Well, this may be the shortest knitalong on record. I have completed my Fuzzy Feet, without having much interaction with my fellow footalongers or even seeing their pictures. I may have to make another pair.

Here is the unfelted first Fuzzy Foot, sitting on my nightstand so that there are objects to compare its size to. It was only after I uploaded that I considered that this picture contains both an enormous cup and a tiny pen.

Ah, well.

And here are the felted Fuzzy Feet, in the same milieu.

A couple of notes on felting KnitPicks Wool of the Andes: it felts very fast compared with other yarns I have used — I barely caught these before they became teeny tiny elf shoes. And they are very smelly when wet. Rather like having the actual sheep in the room with you.

If I do make another pair, I think I will make the cuff longer.

I completed the Fuzzy Feet last night while simultaneously being beaten at chess and watching The Screaming Skull, a horror movie which offered free burial to any patrons who died of fright while watching it. I don’t like actual scary movies, but ancient ones like this are fun. This film contains a woman who roams around in a diaphanous nightgown, investigating scary noises. While I have often seen and read parodies of this scenario, I had never previously seen it presented seriously. You have to wonder why she didn’t just lock the door and stay in her room.

She also spent a good bit of camera time in her underwear. I understand that in those days they had to work the gratuitous nudity in anywhere they could. They figured that, had they gone directly from underwear to diaphonous nightgown, they would have only a few seconds of flesh. So they had to come up with a device to keep her in her undies a little longer. Here it is: she was reading a novel by Henry James and had it on her bedside table. So, having removed her clothing, she picks up the novel and nuzzles it a bit. I don’t think she actually read it or anything.

Can you imagine the planning meeting on that?

“How can we keep her in her undies a little longer?”
“Well, she could read that book. Or at least pick it up.”
“In her bra and slip? While getting ready to go to bed, only to be pursued by a screaming skull?”
“Hey, it’s Henry James!”
“Well, that’s true. Okay.”

The reason we were watching that movie last night instead of tonight — we usually watch cheesy horror movies for Hallowe’en — is that I have a rehearsal tonight.

At 6:30, I should be singing “Dona Nobis Pacem” at the university, having brought the cookies.

From 4:00 until 7:00, I will be reading spooky stories to little children in this vaguely Renaissance get-up. I don’t think you can actually see this costume at all in my picture. White muslin, ribbons, black velvet, dark blue tartan taffeta, McCall’s pattern… Doesn’t matter. The essential point will have struck you: namely, the two scheduled events overlap significantly. I can’t even dash directly over at 7:00, because I will be in costume. I have to go from the East side of town home to change clothes, and then over to the college on the West side of town. With cookies.

No solution to this quandary has yet occurred to me, though I am kind of thinking about taking the cookies over this morning before work.

While I did not get very far with yesterday’s to-do list (we had unexpected guests, I had to clean up before the Schwan’s man arrived, there was this whole taffeta ruffle thing…), I did make a little progress with the Fuzzy Feet.

As you can see, it is an enormous sock. A lot of folks around the web have remarked that this would be a good way to start making socks if you find normal socks intimidating. The directions are very clear, and the heel and toe shaping are simple but traditional. If nothing else, knowing that you will be felting it and therefore any little irregularities will become invisible might make it a more comfortable experience.

Here is the knitalong. From there, you can easily find the pattern and many blogs with other folks making fuzzy feet. Mine are in KnitPicks Wool of the Andes, color Iron Ore, on 10.5 needles.

I rarely use such large needles, and can only find two of my dpns, so I am using the so-called Magic Loop technique, bringing in the two dpns now and then to help out. I say “so-called” because I think this is less a technique  than a fudge for those of us who are too lazy to go find our dpns, and I would not do it if I weren’t going to felt these. It also slows me down quite a bit and is irritating as well, so I am certainly not recommending it. To each her own, however. There are plenty of folks who hate dpns and prefer to use Magic Loop or two circulars, even if their dpns are sitting neatly in the knitting basket where they should be, rather than having been removed for purposes of playing at medieval warfare or taking the place of a proper tool in the garage or all the other things that tend to happen to my knitting needles.

I am hoping to gain the impetus to go find those missing dpns, myself.

There was some progress on the fifth bawk. This is project 19 from Rebecca Home #7. It is also in Wool of the Andes, color Asparagus. I quite like this yarn.

