Happy Mardi Gras! it is also Shrove Tuesday, Pancake Tuesday, the day before Lent. In our town, both traditions are thoroughly celebrated.

#2 son made a King Cake for his French class celebration. We did this last year, with a Galette des Rois, and used store-bought puff pastry. This year, he went to a classmate's house after school, and her mother helped them make the New Orleans-style yeast cake. He didn't get home till 9:00 that night, at which point I had already spent some time worrying. In these cases, I always end up imagining what I would have to say to the police: "He said he was at Haley's house. No, I don't know her last name, her phone number, or her address. She lives in a development on the east side of town; that's all I know" while the officer silently but with compressed lips thinks what a bad mother I am.

If I had known they were making the yeast kind, I would have factored in the rising time, and not worried.

So our pen rep came in yesterday and showed us his new goods. I've told you about him before. Imagine that Clint Eastwood became a pen salesman and part-time country singer in Tulsa. He also told us a story.

"I said to him," he wound it up, "I have a question to ask. He said okay. It's kind of personal, I said. Sure, he said, go ahead and ask.

"I said, 'Do you know that you're an @#$%@?'"

"'Excuse me?' he said. I said, 'Do you know that you're an !@#@$!?'"

The Empress was very pink in the face. I might have been too. We are not accustomed to such language. But we hung on his words.

"I told him it causes me utter distress when someone is an !@#$^& without being aware of it."

We were speechless, The Empress and I.

I have been knitting. I have not returned to Erin because I must finish Pride and Prejudice for book club tomorrow, but have instead been working on the prayer shawl. Have you ever seen anything so pink?

This is Lion Brand Homespun. I actually have a shirt this color, and have nothing against a good bright pink, but the size of it, in this color, will be a little overwhelming. However, I feel sure that it will go to someone who needs cheering, or enjoys pink. These shawls are given to people who are in need of comfort, after all, not to people who are seeking to make an elegant fashion statement.

I have also done a little of the Leaf Edging Baby Hat. This is for the baby shower at church in a couple of weeks. My work so far is a sort of gallery of errors. I am going to keep on until I have the pattern right and then rip it out and start again. It is possible that this is not something I can knit while reading Pride and Prejudice, any more than Erin is. It may be that I need to stick with the prayer shawl till tomorrow. Since the shower in question is for twins, I am planning to make this hat and then make another with a different edging pattern, so they are not quite matching.

I am still feeling unsettled. I think it is because I have such a plethora of appointments in the coming month, plus the distinct possibility of having to drive to and from Kansas City three times. In which case it is just an irrational response, and I can safely ignore it.

And here is a coif and hauberk pattern. You never know when such a thing might come in handy.

"Lord, bless those who thought of coming to choir practice and decided not to, and next week please push them a little harder." This was part of the choir director's prayer at rehearsal on Wednesday.

We had only eleven singers there. That's not really enough for the Hallelujah Chorus.

So on Sunday (with the strength at 13) we were exhorted to call and nag the strayed choristers, and to pounce on other members of the congregation and persuade them to join us just to sing the Easter music.

I still feel too much like the new girl to do much pouncing. I have been trying to persuade #1 son to come and sing, but he is being recalcitrant. I feel that, since he can sing, and there is a need for singers, he should do it. Like giving someone a ride if you have a car and they need a ride. He doesn't agree with me on this.

Sunday school was filled with lengthy OT discussions (I mean off-topic, not Old Testament). They ranged from admiration of my Olympic bag (they passed it around and oohed and ahed far more than it deserved, the sweeties) to arrangement of a baby shower for a woman none of us actually knows "but we ought to do something." It was marvelous to see these ladies organizing it. I have so often been in meetings at which the goal seems to be to commit to as little work as possible and belittle everyone else's ideas, that it was a pleasure to see how easily a group of kind-spirited people can plan an event.

But the result was that I did not get into the choir room in time to practice the anthem. So I pulled out the music and read through it (silently, of course) during the children's message. And stood, at the appointed time, to sing, and discovered -- that I had the wrong music.

Fortunately, I had the opening line by heart, and I was able to look onto my neighbor's music after that. My other neighbor claimed afterward not to have noticed anything amiss, so I guess it was okay.

After church, I had a call from someone at my former church -- where I am still a member. She was telling me about the changes they are making. I have been getting a bunch of these calls. I have not yet transferred my membership to the new church. I have been there for a year. I like the church, I like the people, I like the higgledy-piggledy choir. They have shown degrees of love and kindness to me and to #2 daughter that are just overwhelming.

