Here's something really exciting: Knit Pro. Of course it is not exciting if you are not a knitter. But if you are -- wow! This application will chart images from your computer for you to knit.

Last week I had found a way cool triangular design which I thought would have been great on Hopkins's sleeve, but it was too complex for me to chart.  Well, Knit Pro charts it for you automatically. It is, as far as I can tell, free to the public, since its makers want to raise awareness for some causes. If you find that I have broken the law by using it, please let me know. I think the opportunities for digital law and rule breaking through sheer ignorance are enormous. Some day, a whole raft of nice matrons will be hauled into court for some digital crime, and all of them will have to bring their kids with them to translate the charges.

Anyway, this wonderful site charted a number of images for me, and it will do words as well. So when we make the T-shirt, we can put slogans and designs on it. This strikes me as fun. I am looking for a less-expensive alternative to Calmer, however. Even the most fun knitted T-shirt shouldn't cost $70. (In fairness, when I said this to the lady at the LYS, she said "A T-shirt never goes out of style," which may be true.) I am thinking that Patons Grace might be the right weight, though it contains no microfiber. Have any of you ever used Grace? It is about half the price of Calmer, and has some very nice colors.

Nona is hosting a knitalong for the T-shirt, to begin April 1st. I will be behind, obviously, since I am determined to complete Hopkins first, but perhaps you will be quicker than I and jump right in. I did the DNA scarf knitalong last year, and found it very helpful to hear and see what other people found out as they knitted theirs.

And, while I am able to put this button in as a picture, I do not know how to put it up here in a way that allows us to click on it and go there. I know it to be possible because other people do it. Pokey? Can you help? I'll send you the yarn. Is that a good bribe?

Here's the flowerpot with its necklace. You cannot see the detail of the shards, but you can see those if you look back at my picture on Easter. The farmers market opens this Saturday, and our frost-free date is next week. I do not have the knack of starting plants indoors, so I buy some plants at the market, and direct-seed the rest. I can hardly wait.

With the advent of warmer weather, many cyberknitters begin to consider tank tops. I do not. But it is true that our woolen sweaters have less appeal. We can still knit things for fall, or for Christmas gifts, or for our houses, but sometimes you want to knit something that can be worn immediately. So here is a T-shirt pattern to consider. Have any of you ever made this? It is intended for cotton/microfiber. This probably helps with the usual cotton problem of flaring at the bottom.

Microfibers are made of acrylic, ployester, nylon, rayon, or a combination. The big deal about microfibers is that they are very thin. That's the micro part. They are twice as thin as silk. Linen is the heaviest fiber, then wool, cotton, silk, and then, half the size of silk fibers, comes the microfiber. Linen, wool, cotton, and silk all have the great advantage of feeling wonderful and behaving well. They have the appeal of history. You can think of the linen of Ancient Egypt, the happy sheep and goats and rabbits cheerfully providing their excess wool (unless you read PETA's views on wool, in which case you have to think of farm animals feeling violated by their haircuts), the pioneers cleaning cotton together after dinner while Grandpa plays the banjo. Or I guess cotton might make you think of slavery and pesticide-dense factory farming. What about silk, then? You can think of the Silk Road, of mysterious Ancient China, of the silkworms feasting on mulberry leaves. Or you could consider that the silkworm is the only domesticated insect, and has now had the ability to fly bred out of it. Not that it matters much. The adult silkworm does not even eat -- it just mates and then dies. Except for the ones in the cocoons used for silk, which are killed while still in their cocoons, since the process of coming out of it would damage the silk.

Does all this make microfibers more appealing? They were developed by the same people who developed Napalm. Sometimes it doesn't do to think too much about the history of daily objects. It's just a T-shirt, after all.

But, knitters, this brings me to a question I would like to ask. To what extent is your knitting influenced by wardrobe planning? In perusing the knitting blogs, and in my own experience, I find that people decide what to knit based on the yumminess of a yarn, the popularity of a pattern, the sale price at Elann or the fun quotient of the stitch. Does anyone ever think "I need a yellow top to round out my Spring wardrobe, so I guess I'll make a yellow Honeymoon Cami"? Or do we all create for the satisfaction of creating and then rely on jeans and khakhis to make it all work out?

Oh -- I did finish the costumes. I am not happy with the way they turned out, but they will have to do. And maybe I have learned my lesson about volunteerism. I try to say yes as often as possible, for good causes, and especially for church, but "as often as possible" doesn't mean "always."