I did the baking and got my costume thrown together, but it took considerably more time than I had hoped, so I did not get my music learned, or the cabinets cleaned, or any other holiday preparations done.

This week on the HGP we are supposed to clean our family room, and I do not have one, so I can finish up my pantry and closets instead. This is also the week to polish the silver, clean the coat closet, put away those Jack-o-Lanterns and decorate for Thanksgiving. We are also to continue spending at least an hour a day making gifts, putting things into the freezer, working on cards, and gradually buying gifts.

This morning, the choir will be singing Rutter’s extremely jazzy arrangement of “When the Saints Go Marching In.” We have been looking forward to this. We are also doing very jazzy Christmas music, and our director plays the sax in a big band (I mean a Big Band style band, rather than a large band. I don’t know the size of the band), so he knows what he is doing with the jazz.  It is sad but true that Pokey chose not to come down and sing with us, relying instead on some flimsy excuse about having a concert to sing in or conduct or something in another state. We forgive her, but will definitely miss her. Janalisa and I will have to impart the whole sultry altissimo tone to “when the moon turns into blood” all by ourselves.

Having given blood and had a busy day at work yesterday, I was a bit low energy last night and went to bed early. This turned out be a good thing, because #1 son came in at 4:00 am and woke up the animals. This brought Nadia the cat into our room, determined to sleep between me and my husband, no matter how much pushing and shoving and loud purring it required. She was followed by Fiona the dog, whose boisterous tail-wagging provided a thwack! thwack! thwack! accompaniment wherever she went.

Since #1 son had brought friends with him, I couldn’t just give up and get up, so I put the bathroom light on and read a while in the gloaming, finally going back to sleep around 6:00 am. So I am late getting up, and yet still sleepy.

No matter. Today I must make a Hallowe’en costume for Monday, when I will read spooky stories to little children at work. I was privileged to receive a Hallowe’en card from Scriveling, so I think that will provide sufficient inspiration for me, but I must get to Hobby Lobby before I can begin. (My beaded pumpkins and gourds look silly in the flash, but I did want to show the card on the mantel, where it is providing a touch of mystery.)

The card also reminded me that this is the week (for the HGP) to begin addressing Christmas cards, while I have not bought or made any, so I am looking through craft books for inspiration. I also have to finish cleaning and organizing my pantry and cupboards today, if I am to keep up with the HGP. What is more, while I am pretty good at following instructions, I have not been wrapping the gifts as I finish or buy them, and at 4:00 this morning, I mentally added that to my day’s to-do list.

This is bawk #5, halfway completed. I have nothing new to say about the bawks. Every time I begin a new one, I think that I will use a different stitch pattern, a different cable… But I really love this cable, and it has gotten pretty quick, too, so each time I just go ahead and follow the pattern. Especially for those that are being given in pairs, I am thinking that the matching cables in different colors will be very nice. I hope to finish this one over the weekend, leaving a mere three more — a do-able number for November, I think, even if I slip a few hats in.

However, I have started something new. Not exactly socks, though I think I can catch the last couple of days of Socktober here, because they are Fuzzy Feet, which are simply giant socks felted down to make slippers. I am using Knitpicks Wool of the Andes in Iron Ore, and 10.5 needles. I did not swatch, because I am felting the things, after all, so it doesn’t really matter what my gauge is.

Here is the first of the fuzzy feet, with the heel freshly turned and the stitches picked up for the gusset. The dog Toby is indifferent to it, since it is clear to him that it will not fit any of his paws, even after felting.

I have joined the Fuzzy Feet knitalong, and also went and checked out the correspondence from the Fuzzy Feetalong of 2003. Considering the comments from that adventure, I decided to pick up only 10 stitches along the sides rather than 12, in hopes of avoiding the dread floppy instep that plagued the earlier knitters.

This knitalong is just beginning. The Fuzzy Feet are quick and easy and will make good holiday gifts, or keep your feet warm this winter, so perhaps you would like to join. This is my third knitalong and I have found them all fun and useful.

I am on the cookie rota for Monday night’s rehearsal, and so of  course I am making Hallowe’en cookies. For Pokey’s visit, I had made ginger stars, chocolate cats, peppermint skulls, and butterscotch pumpkins, and they were a hit. So I figure I will repeat that, making some every day between now and then. Then I can take some of each to rehearsal and still have some for my boys.

Since I started on Thursday, I had an extra day, so I added mini chocolate chips to an ordinary sugar cookie dough and cut them out with a spider-shaped cutter. This makes a very creepy spider.

