This is a good book, an enjoyable read with an engrossing story and satisfying characters and enough serious thought-provoking stuff for any summer's evening.

It is an Irish book. I have to admit that I don't read much Irish fiction. Maeve Binchy, Roddy Doyle, JP Donleavy, and of course Swift and Yeats and Joyce back when I was reading the classics. That's about it. Perhaps this is why I was entirely unfamiliar with the colloquial expression "pants."

In Sushi for Beginners, all bad things are "pants." It seems to be an adjective, but I am not entirely sure of that. The characters say that "the movie was pants," "Tell him it was pants," "She read the paper but it was just pants." They never say "a pants movie," so I suppose it is possible that it is in fact a noun. Does it have anything to do with trousers or with panting? Does anyone out there know about Irish slang? Here in Hamburger-a-go-go-land, we never say that things are pants.

It could come in handy, though. There I am, holding open yet another planbook.

"Well, I think the squares were larger."
"What about this one? The squares are quite large."
"I think it had more squares, though."
"Well, this one has eight squares."
"They're too small, though."
"Well, this one has shadow lines on the vertical, so you can divide it into as many squares as you want."
"Well..."
"It's pants, isn't it, choosing a planbook?"

The customer would be so dumbfounded that she would just take the planbook, any planbook, in a hypnotized manner reminiscent of a snake being charmed. She would be thinking, "Pants? Pants?" and could no longer be obsessing over the size of the squares.

I really like the differences among varieties of English. The worldwide shortage of Mavalus tape continues, but we did get a little bit yesterday, and I called one of our English customers to offer her some. She said it was "fab." Americans cannot of course say that things are "fab" without sounding as though we are trapped in a mid-sixties time warp (although we do occasionally say "fabbity fab fab" around our house, in honor of Louise Rennison). Anyway, she said "Mahvelous. I'll pop round on Fridy or Sat'dy." Americans never pop round anywhere, either. It brought a breath of the exotic into my afternoon, without actually being hard to understand.

We have a couple of French Canadian customers, too. For me the difference in the sound of Canadian French is quite fascinating. We may have lots of English-speaking Canadians, for all I know, because Canadian English is just another of those little regional accents in North American English, but Canadian French really sounds quite different from European French. I do eavesdrop on them, I admit it, not in order to learn more about their lives or anything, but because the accent is so cute. I probably should not, because after all, they are thinking that no one knows what they are saying. They probably speak quite freely.

However, in these days of near-universal cell phones, most people seem to talk quite freely. At the tops of their lungs. Sharing details of their love lives, health, and real estate deals that might, if they were talking to someone actually present, be said with lowered voice.

It doesn't matter to me. I am only listening if you have a cute accent.

Ah, yes, knitting. Brooklyn is growing. Brooklyn is a British knitting pattern, and therefore uses metric measurements. This is fine. We in Hamburger-a-go-go-land know that the rest of the world uses metric and that we alone are mired in the old imperial system. I have found, though, that while I have quite a clear idea of a centimeter, 43 centimeters means absolutely nothing to me. 13 inches, 5 inches, 27 inches -- any number of inches can be mentioned in a knitting pattern and I have a point of reference, but somehow 43 centimeters could just be anything. I only have a mental image of one centimeter, and 43 of them is just too many to put together meaningfully. I have to keep a measuring tape handy all the time.

"Imperial" of course refers to the old British Empire. It is slightly unnerving that we now use it, with such an imperialist as we have in the White House. Some people now call it "U.S. Customary," which is a nice little euphemism, with only one drawback -- that very few people understand what it means.

Sort of like "pants."

We've moved, at work, from "How is your summer going?" to "Are you beginning to feel ready for school?" as our conversational gambit as we unpack their shopping baskets. Well, when we are not too busy and grim to make any conversation.

One woman said she was looking forward to getting back to normal. It was a little bit of a shock to hear. Not because I haven't felt that way, but because it made me realize that I don't feel that way yet.

"Back to normal" as a description of the school year is accurate. When school starts, we have routines. Housework, hot breakfast, drop off the kids, go to the gym, get ready for work... Then dinner, evening routine, class or rehearsal...

