It is the day of our big Fair at work. This is the single busiest day of the year, and I am going in a couple of hours early. I have not yet seen my car, which #2 daughter borrowed last night. She assured me that she would clean it up, which alarmed me a little, since I had not known she would be doing anything in it which would require clean-up. Perhaps seeing this on my face, she quickly assured me that no one had thrown up in it. This, as parents will immediately know, did not make me feel better.

Last night on NPR, I heard a reporter who was obviously an American, but who was working from Edinburgh and had previously been working in Jerusalem. My drive home is too short for me to have the full story -- I did not catch his name, and I only heard one remark from him. But it was a startling one, to me. He was saying that American listeners might be surprised to know that the people of Great Britain generally felt that the war in Iraq was not really about terrorism, and that U.S. actions since the attack on the World Trade Center had made the world a more dangerous place. This was roughly equivalent, I thought, to saying that American listeners might be surprised to know that it was widely believed that the earth moved around the sun.

The boys' room continues to occupy my attention, if not my time. I am mostly being forbidden to do things. I have been permitted to use natural canvas and hemp twine. I am not permitted to stencil the canvas. I am showing you the example I prepared, so you can see how cool it is. But #1 son said kindly and firmly, "I'm not saying it's not cool. I'm saying I don't want it in my room." Framed National Geographic maps have also been forbidden. Sigh. I'm waiting for him to be away for a while. Then I will sneak back in and do stuff. He has, however, announced that anything girly or childish will be torn down immediately. I have to admit that I am not good at discerning the girly or childish.

I am going to finish the stenciling. We are using old speakers for the boys' nightstands. We pulled off the fronts, and will staple canvas over the panels. It will look good with plain canvas, but I thought it would look excellent with stencilled panels. Not enough like a car interior, apparently. But it will make someone a nice tote bag.

The technique is very easy, and no one will ever guess how you did it. Here is another example. The one on the right is a cushion, so it would not lie flat for its portrait. No matter.

You use crayons. Ordinary crayons. Then iron them, with a piece of plain paper between the iron and the fabric, and it will be permanent. If you want soft colors like the cushion, use petroleum crayons like Crayola. Then you can embroider around the edges of the design, as I did. Soy crayons like Prang will give you the saturated colors of the canvas stencil. The stencil is from a Dover book. The color will appear to be part of the fabric, not a surface decoration. You will be amazed.

Instead of going to the gym yesterday, #2 daughter and I took advantage of the boys' absence to start redoing their room. If you spend an hour carrying furniture to and fro, it feels a lot like exercise.

We took down the big, heavy, antique wooden bed and carted it out to the garage. It didn't want to go. The springs pinched us, the slats punched us, and the handmade mattress did a sort of civil disobedience slump and made itself nearly impossible to carry. However, we persevered.

Now the boys have smaller beds, nightstands, and a computer desk with computer. They can walk around. Before, there was one big bed, one small one, and an assortment of amps. #1 son has agreed that the new arrangement is an improvement.

Dr. Drew said that a guy's room should be reminiscent of the inside of a car, and the boys warned me that any discernible theme would be unacceptable, so we went with neutrals relieved by dark blue. Gray laminate plays a large part in the look, and I have gray laminte shelves to put up, too (#2 daughter insists that we have Daddy do it, on the spurious grounds that he will do it right). The only decorative items are a neon "OPEN" sign and a small but functional traffic light.

Next chance we get, we will do things with fabrics.

#2 daughter finished knitting the Carried Away bag from Simple Knits for Sophisticated Living. Here it is before felting, with a cat for size comparison. She made it on size 8 needles with Lamb's Pride worsted wool -- one of the two yarns recommended in the pattern.

And here it is felted, with the same cat for size comparison. She put it through the washer with hot water, and then made it spend a while in the dryer. We then pummeled it a bit and put a DVD into it to remind it that it was supposed to be a nice rectangle and not a skinny little tube. It didn't end up being the shape she expected, but I think it will be a nice bag -- a variety of shapes is good in a bag wardrobe. It has pencils at the strap openings, to encourage them to remember to be openings while it dries. She still has the straps to do.

