Social Crimes is an interesting novel; I nearly quit reading it a couple of times, but I’m glad I got to the end of it. It sets formulas on their ears.

I am also still reading Unweaving the Rainbow — and by a remarkable coincidence, just a couple of days after I wrote about coincidences, I came upon the chapter in this book about coincidences. Dawkins offers us the example of how Skinner was able to induce superstitious behavior in pigeons through coincidences, and suggests that we are not far from those pigeons.

But he also suggests that there are adaptive aspects to our credulity, and admits the appeal of the marvelous.

Ah, yes, that knitting up there. That is #1 son’s Tychus hat. I wanted to show you how clever the construction is on this hat — you knit up and down from crown to brim.

I was able to make it through my to-do list for the weekend, including putting a batch of Santa’s Workshop cookies into the freezer, finishing and wrapping the gifts for #1 daughter and Son-in-law, and knitting a lot of stuff. Today I have a morning full of irritating errands followed by work and then immediately thereafter a dress rehearsal for tomorrow’s concert. I should be able to finish this hat during the waiting times.

I am trying not to be too cross about all the errands. Monday morning is supposed to be for housework and gym time, not errands, so I am not succeeding entirely. This is very funny, though. It helps a bit.

Some people write journals for the sake of self-discovery. They look back and see patterns in their behavior and learn from this.

It is fortunate that this is not my goal. The patterns revealed in my journal are just tiresome.

For example, I frequently suggest that I am going to do some mad, wild thing — continue knitting instead of frogging back to a mistake, skip all my housework, stuff like that. Then, the next day, having apparently gotten that out of my system, I report that I frogged back and fixed the error, did the housework, etc.

Not that I never do anything wrong. But I seem not to plan it. I do not see myself announcing that I will snitch cookies from the Christmas boxes in the freezer, snarl up my bank account, or delay my fact-checking for two weeks past the deadline. In fact, I don’t even seem to report such misbehavior, let alone fantasize about it.

And what’s with the sins I suggest I will commit? Is improper knitting the worst thing I can come up with? Since I never end up doing them anyway, I ought to have better plans to kick over the traces. Why don’t I say I’ll run off and join the circus, or sabotage a performance, or something?

In any case, having said that I was going to ditch the Christmas gifts and do something new, I predictably enough started off the next day with a pair of Fuzzy Feet and a bawk.

But then — I got bold! Determined to overcome the pattern revealed in my blog, I did something quite new. I cast aside the Fuzzy Foot and began a hat! This hat, to be specific.

It is Tychus, from knitty.com, and it is — as advertised — very easy. It is also clever and satisfying, and #1 son says it is cool. He tells me that cuffs are not comme il faut this season, so I made it without the cuff. In fact, the pattern is written for #9 needles and a double strand of worsted, and I made mine in sport yarn on #3 needles. Now I wanted it shorter — so it would be cuff-less — but not too small, so I added an extra buffer of white between the wedges. It turned out just right. That is one thing to keep in mind with this pattern — it is a clever idea, and could be a neat way to make a hat even without stripes, but what you cast on is what you end up with. None of this “knit till you think it is long enough” business. If I made one for myself, though, I think I might pick up stitches along the completed edge and knit a ribbed cuff. This is because I am not stylish, and I think an un-cuffed hat might not be as warming for the ears.

#1 son is trying it on here, and wanted to keep it. However, that is not to be.

My picture does not show the wedges properly. There appears to be some kind of op-art distortion where really there are simple arches. I have no explanation for this.

Um, yes, it is a Christmas gift. I can’t be expected to change my ways so quickly as all that.

Fortunately, I have Crazy Aunt Purl’s special Christmas gift filter that makes it impossible for a gift’s recipient to see it without a magic decoder ring. Therefore, if you can see this hat, you can be confident that it isn’t for you.

It is, by the way, now officially High Time to get going on those Christmas gifts if you haven’t done so yet. Since Tychus can be made in one day of fairly solid knitting, this would be a good choice if you haven’t gotten started yet.

Or check out the Buy Nothing Christmas catalog. Really. Go check it out. Send in your suggestions, even. I found the link to this at My Adventures in Simple Living.