I also made an appointment with the personal trainer at the gym. Those who know me will be astounded. They will know that the chances of my making an appointment with anyone are so slim that the chances of my making an appointment to work out with a boy named Evan are virtually nil. However, when I tell you that it was the force of the aerobics instructor’s personality, you will know just what I mean. This woman, though she may look like a Barbie doll, was able to make me and Pokey both balance on giant rubber balls and kick our legs around, so it was child’s play for her to make me sign up with Evan.

I left the gym immediately, even though it was early. Making an appointment was enough of a stretch for one day. That gave me time to bake creepy spotted spiders, not perhaps what Evan would have recommended for me.

If you have ever wondered what a $160 knitted hat would look like, Crazy Aunt Purl has kindly shown us. It looks like something you could do better yourself, frankly. There has been some agitation for hats chez Fibermom. I don’t know what has happened to all the hats I made last year and the year before and the year before that, but it is clear that I will have to make some more. Maybe this one or this. I can probably use a break from the bawks anyway.

However, this weekend I must also make a costume for work for Monday. And finish the cookies for the rehearsal. And learn my music. I am giving blood today. The heroine of Brilliant spends her weekends engaged in felonious undertakings, creeping off to Provence in disguise, or having trysts with rough-trade millionaires. Compared with that, donating blood, sewing, knitting, singing, and baking do not seem thrilling, but I expect to enjoy it.

Chanthaboune suggests that economics is not interesting, but I happen to know that she enjoyed reading Candyfreak, a book with a lot of economics in it. Of course, there was a lot of candy in it, too, and that might have been the part she enjoyed.

That’s okay. We are not all interested in everything. It’s not a character flaw.

I am interested in a lot of things, but I have to admit that there are large numbers of things in which I have no interest at all. This may explain why I am reading Pompeii very slowly in between other books. This book, while I feel sure that there will be a volcanic eruption soon, is at the moment mostly concerned with the engineering of ancient Roman aqueducts, a subject which for some reason leaves me cold. Brilliant is about a female jewel thief of uncertain age. Much more alluring, somehow.

I am also completely uninterested in the entire continent of South America and everything to do with it, including its music.(We are singing a modern carol int he choir which sounds like a Christmas tango, though, so I may have to revise my thinking there.) Celebrities are a matter of almost complete indifference to me (I say “almost” because there are some individuals whom I find intriguing even though they happen to be famous). Accounting has no charms for me, though I can get surprisingly excited about statistical analysis and, of course, economics. Sports is another subject in which I have no interest whatsoever, although I will watch gymnastics and figure skating with my family out of friendliness, since both are similar enough to dancing for me to understand. I also do not care at all about cars unless they are (a) my actual transportation, or (b) interesting from the standpoint of the environment.

I also do not want to hear or read any poignant human stories about diseases. In the abstract, diseases are interesting. Historically, they can be fascinating. But I do not want to have to suffer over people who are ill unless I actually know them.

So you can feel pretty confident that you will never have to read anything here about famous Argentinian golfers. Or the accounting practices of a Peruvian movie star who suffers from a rare form of cancer, but keeps his spirits up anyway by playing soccer.

Other than that, I make no promises.

I probably will never write about punctuation, however much I may enjoy the topic, because I have learned that no one else cares. However, I am also persuaded that no one has to read this, so I might slip in something on restrictive relative clauses some day.

Now, there is a subject which I have not previously found interesting, but on which I need to educate myself, and that is, crafts. Not the kind fo crafts I do, which are more of the “arts and –” or “needle-” variety. I think I mean the kind that involves hot glue guns. At work, we just got in an enormous shipment of things like glitter pompoms (shouldn’t that be pompons?), satin puffs, and artstraws. I have no idea what people do with these things. Wiggle eyes, too, including flirty ones with eyelashes, and wonderfoam and pony beads. Lots more stuff like that, too. They are all going into a $1 section, and I feel sure that people will want them. But I will be ignorant. I have never before seen a satin puff, and have only limited facility with glitter.

Can anyone out there enlighten me?

We are getting toys in at work. It is always fun to unpack and arrange toys, and it is especially fun to see new ones. We have carpet skates this year, and Blast Pads, and very very cute baby toys.

The Empress is a little nervous about ordering lots of toys, because the American consumer is feeling a little nervous. The Wall Street Journal is happy to advise us that this is only because the average American consumer doesn’t understand economics.