Once again, this book shows itself to be inaccurate or perhaps capricious. The bag was knitted to the dimensions specified in the pattern, with the specified yarn, and felted to a completely different shape from the pictured examples. #2 daughter checked frequently during the felting, but there was no point at which the bag reached the intended shape. I notice that the pattern claims that a 16" x 18" bag will felt to 12" by 9". I cannot help but wonder whether they meant to make the bag 18" by 16" instead. We have, between us, made a lot of things from this book, and they are mostly rectangles, so you can often adjust for its little foibles,  but really you just can't trust it. Still, the fact that we continue to make projects from this book even after so much untrustworthy behavior says that there is a lot of good stuff in it.

Fuzzy Mabel is having a free shipping offer for U.S. customers in July and August. So if you need yarn that your local LYS does not carry, this is your chance to avoid the heartbreak of S&H.

#2 son is safely ensconced at the university. He caught up with old friends, including the staff, and met his roommate, who did not actually speak to him while we were there. However, #2 son has excellent social skills, and we are confident that they will get along. In fact, since #2 son went last year, it will be an advantage for the new roomie if he is shy. It may be that he is not shy, though, but was merely inhibited by the presence of adults.

I don't generally mention names, but the roomie has such a cool and unusual one, I have to: Jamarcus. He is from a town a bit south of us. The kids at the institute are from all over the state. We are a small state, but fairly diverse. We have six very distinct geographic regions, so the economic bases of the communities, the weather, the ethnic makeup, and even to some extent the history are rather different. The town we live in is one of the largest in the state, though it is still a small town. The university is our largest employer. We have a large international population, by our state's standards, and the second largest Asian-American population in our state, but nonetheless, 88% of our people are European-American.  10% of our families qualify as poor, and 9% are in single-parent households. #2 son's best friend from last year, a kid he has kept up with all year, lives in the next county over but one. In that hilly county, there are still many people who do not have running water. Few roads are paved. Logging is the major industry, and it is not much of an industry. 98% of the residents are European-American. 21% of families live below the poverty level, and 7% are single parent families. Jamarcus's town is in the Delta. It is a bit smaller than ours, and also has a university. Agriculture and weapons manufacture are the major industries. 70% of the people are African-American. 25% live in poverty, and 38% are single-parent families. It is good, I think, for these kids to have the chance to meet people from different parts of the state. The thing they all have in common is academic excellence.

We have all seen the movies where a group of kids from different backgrounds are thrown together and learn from their differences. I don't think this is going to be a dramatic experience, since the differences are not that big -- alluvial plain versus pine forest is not the stuff of drama. Although I am sure that, had Molly Ringwald been included in the group, they could have come up with some.

Following church and lunch and the trip to the campus, and preceding a tussle with the rose bushes and a nice salad nicoise, I began a second bawk. I intended to use the first pattern I had found, which actually uses the name "bawk." It seemed more masculine and tailored than the one I ended up making first, and I will need four or five masculine bawks. But within just a few rounds I could tell that the ribbing of the Rebecca home pattern was a huge improvement over the plain stockinette. This is an item that really needs to be stretchy and clingy. So I am going to make bawk #2 with the more plain design of the online pattern, but I am adding ribbing.

I am still contemplating what to make next. Prayer Shawls and bawks will be a regular feature of my knitting for the foreseeable future, and it is too hot to begin my planned sweater, so I need something new. I have been scoping out the knitting blogs and looking through knitting books, enjoying the process. A shawl? The bed jacket from Rebecca home? It is charming, but who would actually wear a bed jacket? If you had a bed jacket, would you also automatically get a box of chocolates and a romance novel -- or possibly a bad cold?

The quilt is on hold because my sewing machine has the collywobbles. My husband will doubtless be able to fix it, because he is very like McGyvor, but he has been busy repairing the shopping carts from the store. He also has several household appliances on his list, and a couple of things with his car. His repairing stuff is sort of like my knitting stuff. And the other quilt? #1 son's quilt? We will not speak of it.

Yesterday's sidewalk sale turned out much as The Poster Queen and I had expected. However, I did rather enjoy sitting outside knitting for six hours.

