that he has learned from his parents and from sailors during his travels. We have a century and a half till the next knitting incident, so he had better marry and have a whole lot of children, the youngest of whom are a pair of twins. One fathers a family which goes up in the world as the industrial revolution takes hold, and the other a family which goes down, clinging to their craft of hand-knitting. There can be scenes contrasting the two sets of descendants as their lives diverge and they lose track of one another. Also the Napoleonic wars come in here, allowing battle scenes and some cool ballads.

The great-great-grandson of one twin is, by an ironic coincidence, one of the wretched fellows oppressed by the g-g-grandson of the fortunate twin (played by Brendan Fraser). In desperation, he allies himself with the Luddites and is captured and tried for frame-breaking. When he is sentenced to die on the gallows, the young Lord Byron makes his impassioned speech in the House of Lords. The wealthy g-g-grandson hears this speech, and his eyes are opened to the suffering of the poor.

As Byron heads off for his wild adventures, the g-g-grandsons, having somehow learned that they are indeed cousins, are reconciled. They put their heads together to find ways to meld technology and art. We can let Byron (Johnny Depp) have some dissolute sexual encounters for the sake of the ratings, but there will also be a heartwarming family thing. The wealthy textile guy’s wife (somehow I see her as Olivia de Haviland, but there will have to be a live person to play her, of course), who has felt alienated from him because of his lack of compassion for his miserable workers, rediscovers her love for him as he becomes more concerned for his fellow man. There can be many charming scenes as the two families learn from one another and so forth. Several photogenic children will be needed for this bit.

In the final scene, the youngest sons of the two g-g-grandsons (I hope you haven’t gotten lost yet) set off for America on a ship, while their parents, filled with a quiet joy in spite of their sorrow at losing their children, watch the ship sail out of the harbor.

Knitting patterns can be printed on all the ticket stubs.

I am singing at the Presbytery meeting tonight, which means that I will be out every night this week. There is also work and the daily gym visit. So I will not be doing much knitting this week. Instead, I will be making decisions. I have to decide what yarn to use for the third DNA scarf, and what pattern to use for the fisherman’s Wool-ease hat.

The hat question is complicated by the fact that it is for a guy. #1 son has already told me that he thinks the DNA scarf is feminine. “Guys don’t wear scarves any more,” he said. This surprised me — and perhaps it will not be true, since the intended recipient lives in the frozen North. But this makes it especially important that the hat should be masculine. Manly, even.

So what kind of hats do guys wear? And of that group of hats, which can be made from fisherman’s-colored Wool-ease? And will coordinate with the DNA scarf?

Really, though, I will be thinking about Fair Isle. I have actually been thinking about Fair Isle for weeks. This should be no surprise. I have just finished an essentially cream-colored scarf and am about to start another one. I have been cabling steadily since July. Of course I am thinking about Fair Isle.

Many people use the term “Fair Isle” for all multicolored knitting. Strictly speaking, it refers only to a particular technique developed on Fair Isle in the mid-1800s. I will now be like Leonidas and give you a nice link to learn more about the island itself: http://www.fairisle.org.uk/

Fair Isle knitting involves bands of designs knitted with only two colors at a time, but changing those colors every row. If you begin with a red background and a blue design, for example, then the next row will have a blue background and a white design, and the next row a white background and a green design, and so forth till you run out of colors. Traditionally, a Fair Isle knitter would do the one pattern and then move on to another, and so on up the sweater, without repeating. However, modern Fair Isle knitting is often more planned-out than this.

One old story was that the knitters of Fair Isle copied the patterns from the sweaters of dead Spaniards who washed up on their shores. People like this story because it is gory and romantic, but actually it appears that the inspiration for Fair Isle knitting was a woven shawl worn by a visitor in about 1856. The early examples of this knitting were done in bright colors, but in the ’20s there was a vogue for natural wool colors. Now people use all sorts of colors.

Fair Isle knitters have not stuck to a few old patterns, but have copied designs from other traditions, and from linoleum for that matter. I have a nice book called New Designs in Fair Isle Knitting that has designs of octopi, bumblebees, comets, and rocket ships. The Celtic Collection has knots and creatures reminiscent of the Book of Kells.

Traditional Fair Isle patterns showed stars, trees, anchors, and abstract geometric designs. But it is clear that Fair Isle knitters have always been inventive when it comes to their patterns. Would they not, had they thought of it, have used octopi in their designs?