But somehow I haven't yet committed myself to the new church. And when I get those "You should come back" calls, I think about it. I think that a lot of it is about my kids' having grown up there. The people at the new church don't know my children, except #2 daughter. My boys stopped attending church during the mess that ended in my leaving the old church. The new church knows me as an individual, not as a family. There seems more of a chance that the boys would return to the old church than that they would begin coming to the new one. But you know, after a year, I should just give it up and settle into the no-longer-all-that-new church.

Then I hemmed my skirt, finished and sent the encyclopedia article, baked a cake, talked with my daughters, and began knitting a baby bonnet for the upcoming shower. A reasonably productive day. And yet today I feel as though I am behind on things, and rushed. Maybe it was just a dream I had and don't remember, or just one of those Monday feelings.

Here it is, the last day of the Knitting Olympics, and my object is completed.

It turned out a good squashy pouch, and I think I will get a good deal of use from it, even if I also let #2 son use it for a chalk bag.

It is a modular knit in Highland Wool, and took one and a half skeins, plus a lot of scraps. I knitted it in the round on #3 needles (if I remember rightly) and felted it in the washing machine. The drawstrings are suede ribbon, and I added one at the bottom as well, though of course it is permanently drawn up.

I lined it with a stout twill (and, I now see in the photo, left a thread -- I hope this won't disqualify me from bringing home the gold for Women's Modular).

If you ever want to line a knitted bag, do not think it will be difficult. I measured around the thing and cut a piece of the fabric to the right width and height (leaving a bit extra on the height to turn under). Don't leave extra for seams, because you are measuring the outside and making the inside, so you want it just that bit smaller.

I cut a base for the lining from two thicknesses of the cotton and one of interfacing, to encourage the bag to keep its shape.

And yes, the handle of my scissors has been nibbled on pretty thoroughly. I forget which dog it was that got it during the puppy chewing stage.

Fiona once chewed the entire cover off a copy of 100 Carols. On the other hand, Toby chewed up the handle of my $60 handbag, so they are equally likely culprits. We don't hold it against them, either way. Youthful excesses can happen to anyone.

I also got my sewalong skirt zipper and waistband done. It then had to hang overnight (I know it has been hanging for a week already, but still...) and I will hem it today.

It's a lovely, soft drapey fabric. The thing about fabrics is that you have to have actual talent as a photographer to photograph them well, so I do not think that this photo tells you much about the skirt.

Still, it is turning out quite well in spite of my lack of skill with zippers. The pattern is Simplicity 5914, and I recommend it highly. It is easy, and yet still makes a graceful skirt.

What with the parade and errands and sewing and all, I did not get my encyclopedia article redone, so that is on the docket for today after church. I also did not do any impressive amounts of housework. Not only was I terribly busy (I also did some more rows of the prayer shawl, did I mention that?), but it was also too cold to leave the fire. And today is the Sabbath, so I feel sure that I should not be doing any serious cleaning. At least I did the bathrooms and kitchen yesterday, so no one will contract any loathsome diseases brought on by insufficient cleanliness.

In fact, in the novel I am reading, one of the least attractive characters washes her towels every Wednesday. This is one of the things that is used to make it clear that she is horrid. So I will add to my list of excuses that a little slovenliness makes a person more appealing. You know, the longer the list of excuses, the less real...

"Laissez les bons temps rouler!" says the sign on this fire truck. Dpending where you live, you may have been celebrating since Epiphany, but we started Mardi Gras today.

The parade was fun. #2 son came with me -- what a good sport!

This is the family-friendly part of the Mardi Gras celebration. There was a giant pancake -- 200 feet was the goal -- made in the town square, and there were rumors of King Cake, though we did not find any.

 

This fellow came along tossing beads to the kids.

There were a lot of walkers in the parade, and a marching band, so it was a nice slow parade.

Big town parades can be tiresome, since they go on so long, and you sometimes cannot get close enough to see well. I like small town parades best.

 

 

 

There were floats. This was one of my favorites.

A lot of the floats were made with materials from the shop where I work. It was fun to see the results of the handiwork people had begun in our store.

 

You can embiggen the pictures by clicking them.

These girls looked very dashing in their cocktail glasses.

 

 

 

This dragon had smoke and bubbles. When he saw me taking a picture, he came over very close and sprayed right into our faces. The camera ended up a bit wet, and so did we, but it was fun.

We got to see some friends on our way to the square. It is a small town, so you really can't go anywhere without seeing some friends. The girls on the girl scout float waved at #2 son, but he was too cool to acknowledge them.