Today I will make a second Tychus, for #1 son. And maybe another for #2 son as well. Then it will be back to the Fuzzy Feet and bawks. The HGP recommends ending all adults-only crafting by December 10th, which gives me four weeks of knitting time. I think I can, I think I can…

I used to disagree with that December 10th deadline, but I have come, over the years that I have been doing this, to appreciate it a lot. It has eliminated last-minute rushes to complete things, and given me time to enjoy making things with the kids when they are on their school vacation.

When I saw this book at Frugal Reader, I figured that I was seeing my best chance to give a fair reading to the Other Side of this surprisingly ubiquitous question. The authors put their M.D. and PhD on the cover, implying (I thought) that they were qualified to write about evolution in the same way that, say, Stephen Jay Gould and Richard Dawkins are. In conversation with people who do not accept the idea of evolution, there will always eventually be a story about some biologist who used to believe in evolution but then when he kept studying, he was convinced that it was impossible. Perhaps, I thought, these guys were in that group.

Nope. They are an ophthalmologist and a Doctor of Theology. They start their book claiming that the Intelligent Design movement has shaken up the scientific community so much that “the teacups haven’t stopped rattling yet.” Actually, Intelligent Design has made and is making political waves, not scientific ones. Biologists have benefited from the upsurge in the controversy by gaining the opportunity to write more and more books showing how clearly the scientific evidence supports the theory of evolution, but evolution continues to be pretty well universally accepted among scientists.

Splendid Swatches reported that the Vatican has also accepted the evidence for evolution. You can read the details here. She is also making some Fuzzy Feet. And is not, as you will see, the only knitting blogger to remark on the creationism controversy.

The title of this book refers to “Darwinism” in order to make it sound like an alternate religious viewpoint – because the authors believe that it is. They claim that scientists only continue to accept evolution because they are wedded to its philosophical premises, just as the authors of this book are wedded to the religious premise that God created all life instantly.

At one point, the book makes this summary:

“The essence of the Darwinian argument on origins is that random mutations, random changes in DNA acted upon by environment over enormous expanses of time, lead to minute advancements in an organism that eventually add up to wholesale changes in complete systems and morphologies. The essence of the design argument is that a designed system would cease functioning if one of several component parts were missing, and so, gradual, minute alterations could not lead to a fully functional, complex system.” (p.51)

That seems pretty fair, although in this statement — and in the various mathematical arguments sprinkled through the book — the process of natural selection is ignored. Gould and Dawkins both have led readers through the photosensitive “eyespot” and its usefulness, as well as all the various varieties of eyes in the animal kingdom, but this book continues to claim that the human eye in all its complexity is just so cool and perfect that it can’t possibly have evolved.

We can look at any completed sequence of events and say how remarkable it was that all these events took place, what are the chances? But that is only after it is completed. Our earth’s atmosphere is perfect for the creatures that live here — either because God planned it that way, out of all the millions of possible ways an atmosphere could be, or because since the atmosphere was here, only creatures that could breathe that atmosphere could possibly have evolved. Had there been some other kind of atmosphere, there would be some other kind of creature here. Mathematicians are constantly trying to clarify this for people who see remarkable similarities between Kennedy and Lincoln, but the rest of us continue to be dazzled by coincidence.

What the argument in this book really boils down to is this: Gee, life is so impressive and complicated, it must be a miracle.

It is true that many people who accept evolution make similar kinds of arguments. She Just Walks Around With It says “it may or may not come as any sort of shock to you that i’m not so much pro- ‘intelligent design’ because ohmygodpeople.” I can’t say that her argument is as cogent as some, but I can relate. (She also has a link to the noodly appendage site, if you missed it here.)

#1 daughter also was expressing this view last night. A sort of general mind-bogglement that people can look at the sheer quantity of evidence for evolution and reject it. I think the key tends to be that they don’t look at the evidence. I have not yet met even one person — and you know I have been discussing this subject with people for months — who both understands evolution and rejects it.

The authors of this book, though, appear to have looked at the evidence, felt their minds boggling, and rejected evolution in favor of intelligent design.