It is the same question that comes up in music. Wouldn’t Bach have used the new stops on the organ if he had had access to them? Wouldn’t Handel have had legato passages if it had occured to him? We have a little friendly controversy about this in our Messiah, between the organist and the director. So we are going to hide tambourines in our robes and, at our first rehearsal with this organist, pull them out for “His Yoke is Easy.” I am looking forward to this.

I am also looking forward to making a Fair Isle project — I’m leaning toward Alice Starmore’s “Erin”, but I have plenty of time to think about it. Because I have a lot of Christmas presents yet to knit. It will probably be January before I can, with a clear conscience, turn to Fair Isle.

This morning we sang a new piece, commissioned for our church from Rebecca Oswald. It is a somewhat sappy piece, though it grew on me during rehearsal. Lucky for me, since we are singing it again tomorrow night. I have sung other works by this composer, and not found them sappy. Did she visit our church and decide that we were sappy? Did the person who commissioned it say, “But hey — make it a little sappy, will you?” Was she given an outline for the lyrics that suggested that a hokey tune was required? Well, we made people cry, so it was clearly a success.

What does it do to performing artists, the fact that one of the main signs of success is making people cry? Could it really be good for our characters?

This afternoon, we have sectionals for Messiah, a non-sappy piece of music if ever there was one. And my solo for the season is “This is the Record of John,” by Orlando Gibbons. So I guess I can sing a little schmalz wihout excessive complaining.

The second DNA scarf is complete. I have not yet bought the yarn for the third, nor have I decided on a pattern for the second scarf’s matching hat, so I have a little work to do before I can continue my DNA activities. I have added a picture of the second scarf here, though perhaps it should not be considered a scarf picture at all. For one thing, the composition, including as it does a portion of a kid wearing a wool scarf with pajamas, suggests surrealism, or at least one of the odder fashion mag styles. For another, the fact that I took it with my new toy digital camera (one of those free prize things, and it does actually identify itself on the computer as “Toy Camera”) gives it a sort of watercolor look which interferes with any actual identification of detail, outlines, etc — I mean, if I hadn’t told you what it was, it could have been anything, right? But I like to play with new electronic toys, however ineptly.

I was working happily on my Thanskgiving table runner, and contemplating a Christmas one, too, when I learned that table runners are the Big Thing in table setting right now. Frankly, I was unaware that there was a Big Thing in table setting. I have trouble with the concept. Table setting seems to me to a small thing, by its very nature.

I learned this interesting fact on TV, on the House and Garden channel, to be precise. I am not sure of the name of the program, but it also had a segment in which a designer told a woman to cover up her books when guests came. This woman had one measly bookcase, and the designer said that it would be assaulting her guests with literature and not fun. She draped a scarf over the front of it to cover the books. Now, I have been aware for some time that decorators don’t think bookshelves are for books (to be exact, since the night my modern bookshelf fell down because I had dared to fill it with books instead of  objets d’art), but the idea that they have to be covered in order not to spoil the fun seemed a little bizarre. Then the host suggested leaving an art book open on a table. Is this a mixed message?

Admittedly, I am not up on fashion. I am in fact indifferent to fashion. I have not made even one poncho and do not intend to, and I have no plans to make a capelet either. You will not find one scrap of eyelash yarn in my knitting basket. And the nuances of various styles of jeans and T-shirts, all of which are known and important to my kids and their friends, are to me a closed book.

But can any of us really say that we are unaffected by fashion? I may think that the discovery of a half-finished table runner in my Hallowe’en decorations started me off on this table runner kick, but could it not be that I have been subconsciously noticing the presence of table runners in magazines and store diplays, and it finally percolated down to my consciousness? I’m felting, after all. And I do not walk around, as some people do, wearing clothing from an earlier era in my life. When I see women in ’80s pussycat bows or the Pre-Raphaelite haristyles we favored in the ’70s, I am reminded of the Amish. The same quaint holding onto a vanished time.

I will contemplate this question as I quilt today.

Are you scared? Putting cobwebs on the messy front garden staved off the time when it had to be cleaned up, but it’s back in the 80s today, and I have flowers blooming, so I don’t think I can put it to bed this weekend. Is it all the weather’s fault, or is that just laziness talking?

The Hallowe’en table runner is hanging around on the piano before being put away till next year.

The Thanksgiving one is in progress. Here it is, wrapped around a pillow so that it appears to be a pillow itself.

And here is a detail:

The house is reasonably clean, the cooking and baking are well underway, errands are all finished. I am going to get my scrapbook up to date so my visitors can see what the family has been up to — if they want.

After that, back to the DNA scarf.