I made one of these sets (unblocked, here). This is the ideal knitting project for outdoor summer knitting. At a picnic or concert or something, when the termperature is in the 90s, a little bit of cotton is a pleasant thing to work on. The only disadvantage is that when someone asks you what you're making, you have to go through a long "well, it's this Japanese scrubbie thing..." explanation. It is actually called a "tawashi," I am told, so you could just firmly say, "It's a tawashi." How you respond to the inevitable "huh?" is another question. I was resolved to say "a scarf" the next time someone asked me, when a woman came clear around the tables to look at it and said "I saw those online and I wondered how it would work." I was of course pleased that I had not fobbed her off with the scarf story.

Another thing I learned when I found the proper name of this item is that in Asia they are often made with a special anti-bacterial yarn. This strikes me as excessive. However, I also found a pattern for a special desk duster, which looks like a weird little animal, also designed to be made with anti-bacterial yarn. Perhaps in very crowded places this would be a necessity. Perhaps it is just that rampant cuteness. In any case, if you can read Japanese, you can find patterns for special tawashis for your aquarium, car, and indeed everything else you own or might care to own.

I also added a tawashi to the bath ensemble from the book Simple Knits for Sophisticated Living. I began with the bath mat in  February and am just now getting around to finishing the set. I have enjoyed working with Morocco, though I would not care for a sweater made of it. For household goods, though, it is quite wonderful. You can click on the picture for a better view.

Today we are taking #2 son to camp. "Summer Institute," really, a pre-college program at the local university for junior and senior high kids. His session is about architecture. He did physics last year and had a great time. He will be living on campus for three weeks. He is excited, and I am excited for him, though of course it is also hard to say goodbye to your kid.

I like to make a "See You Later Alligator" cake to say goodbye to people. Family Fun magazine had a cooler-looking one than the one I have made before, so I set out after work to make it. You can see the cake and directions for it right here. Mine did not look much like the picture, I'm afraid. It was more of a "See You Later, Swamp Thing" kind of cake.

We ate it anyway, and played gin rummy. The kids are not being allowed to take electronic games to the institute this year, so it seemed to me that #2 son needed to have the rules to gin rummy fresh in his mind. And a pack of cards in his suitcase, too.

It happened that the day I went over to the university to finish paying for the institute was also the day of the London bombings. I have been feeling a bit ill and unsettled ever since. I think it is the combination of the horror of that action and the fact that I have to say goodbye to my youngest for three weeks.

We don't yet know who exactly is to blame for the bombings, of course, and I think the use of "the terrorists" as a term that seems to refer to a single coordinated group is inaccurate. I think, in fact, that it is intended (by our government, not by all the rest of the folks who have picked it up) to give credence to the idea that we are at war with some clearly defined set of people. Really, "terrorists" is like "criminals." It is not a group that you can work with in some way. There is no way that you can ensure that people who are determined to do something evil will not be able to do it.

However, to the extent that one can talk about the goals of terrorists, it is surely to terrify people and get their attention. We have reached the point where daily death tolls in the Middle East no longer terrify us as they should. Britain feels different. This troubled me at first, because it seemed as though we are saying that some human lives are of more value than others. But The Empress pointed out that we cannot live with the full horror of all the evil in the world at all times. We would go mad if we tried to. In sheer self-defense, we filter things and unconsciously control our emotional reactions to it. I remember seeing this more directly when I worked in refugee resettlement. We could not continue to be distraught over every person we worked with -- not if we wanted to be helpful to them.

But then something happens that is different from the usual. We are accustomed to daily death tolls from terrorist crimes -- but not in Britain. It shocks us into a normal human reaction. Just as we were devastated by the shootings at Columbine, when we are inured to the shootings of children every day in our troubled cities. We cannot tolerate thinking every day of the suffering of the world, but events such as these get past the barriers we have set up. We cannot avoid reacting to them.

In some cases, the normal human reaction is fear, suspicion, and pointless scurrying about. This, I think, is what the bombers want. When they see that we have armed guards on our subways in the U.S., they must feel very satisfied. But the normal human reaction is also grief, and the sense of helplessness in the face of human suffering that is so difficult for us to accept.

I didn't intend to write about London. I don't write about political things, in general. There are plenty of xangas writing about London, and some of them have done so in an informative and useful way (Leonidas, for one). But I will leave the post as it is.