And that seems to me to be another problem with this debate. While several respectable scientists have publicly said that they believe in God and find evolutionary theory compatible with their belief, the anti-evolution brigade continue to contrast evolution with faith. They do not seem troubled by the idea that God planned sexual reproduction, rather than creating every individual living thing individually, but cannot consider the idea that God planned evolution.

Yes, well, I just wanted to share that.

My son-in-law’s parents are driving out to visit family in the Frozen North and have kindly offered to carry a package to the kids for us, so today I will have the impetus to get their gifts (such of them as I have already bought or made) wrapped up and ready. We are having a gray day with rain predicted, the perfect kind of day for staying in the house working on Christmas presents (after the housework is done, of course). I intend to do the Swiss ball workout in the privacy of my home where I can fall down as much as I need to without concern for my dignity and I suppose I will have to sally forth at some point for groceries, but otherwise I plan to spend the day reading and knitting. It seems unlikely, even so, that I will complete Son-in-law’s planned knitted gifts in time to take them over to his parents’ house tomorrow. The box will be rather heavy on presents for #1 daughter. I will be shipping Son-in-law’s remaining stuff later, so he must be sure not to conclude that we don’t love him.

Now, do not think that I am the only (or even one of just three) knitting blogger who writes about evolution when you just came here to see my knitting. The Knitting Fiend, the Keyboard Biologist, and Bron are among the many who have broached the subject.

I had my final meeting with Evan. This involved free weights, the Swiss ball (he did not see the potential for slapstick humor, although he may now that he has shown me how to use it), and a strange device that involved hanging in the air and lifting your body into space.

“Evan,” I said, “can your mom do this?” I wanted him to have a little perspective.

He said she could, and in fact, so could I. It is not as hard as it looks. I have sore muscles today. I like a little soreness, myself. Leftover dancer’s masochism, I suppose. I hesitate to admit this to people, of course, since it sounds perverse, but it came up in the conversation with Evan. His eyes lit up, and he eagerly shared his methods for ensuring sore muscles.

It’s nice to find others who share your little peccadilloes, isn’t it?

The second Fuzzy Foot is done to the heel, and I have cast on for the sixth bawk.

I am ready for a different knitting project, I think.

My grandmother was an expert knitter, but she made the same pattern — a top-down seamless raglan — all the time. I can only think of three or four other items she ever made. Nearly always, she did her raglan sweaters. She never used “fancy stitches” or colorwork, either. Just stockinette. She knitted constantly, and often read while she knitted, and I don’t believe that she ever once got tired of doing that same pattern.

So why do I have this mad craving for variety? It doesn’t even seem mad to me. After I’ve cabled for a few weeks, I crave Fair Isle. After I’ve done a few things in worsted, I want to make lace. Stern duty keeps me producing bawks, of course. The Fuzzy Feet are providing a little respite from cabling.

But I think it is time to change it up, as Evan said when he showed me how to do the free weights. Sore muscles and a new knitting project — what more could I ask?

I cast on last night for the second Fuzzy Foot of the second pair.

You know how knitting patterns usually say to join the cast-on stitches “carefully, being sure not to twist”? Well, I twisted. I don’t think I have ever done this before, in all my years of knitting. What I have here, then, is a Hollyberry wool mobius strip. (I always spelled it “moebius” but apparently that was the old American version and the new ecumenical way is to leave out the “e” and the original dots over the “o” so I am being modern here.) While the Mobius Scarf is popular nowadays among knitters, I don’t think it will add anything to the Fuzzy Feet.

My knitting time last night, therefore, was entirely wasted.

Those of us doing the HGP are supposed to be spending at least one hour each day working on our handmade holiday gifts, and my hour is supposed to be 9:00 to 9:30, a.m. and p.m. Right now, I am usually not back from the gym by 9:00 a.m., and barely skittering into the house after class or rehearsal by 9:00 p.m., so I am falling behind a bit. But there is no point to trying to knit when you are too tired, because you just have to pull it out again. Which is what I will have to do here.

Janalisa asked me last night if I would host a Pampered Chef party. I’ve done it once before and found it surprisingly fun. The idea that I am thinking about adding anything more to my schedule between now and Christmas startles me. Still… As I say, it was fun. Pokey, are you up for that? Do any of my mom-type readers need a good garlic press?