For example, the inflation rate is hardly anything, if you do not count energy or food costs. This will be reassuring to those of us who live in tropical paradises where shelter is optional and one can live upon breadfruit and cassava plucked from wild breadfruit and cassava patches. The rest of us, since we have to drive to work, heat our homes, and feed our families, will be less sanguine.

And, while it is true that the number of Americans living in poverty has risen to 37 million under Mr. Bush (the education secretary said in a recent speech that this administration will be remembered most for the No Child Left Behind Act, but I think they may be luckier than that and be remembered chiefly for bringing our nation out of the dangerous period of peace and prosperity that had lulled us all into smugness), we can all feel better knowing that American poverty is not that bad. For example, poor people in America have way more square footage in which to experience poverty than those in other nations.

It’s just that, with so many of us not fully understanding these things, it is very possible that this will be another dismal Christmas shopping season for toy stores. So we are trying to have plenty, for the people who come in to shop, but not so much that we will go under if they don’t come in to shop.

I think the reasonable response to a fiscally nervous Christmas is to buy a few well-chosen toys that will last, instead of spending the same amount on lots of dreck at the discount store, but I may be biased.

Yesterday, I put together a multicultural games basket for the American Heart Association gala, and was able to include things for all ages and in all categories, from all over the world, mostly made of wood, for just $100. This is the equivalent of two video games, or four trendy plastic things that will break within two weeks.

But enough retail griping. Homemade stuff, too, is good.

Is there a dreadful sameness in my knitting pictures lately? What can I say? I am being disciplined. I am cabling, cabling, cabling, till all the cabling is done.

La Bella and I went to a choral concert last night. It was excellent. Several different choirs, a good variety of music, including several pieces that La Bella and I have sung together, so we got a bit of nostalgia with our music.

One of the conducters directed as thought she were dancing the hula. I was mesmerized.

We ran into my old voice teacher and one of my daughter’s old voice teachers. Fun. La Bella also told me that our old choir director had announced that he had been diagnosed with bipolar disorder. I am not knowledgeable about this, but it seems likely that he will be better off under professional care than he was when it was just all his friends saying that he was loony to the tonsils.

When I got home, I went online to see if my daughters were around to talk with, and found that I got to request another title from Frugal Reader. They send you an email when someone wants one of your books or you get to ask for someone else’s book.

I have still not really joined in properly. It seems like such a pleasant and sensible idea that I am not sure why I am hesitating. I have put half a dozen titles into my “library” — that is, the list of books people may request from me. In order to maximize my results from Frugal Reader, I should put in another dozen or so — in fact, all the books I am willing to pass on. Then more people will request my books, and I will be able to request more books myself. In fact, there are rewards for putting in various numbers when you join, all of which I forewent, putting in just the minimum number required. I am not sure why. After all, if someone came to my door and asked for my copy of The Object of My Affection, I would hand it right over, glad that it was going to a good home.

But there is an unpredictability factor. What if 10 of my books are requested, costing me $20, and I do not find any books I want to request? This could happen. There is an altruism requirement here, I suppose.

I have not yet read the first book I received under this plan. I am supposed to be reading Pompeii for book club next week, I have an unread Booksfree book, I have music to learn and a costume to make and cookies to bake, all for Hallowe’en night. Since Christmas is precisely two months away, I have to complete my gift knitting at a faster pace than I have been managing so far.

Now, the great thing about this is that, while I am feeling a little pressed for time, it is all time spent in pleasant pursuits. You do not hear me saying that I must hurry and grade a bunch of papers or that I am falling behind on work-related things. No, indeed. At work, I am completely on top of everything, and have time to read the new books and compose the newsletter.

The things I am rushing to do are, well, sitting on the couch and knitting while reading novels. Listening to practice tapes while baking cookies. Sewing while watching movies. I am having trouble fitting in all this leisure between social engagements, visits to the gym, and rehearsals.

I recognize that I can only expect very limited sympathy for this.

You may remember Brooklyn. This is the denim track jacket I made for my 16-year-old.

In spite of his maddening behavior during the actual knitting of the jacket, he likes it and has been wearing it when it dips below 90 degrees.

Now, after a couple of weeks of wearing, the cuffs had gotten stretched out, as you see at the top of the picture on the right. You may have a sweater that has done the same thing. Not to worry.