#2 daughter and I both had yesterday afternoon off, so we went out to lunch. We talked about boys. Oh, yes, we also talked about London, and music and school and stuff like that, but we particularly talked about boys. The Princess, The Empress, and The Poster Queen have all been giving #2 daughter excellent boy advice in absentia, so I passed it all on. Along with some of my own.

It has been many years since The Empress and The Poster Queen and I engaged in recreational romance, so we like to give The Princess and #2 daughter advice. The Princess is using an online dating service, so she particularly needs plenty of good advice from older women. Plus, she is a little older than #2 daughter, so she can join in on both sides. Since we are not emotionally involved with any of it, we can enjoy it all much more than an actual participant. The girls may think that we are buttinskies (as my mother used to say), but really this is harmless fun. Like reality shows without the mean-spiritedness.  If you need any good advice for your own romantic recreations, just ask us. We are so good at it, you wouldn't believe.

Then, to further my researches on triangular shawls, I headed over to the local book store to check out the knitting mags and books. Let's get rid of the suspense immediately: no luck at all. Spinner Mom suggested a book, but I did not find it there -- I can probably order it at the store where I work, though, so I will check it out at amazon.

I did get to browse through a lot of books and magazines, though. I have noticed that a lot of experienced knitters can get very snide over the new knitlit. I think I understand why.

Consider the fact that I own 38 knitting books. I have given my daughter a couple of the new ones, but mine are Alice Starmore, Debbie Bliss, Elizabeth Zimmerman, Elsabeth Lavold, Mary Thomas, Barbara Walker -- the classics. So I have several hundred classic knitting patterns on my shelf. It follows as the night the day that most classic-style knitting patterns will be similar to what I already own, doesn't it?

And since I own several dozen classic knitting  books, I must like those classic styles. So it is probably no surprise that I find the edgy new patterns a trifle bizarre. 

Since the largest audience for new knitting books right now is the beginning knitter who wants easy patterns, it is natural that most of the new knitting patterns will be simple things made of rectangles. However gorgeously they may be photographed, I am not likely to find those exciting, am I? At the very most, I'll think -- "Ah, that's a nice thing to do with a rectangle. I'll try that out" and turn the page.

So I do not plan to say any snide things. But I also am not going to recommend any of those books or magazines. I did enjoy looking at them, though. Then #2 son and #2 daughter arrived and we went to the music section so she could search for this Finnish CD. The person helping us was the one helpful guy in the place. I always want to give him a tip or a cookie or something, just for being a knowledgable and helpful person in a store which specializes in unhelpfulness and ignorance.

They did not have the Finnish musician. Nor was there even one thing about complex triangular lace shawls. We went home.

#2 son packed for his stay at the university. #1 son came in from his baseball game and remarked that baseball was really hard work. #2 daughter and I knitted. We measured everyone and made nachos with plenty of peppers and tomatoes and three-grain tortilla chips, and watched TV. It was the laziest possible evening.

I did make some progress on the bath ensembles. I am using a yarn called Morocco, a heavy weight linen and cotton blend. It has a wonderful crunchy texture and knits up very well, especially in texture stitches.

When we were on vacation this year I had an opportunity to see some spun flax, and it quite amazed me. I love linen, and am fortunate enough to have linen pillow cases -- truly the very height of luxury. But I had no idea that the stuff looks like hair -- like human hair, really -- when it is first spun.

The colors here are moon blue and raisin.

I'm off to work now. Enjoy your weekend.

Eddie Izzard is very funny. One of the things that I particularly like about him, though, is that when I watch his shows I have the feeling that he had the same sort of upbringing and education that I did. Izzard is a British, dyslexic, transvestite stand-up comedian who went to school near a place called Beachy Head, so I assume that this sense of kinship is a talent of his rather than an amazing coincidence.