My other frustrating sewing project is this one: 

Yes, it is #1 son's quilt, still in the same condition (freezer paper on black cloth) it was in three weeks ago. I don't feel confident enough about the next step to do something as committing as cutting it. So it is sitting on the organ bench in my living room, waiting. I am working the next two weekends, and have a lot of things to catch up on, so I predict that it will still be waiting in this spot when #1 son's birthday arrives.

I was intending to show you pictures today, but xanga is not in the mood. Maybe later. I was up late last night working on the costumes which are due tomorrow, and will be doing the same thing tonight. This is caused by the fact that I have to take my kid to the dentist today and had to take my other kid to Tulsa yesterday, the fact that -- as the Poster Queen put it -- I don't know the meaning of the word "no," and the fact that I procrastinated.

I am not normally a procrastinator, and this is why. I now have to finish the costumes under conditions of maximum inconvenience, and probably will not do a very good job on them. This is what happens when you put things off. Even things that you should not have agreed to do in the first place. These are the costumes that I was roped into doing for the Presbyterian church. Why, I wondered, weren't any of the parents of the kids wearing the costumes, or indeed any of the people currently attending the church doing these costumes? Well, the Easter Sunday sermon was on the idea that Jesus doesn't ask you to do anything, just to be, and He will come to you in your ordinary life. This encapsulates the message of all recent sermons. This has become a church for people who want a really trouble-free version of Christianity, so why would you expect a high level of volunteerism?

So, rather than showing you Hopkins and the current state of #1 son's quilt and the flowerpot modeling its necklace, I will now head groggily off to work on those costumes.

Last week The Empress asked me whether I thought that the agoraphobia program was helping and I said no, I thought I was just having to fit unpleasant experiences into my life a lot more than before. Now, having driven several hundred miles on the freeway -- some of it in the dark and some of it alone -- I can say for sure that it has helped.

The last time I drove on the freeway -- about seven months ago --was exactly the same trip, so I can compare the two. And thus I can clearly see the first improvement. Back then, I made up reasons for my anxiety, so I worried about getting lost, the car breaking down, being unable to merge, accidentally putting the car into reverse instead of fifth gear -- and more. I have actually -- more than once -- stopped on a freeway shoulder to make sure that all my wheels were firmly attached. This time, knowing in advance that I would experience irrational anxiety, I was able to worry very little about that other stuff. (I should probably mention that I had not driven alone on a freeway in many years. This wouldn't matter to most people but, like many agoraphobes, I can do things on my aversion list much more easily if I have someone with me.)

The program also has you pay close attention to anxiety. I was thus able to notice that, while there are stretches of this road that cause me severe nausea, there are also long stretches that are perfectly comfortable. On the way over, I pointed this out to #2 daughter. "I'm perfectly comfortable here," I would say, and ten minutes later, "I am now feeling very sick." Her inability to see any difference between scary roads and normal roads encouraged my ability to recognize this as an irrational fear, and thus to ignore it. This means that, rather than thinking of this particular trip as five hours of unmitigated suffering, I now can recognize it as a 4.5 hour drive with at most 40 minutes of terror embedded in it. That is a much more manageable prospect.

The agoraphobia book also points out that people put a lot of time, trouble, and expense into getting thrills. White-water rafting, big-game safaris, roller coasters -- all of these exist as opportunities for recreational fear. How lucky am I, to be able to get the same sense of true danger merely by driving through Tulsa! I pointed this out to myself during the really scary part, and  it did give me something to think about.

And by the way, to the black SUV that did a steady 60 miles an hour right in front of me from Tulsa to Chouteau, thus demonstrating clearly that the road was not disappearing ahead and that the law of gravity was not about to give out, I will be forever grateful.

So I got to the top of the sleeve, and found that I was about 1" shy of the needed length. Looking back at my calculations, I noticed a lot of "about" and "roughly," and this is probably why it did not quite work out. It needs to be bit steeper. I was decreasing on every row, which is unusual, but decreasing on every other row as the pattern says was not satisfactory. So I have frogged back to 56 stitches, and will decrease every other row to 25 stitches, at which point I will begin decreasing every row again. We'll see how that works.

I am taking #2 daughter to the next state to meet up with Wind Dancer and the Emo King for the trip back to her school. This involves driving a long distance on the freeway in the dark, and then back on the freeway alone, with added worries about being late to work. I think her visit will have been worth it. Then tomorrow I have another blasted appointment. That should cover this week's requirement for my agoraphobia program.

Happy Easter!