Grab a crochet hook and some common elastic thread, turn the sweater inside out, and do a few rows of slip stitch around the cuff. I did them on the stripes and at the edge, and you can see the results at the bottom of the picture.

Take the stitches just through the back leg of your stitch, not going clear through the fabric, and they will not show on the outside.

You can do this as soon as you complete the sweater, and with cotton, it is a good idea to do so. However, if you are knitting for a difficult person who will not allow you to, it works just as well as a later fix. In fact, it works on commercial sweaters or old favorites that have gotten stretched out, too.

If you are doing the HGP, then you have a nice clean kitchen and it is time to do the pantry and the cupboards and closets and drawers of said kitchen. It is time to begin addressing Christmas cards (that startled me, but I know from experience that the HGP works if you just do what they say, so I will try to get started on that). You should have quite a few freezer meals and batches of treats in the freezer. You should also have about a quarter of your presents bought or made. Here is a little clutch of bawks. Only one currently is occupied by a hottle, so I think the effect is of one hottle with a wardrobe of little sweaters.

After I took this picture, my husband took the hot water bottle. It has turned chilly, and he doesn’t really grasp Christmas anyway. He will find in his stocking a sweater for his hottle. I think a trip to the pharmacy is in order for me — since hot water bottles are apparently an exotic item in my part of the world, it might take several trips for me to get a whole crowd of them. They probably only carry one at a time. “Better order two this time, Jim Bob,” they will say to one another. “That odd woman has been in buying them up again.”

#2 daughter has forgotten her coat. She always arranges to forget something large and costly to mail. Last year it was her quilt. She says to send cookies along with it as well. So I have my pre-workday work cut out for me.

It’s easy to make fun of Martha Stewart. At the craft fair, there was a piece of calligraphy with Martha’s supposed Christmas To-Do List. My favorite item was “Roll sheep in egg white and sanding sugar to give a shimmer to the upper pasture.” “Disassemble, disinfect, and reassemble dog” was also a good one.

But I am going to buy a copy of this DVD for my married daughter, who is cooking her first solo Thanksgiving dinner next month. It has absolutely step-by-step directions for several different ways of cooking turkeys and side dishes and desserts, as well as for setting the table and making centerpieces.

Now, vegetarians and the squeamish might want to skip some of the more graphic turkey segments, such as the boned-and-rolled one, but my husband enjoyed them.  We think we will try it this year — my husband will do the boning, and I will take it from there.

In addition to admiring the gruesome parts, my husband also pointed out, during all the recipes, that I couldn’t eat any of those foods. Dark meat, sausage, butter, sugar, cream — really, even the vegetables were a sort of love poem to cholesterol.

This is what I knitted while I watched. It is #19 from Rebecca Home #7, in Knitpicks Wool of the Andes. The color is Stream, a very good peacock blue, in no way reminiscent of any stream I have ever seen, but quite a nice color. Compared with the Elann Highland Wool, this yarn seems to be a bit less soft and less inclined toward fluffiness. I think you could mix the two in colorwork, though.

I also baked my weekly batch of cookies for the freezer using a recipe from the current issue of Martha Stewart Living. #1 son complained about that — both the boys are of the opinion that cookies are only edible when taken directly from the oven and eaten right then. These cookies are not for the boys, though. They are for my Christmas cookie boxes. #1 son has, in his sixteenth year, turned into a tyrant. Since no one but #2 son does what he tells them to, he is rather a frustrated tyrant, but that does not improve him. We must just tolerate him.

I also made a batch of homemade cleaner scented with cedar oil, and put up a peck of spiced apples from the farmer’s market.  Here is a jar of the spiced apples. I posed it with some autumnal flowers so you could see the very pretty color the apples turned out.

Yes, it was a fairly Martha day.

Today should be more intensive knitting, a final end to the fact-checking (yes, I am deeply embarrassed about that), and a struggle with the music for the Master Chorale. I may also bake some cookies for the boys, assuming that #1 son can curb his tendency to sound like Napoleon. Actually, Napoleon was rather a charismatic guy. He went to visit his troops when they had bubonic plague, in order to give them courage. He sat by their bedsides when everyone else was too frightened to go near them. If it hadn’t been for the insects (disease vectors, the little brutes), Napoleon might have succeeded with his plans, and all of us who live in the Louisiana Purchase might be speaking French today.