He was also too cool to wear beads. He tucked them in his pocket, hanging out like a watch chain, to be a little in the spirit.

 

 

I loved these little girls' masks. Their parents gave permission for the picture, and I am sure you will not recognize them -- aren't they cute?

 

 

There were lots of dogs as well as lots of children. This float has a little white dog, which you can see if you search diligently. There were many dogs in costume, also, and some dogs were in beads. I always wonder whether the dogs like the costumes or not, but I admit that they didn't seem to mind. Their costumes were certainly less elaborate than the humans' get-ups.

We did not take our dogs with us, but we did give Fiona some beads when we got home.

She might have been trying to shake them off.

 

But she might also just have been saying, "Laissez les bons temps rouler!"

Dawkins, in The Ancestor's Tale, has been going on about birds and fishes and amphibians, so I have not been as fascinated as usual. I just don't find those creatures as interesting as mammals. I think we may get to insects pretty soon, and then I will doubtless be fascinated again.

Not that there haven't been some great moments. I loved it when he referenced A. Fink-Nottle on newts, for example. Since he does not anywhere explain, this remains an inside joke. If you are not familiar with Fink-Nottle yourself, you can read some Wodehouse here. You will then perhaps be as great a fan as I am.

The part where he quotes a poem "to be read in a plaintive New Zealand accent" is also appealing. I have heard Sighkey's very charming but not plaintive NZ accent, so I can almost imagine it. And I did like the part about this creature: the lacy dragon fish.

So today I must finish redoing the lost encyclopedia article and do errands. Then I intend to complete the Olympic Knitting project by making its lining. I also plan to put in the zipper for my skirt. Assuming that I succeed at that, I will then do the waistband and tomorrow I'll hem it. I have The Merchant of Venice to watch while I do all this sewing, assuming that my menfolks will agree to give up watching the 857th showing of Rocky. I do not know for a fact that Rocky is on TV today, but I assume that it is, because it seems always to be on. In fact, it appears to me that there are five movies which are shown in a continuous loop on all the stations. I could be wrong about this.

It is a somewhat pitiful fact that this week's sewing adventures will increase my wardrobe enormously. Last year, I was surprisingly successful at Overcoming Agoraphobia (you would have been amazed at how normally I behaved about driving in last week's winter weather, if you knew me before), but the fact remains that there are some very normal things that are very difficult for me. Driving on freeways, making appointments, and shopping are three of them.

For years, I took care of all my clothes-shopping needs by going, on my birthday each year, to the Land's End website and buying the same three articles of clothing. Different sizes and colors, but the same three items every year. I suppose I had ordered them once, back when I had already stopped shopping at the mall but was still paying attention to catalogs. And then, having done that once, I found it possible to repeat it. I now realize that one pair of pants and two tops is an unusually small annual clothes shopping list for an American woman, but that is what I did.

Then I would just wear them till they disintegrated. Now, I have a fairly physical job -- I am always on ladders or on the floor or lifting boxes or climbing around things -- so the trousers become seriously shabby in a year or two, but the tops hang on for quite a while. So I have the same garment in different colors, which is perhaps only slightly eccentric -- but also in different sizes. Actually, four different sizes, only one of which actually fits. And I continue to wear all of them. It occurred to me, as I was fitting the skirt, that this was a trifle odd. So last night I went and put away the ones that are too big for me, to go to Goodwill. This leaves me with exactly nine pieces of clothing. When I complete my sewing this weekend, I will have a dozen pieces of clothing, which is as you can see a great increase.

Since I am, apart from my little agoraphobia problem, a reasonable person, I find it strange that I do not notice these things. That is, I have gone around for years not merely wearing the same garment all the time, but actually wearing completely different sizes of these garments from one day to the next, and never considering that this was unusual behavior. No one has ever said anything to me about it, either. It is one thing to be unconcerned about clothing, but it strikes me that this borders on the eccentric.

One part of the Overcoming Agoraphobia program was telling people about the ailment. I remember that my very closest friends were astonished to learn that I was rarely able to get all the way through my grocery list before I had to escape from the store (I can now usually make it through the list, by the way). And that I never drive on freeways (although I have now done so -- admittedly, in abject terror the whole time, but I have done it several times in the past year). I guess these are not things that you would necessarily notice about someone. But I suppose the normal people around me must have noticed the extreme limitations of my wardrobe.