I hope that you have a joyful Easter planned. There are baskets on our table filled with candy, books, and trinkets. We have colored eggs and banana nut bread that we made yesterday for our quick breakfast before the sunrise service. Any minute now I will go drag the kids out of bed. Since it is just us this year, we do not have to gussy up the house or make the meal very fancy, but there has to be a feast. So we will have sunrise service and the potluck there, then the Methodist service, then the grand Easter dinner, and then we will succumb to a surfeit of chocolate and jelly beans and relax the rest of the day.

Yesterday was quite relaxed, as well. We did all remaining errands, played chess, did some holiday preparations, and that was about it. Here is Hopkins's sleeve, conforming to all the measurements my calculations called for. Sleeves are always a bit uncertain, adding suspense as we wait to find out whether the various pieces of the sweater will actually fit together. This is not an interesting picture at all, I must say. More swathes of gray stockinette. But I always like to see people's knitting, so I feel that I should show you mine as well. Whether it is interesting or not. I did the sleeve mostly while talking with #2 daughter, who has to go back to school tomorrow. I think it would be nice if she could just stay here, though my friends who have college students at home assure me that it is better to have them at a distance.

Here is the flowerpot necklace we made. The shards are from a favorite antique plate which my husband broke last year. Better Homes and Gardens suggested wrapping bits of broken pottery with copper wire to make them into pendants, and then stringing them with beads on copper wire. This goes around the neck of a big flowerpot. We also added mismatched earrings and charms and random stuff. And we did not cut ourselves.Breaking the plate further in order to have pieces small enough for the project was the most difficult part -- I took it out to the patio in a paper bag and whacked it with a pestle.

 It suits the flowerpot very well. Last year, I had this pot planted with ivy, violas, and torenia, but this year I might need to go with some brighter stuff. It is still too early to plant anything, but Easter is the guarantee that spring will be along just any time now, so thoughts of planting are no longer unreasonable.

Easter morning always brings up for me memories of dressing the children up warmly and meeting by the river for a true sunrise service. This was when we lived in the country, when the kids were small. We all shivered and watched the sun come up as we sang hymns to a guitar played by a stalwart fellow who was able to keep in tune even though it was so cold. The mist rising off the water added to the sense of atmosphere. The boys want to go to Our Church today -- that is, the Presbyterian one -- and I am very happy that they are going to church, even though the sun will be well up and we will be inside, unable to see it at all. In years past, our church had the sunrise service out in the courtyard. It was cold, admittedly, but it was A Tradition. The Methodists meet on top of Mt. S., at their camp, for sunrise service. All the local Methodist churches do this, so we will be going to the later service there. Some of our local churches are having six different services today, to accomodate everyone, no matter how late they like to sleep.

Well, if I do not go wake people, we won't get there at all. Happy Easter!

This book tells us that one angora goat can produce the wool for two pairs of cashmere socks or half a sweater. It does not specify whether this is per year or what, but it may still be helpful to any spinner who is considering bringing up his or her own cashmere for sock knitting.

The book also has lots of helpful advice about shopping. I have done more shopping -- and more riding on freeways -- in the past week than in the previous year. #2 daughter actually enjoys it, and I am trying to emulate her in this. I do have principled objections to rampant consumerism, but my purchases have all been of the basic food and clothing variety (and #1 son's birthday present), so I guess I am safe from that. We did not make it to the mall, but she will be here for another day and a half, so who knows what might happen?

We did not make it to the International Festival, either. The kids, who have after all spent their entire lives going en masse to various educational festivals, kindly but firmly let it be known that they would prefer to go out for ice cream and then go home and try on their new clothes.

The boys punked out on us, but #2 daughter and I went to the gym and tried out all the forklifts and threshers -- um, I mean Hammer Strength weight machines. I had previously felt that weight training, while of course necessary for maintaining bone density, wasn't really much like exercise. We treated it as the rest period between bouts on the cardio machines. I think we were doing it wrong. Some of those things actually get your heart rate up. I'll probably continue to do circuit training, but I am looking forward to getting proficient with the yellow machines. I am afraid that today we looked kind of girly, scampering around with our 5 and 10 pound weights trying to help each other remember how the things worked.

I had randomly chosen to use 60 pounds with lower-body machines and 30 pounds with upper body machines (we figured out a few of each) back when I first started going to the gym, and had just been doing more and more reps. However, the nice man told me a) that you use different weights for different muscles, and b) you use the amount of weight that allows you to do 10-14 reps and then not to be able to do any more. I pass this along to any of you who might have the same dilemma. The trial-and-error bit added to the girliness of our gym outing today, because we kept going back and forth adding five and ten pounds at a time. But, hey, if we gave those guys something funny to write about at their blogs, it was a good deed.