What ho! The completed bawk -- or rather, a slice of it. If you plan to make one (this is #19 from Rebecca home #7), you might like to know that in addition to a lack of clarity about the neck and shoulders, this pattern is also written in metric measurements. ("It was 300 feet tall," says Eddie Izzard. "Oh, now we're metric. So it was 14 cubic litres tall.") I have a clear mental image of one centimeter, and can do a good handy estimate of any number of inches up to a foot, but 14 centimeters is for me a distance that occurs only on metric measuring tools. So I just continued this thing until I ran out of yarn, and it looks about right. So one skein of Wool-Ease will make you one bawk pretty exactly.

 I intend to make another half-dozen of these over the next six months, but at the moment, I am freed up to consider a new knitting project. Oh, yes, I still have a few WIPs. However, one of them is the prayer shawl, and it is flat too hot to be knitting something that sits in your lap while you work on it. The bath ensembles are small projects which will be finished soon. So I can certainly think about a new project, and what I am thinking about is -- a shawl.

One reason that I am thinking about shawls is peer pressure. Or whatever you call that feeling you get after seeing something a lot of times that maybe you want one, too. Advertisers rely on this feeling heavily. But many knitting bloggers are having a Summer of Lace, making lovely lacy shawls and showing their pictures hither and yon. I've been doing texture and color stitches for a while now, and haven't done any lace. It seems like time I got around to some.

Part of it is making the Prayer Shawls. They are heavy, cozy objects, but they still bring to mind the whole idea of shawls.

And then Sighkey mentioned possum fur yarn and I went and looked at some online and found laceweight fur/wool/silk yarn being shown in the form of a shawl. The lightness and warmth of the stuff was being marveled over in the description, so I am left with the thought of a light, warm shawl for fall evenings.

Now, here I must explain some terminology. There are scarves, stoles, and shawls. A scarf is a long thin rectangle, usually worn around the neck. A stole is a larger rectangle, usually worn around the shoulders. For both of these objects, all you have to do is to choose a nice stitch from your stitch collection book and knit a rectangle. You can make borders of some kind if you feel like it, but you really don't need a pattern. I have recently seen lots of "patterns" for stoles and scarves which are just a rectangle of some often-collected stitch, but no matter how many copyright notices they contain and how cute their names, these are not new designs. The scarf pictured here, the DNA scarf, has unique features and an original cable pattern, so it deserves the name of a pattern, but for the most part, it's just a rectangle.

Shawls can be square, round, or triangular. A (non-square) rectangular one is, strictly speaking, a stole. I have several books which detail the construction of a traditional square Shetland shawl. I also have half-a-dozen stitch collections, with lots of nice lace stitches, so I should be able to make a square shawl with no difficulty. I also have Elizabeth Zimmerman's clear instructions for making a round shawl.

To make a triangle, you just start with three stitches and add on every row until it's as big as you want. You can't help but come up with a triangle if you do this. If you want more detail and pictures, here is a wonderful Shawl Workshop for beginners. But if you want to use a complex lace stitch, and especially if you want that nice mirror effect where the patterns meet in the middle of the triangle, then you will need some complex calculations. Or at least a good example to work from.

I own 38 knitting books. None contains an example of a triangular lace shawl. None has calculations for making one. So what kind of shawl do I want to make? The only one for which I have no pattern, of course.

Obviously, I must buy a new knitting book. Any suggestions?

Apart from knitting and sewing, we are on summer schedule. That is to say, the grown-ups work a lot and the kids have such hectic social calendars that we rarely see them. The garden has gotten a bit jungly -- subtropical summers naturally lead to that. Plenty of peppers and tomatoes and herbs in the vegetable garden, but the green beans are being a bit slouchy. We are still able to keep up with everything by using it fresh so far; canning is in our future.

And it is my xangaversary.

Today I am going to save you a lot of money.

Not by telling you about the sidewalk sale at our store this Saturday -- we are having one, but I don't think that information will help you much. I mention it only because it is one of the few areas in which The Poster Queen and I really disagree with The Empress. We hold sales to get rid of stuff, and we really lower the prices. We sell things at or below our cost. Many stores hold fake sales, in which they lower intentionally inflated prices to a reasonable level, as a marketing device. We have real sales, but then we don't tell anyone about it. I think The Empress feels that people who would have shopped with us anyway are the only ones who deserve these bargains.

The Poster Queen and I try to get the word out a bit, but this is one of those cases in which advertising is the only sensible approach, and The Empress opposes advertising. So it makes me feel a little better to mention it here.