I have not actually bought a piece of clothing since last March. I haven't gone to the mall since then, either. Along here sometime I am going to do it, though. I am working my way up to it. I think that my success with Overcoming Agoraphobia is impermanent. I am always likely to slip back into being unable to do things if I do not force myself to do those things. My trip to the mall was in a sense a cheat, because I took my daughter with me. Agoraphobes can often do things they are averse to if they have someone along with them. I have not gone to the mall by myself since... maybe 1987?

Thinking back over the past year, I find that I have gone into only half a dozen stores by myself, counting the grocery and the butcher's shop. I don't know how many stores a person normally would enter during a year, but I have a feeling that my total might be a bit low.

Now, being able to go to stores doesn't seem desirable to me, and maybe it doesn't seem like much of a goal to you, either. But the thing about agoraphobia is that it is a progressive boxing in. So the number of things you cannot do gets bigger and the number of things you can do gets smaller. And smaller. And I think that I will always have to make an effort to keep pushing at the edges, if you see what I mean, or I will find myself boxed in.

I don't know why going to the Performing Arts Center with 1400 preschoolers doesn't trigger my aversions and going to the mall does. There is a Mardi Gras parade today, which I probably will not be able to persuade my husband or sons to attend with me. Perhaps I will go by myself. (You may laugh here, if you like. But you know, thinking about it is more than I would have done last year. It's a good thing I have plenty of friends and family, even if they won't go to parades with me. Otherwise I might simply never leave home.)

But right now I am going to pull out a sewing book and refresh my memory on putting in zippers. And contemplate what to do with my handmade sweaters which no longer fit.

Yesterday, I went before work to help seat 1400 preschoolers at a concert.

The concept is this: you meet Miss Linda's Preschool at the door, lead their forty-seven kids into the theater, and send them down the row of seats, putting one kid's bottom on each seat.

Here's what actually happens, though: the first one follows you cheerfully down the row of seats and sits down, and the rest follow pell-mell, like a bunch of little lemmings running off a cliff or something. When they all bunch up together, they will immediately try to sit down. Six will attempt to sit in one seat, and possibly one of them will cry.

So you send them down one row and race to the next row behind that and follow along saying, "This is your seat, this is your seat, this one is yours, sit down honey, sit down sweetie, this is your seat, what's her name? Kelsy, baby, sit down in this seat, thank you. Okay, dear, back up, that's it, okay, sweetie, this is your seat, this is your seat, this ..."

I skipped the gym, but I think I got my workout.

Now the comments section here has been an absolute hotbed of interesting topics lately. Etymology, were-felines, whether felting has anything in common with polymers or not... But there is one question that has arisen about which I have some real evidence.

Here is the question: are Americans insular? Or, more properly, are the people of the U.S. more insular than other people?

This was a bit of a hot topic a while ago. It was suggested that we in the U.S. knew less about geography than anyone else, that we were less familiar with other cultures, etc.

At the time, I had students from about a dozen different countries, so I decided to put it to the test. I found that everyone, from Oman to the Netherlands, knew about their own country, their nearest neighbors, and the U.S. and USSR (which existed at the time). The people from Burundi didn't know anything about Pakistan, the people of Argentina didn't know anything about Bahrain, and the people of Norway didn't know anything about Cameroon.

Now, we in the U.S. are pretty familiar with the states around us, with Mexico, and with Canada. Just like everyone else, we know our neighbors. We have heard of the U.S., naturally, because we are here. The trouble is that people in Burundi have heard of us, because we are big and cause trouble, and therefore they expect us to be equally familiar with them, as though it were some sort of reciprocal arrangement. Also, since we are big, we have fewer neighbors. France is the size of one state and has five countries that border it. For France to be knowledgeable about Germany is the equivalent of New York being knowledgeable about Connecticut, not the equivalent of France being knowledgeable about Peru.

Many of my students were disappointed, upon arrival in the U.S., to find no one walking around with guns, so it was evident that they didn't really know any more about us than we knew about Turkey. I am not saying that we shouldn't be more knowledgeable -- I am always in favor of education -- merely that we are not really less knowledgeable than the rest of the world. We just have circumstances that make us look less knowledgeable.

Sighkey did a similar little experiment with math, and I believe that the Americans did no worse than anyone else.

No, the area in which we in the U.S. actually know too little is science.

The new science standards for our state have been released, and I read through them yesterday to see what kind of materials we would need to get in the store for the teachers who are affected by them. Then last night as I was reading The Ancestor's Tale, it struck me -- a 9th grade student who had actually learned all the things in the standards would be able to read this book. As things currently stand, I am not sure that most of the teachers up to 9th grade could read it without keeping a dictionary handy.