There was sign over in that section that said, "If you aren't man enough to put it away, don't pick it up." I think there would be a thriving market for signs like this to put in the bathrooms and kitchens of all households containing guys. I suggested this to the ladies on the way up to B-town for the Tennebrae service, and Sewanna responded with a great story about her ex-husband which I am not at liberty to pass along. She also took us, on the way back, to see the appalling statue in the poultry science building.

Now, the Tennebrae service is the most solemn service there is in the entire year, commemorating as it does the crucifixion of Jesus. We sang sad and touching songs and left the church in the dark, in silence. But on the drive back we got caught up in the wild tales of these two funny ladies again. We became so engrossed in our conversations that we missed the exit and had to go back through town. Sewanna said, "Since we went the wrong way, we will be passing right by the poultry science building!" She had told us about the statue, and we all agreed that this would be a splendid opportunity to view it.

This work of art depicts a family of chickens. (In case any city dwellers are reading this, I will mention that chickens do not actually live in nuclear family groups in nature.) The central piece is a tree stump with an axe thrust into it. The rooster is perched on the stump, right by the axe, while his little family disports itself on the ground around the stump. You cannot look at this piece without thinking of the axe's being used to chop off the chickens' heads. Since someone had added a couple of bright plastic Easter eggs to the tableau, it was particularly macabre. Maybe the poultry scientists consider it a happy contrast to the modern methods of killing chickens, romanticising their death just as it does their family life. I do not know. There were no poultry scientists there, since it was nighttime. The four of us stood at the plate glass windows admiring the statue for quite a while, though.

Today we have further errands, housework, and baking, but no singing. #2 daughter and I have a plan to make a project I saw in Better Homes and Gardens while at the gym: a necklace for a large flower pot. #2 son is off on another sleepover, but we may be able to rope #1 son in for some egg-coloring.

Here is the start of Hopkins's first sleeve, with the colorwork completed. It is asymmetrical, vaguely triangular, and subtle, as intended, but I am now wondering whether maybe a vertical band all the way up the sleeve might be better. I draped the body over a chair and set the sleeve on it. I'm squinting at it across the room (Hopkins looks better at a distance) trying to imagine it both ways in order to decide. Hmm.

The Maundy Thursday service was fun. The director asked #2 daughter to do a solo on Sunday. While we are a little alarmed that there was room for a solo on Easter Sunday with three days' notice (usually, choirs begin the Easter music right after Christmas), I'm sure she will do a good job. The director claimed that I had bragged about her, but you know that I would never brag about my kid

Otherwise, we are definitely in Spring Break territory. We went to the gym yesterday and worked out for about 18 minutes ("We'll get the rest of our cardio walking around the shops," I said inaccurately), then got the nice guy at the desk to show us how to use all the machines. Hitherto, we have only been using the ones we could guess how to use -- half a dozen. Most of the others look to me like farm equipment. We watched admiringly as the nice guy twisted himself into intimate contact with the various machines. Mostly, the way they work is pretty counter-intuitive. We would never have guessed them. There were a couple he told us were just for men. We did not ask further. He also gave us some good hints for how to determine how much weight to use and things like that. So we spent the normal amount of time at the gym -- we just spent it standing around.

Then we went shopping. I hate shopping. We had intended to visit three shopping centers,but only managed one. However, I went into three stores and conducted three transactions, so I feel reasonably proud of myself. #2 daughter actually likes shopping. I bought her a couple of little things that she admired. Today I must go clothes shopping with the boys. Into every life a little rain must come. We sat down to dinner together, enjoying chicken parmesan with whole-grain pasta and steamed carrots and multi-grain bread, plus #2 son's requested possum pie. Then all the kids played video games -- Final Fantasy 10 and NBA Street 3. And I read a bunch of knitting blogs. So our day -- apart from the music -- was a perfect example of modern American life: watch other people be active, buy things, eat things, and look at screens.  

Today is Good Friday. I am up making Hot Cross Buns. If you click on the words, you will find a good traditional recipe. I use whole grains, but my recipe is otherwise very similar. If you are having a misty morning, as we are, then spending a couple of hours making Hot Cross Buns will be a nice, cozy way to start the day. When they are hot out of the oven, I will try to roust everyone out of bed with the smell of fresh bread, and get them to come to the gym and actually use all those machines. Tonight we are riding up to the next county for the Tennebrae service, again with the kind and funny ladies. In between, I hope to persuade the family to go to the International Festival being held in the next town, but I have after all promised to go to the mall with them, so I guess we'll find out just how persuasive I am.