The Empress and I will be out there at 8:00 a.m. I have already told her I am bringing my knitting.

No, I am going to save you money by telling you how to make your own trendy skirt.

This skirt, from a popular young people's clothing store, will set you back enough to feed a family of four for a week. Notice that there is no hem on this skirt -- it is "distressed," which means that it looks like a rag as soon as you buy it.

And yes, moms, it is as indecent as it appears to be. The model's shirt covers her navel, and she is still left showing all that skin. You are not going to let her wear it to school, are you? The model is turning 21 in a couple of weeks, and goes to school in another state, so I can't stop her.

But you can have this skirt entirely free. If you want to show all that skin, choose some jeans that are too large for you. Otherwise, find a pair of old jeans that fits.

This pair has been worn by a guy who jumped off the tractor to kill snakes, climbed under the car to repair the transmission, and otherwise really moved around in them. If you do not know any guys like this, here is your chance. Go around town asking for people's rattiest jeans until you find a suitable pair. You may also meet a useful man or woman at the same time.  But since they only have to fit you for about one foot of length, you can use guy's or girl's jeans.

Cut off the legs. Take out the seam at the crotch (non-U.S. speakers may very well use the term "gusset" here) and flatten it. Sew it to make the front and back flat. I have not yet, in these pictures, ragged up the edges, but you can do it by pulling at them till they fray. Pull out several strands and -- to make it look just like the ready-made one -- leave some threads hanging down at the back.

There. You've updated your fall wardrobe for nothing. Wear some tights under them, okay? And a long shirt.

This book is not a diet book in the sense of a weight-loss diet. It details the once-newsworthy information that eating unprocessed plant-derived foods is healthier than subsisting on hydrogenated palm oil, high-fructose corn syrup, and modified food starch.

Some years back, oh you young people, there was a study of levels of heart disease around the world. The researchers found that people with high-fat diets were not always prone to heart disease. Specifically, the folks in the Mediterranean ate quite a bit of fat, and didn't have high rates of heart disease. This amazed people at the time, and led to a recognition of the important differences among saturated fats, trans-fatty acids, and healthy vegetable fats. It also led people who drank to decide that red wine was a health food. This is true in exactly the same way that it is true that dark chocolate is a health food.

I borrowed this book from Booksfree for inspiration, because Back-to-School is coming up, and at this time (July through August), the catering standards around here drop considerably. A reminder and some new recipes seemed like a necessity. One of the main reasons that we have so much trouble with healthy eating is that it tends to require more thought and more preparation time than unhealthy food, which is readily available everywhere. This is also true of activity. Our ancestors had no choice but to be active, because there was work to be done, but we have to make special efforts. This book gives enough detail about the benefits of a healthy way of life to encourage us to make the effort, and tips for increasing the convenience as well.

If you have been thinking about a more healthy style of eating, this book would be an excellent starting point. It summarizes eating guidelines from the American Heart Association,  the Cancer Society, and a variety of other organizations and individuals, and analyzes the similarities and differences. It reminds us what's so great about vegetables, what's wrong with processed foods, and how to fit whole foods into a busy schedule. It offers some tasty recipes, and lots of specific suggestions for various healthy foods. It supports its claims with research, and also goes into the non-food elements of the Mediterranean lifestyle (strong social connections, daily exercise, an unhurried approach to life) which seemed also to have a role in the health advantages of the Mediterranean life.

By now, of course, many Mediterraneans have embraced fast food and type-A behavior, and the rate of heart disease and cancer has risen accordingly -- a fact which this updated book recognizes -- but this doesn't mean that we cannot benefit from the traditional wisdom of a healthier way of life.

This book also points out how other cultures' foods can be adapted to the same principles. All the recipes are Mediterranean, but the information on how to buy produce and whole grains and what to do with them once you have them in the kitchen is relevant to all cuisines. Those of us who buy lots of lovely produce and then throw away the slimy corpses a few weeks later can certainly benefit from the many ideas of ways to prepare fruits and vegetables, as can those who dutifully buy the same four fruits and vegetables every week and suffer from boredom at the thought of produce. This book can be of use to all of us.