Now, whether you are a mom type or not, you may be in need of inspiration as you knit your holiday gifts. Perhaps you, like me, are making multiples of one great item and need a break from it. Or perhaps, completely unlike me, you have finished all the gifts you planned and have time to add something in. I posted a list of knitted present links back when the HGP started, but I have a couple more for you. Here is a Fortune Cat pattern — a very cute toy or ornament, even if you don’t know what a Fortune Cat is. It may be too late to begin an adult sweater, but this little Dragon Hoodie would be nice for any babies on your list. and of course there are always Fuzzy Feet. Everyone needs a pair of those.

My whole house now smells of cinammon rolls. As it happens, there is a pan of homemade cinnamon rolls in the oven, so this is not as surprising as it otherwise might be. I had better go take them out.

I think of myself as a disciplined person, but once it occurred to me to examine things, I had to admit that I am all about comfort.

This won’t be news to you, of course. I sell books and toys for a living and knit wooly things for amusement. You weren’t thinking that danger was my middle name or anything.

But there is a tendency to stay in our comfort zone which is almost akin to laziness. Even if that comfort zone is nightly rave-ups or rock climbing, or hair shirts and misery. Whatever we’re doing becomes habitual, and it requires a bit of a push to make us try something different.

I noticed it because I am singing hard music again, having been pushed into the master chorale. I am singing a solo with an E flat, a note I usually avoid, so I am back to practicing my vocalises again, instead of just singing. I am, thanks to Evan, sweating and suffering at the gym again, instead of decorously strolling along on the treadmill. I am listening respectfully to the wild notions of religious fundamentalists, instead of just talking with people who already agree with me.

This is good.

Push your comfort envelope a little with The Anti-Craft, a magazine whose motto is “You’re going to die anyway; you might as well knit.” It could well be a parody of Knitty, though they don’t admit that. I enjoyed it, and may make a thing or two from this first issue.

If you do not need a knitted voodoo doll, you might prefer MagKnits, where there is a handsome men’s sweater with an elaborate cable on the sleeve. The rest of the sweater is ribbed, so it could easily be adapted to a bawk or dog sweater.

The designer of the online bawk pattern tells me, by the by, that the name is an old in-joke. Who knows how many words have entered our language by this route?

 Here is the first of the second pair of Fuzzy Feet, with a little suspense over whether there will be enough yarn to finish.

I am following the same pattern, using the same yarn (different color) and the same needle. With the first pair, I had a bit of yarn left over from each of the Fuzzy Feet, and with this one I am about to run out.

There is no mystery here. I am not very accurate, that’s all. I must have made this one bigger, somehow. It doesn’t matter — it will be felted, so the size will be determined later.

But it is a little surprising, all the same. 

And a final random note — Ozarque is telling some interesting stories about cross-cultural miscommunication these days. 

I have half a dozen more Christmas gifts to knit. My knitting time is somewhat curtailed by preparations for performances, work, my new gym schedule, my involvement in the state history encyclopedia, the HGP, and life. I have a lace stole and a Prayer Shawl on the needles, and a cardigan planned to begin as soon as we reach fireplace weather.

Obviously, the very last thing I needed to do was to cast on anything else. However, I have a good excuse. The $1 yarn at Target (not a bargain, for 65 yards of nylon) is now 25 cents a skein. While I am not much of a fluffy yarn knitter, I have been admiring the fluffy bed jacket in Rebecca Home 7, so I figure it would be worth buying up the stock — if the yarn is nice. That had to be determined before all the bargain yarn was snapped up.

So I swatched with it. I was intending to make the Braided Scarf from Debbie Bliss Home with the three balls I had already bought, so I just went ahead and cast on the number of stitches called for. No trouble to frog the little bit if this yarn turned out to be destined for greater things.

It is not destined for great things. It is like trying to knit with fog. Fog which, while it is so unsubstantial that I was constantly dropping stitches, turns around the next moments and wraps itself around the needles in a death grip and will not slide. The knitted bit will not hold a shape. Do not consider using this yarn for anything where shaping, gauge, pattern, or fit might be important.

