So here's the bathmat. At the absolute end of the first skein, I had not quite completed two repeats of the pattern. This tells us that here, at the end of the third repeat, I should finish it with the edging. Common sense tells us that I will not be able to complete the fourth repeat, which the pattern calls for --even though the pattern specified two skeins of the yarn. All thoughts about how it might be possible to alter the second half unnoticeably to save yarn, or miraculously to make the second skein do more than the first did, should be rigorously ignored. 

So the decision is this: give in and use the last bit of skein two to do the edging, or stupidly continue the pattern as written, knowing that there won't be enough yarn and I will have to frog it?

Obviously, I am going to choose the stupid alternative. #2 daughter and a couple of boys are coming down to visit today, so I will have plenty of time to knit and then to pull it all out, while I talk with them. If I don't do that -- if I just go ahead and finish it -- then I will always wonder whether maybe it would have worked out. This way I will know for sure.

I also have the rest of the cutting of the quilt pattern to do. Perhaps the X-acto knife will appeal to some of the youths, and I can get some help with that. If I behave as though it is really fun, after the manner of Tom Sawyer, it could happen. Maybe.

It has been a long time since I posted any images of knitting propaganda, so here's one. I like the entire genre, although this one is a little threatening-looking. Possibly not just because of the gun-wielding soldier, but also because I don't know what the word "dones" means, and yet we are being exhorted to do it. Maybe.

Yesterday was my birthday, and I had cards and e-cards and calls and both breakfast and dinner made for me, and even a cake. I was very touched.

Ah. Apparently "dones" means "women." And "treballeu" is knitting, as in the poster at this link: http://www.bolerium.com/cgi-bin/bol48/51287.html?id=FXfQK4R5 which tells us, I think, to knit for the front, because the nights are cold. babelfish does not know this word, so I am guessing. No wonder I have not previously posted this bit of knitting propaganda. The truth is, I have no idea what it is advocating, and it is probably quite irresponsible of me to put it up here. Maybe it says "He may have a gun, but you have pointy sticks!"

http://www.xanga.com/item.aspx?user=sighkey&tab=weblogs&uid=214588004

Sighkey posted her walk to work. There's the link.

I mentioned my phobia in passing yesterday, but then it came back to my mind during the day. We talked about it at work -- The Poster Queen has a little claustrophobia, The Empress is a bit acrophobic, and several customers chimed in with their own experiences of these two phobias. But some people have no phobias -- like Chanthaboune. I IMed her pictures of terrifyingly flat open places for quite a while last night and she could only make laughing emoticons about it. I offer you a really scary one, on the left. Are you terrified yet? Probably not. Maybe if there were some really spooky music along with it?

First, for people who have never had a phobic reaction, let me tell you what it is like. The only situation in which I have had it (apart from childhood examples which I don't actually remember) is on a particular kind of road. There are roads -- mostly freeway ramps -- which seem to have no sides at all. There are no vertical elements in view. Now, imagine that you are driving along and all of a sudden, the road turns upside down.You are driving upside down, with your wheels on the ceiling. The passenger in your car, seeing that you are alarmed, explains that this is a new kind of road, using magnets or something, and that you are perfectly safe. Imagine that you believe this, and know intellectually that you will not fall.

I think that, on a visceral level, you would still expect to fall, and you would be very frightened. This is how that kind of road feels to me.

I say "all of a sudden" because I only have this experience all of a sudden. After all, if I knew ahead of time that one of those roads was coming up, I wouldn't go there. There is a nearby town which I used to visit often -- I actually taught at their college for a semester -- which I will never again drive to, because they built several of those ramps. And it is roads not because I am scared of roads, but because you don't find yourself in open places all of a sudden. By their very nature, open fields do not sneak up on you. But those roads do.

I think that, if I had never happened upon one of those roads, I would not have known that I had a phobia. All the usual little twinges of this phobia could be thought of as preferences. I don't like freeways, I prefer hilly places to flat ones, I don't care for open floor plans. You might have a little phobia yourself without knowing it. Claustrophobia is, I think, so common in the U.S. that it seems normal. When we set up furniture in the store, we watch out for things that might make claustrophobia kick in, and I think that is common practice. If you were a little claustrophobic, you might not even realize it until you had to have an MRI or something. Acrophobia, too, is common enough that we usually coddle it.

My phobia is agoraphobia, an unreasonable fear of open or public places. When you read about it, it is usually presented as a kind of social anxiety, from which I do not suffer (I don't think). For me, it is about space. Land clear to the horizon makes me edgy. (It is perhaps odd that water doesn't have this effect for me. Sea to the horizon is fine. This is because it is, for the part of my brain that has the phobia, a vertical sort of space to move around in, and not a surface.) It is a fear of falling, really. I remember driving by flat fields and seeing cows in them and feeling that there was really no reason that they didn't fly off the earth. My understanding that gravity does not rely on the presence of vertical elements in the scene doesn't help at all.

But it is good to know your phobias. Then you can coddle them. For example, the view from my back yard is a field. Not a terrifying field, because it has some trees in it. I don't feel frightened when I go outside. But neither do I feel at ease. If I sit out there for 15 minutes, I feel antsy and go back inside. I told myself that it was because I had work to do, or it was too hot or too cold or something. When I realized that it was my phobia, I was able to plan my garden and patio furniture to fix the problem. The view from my dining room window is of this field. So I grew roses under the window. Now, a fully honest explanation of my state of mind would say that, since the roses are there to ensure that my house does not fly off like Dorothy's, I can enjoy the view of the field. That sounds daft. Enjoying the roses under the window is perfectly normal, though. And much better than just avoiding that side of the house because it makes me feel vaguely nervous for some reason.