Except those who have embraced the alternative approach of sweetitude and meatitude. #1 son says he intends to have a shorter but happier life, living on pizza and doughnuts. Unfortunately, we know people who have taken this approach, and it does not always work. Sometimes it means living quite a lot of years in feebleness and misery, through a failure to die as young as one had intended. My own husband -- who is in excellent health, in spite of himself -- intended to die young. That was his retirement plan. But he is getting too old for that, now. He may end up being one of those folks who says "If I had known I was going to live this long, I would have taken better care of myself."

So there are those who knowingly choose to eat wrong, and those who have trouble finding the time, and those who need more skills, and this book offers some help for all of them. But there is another problem, I think. At least in the U.S., we have two strands of information about health.

First, we have information from the scientific community. These guys have been telling us much the same things all along. School books in the early 1900s said that cigarettes were bad for us.

But at the same time, the advertising for cigarettes encouraged women to "choose a Lucky instead of a sweet" and showed people dressed up as doctors saying that their cigarettes were "smooth" and easy on the throat.

For many of us, industry spokepeople are the main source of health information -- whether we realize it or not. Add to that the dismal state of science education, which means that many people are incapable of evaluating data. The result is a nation of people who can be persuaded that pork rinds are an excellent snack choice.

The current goal of our food industry is cheap food with a uniform taste. Hydrogenated fats, salt, and high-fructose corn syrup are great for shelf life, and much cheaper than actual food, so that is what most of the packages on the grocery store shelves contain. Our mass-market produce and meat, through the cost-cutting methods of modern agriculture, taste like nothing much at all, so the packaged food industry sells us stuff (made of hydrogenated fats, salt, and high-fructose corn syrup) to make relatively fresh foods taste like the packaged foods we have been taught to prefer. The excellent book Something from the Oven by Laura Shapiro tells of the struggle by the convenience food industry to gain a footing in American kitchens. By now, they point out, very few people are comparing the taste of a cake made from a mix with the taste of a homemade cake, because so few of us have ever tasted a scratch-baked cake.

The party line on health within the food industry is "balance" -- that all foods have a place in a balanced diet. This allows claims like "Lucky Charms is part of this balanced breakfast," which should be no more convincing to us than the claims that certain cigarette brands were doctor-recommended.

The Mediterranean Diet does not suffer from this problem. It is a good piece of reporting. But you wanted to see the bawk, didn't you? I have, through the magic of knitting jargon, told the knitters what the bawk is, though it must remain a secret from my family members and will therefore never show up here in a really good picture. Knitters, however, may want to make it. This is one of the main reasons for going to knitting blogs, after all -- to find cool new stuff to make. So I want to let you know that the pattern I used (see yesterday for details) has some flaws, as nearly all patterns do.  If you look at the decreases at what we might think of as the left shoulder, you will see that they are nice and smooth, with a good match to the rib. The ones on the right shoulder, in contrast, are a mess.

This is my practice bawk, which I intend to keep, so I probably will not frog it (although I may -- I think that this section will not show on the finished bawk, but I could be wrong, and will not know for sure till I finish it). But I will warn you that the directions for decreasing are ambiguous, and those for shifting from the cable to the rib are unclear. So a little charting ahead of time is called for if you want lovely shoulders for your bawk.

The new knitty is up. It is a special men's issue, with essays about men knitting and knitting men, and patterns to knit for men. A woman might also want an Obey Giant scarf, of course, and baby-size cargo pants could suit any knitter with a baby to knit for, but those who have trouble finding good patterns for guys might especially like to check it out. I may make those mittens myself.

The bawk is not completed. Yes, I did spend most of the day on the couch knitting, but there were interruptions. For one thing, it was an absolutely glorious day and the garden was calling out to me. My husband needed occasional help with car repairs (and it was, after all, my car he was repairing). Then, after I had made a lunch of grilled chicken Caesar sandwiches, brown rice, tomatoes, and fruit, the family complained that the food had not been sufficiently holiday-esque, so I was sent out after hot dogs, chips, and watermelon.

I took off for the grocery in blue jeans, my son's old summer camp T-shirt with clear evidences of gardening and car repair, unbrushed hair, and no makeup. I ran into many people I knew, all out buying hot dogs. This is Murphy's Law.