Dawkins, while he is certainly among the great popular science writers, does in this book assume a broad science background among his readers.

This is not to say that I am exceptionally knowledgeable about science. Rather, I have the amount of background in the sciences that a person ought to have, while most of us don't.

The Core Knowledge project approached the question "what should be taught?" in a really interesting way. They read through materials at various grade levels and, if a thing were referred to without further explanation, they determined that kids at that level should know about it. So, if a second grade book mentioned Aladdin without saying who Aladdin was, then the story of Aladdin was something that second graders in the U.S. were expected to know.

When they came to scientific knowledge, they could not adopt this methodology. If they had, there just wouldn't have been a science section. For this portion of the project, they had to go back to the old method of making lists of things that they thought people ought to know. They expressed concern that teachers would not have sufficient background to teach what needed to be taught. I believe that a study in England and Wales a few years back came up with similar results.

In choir practice the other night, we found that none of us could remember who had written "The Charge of the Light Brigade." Actually, I was correct -- it was Tennyson -- but I wasn't sure enough to be able to stand firm against those suggesting Kipling or Coleridge. We were a little shaky on British history, obviously, as well as on British poets.

But I think that is a reasonable and normal level of knowledge among people who have been out of school for a long time (and are not even British). We were all able to recite great wodges of the poem, as well as bits of other poems to compare for style, and we all had suggestions of possible authors.

If instead we had been uncertain about, say, whether felting was similar to the formation of polymers and if so, in what way, I doubt there would have been so much general knowledge to pool. The chemist who sits by me (she was the one plumping for Kipling, and quoting "Gunga Din" in support of the hypothesis) could have put us all right, but I doubt that most of the group would have had views on it. The agronomist on my other side probably also would have known. But the Pampered Chef hostess, the Wal-Mart clerk, the pilot, the Red Cross executive, the librarian -- they all know where Dubai is, but they may not know about polymerization.

A bach bit more progress. I had gathered the bottom of the bag (I just knitted it as a tube, since I had initially planned to make a flat rectangular bag) before I felted it, but post-felting, it began to come undone and develop a hole. I therefore used a bit more of the leather ribbon to gather it back up. Here is a scanning of its bottom. I did take it to the gym yesterday, and it worked perfectly for the purpose, but I think it needs a lining. I have a few more days before the end of the Olympics to get said lining done.

It was hard to go to the gym yesterday. I had not worked out for four days, and there were deer prancing around in the leftover snow in the back field, and I have several unread books... I went, though. The Knitting Olympics will not sub for actual physical activity. 

I was over at the Knitting Curmudgeon's, reading her imaginary play-by-play announcement of the Knitting Olympics, when something she said caused me to read her comments. I usually avoid this, because -- while it can be entertaining to read someone's fairly abstract ill-natured essay about something -- the comments are interaction. And reading mean-spirited interactions is not my idea of fun.

It made me think about my Lenten sacrifice.

Now, a Lenten sacrifice is when you give something up for Lent, which is the part of the year between Mardi Gras and Easter. Many people give up luxuries, or perhaps something they especially enjoy, but we mainstream Protestants also sometimes choose bad habits as our Lenten sacrifice.

The object of the Lenten sacrifice is not to suffer, but to have reminders. When you reach for that cup of coffee and then have to stop because you gave it up for Lent, you are reminded to contemplate the things you are supposed to contemplate during Lent. If we did not have these reminders, we might not get around to contemplating anything. For the past couple of years, I have done an online Lenten study which has prescribed various sacrifices which were designed very specifically to increase awareness of particular issues and consequences of our actions. (Index of the studies is here -- there is not a new one for this year, but the old ones are still excellent.)

But when you give up a bad habit for Lent, there can be a side-benefit of losing the bad habit permanently.

Reading the nasty comments at the Knitting Curmudgeon's place has encouraged me to give up being critical for Lent. It is so easy to be snide and mean, and often we mistake it for cleverness or wit.

I do not make many snide comments (I don't think -- if you catch me at it, let me know), but I have a lot of snide thoughts. As we get older, it is easier and easier to go around disapproving of people and mentally belittling them. I don't want to end up as a nasty old biddy, or even a curmudgeon. I enjoy reading Mencken, after all, but as I do, I frequently feel gratitude that I am not like him.

Now, the disadvantage of giving up something like this is that it is not conducive to Mardi Gras festivities. Eating up all the meat and chocolate in the house, having a last bottle of wine, spending the entire evening in riotous reading of novels (Partygirl usually gives that up for Lent) -- these are jolly images. But who would want to spend Mardi Gras in a sipe-fest, making snarky little digs at people?