#2 daughter is home for Easter, having finished her choir tour. Now, she had been on a whirlwind tour, doing one or two concerts a day for five days, and then driving through a couple of states to get home. Naturally, as soon as we grabbed some spinach and mushroom pizza and melon, we headed right off for -- choir practice.

It was fun. Even for #2 daughter. I told her she had to approach the experience with an open mind, not thinking of it as a choir. This is just a sing-around-the-campfire that happens to sing Robert Shaw and Gregorian chants.

We drove up with a couple of raucous older ladies. They told us wild stories and sang us bawdy songs and expressed a hope that the director at the church we were going to would relax. He just isn't as relaxed as our choir director, they complained, and that is certainly true. In fact, they are practically a choir. We arrived as they were polishing the Hallelujah chorus, and most of us sat in the pews and sang along. Their choir would not be troubled by that, because they had two violins and a tuba and a trumpet and an electronic organ (which later played accordion for us) and were also heavily miked. The whole experience was way too loud, but fun nonetheless.

And now I have a four-day weekend to enjoy with my family. Tonight and tomorrow night we are singing, Friday there is an international festival, Saturday there is a kite festival, Sunday we are singing at two different churches and celebrating Easter. My parents, who usually join us for Easter dinner, are in Seattle at a conference, so it will just be our little nuclear family, short the married daughter. I expect I'll get some knitting in at some point.

There are no nice people in this book so far. There are self-centered, whiny fashionistas, self-centered whiny goths, tormented police officers, and madmen. If it doesn't improve, I'll quit reading it before the end. That'll teach it.

The boys are out at sleepovers, so my husband and I took the opportunity to enjoy some Thai karaoke. There are two elements to the videos for each song. First, there is a middle-aged woman in a garden, singing and dancing. Sometimes she has a couple of friends with her. They are all smiling cheerily, dressed in traditional clothing except with very short skirts. They have lots of changes of outfit; in each song they are swathed in new rectangles of silk, with lots of very creative jewelry. They dance in the traditional fashion, keeping their feet very close together and turning their bodies from side to side while making hand motions that are supposed to remind us of flowers. And they are surrounded by flowers.

Interspersed with these are segments showing miserable young women in Western clothes. They are staring off into the distance. Sometimes they appear to be looking at young men, who may or may not be enjoying themselves, but they are just as often looking at flowers, letters, or TV sets. Without exception, the guys look like chemical engineering majors or computer programmers.

I don't understand Thai at all, so I just caught a word here and there -- mostly about tears or disappointment. My husband doesn't like giving continual translations. I asked him about one song, and he said "He doesn't know what he will choose." It can be hard to decide between chemical engineering and computer programming.

So are these older women goddesses of the harvest, laughing about the little trials of mortals? Happy moms, chuckling over the fact that youth is not all it's cracked up to be, and encouraging those girls to go outside and get some fresh air? Or are they telling sad stories about the consequences of  wearing Western clothes?

LikeWowMom surmised that Hopkins must be almost finished. I went back to see how long Siv's sleeves had taken, and found that it was a span of two weeks. Hopkins has a little colorwork and Siv had cables, so that is probably a pretty good estimate. I may get to wear Hopkins before it actually gets too hot. You may notice that there are no floats on the back of this sleeve. That is because I weave the stitches instead of stranding. I hold the non-working yarn in my left hand, keeping it taut, and the working yarn in my right hand. Then I knit (or purl, as the case may be) to the left of the non-working yarn on one stitch and to the right on the next. No floats.

Pokey, Wind Dancer, and the Emo King are arriving today -- but I do not know when. I have choir practice tonight. We are singing with a church in the next county, and going up there to practice. There is a van leaving from the church 15 minutes after I get off work. If I drive directly there from work, I can go with them. So, if the young people are not arriving until after dinner, that is of course what I would want to do. If they are coming early in the day, then I can come home at lunch break and greet them, and make arrangements then for their meal. But if they will be arriving for dinner, then I must skip practice and go home and cook instead. Or I can leave the whole thing to my husband. He is quite a good cook, and he gets home from work a lot earlier than I do. A little exotic food might be just the thing after all those weeks of dorm food. Maybe a trip to the grocery is in order... And, yes, of course my first thought is about feeding them. For guests over 25, your first thought is about entertaining them, but under 25, the main thing is feeding them.