Then in the evening I had a call from #1 daughter, and went out on the porch to talk with her while watching the fireworks.

She and Son-in-Law went, with a whole bunch of his colleagues and their wives, to the Statue of Liberty. What a splendid place to enjoy the Fourth (though I hear that the new torch is garish). While they were visiting the tourist attractions, though, they were themselves tourist attractions.

There were Japanese tourists who wanted their pictures taken with a dozen uniformed sailors. The girls shooed the wives out of the way so they could look as though they were surrounded by admiring sailors. There were people who came up and thanked the guys for serving their country. There were also people who wanted to express their views on the U.S. presence in Iraq.

These folks are like the ones who give pregnant women lectures on overpopulation. I always used to wonder what kind of reaction the were hoping for. Maybe, "I declare, I never saw it that way before. Here, mind my older kids while I pop down to the abortion clinic, will you?"

What should members of the armed forces do when faced with declarations against the military? Offer to strip off their uniforms there and then? Defend the existence of the armed forces, even though they have often been misused? Say, "Thank you for allowing us to be part of your Independence Day celebration"?

In any case,  here is the bawk. Or a portion of the cable, at least. I really like this cable. I had intended to make my bawks with all different designs, chosen to suit the various recipients. But the first (and official) BAWK pattern that I saw had just a plain 4x4 cable. I thought I would replace it with Polperro Musicians, Anchor and Gull, Chalice Cable, Old Scottish Stitch. This cable is so much more cool, though, that I will have to make a few more.

Knitters, this is pattern #19 from Rebecca home #7. It is done in Seafoam Wool-Ease on #3 dpns. Now you know.

Back to work today, with renewed spirit. I redid the toy wall last week, so today should involve Frequent Buyer cards and conceivably some unpacking of books.

HAVE A

GLORIOUS FOURTH!

Here is the bawk, with the first repeat of the cable pattern. I really like this cable. I am making all possible mistakes on this first bawk, so that the others, which will end up being gifts, will be flawless. This flawed one I will keep for myself. Otherwise, I would have to frog it repeatedly in order to perfect the increases, match up the twists, etc. This would not be in keeping with my plan for the day.

I have the day off, you see. In fact, the whole family has the day off. We had a multigenerational family gathering yesterday, and barbecue the day before. We have sung patriotic songs in eight-part harmony. We have picked the first ripe tomatoes from the garden. The boys have illegally set off bottle rockets on the patio. So today the plan is to waste the entire day watching the Monk marathon on TV.

It won't be a total waste, because #2 daughter and I will be knitting. I will complete the bawk and then return to the cotton/linen bath ensemble, while #2 daughter is making herself a most snazzy felted handbag from the book Simple Knits for Sophisticated Living. This book is also the source for the bath ensemble pattern. It has a lot of nice easy patterns in lovely yarns -- clothes, baby gear, household goods, cat toys, all kinds of stuff really. If you wanted one knitting pattern book besides your sweater compendium, you could do worse than this one. Just don't believe their yarn quantity estimates.

Sighkey tells me that in New Zealand, they knit with possum fur. Their possums are not like our possums. You can learn more about them here and buy possum knitwear here or here. You can buy possum yarn here or here. You will find at these sites many good reasons for accepting the use of possum fur. This means that those of us who are squeamish about wearing fur (not perhaps those who are adamantly opposed, but the squeamish at least) can contemplate enjoying the warmth of fur. I for one am contemplating a shawl of laceweight possum/ wool/ silk pretty intently.

Possum Pie, to return to the point that brought possum fiber up in the first place, is composed of chocolate, nuts, and cream, not possums. It is possible to eat American possums, just as it is possible to eat squirrels, but I sure wouldn't do it. We do like to make Possum Pie for visitors, because it is I think a local dish. I don't know why it is called Possum Pie. Maybe to scare visitors, who begin to fear that all they've heard about Southerners was true. Then, when they discover that chocolate and pecans rather than rat-like vermin are on the menu, they feel relieved and everyone can laugh at them.

Nah, that couldn't be it.

Now I must get down to the serious time-wasting of the day. Enjoy yours!