I did not wash this swatch, as a really good yarn reviewer would have done. I am guessing that washing this yarn at all would be an error.

I will go ahead and make the braided scarf, though I am going to do it in garter stitch — ribbing is not worth the trouble with this yarn.I quit ribbing halfway through the swatch and switched to garter stitch, and I defy you to find the point at which I did so.

But I don’t think this yarn is for the garter stitch scarf afficionado, either. I am an experienced knitter,and I find it very irritating. I wouldn’t wish it on a beginner.

I think that the perfect project for this soft, pretty stuff would be a nice basket with balls of it piled up and some straight needles (also going for a quarter at Target, and also poor quality) sticking out of it. For your coffee table.

And Dweezy says, “When you embrace life, you’re likely to get something on your shirt.” Wise words.

After church, I went to lunch with friends from my old church. It was wonderful to see them, and we had long, interesting conversations. I must do that again soon.

At one point, the talk turned to Intelligent Design (it wasn’t my fault, as it happens; the librarian had perversely taken up listening to the Phyllis Schlafly Hour on the radio, and it had come up there). Someone mentioned the favorite ID argument: living creatures are too complicated for evolution to account for.

One of the chemists then offered his favorite argument against ID. The chimpanzee genome project was recently completed. Using the number of harmful mutations found in the human genome project, a mathematical projection was done of the number of harmful mutations that should — based on evolutionary theory — be found in the chimpanzee genome. The prediction was right on. “How many harmful mutations,” the chemist asked, “Would you anticipate finding, based on the theory of Intelligent Design?”

Now, here’s an Intelligent Design: the bawk. I asked the designer where she got the name, but I have not had an answer yet. This example of a bawk is from Rebecca Home #7. The free online pattern linked above is simpler, but essentially the same idea. I made one from that pattern, but added ribs all around for a better fit.

Here is a tutorial for making up your own bawk pattern (I have gotten used to the name, though, so I’ll still call it a bawk).

The online pattern bawk is the striped one — I made it in a variegated Wool-Ease. The others are all the Rebecca pattern, the gray in Wool-Ease and the others in Peruvian wool. The pink one is chubby because it actually contains a hot water bottle, while the others are empty husks. Well, maybe not husks. Maybe sweaters. In fact, Algielerept (speaking of names, I know I have that wrong, and will probably never get it right, but you know who you are) points out that a bawk, with strategically-placed holes for the legs, would make an excellent dog sweater.

This could be the next evolutionary step for the bawk.

Toby is not amused, but we have to admit that he has just the figure for it.

Imagine Nadia in it. Or your own hapless pet. Are all the animals getting nervous?

Mine have nothing to worry about — I must make three more for humans, and I think that is going to be my limit. But if anyone else makes these into dog sweaters, I totally want to see the pictures.

Here is the first foot of the second pair of Fuzzy Feet. Vital statistics: Hollyberry Wool of the Andes, 10.5 circular needles with a “Magic Loop.”

No adjustments this time — I’m just following the pattern. #2 daughter reports that hers (the first pair I made) are cozy and keeping her toes toasty as she plots dreadful comeuppances for her advisor and the person who is supposed to be in charge of fundraising for the choir tour.

I have reached the heel on the second pair of Fuzzy Feet, in Knit Picks Wool of the Andes, color Hollyberry.

Before casting on for the Fuzzy Feet, I finished the fifth bawk. I still have three more to make, but I am getting them done in a week pretty consistently, so I think I can finish the remaining three this month.

 Even with a little extra-curricular knitting.

Yesterday I went to the library to finish my second round of fact-checking. This was what greeted me as I left the driveway. We are getting some color in the trees at last. I was afraid the leaves would just turn brown and fall without giving any show first.

I rarely go to the library, so I took the time to check out the knitting books before settling into the reference section. I also took the opportunity to copy out a couple of patterns — Na Craga from Starmore’s Aran Knitting, which is a nice reference book but not one I would need to own, and the riding jacket from Loop-D-Loop. #2 daughter loves that jacket, and I agree that it is quite nice. She had wanted me to buy the book, but as I sat leafing through it yesterday, I found that my initial impression of it remains: it is one of the ugliest knitting books I have ever seen. This is a very popular book — the Corkscrew Scarf alone has spawned a fan club. But — what about the picture of the pale guy in the slip-stitch kilt and a nipple-length poncho with a cowl neck that covers his chin. Am I the only one who finds this freakish?