When we discussed it at work, however, we considered whether phobias might get worse over time. Especially if we coddle them. I already avoid freeways. It could happen that I would reach the point of not driving anywhere unfamiliar, for fear of encountering one of those roads. And I sure wouldn't go to Kansas (Scarf Boy has also recommended that I avoid western Nebraska). Some of the people who joined in the discussion yesterday at work had little explanations for their phobias that made them seem logical. When we do that, or when we avoid things that make us feel a little claustrophobic or acrophobic -- or agoraphobic -- then are we setting ourselves up for worse cases of it later? In fact, for agoraphobia at least, the avoidance of possibly scary places is part of the description of the problem. That is, medical folks don't necessarily think that being scared on certain roads is the trouble; rather, it is being unable to drive to places because of those roads. Who knows? I might really enjoy western Nebraska.

Leonidas recently showed us his drive to work. Dodsonj also said "You show me yours, I'll show you mine." So I am showing you my drive to work.

Leonidas lives in the Industrial North. I, having grown up in the Urban West, have lived all my adult life in the Rural South, and have never been to the Industrial North at all, so I found it very interesting. #2 son has warned me, however, not to show you any street signs or recognizable landmarks, just in case. "It's a question of privacy," he said sententiously. And of course he is right. He knows a lot of xangans. If they ever found out that he was the subject of cute stories on the internet, he would never hear the end of it. Herewith, then, my entirely incognito drive to work.

This is the corner of the road I live on.

 

 

Here is the first road that I drive on after turning that corner.

 

 

Here is the next road.

 

 

Here I am approaching the intersection. I don't turn again until I turn into the driveway at work.

 

 

And here is my walk to work. I go the other direction from when I drive, because when I get to the end of the road, I will walk through the gap in my neighbor's fence.

 

There's the gap. This is a kind neighbor, who allows all the neighborhood kids and walkers to take this shortcut.

 

 

And yes, it is a shortcut through a cemetery. All the neighborhood kids can get to one another's houses without crossing a road or walking on a busy street, because all the roads end up here. They radiate out from it, as from a hub.

It is quite a pleasant cemetery, as long as you are not creeped out by cemeteries in general.

 

Here I return to the road, and the rest of my walk is the same as my drive.

 

 

Except that you notice different things when walking than when driving. I really love these frogs. I think there used to be lions there, but these folks have a sense of humor and changed them.

 And when walking, I definitely notice when I get to the top of the hill, here, and start back down again. I live in a very hilly place, and all roads go up and down. This is important for me because I suffer from a slight case of agoraphobia (the opposite of claustrophobia). In some people, this is a debilitating condition that causes them to be unable to leave their homes, but for me it is just a nervousness in flat, open places. My children know that there are some roads I can't drive on without experiencing panic, and I guess that if I had been born in Kansas or someplace like that, I would have been a very neurotic person, but fortunately I escaped that fate.

So, what do you say? Will you show us your walk or drive to work or school?

Following yesterday's discovery of competitive speed knitting, I read on one of the knitting blogs that Wendy of Wendy Knits! has been publicly castigated for knitting slowly -- and for knitting something too easy for her. Wendy is one of the most popular knitting bloggers, and is always being lambasted for something. In this case, I haven't read the original post about her, but in the past I have followed some of them up, so I can vouch for the fact that it is not her imagination. She seems to be an ordinary woman who knits nice sweaters and hangs out with her cat. She doesn't write about sex, religion, or pirates. I don't know how she manages to inspire such vituperation.

Her response was that it takes 4 to 6 weeks to knit a sweater. She's right. And that is 4 to 6 weeks of actual knitting time, not counting dithering over what colors to use, pulling it out and starting again, or quitting in the middle to make a bathmat. Oh, you can make a toddler's sweater in worsted weight in a weekend if you have nothing else on your to-do list, but your average adult sweater, fitted in around work and classes and rehearsals, will take six weeks. So you could -- if you just knitted sweaters and are not a speed knitter -- make about nine sweaters a year. I usually make two. I knit lots of other things besides sweaters, and do a lot of other things besides knitting, but at least in theory, I could make nine sweaters a year. Ten, if some were simple.

Are you finding this a startling thought? After knitting for ten years, you could have made nearly a hundred sweaters. You could clothe your entire block, make all the patterns in your average knitting book several times, or be an astoundingly well-dressed person (if perhaps a little predictable in your outfits).

I'm not saying that we should do this, just that we could.

The Wall Street Journal reported yesterday on the new sport (?) of competitive speed knitting. Not really that new, apparently, since there are already world record holders and a challenger. Here's a link to a story about the 2004 winner: http://www.dailytimes.com.pk/default.asp?page=story_11-10-2004_pg9_5.

The world record is 255 stitches in 3 minutes. Hazel Tindall of the Shetland Islands is the current record-holder, succeeding a woman from Yorkshire. The challenger is a Dutch woman who seems from the Journal's reporting to have a mad desire to break the record. The Brits were gently skeptical of the possibility of a non-Brit being able to get the title, though Tindall did call her with some kindly tips on talcum powder.

My casual check of my knitting speed (knitting normally while watching my computer clock) revealed that I can't get across one 79-stitch row of the bathmat in 3 minutes. I should have done it on Hopkins, which is just stockinette, and slides across the needles better, being wool. Then, oh then, I could have been a contender!

Not really. I am not a fast knitter, and have no desire to be. But the experiment showed me that 255 stitches in three minutes is really fast. Tindall claims that this kind of speed is normal in the Shetlands, where of course they do use a knitting belt. For a professional knitter, speed would clearly be an economic advantage. For us amateurs, it would probably threaten the meditative nature of the process. And how many books does Tindall get read while she knits?