But summer has lolling around, making messes, long conversations, ignoring the clock, trying to read all the knitting blogs instead of doing housework. Isn't it a little too early to give all that up?

I have been reading the knitting blogs, and I have a few more I would like to recommend to you.

Marnie has apparently never read "Jabberwocky," which naturally makes one wonder whether we can trust her, but she does have lovely and unusual knitting. She also very kindly shares her lovely patterns. As you will have noticed on your own, most "patterns" at knitting blogs are not so much patterns as they are an idea for a rectangle or tube, but Marnie has a bunch of very good ones.

Fickleknits is filled with antic cheer, and has both quilts and knitting. That's enough, isn't it? I'm not going to lie to you, there's a lot of variegated yarn here, and definitely edgy color combinations. But where else are you going to learn about Atomic Force microscopes in combination with knitting and quilting?

Blufelicia has an opinionated blog full of rants and carrying on, with some startling language. However, she is not carrying on and ranting about things like how the yarn company didn't respond within thirty minutes, but about interesting things like slave names and dogs. #2 daughter and I read her recent posts together, with our mouths hanging open.

Woolywarbler knits well, does a combination of the "everybody's doing it" and the more unusual, and shows you her progress. A good, solid knitting blog. If you have eagerly visited the knitting blogs I have recommended and wondered whether I thought knitting blogs should contain knitting at all, this is one that will redeem me.

There has been a little knitting going on over here. After a day spent trying, while simultaneously checking people out and answering questions about purchase orders, to deal with people who do not get it when I assure them that manufacturers of plan books will not send them one copy of the plan book faster than they will get our shipment to us -- indeed, they will not even sell them one plan book, however nasty they are about it -- Ah, well. Let's just say that there are some evenings when I don't really accomplish much.

I do try to remember that Leonidas's customers widdle on his produce and Blisskitty's try to lure her into the bathroom to look at their sores, so my customers' mad attitudes toward plan books are not that bad.

I was decanting my paper bags of radiatore and whole-wheat pastry flour yesterday when That Man called.

"You said I could call you if we got desperate," he said. It seemed that the Stupidest Customer had called to say she was on her way and The Poster Queen was heading out the back.

I do not hesitate to tell you that it was the Stupidest Customer. I doubt that she reads recreationally, and anyway I do not intend to give any other identifying information. She is not savvy enough to realize that she is in fact our stupidest customer. She is also a High-Maintenance customer. Our hearts sink when she walks in.

I had just offered to come in as soon as I got the groceries put up when That Man admitted that he was joking. He and The Poster Queen would soldier on and deal with her.

What a relief.

I went ahead to have a lovely needlework-filled day. Here, for example, is the re-started Lotus shawl. Lace on #1 needles and hundreds of stitches goes at a glacial pace, and looks like nothing for a long time. I am just including it out of politeness. Notice, though, that I did get a new packet of stitch markers, so I will not be subject to dropped stitches, however heated the discussions may get around here.

Here is Windblown Shadows, all grown up to be a square. I love the colors and the pattern.

I am using the Thimbleberries variation on the traditional Windblown Squares block, which doesn't give you an allover design.

But now what? Here are some options:

* Go ahead and make one more row of blocks. Border it with pieced and plain borders and finish it as a bed quilt.

* Replace the two solid pink squares with two more of the pink print, leave it at its current size, and quilt it as a throw for the living room.

* Put another pieced block at each corner and add solid borders between them. Then continue either with pieced and plain borders to make a bed quilt, or stop there and leave it sized for a throw.

Hmmm... Square or rectangle? All print "shadows" or some plain? Pieced or solid borders, or both? Decisions, decisions.

#1 son and I also made this shirt, modeled here by #2 daughter. We used the hand-tinting method. I am not sure that you can see the design, which is #1 son's original Mr. P to the Sizzle Nut.

And Brooklyn got bigger.

Then it rained, and I sat out on the porch watching the rain fall onto the crape myrtle. Bliss.

I will be going in to work today after church. It is getting close enough to the first day of school that many teachers will find themselves in their classrooms this afternoon, and some will discover that they need one more desk plate, or a package of stickers. We open on a couple of Sundays for these people. Last year we found that they were so grateful that we were open, that it seemed worth doing again this year.