Well, maybe some would. But I don't think I would enjoy it. So I think I will plan to join others in celebrating before they make their Lenten sacrifices. Anyone who plans to give up pastry, come on over!

The protagonist of this book lived in Virginia till she was 12. Are you laughing yet? If not, you may not enjoy this book. It is one of those that takes as its premise the idea that merely being Southern (even as questionably Southern as the heroine) is hilarious.

We had a woman from Canada in the shop recently who assured us that Canadians make fun of the people in northern Canada "the same way that people in the states make fun of Southerners." We had not been aware that people in the U.S. made fun of Southerners, any more than anyone else. "All the rednecks are in the north," she blithely assured us, speaking at that point of Canada.

She was, I must remind you, in the South at the time. The Southern United States, that is.

She shared with us how difficult it had been for her to move here from Toronto, considering the reputation we had. She also complained that our local weather reports did not show Canadian weather. Apparently -- and I did not know this because I don't watch TV news -- Canada is right there on the map, but they don't mention the weather in Toronto.

We are 1148.31 miles from Toronto. We probably don't need to know the weather there before we decide what to wear in the morning. I did not say this to her. I did not mention that I came here from California and had never felt that I was surrounded by rednecks. I did not mention that we have lots of Canadian customers, and none has ever before called us rednecks. I did not say, "Sugar, don't they teach y'all not to insult your hosts, up there where you come from?" Instead, I suggested that she get her news online. I sympathized because we are a small town, and she was accustomed to big city media. I shared with her that I like to read the New York and San Francisco papers online, and that it was easy to do so. She suggested that we in the U.S. are just insular.

Now, The Princess had left the room rather frostily back when this woman said we were rednecks, so she didn't get to hear that we are insular rednecks. I assume that this poor woman was in the throes of terrible homesickness, and had no idea what she was saying. Of course, she had already admitted that she makes fun of the people of Northern Canada.

And I was reminded of her by this book, because it is absolutely taken for granted that the New Yorkers in it will automatically look down upon Southerners. Anything you say, if said in a Southern accent, sounds stupid. This book says so. The heroine gets all defensive about being a Southerner (remember, she lived in Virginia till she was twelve).

If you want to read something funny about the South, read Florence King. Crazy Aunt Purl is funny about being Southern. Granny is funny about living in the South. The Mile-High Hair Club isn't funny.

Another thing that isn't funny is that I emailed my encyclopedia entry in and got a response saying it was blank. "Hmm," thought I, unconcerned, "I'll send it again." I went to open my copy of the file and -- it was blank. My hours of work were gone.

I am hoping that one of you will read this and put something in the comments like "Oh, that happens all the time. Just change the font size and it will all reappear."

Pokey said that I could reset my computer to think it was Sunday again, and it would reappear, but I haven't figured out how to do that. I think she may be having me on -- it sounds like Superman turning the world backwards. Sent an email you regret? Posted more details of your private or corporate life than you should on your blog? Just move the computer back in time and it will be gone.

Well, not anything you sent out, presumably, but it would be great if I could do a little time-travel and get my article back.

I had just returned from a lecture on spiritual lethargy when I discovered this loss. And I was at work until the lecture, and taking #2 son to the dentist before that, where I was given an estimate that startled me. And before that, I was getting no sleep because Nadia the psychotic cat gets in the middle of the bed and pushes us out.

I know that this seems unlikely. She is such a sweet-looking cat. And small, compared to a human. But she is selfish. Spiritually lethargic. And a major blanket hog.

Whenever she does this, my husband wakes me up repeatedly to complain that the cat has stolen all the covers and is pushing him out of bed. While kneading his stomach and purring deafeningly loudly.

What I am supposed to do about this I do not know. But it doubles the number of times I am awakened during the night, since I am awakened not only when she mistreats me, but also when she mistreats him. Sometimes she pushes us both to the absolute edges of the bed -- opposite edges -- at the same time. She doesn't look that big, does she? It may be that she is one of those shape-changing cats. She turns into a griffin or something after midnight.

Anyway, I have not gotten any knitting or sewing done since the last pictures I posted. I will not have time to redo the article till tomorrow. And I am not in the mood for any more tacky jokes about Southerners. Or Northern Canadians, either. Northern Canadians, I salute you. Dymuniadau da.

Yvonessa was asking about felting, so I am going to answer her questions.