And if Martha Stewart had been a man, her own tyrannical tendencies would not have gotten her nearly so much bad press. We do not see Donald Trump going to jail, and I think we could make the case that he is more loathsome than Martha Stewart, and less useful to boot. #1 son may be able to get away with his Napoleonic behavior. But it will not get him fresh cookies.

If you are doing the HGP, then this week you are thoroughly cleaning the kitchen. A somewhat dismal thought, but while I was scrubbing the stove I thought about another burning question that has been popping up a lot lately: does healthy eating cost more?

First, The Empress showed me a newspaper article that asked “Why are Americans both overweight and malnourished?” Their answer: “Because a Big Mac, fries, and a Coke cost less than fresh fruits and vegetables.”

Then Distant Eyes said healthy food cost more. Being older than she, I had no hesitation in jumping right in and contradicting her. (We then moved on to the best way of keeping the food budget really low — eating most of your meals with your parents. Won’t work for me, but many college students can survive on very limited food budgets by this one simple method.)

The very next day, Partygirl was in my kitchen having a cup of tea and said, “I always wondered, since you don’t shop at Wal-Mart, where you bought your boxed foods, but I see that you don’t buy boxes.” She’s right. I get whole grains and canola oil and tea and spices and stuff in bulk at the Co-op in paper bags (which we use to carry our lunches) and reusable containers. And that led to a discussion about food shopping, during which Partygirl told me that she had been to the farmer’s market and the Co-op each once, and had been disappointed in the prices and selection.

Partygirl is older than I, so I did not contradict her, though I did take the opportunity to point out the environmental and social consequences of  the two approaches to shopping which were under discussion.

But then Frugal for Life had this article on the same topic, complete with links to more claims of this type.

So I feel that I must present my argument on this. And here it is: people get the impression that healthy eating costs more because they compare individual items.

I will freely admit that organic whole-grain pasta costs more than the cheapest available white-flour pasta. Two or three times as much, in fact. And it is my understanding that you can buy a fast-food burger for 95 cents, which is less than the price of a homemade burger with lean meat, whole-grain bun, and plenty of fresh veggies. Not much less, but less.

However, that is not the set of numbers we should be looking at. We should be looking at the overall grocery budget. And I am here to tell you that I spend less on healthy fresh foods than the average mom who buys mostly processed foods.

Because she doesn’t just buy the cheap pasta. She also buys the ready-made sauce, the frozen pre-made meatballs, the pre-grated ersatz cheese, the frozen vegetables in seasoned sauce, the pre-made garlic and cheese bread from the freezer, the ready-made salad and the bottled salad dressing, the box of salad croutons, the bottle of soda, and the package of Ho-Hos. Probably also the microwave popcorn and a box of ready-made cookies.

All in all, buying fresh food and cooking it yourself is cheaper than buying processed foods. I buy a few processed foods myself, so I know this to be true.

But in order to be really persuasive, I must offer you statistics. The average family in the Southern U.S. spends about 14% of take-home pay on food, a calculation which yields a figure about $10 over my weekly food budget. My food budget, in fact, matches the USDA ”thrifty budget” for a family of four with two children under the age of five. Since the same sources say that a teenage boy will increase your food budget by $45 a week, and I have two of those, plus a teenage girl for four months out of the year, I think I can claim to offer proof that healthy eating is not in and of itself more expensive.

Now, if frugality is a goal of yours, you might also like to know about The Frugal Reader. This is a service which allows you to list books you own but would be willing to give away. If someone wants your book, the service tells you so, and you mail it to them. As soon as they receive it, you can ask for someone else’s book, and they will mail it to you. It’s a book-trading system with the advantages of currency (Frugal Reader credits) over barter (having to know someone with similar tastes). I have now sent and received one book each, and it does appear to work. There is no cost except for the dollar or two in postage for sending the book. I think that the random-ness of the process means that you could not rely on this service for all your reading , and the cost to me is only slightly less than the cost per book of Booksfree, but it seems to me that it would be a good way to get extra books out of the house.

That Man points out that passing books around like this does not create wealth, but I feel that I do my part for the publishing industry, so I am not ashamed.

Yes, I’m knitting. In fact, I hope to do a lot of knitting today — I am feeling a little time pressure, what with Christmas being just barely more than two months away, so I hope to spend most of the day knitting. And reading, of course. But first, I have to go out and buy healthy foods. I intend to do some preserving and baking and stuff as well — oh, and of course a bit more cleaning in the kitchen. Unbounded domesticity, in fact, as the immortal G & S put it. Enjoy your weekend as well!