My kids have all done their clothing inventories, we have almost finished the pre-school appointments for hair and eyes and teeth and whatnot, and we will soon be moving into the picking up of schedules, parent meetings, and such. What the kids do not know yet is that it is also time to practice getting up early and to clean their bedrooms.

Fortunately for my knitting, I have recuperated from my attack of stress and returned to my usual placidity. Here  is Brooklyn, with the left front growing to match the back (folded).

And I won a prize! Over at Knitting Psychos, there was a contest for organizing knitting tools. I shared my method of organizing knitting needles with them. I put them in pencil pouches in a binder, sorted by size. This works for me because I don't use very long straight needles. I especially like this because it keeps the different forms of each size together, so you can easily have access to circulars followed by dpns, or different lengths. I used those plastic pencil pouches you can easily find at this time of year, and wrote the size numbers directly on them.

And for this Manda is sending me the new Interweave Knits! I am childishly excited about this. If you click on that link, you will also find some free online patterns, including a stunning pair of gloves. If you, like me, have been admiring Poetry in Stitches but balking at the $40 price, you will want a copy of the colorwork chart for these gloves. It is very much in the style of Poetry in Stitches.

Further excitement chez fibermom is the completion of #2 daughter's tie skirt. You will doubtless by now have noticed that my fall fashion prediction was correct -- romantic looks are on the runways and in the fashion mags. If you are not a Victorian or Gypsy kind of girl in style, but would still like a twirly skirt, you could do worse than make yourself one of these. If you are a girl at all, of course. Guys could do a waistcoat in the same way. I don't know what the fashion is for guys this season, though, except that pants on high school guys are still being worn with 6" of boxers showing at the top. So I guess you have to choose your boxers very carefully.

Today #2 daughter and I are heading out on the usual round of things -- farmers' market, meat market, co-operative -- plus haircuts. I intend to take my knitting to the hairdresser. Assuming that Toby the dog will give it up. He looks pretty comfortable here with his knitting and his mp3 player, doesn't he?

I also have hopes of getting in some work on my Windblown Squares quilt. I may also have to break down and buy a new box of stitch markers in order to make a new start on the Lotus shawl. What's that? I could just clean the house and probably would find the old ones? Well, yes, but you know it is August.

The ribbing for Brooklyn's left front was completed, but had to go to the frogpond. Are you amazed that I could make a serious error in a little striped ribbing? It was the nature of the day.

First off, I had a dentist appointment. Some of you may recall that I have a little aversion to making appointments. So you may not be surprised when I tell you that I broke a tooth last fall and still had not gone to the dentist about it. Even though I have Overcome Agoraphobia and was able to call and make an appointment, the morning spent waiting for it was fairly anxious. I had ice-cold hands and a collection of hastily slapped-down irrational fears, in addition to the toothache.

Even with the appointment over (and they were very nice. A little surprised that I had been walking around with a broken tooth for all this time, but polite about it to my face), the day was not completely improved. For one thing, I have a four-appointment course of treatment coming up, about $1500 worth. Then my husband called to tell me that his car had broken down in traffic. All this while we did five times our normal amount of business, with the same number of workers as usual, and the ongoing global shortage of Mavalus tape. And I still have a toothache.

So I have a good excuse for switching back to the natural color from the blue two rows too early. I've undone it, I'm redoing it, and all will be well.

On the other hand, my husband will be driving my car, so I cannot get my prescription filled this morning before work, and will be going through another mad rush day with a toothache. And walking to work in the heat. And trying to refigure my budget to accomodate car repairs and dental work as well as back-to-school expenses and tuition.

If only life's difficulties were as easy to fix as knitting errors.

I came back later to say...
When I redid the two rows of natural color, I had about 8" of leftover yarn -- that is, I used that much less yarn knitting the same two rows the second time. Do you think I might be feeling a wee bit of stress?

Yesterday was a day full of interesting conversations. Book Club discussed how Nabokov could use language to draw us into his nasty little story about a thoroughly repellant man. The Poster Queen had insights on dog life. Customers had educational gossip. Joys and Concerns time after choir practice started out with grandchildren and housebuildings in the usual way, but quickly became a forum on both local and international politics, not to mention microphones, which excited as much emotion as the Sudan.