Probably this is partly because my workshop yesterday was canceled. There I was, fully prepared to explain all kinds of things -- Indian Removal, why the habitants were rotten colonists, the fascinating story of the only battle of the American Revolution to take place west of the Mississippi, how to use sentence strips to integrate history and math -- and then the snow caused this cancellation, and I had no one to explain anything to.

I did consider explaining the fate of the dodos to The Empress, or possibly the connection between islands and flightless birds, but I think it highly likely that she would be bored by that. So instead I will explain about felting, and if you are bored, you can just leave. I'll never know.

Felting is what happens when you subject woolen fibers to hot water, possibly soap, and agitation. The fibers all line up together and bond with one another to make long molecules. (The book Caveman Chemistry explain this properly, with equations and everything, but that is the part that I remember. It is like polymers.) The result is a firm nonwoven fabric. Yvonessa has done this with direct agitation of wool against a surface, to make felt.

This hat, modeled by a cooperative watermelon, was made by that method. #2 daughter and I shaped some hats like this on a Gertie ball and bounced them around.

You can see in the picture below that we took strips of wool roving and layered them with a bit of soap onto the ball prior to beating the stuff into submission. This gave it the round shape. We then wrapped it up and took it out onto the patio and bounced it. Thus we had the agitation.

 

This method of making felt was, according to legend, developed inadvertently by St. Clement, who put wool into his sandals. As he walked around, the heat and moisture from his feet felted the wool into tough shoe liners. There are similar stories about wool put under saddles. Chances are that this method was discovered independently and repeatedly all over the world by people traveling around on sweaty feet or animals. Hatmakers do it this way (without the sweat, of course), shaping their hats over blocks.

Also, commercial felt is done much like this, with batts of wool being put into fulling machines to produce flat yards of felt which you can then cut and sew into shapes.

But there is an alternative method, which is to knit the shape first and then felt that. The traditional Basque beret is done in this fashion; the "stem" at the top is the cast-off end. Or possibly the cast-on end. I have forgotten in which direction it goes.

 

 

Some further examples of this process include this knitted bag,  which is made from the "Sophie" pattern.

It was knitted and felted, and then sewn onto a ready-made handle.  

Since this is a modern felted thing, the agitation, moisture, and heat were all provided by a washing machine.

You put your all-wool knitted thing into a pillowcase (so your machine doesn't get messed up by stray fibers) and run it through a hot water cycle with a little liquid soap. I use natural soap from Brambleberries.

 

Also this bag, which was made from a pattern in the book Simple Knits for Sophisticated Living. The red part is felted, and the fuzzy black part is not.

With this particular bag, the felting went a little further than the knitter (#2 daughter) wanted, so we wedged a DVD case into it to stretch it back to the desired size.

You have a little flexibility with felting. If you want great precision, you can do it entirely by hand, on a washboard or something similar. If you want a little flexibility, you have to remember to check the washing machine every few minutes to catch your felted item at just the right moment.

 

And here are two neck wraps from Felted Knits, or at least their middles. The one on the top is not yet felted, and the one on the bottom is felted. They were the same size to begin with.

These are the nice wooly things you fill with a muslin bag of rice, which you can then microwave for a cozy heating thing for your neck. This shows that felting makes things smaller. Which is logical. And since they are smaller, they are also denser and thicker.

Now Yvonessa asked how you get the shape. First, of course, you knit the thing in roughly the shape you have in mind. Then you subject it to hot water and agitation till it is about where you want it, checking it frequently. The you can manipulate it or mold it while it dries. Here is another Sophie bag, with a couple of books in it to make the shape. The green Sophie bag above was allowed to dry without forming, to give it a rounder shape. Slippers are often dried on the foot.

The Olympic bag was knitted in the round, and then I gathered the bottom together to make a pouch. I dried it over a cannister for shape, and then added the leather drawstrings. The result is a nice round little pouch.

If you wanted to make one of these for yourself, you could go to Artyarns and sign up for their free tutorial. I did this, but then did not actually do the projects. This is why I still knew nothing about modular knitting.

Anyway, make the headband from session 7, but do not cast off. Instead, repeat it about eight times.

At the end of the first round of the last repeat, you will be told to knit 8 stitches. Don't. Continue with the last round. This will give you the self-faced petals at the top.

#2 son wants this for a climbing chalk bag. He is arguing that I should put in a waterproof lining and give it to him. I am thinking that it would be just the right size for the gym, whereas I now have to carry in a handbag, adding to my matronly "What's she doing at our gym?" look. I might still want a lining, but it would hold my billfold, keys, and lip balm.