So I merely Xeroxed the pattern. There is no way I could make it in time for Christmas, but there are many months after Christmas…

Now, I may eschew freakish knitting — and I do; life is too short for that — but I am not averse to a little freakish baking. #2 son and I once made a Coca-Cola cake when we found the recipe while traveling, so you know that I am telling you the truth. I found this recipe in my mailbox the other day, and Jell-o was on sale at the grocery, so I made weird red and green Jell-o cookies for this week’s HGP freezer goodie. You see the odd little creatures being packed into a freezer container here. I don’t know how they taste, but I am sure that they will look very festive on a buffet table.

With my errands and research and baking done, I settled in for some knitting and reading. I am still reading Unweaving the Rainbow, but I find that this book doesn’t go well with knitting. In chapter three, Dawkins explains exactly how rainbows work, and why they are the shape they are, and all that, and I was so riveted that my hands just stopped moving. He also has quite a bit of poetry in here, and the rhythm of knitting rarely goes with the rhythm of poetry (Longfellow, maybe), so I keep stopping for that, too. So I have started the Robert Barnard novel as an alternate.

Now, if you fully understand photosynthesis, does it make the colors of the trees less marvelous? Dawkins argues that it does not, and I certainly agree. But he is correct in his claim that there is hostility toward science. Sighkey sent me this article,  which makes a political connection to anti-science feeling in the U.S. Dawkins is British, so his concerns are not about the U.S. political scene, but there are a lot of scientists in the U.S. who are concerned that the present administration is hostile to science. It seems to me that this is largely because they want to do things and make policies that are contrary to what would be indicated by common sense and current knowledge about the world.

If you want to make decisions about energy, medicine, research, and education that are completely out of step with the facts, then what can you do but attack the people who collect and disseminate those facts?

Dawkins has, thus far, been talking about people’s emotional reactions to science (and he has some very interesting things to say about the nature of truth, too), but sometimes there is an agenda.

I have a million things to do today, and got very little sleep last night — a bad combination. I have gotten the fifth bawk back through the cables and am ready to do the decreasing and ribbing. It is my hope that I will get all my tasks done this morning, and in the afternoon will be able to rib and read, and then cast on another pair of Fuzzy Feet.

And maybe take a nap.

I am currently trying to wake up by drinking my tea and browsing the blogs. This can be enjoyed even by someone whose brain is not fully functioning.

(Ah, my new knitting book up there. It is a “free” book from a book club. I say “free” because I paid shipping and handling, and because I know that I must have spent a startling amount of money for them to send me a “free” book. Still, it contains the perfect scarf for my Target yarn, which I will make sometime in the distant future when I have finished all the other projects I have planned.)

Here is an interesting knitting site. Not only does it have some cool ideas for knitting toys and stuff, it also has a photo of a piece of knitting inspired by righteous indignation over bigotry. The knitter wanted to make something to show her support for full gay marriage rights.

Now, I cannot myself imagine deciding to knit something to express my views on anything besides aesthetic preferences. I like the idea of someone saying, “I am so outraged, I’m gonna knit me up something expressive!”

This is a surprising game. I read the directions, but entirely misunderstood how it was supposed to be done. So, having taken four seconds to devise my strategy, I made my first move. I attempted to make a second move, but the game had taken off on its own, and I got a score of 1,014. Since I can never expect to beat that, I will never play the game again. #1 son, who is highly competitive and also good at games, played for quite a while and never even approached my score.

This is probably because I am really lucky. You know all those people who say they never win anything? I win all the time. I have had to remove my family from am event because we were winning all the door prizes and it was getting embarrassing. Fortunately, I disapprove of gambling and never gamble. Otherwise, my persistent conviction that I am amazingly lucky could get me into real trouble.

My to-do list for today is so long that I have no business spending any more time here. But I want to show you some toys. We have been unpacking toys at work for the past couple of weeks, and are now a wonderland of toys. Yep, little old toyseller me.