It all made me think that the knitting blogs I enjoy are like good conversations, too.

Oh, there are certainly practical reasons for reading knitting blogs. Since I do not know many knitters in daily life, I rely on the blogs for ideas, for the opportunity to learn from someone else's mistakes or discoveries, for first-hand knowledge of yarns or books or patterns or designers or techniques I might not otherwise learn about. 

But the blogs I enjoy most -- including favorites like the Yarn Harlot and Crazy Aunt Purl as well as the new discoveries I am recommending here -- are the ones with good conversation. Here are a few for your delectation:

Lanam Facio has good literary references. Good taste in music, too.

Life de Luxe has intriguing project ideas (had you ever thought of making a notebook cover from a multi-directional scarf pattern?) and thorough product reviews.

Dolly Dimples is a chatty, breezy sort of blog, with nice knitting and a sense of humor.

Knitlet has a lot of pictures of knitting, really a lot of pictures. And knits lots of different stuff, too, including toys.

Shortly after I began blogging, I read a discussion (I think it was over at LJ) on what makes a good knitting blog. People there were in agreement that pictures of knitting were key. So here is the left front of Brooklyn, scarcely begun. Someone also said, "Only write about knitting. I don't want to hear about your visit to your aunt." I disagreed at the time, because, my dear Yarn Ho!s, I do want to hear about your visits to your aunts.

But I am concluding that it's like any sort of conversation. I also want to hear about the weather and health of the people whom I virtually know from reading them regularly, but I am finding that I care scarcely at all about the weather and health (and children, dogs, cats, boyfriends, and yarn collections) of strangers whose blogs I am zooming through. I only want to hear about it if they are being particularly entertaining on the subject. Otherwise -- well, show me your knitting.

This may say more about the value of zooming through blogs than it does about what makes a good knitting blog.

#2 daughter found Lolita, and I finished reading it. I am looking forward to hearing what the ladies of the Book Club have to say about this book. I hope work is not too busy for me to go to the meeting.

#2 son had a haircut yesterday, #1 son is getting an eye exam today, #2 daughter and I are having our hair cut on Saturday, dentist's appointments are coming up... It feels like August. I am going to have to take the kids shopping. Sigh.

And yes, I am still reading the knitting blogs. One of the interesting things that I have found is a little bit of a movement to eat locally for the month of August. Many bloggers, recognizing that bringing food in from afar uses way more resources than getting it locally (not to mention the value of supporting local producers) are trying to consume nothing originating further than 100 miles from their homes. This is being called the Eat Local Challenge.

I can't do this in August. I can barely produced regular balanced meals in August, let alone add restrictions. It is being an interesting thing to read about, though.

However, we did hit the farmer's market yesterday morning. And breakfast today is a seven-grain cereal milled here. California raisins and Indian tea, though. I said I couldn't do this in August.

I have lost Lolita. I procrastinated about reading it, and now book club is meeting tomorrow and I have not only not finished reading it, but I have lost it, so I will not be able to finish it.

Oh, well. Here is the completed back of Brooklyn. That's Brooklyn from Denim People, in Den-M-Nit, on #3 needles. I'm very happy with the yarn sub so far. I haven't re-started the Lotus shawl because I have decided to be a good little lace knitter and mark every repeat of the stitch, but have also lost my stitch markers. I always say that losing things is a sign of an untidy house, so I do lose things more in the summer, but this is a pair of inconvenient losses.

What to read while I wait for Lolita to come home wagging its tail behind it like Bo-Peep's sheep? Well, there are plenty of knitting blogs.

There are in fact way over 700 blogs in the knitting blogs ring. If you read a bunch of teen xangas, you know that the typical teen xanga goes "My life is terrible! Yesterday I went to the mall...." The typical college xanga goes, "My life is @#$%! Last night I got wasted..." And the typical knitting blog at the moment goes "It is too hot to knit! Here is my progress pic of Clapotis/Tivoli/Kiri. The colors aren't really like that, and I apologize for the weird face I'm making."

But just as with the teen and college xangas, not all the knitting blogs are typical. I have nothing against typical, you understand. I have benefited myself from being able to see many, many pictures of Sophie bags and DNA scarves. But it is easy to find typical ones. So I want to mention some of the ones that are not typical, because you might -- assuming that you are not being as daft as I am and trying to read through all of them -- you might never see these atypical ones.