We could share it, of course, but I have seen what happens to objects #2 son carries around. They get that "I lead an exciting life" look which is so expensive in ready-made objects.

This might be a good look for the gym.

 

Scriveling identified the book I was after -- and others made some intriguing suggestions, too,which I will have to look into later. Many thanks!

Since I've left this so late, I ordered the book from Amazon, along with Yorkshire Tea, and just blinded myself to the horrible price of shipping. And since I was blind to shipping, I went ahead and added to my order a couple of out-of-print books I have been wishing for, which were selling for under $1 each, with $4 apiece for shipping. I don't know what their shippers are thinking of -- I suppose they will sell my name and address to someone, since there is no way they can be making any money by selling me their books for pennies. The shipping for my order was equal to the order itself. Do the rest of you resent this as much as I do?

Okay. I am over it.

We are not over the snow. I did not go to church. The Poster Queen emailed me that her church cancelled services, so it may be as well that I did not slog through the snow and ice, only perhaps to find the church doors locked.

This is a picture of my road. You may not be able to discern which part is the road, because the whole thing is covered with snow. Also, we had a rain of ice, which makes a lovely tinkly sound and renders travel very perilous. Today I will have to venture out of my house, not only to work, but to a workshop in another town. I am giving the workshop, so it might be remarked upon if I do not go. At the moment, I am hoping for a miraculous clearing of the roads between now and time to leave.

Chanthaboune says she is laughing at me. In fact, she says that all of them up there are laughing at me. Oh, well. I am glad to have been able to bring a little pleasure into their overworked lives.

When you are snowed in, you can do a lot of things, even while being lazy and snow-day-ish.

I put the fringe on the Pacific Homespun prayer shawl, which has been sitting around unfringed for an embarrassing length of time. I have now begun another, in cotton-candy pink. Someday there will be a little girl who needs a prayer shawl, and she will be thrilled to have something so extremely pink.

Here is the free pattern. Here is information about the ministry.

I completed the encyclopedia entry and emailed it off to the encyclopedia folks. They were sending the contract in the mail for me to sign and mail back. Since the work came and went by email, I didn't receive the contract before I finished the work. This sort of situation is probably becoming more common. I also have qualms about it -- did I proof it enough? Was it really complete? It is so easy to shoot off an email -- as we have seen in the news lately. Without the intermediary of paper to slow things down, there might not be sufficient thought.

I finished the floral skirt, though I did not do any more work on the other sewing projects. This was mostly a recycling job, with an elastic waistband, so it hardly even counts. But I like it a lot anyway. The other skirt needs a zipper, and I used the snow day =sloth equation to to persuade myself to ignore it.

I moved on beyond the whole testes comparison chart (it proved that humans are not naturally inclined toward promiscuity) in The Ancestor's Tale and learned many things about marsupials and monotremes and herps, which last are defined as "things herpetologists study," which Dawkins admits is a lame definition. Heading on into birds, I particularly enjoyed the discussion of fashion and memes (if you only know this term in the blog context, or if you would enjoy an introduction to Dawkins, you might like to click here and read a chapter from The Selfish Gene, the book which introduced the word.)

I finished the knitting of the Olympic Knitting item, namely the modular knit bag.

On the right, you can see it before felting, sitting in the snow where there was enough light to photograph it. On my monitor, at least, the colors are very accurate in this picture. After I had done the back triangles for the top row, I bound off and picked up stitches to make a hem at the same time, so the edge is very neatly finished. This would be a good way to make claws or dinosaur spines on stuffed toys, as well as flower petals.

Below, you can see it drying after being felted. I think it is still big enough, and the blurring of the design was a definite plus. In general, I do not like felting of colorwork. You have worked so hard to make a beautiful many-colored design, after all, and then you felt it and lose all definition.

However, if you are new to colorwork and want to feel free to mess it up, you could practice on an item that will end up being felted. This little bag, in spite of this badly overexposed photo by the fire, is turning out to look very good indeed.

I am going to use some suede ribbon (I don't know what else to call it) for the drawstrings. I ran a strand of twine through the holes before felting it in order to keep them open. I will wait until it is completely dry to decide about lining it.

It is therefore not entirely finished, but I am sure it will be by the time the Olympics end.

Was it challenging enough? I think so. It is certainly the least successful and most difficult bit of knitting I've done in some time. And I mean that in a good way.

It will be a relief to get back to my Alice Starmore cardie. And you don't hear that sentence much in the knit blogs.