Sweet Georgia has stunning photos. Stunning photos of knitting. Stunning photos of yarn. Stunning photos of landscapes, meat smokers, and cocktails. Beautiful knitting, too.

Strikker also has good photos and nice knitting, but check it out for the links. It also includes the word "grumptigrump," which struck me as both new and useful.

Gibknits is a very stylish site. It has clever, unusual ideas, with instructions.

The Knitting Revolutionary is one I have mentioned before. She's smart and witty, but also makes all these Australian jokes that I don't get and mostly has pictures of yarn. But you know, smart and witty is worth a lot. She also has a very funny manifesto, and the best skull chart.

Jofrog is a trendy knitter, and you need to read one trendy knitter to keep up. Her blog is one of the cutest I've seen. She's cute, for that matter. Lots of good pictures.

Infinite Stitch is the blog "of an angry knitter." Um, I didn't actually find any knitting there. But there were some really interesting links and thoughts regarding things like economics, philosophy, religion, art, justice... You know, important subjects that a person might want to think about while knitting, so they belong in a knitting blog.

We are taking Dr. Drew to the Farmers' Market today, assuming that everyon can get up early enough to do this before we have to go to work. We learned last night while playing Malarky that the color of an egg can be predicted by checking the hen's earlobes. I totally do not believe this. So I hope the egg lady is there, because I intend to ask her.

All of us who work in or for education know that the real beginning of the year is August. If you didn't make resolutions in January, you now have another chance.

I don't make resolutions, really, in January or in August, but I do classic time management -- a list of goals for the year which derive from my life goals, and then monthly, weekly, and daily goals leading to completion of my annual list of goals, blah blah blah. I start this in January, and August is check-up time. I have completed goals # 1, 2, 3, 6, and 10. I am on track with #8.  I spent July working on numbers 4 and 7. I have been working on # 9, with some success. I have done very little on #5.

But for the month of August, I  can really have only one serious goal: getting everyone back to school. My own kids, of course -- we have to arrange clothing and transportation and fill out forms and jigsaw puzzle our schedules together and pay large sums of money and work in haircuts and teeth cleanings and eye appointments and so on. And then there are all the teachers, whose needs and desires dominate my working hours. These things can be overwhelming and exhausting, without trying to add #5 or step up #8.

Still, I have to have some little measly goal to work on. So I have decided to try again to make it all the way through the knitting blogs ring. There are over 700 of them. If I glance at a whole bunch each day, I can have them all glanced at by the beginning of school. And if I don't succeed, I won't really care. It is simply the laziest possible goal for the month of August.

And you do find interesting things at knitting blogs. For example, directions on how to make things out of saveloys.

My mention of this website prompted Sighkey to assure me that in New Zealand, they do not make their saveloys into humorous animal shapes. She seemed to feel that this was a good thing. They cook their excitingly-named saveloys (hot dogs to us in Hamburger-a-go-go-land) and pour on tomato sauce (their unexciting word for ketchup, which could I think lead to culinary misadventures in the U.S.). No mention of buns, so I don't know whether that is a feature of hot dogs in Kiwi-a-go-go-land or not.

We in the U.S. do not normally make hot dogs into humorous animals, either, except for octopi. I have seen this method of making octopi out of saveloys in several American books. You slice the end of a hot dog lengthwise into eight parts, leaving the top intact for the head of the octopus. Then you boil it. In the process, the eight cut parts will curl up into octopus legs, leaving you with a saveloy pretending to be a denizen of the deep. The Japanese website reference above will show you how to cut and paste your remaining saveloys into shark shapes, in order to add further excitement to the whole thing. They will no longer fit into hot dog buns at this point, though, so you must go with barbecue sauce.

And here is the recipe for lemonade to go with your savaloys. "Lemonade" in Kiwi-a-go-go-land appears to be some kind of carbonated drink like 7-Up or something, so we must switch back to American English at this point. The proportions are flexible anyway, so you can use metric measurements if that's what you have, or tea cups out of the cupboard, for that matter. You can also put a cup of fresh mint into the syrup and strain it out after you boil it, for a really nice summery touch.