Last year I had trouble choosing between two Lenten studies. I decided to go with one and leave the other -- a book I saw described at Amazon -- for this year. Now, however, I cannot remember or find the book. It was about physics and spirituality, and had I think the word "grace" in the title. If that rings any bells for any of you, I will be very grateful if you will let me know. Thanks!

This novel is not terribly good, but Richard Dawkins had gotten to a complex argument about testicle size which turned out to be incompatible with my knitting, so I have swapped books for a little while at least. I was interested to discover, a bit earlier in The Ancestor's Tale, that the hippo is more closely related to the whale than to the pig, which just goes to show. What it goes to show, I am not prepared to say, but apparently this idea was accepted in the 19th century, rejected in the 20th century (when I studied this stuff in school), and has recently been shown by new DNA testing to be true. Once I finish the complicated knitting and can pay proper attention to graphs of relative testis size, I will return to Dawkins.

Feebeeglee, who is still waiting around in the snow and cold for her baby to arrive, tagged me with this question:

What one knitting pattern would you like to have in your hands this very moment?

That would have to be this one from Poetry in Stitches, which I learned about at Woolywarbler's blog. This picture I snitched from Pink Tea, with thanks. The book is full of wonderful designs, but costs enough that I haven't yet persuaded myself that I can buy it. I have a good variety of ways and means of finding books for less than the cover price, but none has yet worked for this book. When the encyclopedia people get around to paying me, I may splurge on it.

Not that I am in need of any new knitting patterns, because I have at the moment a highly uncharacteristic number of WIPS.

The modular bag for the Knitting Olympics is nearing completion. I returned to an earlier error to make 3-D petals for the top. On the headband, this error created an unattractive Statue of Liberty effect, but I like it for an edging for the bag. I will put drawstrings just below that top row, and have a useful little pouch. I have not yet decided whether to felt it. It would blur the messy transitions and give it a firmer fabric, both of which would be positive outcomes. On the other hand, I am not sure that I am willing to give up much in size. I may just felt it slightly. This is one of the nice things about felting -- if you have time to fiddle around with it, you can stop and start repeatedly until you get just the effect you want.

Even though I eschewed my highly efficient plan, I still got quite a lot done for the sewalong. I completed a floral cotton gauze skirt with an elastic waistband, and got up to the zipper on a nice drapey rayon one.

The third fabric I scored at the clearance sale was a sturdy twill. It didn't seem suited to the pattern after all, so I made some simple pants from it instead. I have with all three projects done all the easy bits.

This is the trouble. You do the pinning and cutting, enjoying the texture and color of the fabric, and then you come up to the zipper. At this point, you could easily ruin all the fine work you've done. I hung up the projects -- ostensibly to let them settle. But really I must gather up courage for the zipper.

There are no photos because we are having camera issues chez fibermom. I put some batteries that said "heavy duty" in the camera and they appear to have committed suicide and possibly taken the camera with them. I will not know till the snow melts and I can go buy some other type of battery and try them out.

There is still snow outside. The temperatures have been in numbers like 16 which should not, in my opinion, feature in weather reports. Presumably, all the plants which were leafing out in the false spring have now died. I have not gone out in this at all, though the boys went sledding and threw snowballs. Soon, though, I will put on stout boots and walk to church.

I looked at my site meter this morning and learned that I have had visitors from places like Michigan and Manitoba, all of whom doubtless snickered at my snow. If they come back and see that I am letting this little dusting of white stuff dissuade me from driving to the store, their snow snickers (not to be confused with either the snickersnack of the vorpal blade or the snickersnee drawn by Koko) will doubtless turn into guffaws. However, they probably have snow plows. Here, we have had church closings announced.

Later: It has started snowing again, enormous snowflakes, each individually visible in the air. Will stout boots be enough to get me to church? Stout boots and down parka? How much of a wimp am I, anyway?

Normally on a Saturday morning at this hour I would be on my way out to get my errands done.

However, we are having a snow day.

Rosalyne01, who lives in the Frozen North, is very blase about snow. (I don't know how to put accents on with a keyboard -- you have to mentally furnish the accent and give the word its proper two syllables.)

"We had about three feet," she says when I, having seen horrific scenes of northern blizzards on TV, call to make sure she is fine, "but it's no big deal." She explains once again about snow plows.

We do not have snow plows here. Our 2-4 inches, seen here completely obliterating our walkway, entirely immobilizes our town.

It does not matter, though, because I took part last night in the local snow-preparation rituals.

When snow is predicted, as it was last night, all local people go buy milk. I am not sure why. After all, the snow which is turning our road into an apparent field and preventing all movement of cars will not last for more than 36 hours.

It will once again keep me from scrubbing down the porch, but it is not likely that anyone will develop pellagra from lack of milk in that time.

Nor is it likely that the thing people will most want on an icy morning is a nice bowl of cold cereal with milk. This is oatmeal weather. But when I arrived at the grocery last night after work, along with the other 600 shoppers, I found a sign on the dairy case saying "Forecast: SNOW!"

Just in case anyone missed the weather report and did not realize that they were supposed to buy milk.

I did not buy milk, since I had some at home. I bought a ham. And plenty of dried beans and lentils. Because a ham is nice when the family are all snowed in together, and a good pot of beans and ham can make you feel much warmer the next day.

I also have the other essential supplies for a snowy day, namely some knitting and tea and a stack of books.

Yesterday at work I spent the entire day labeling things. This allowed me to think about my encyclopedia article (another senator, but this was a 20th century guy, so there have not so far been any gunfights) and the story contest. I also spent some time developing a highly efficient sewing plan which would allow me to sew three skirts over the weekend. This involved assembly-line cutting and sewing and clever dovetailing of different thread colors.

However, in addition to buying milk, there is another custom for snow days, and that is that they grant permission to be lazy all day. All highly efficient plans are canceled. They are automatically replaced by plans involving lying around in front of the fire. That doesn't mean that I will fail to work on my Knitting Olympics project. I have decided to make it into a cylindrical bag or pouch. Here is the bottom of it. #2 son says it would make a great chalk bag, something climbers need, apparently. He wants me to put in a waterproof lining and a belt loop and give it to him. I may do that.

Following the therapeutic day off, I got back to my modular knitting. Here it is in its less-than-glory. Obviously, I do not want to be the one out of the 230 members of Team Wales who does not complete her project, so I am completing it. I am remembering that I have been knitting other techniques for a long time, so it is natural that my modular knitting should not be up to my usual standard. I am remembering that LostArts admired its primitive appeal. I am remembering that I can felt it, thus blurring all the messy edges. I like the random coloring. However, if you were going to do this, and found as I have that tidy triangles are beyond you, I think doing it in just two colors would hide that untidiness. My quilt triangles tend toward the untidy, too, so it may be that I have a genetic ineptitude with triangles. Some sort of missing triangle enzyme, perhaps. I will say that people who promote this style of knitting as an easier alternative to traditional colorwork are ... um... different from me.

Witty teammate Franklin has confessed that he is not actually watching the Olympics, so I am going to admit the same. I saw the opening ceremonies, and have watched a couple of minutes here and there since, but what can I say? I am not a sports spectator. Many of you dislike ballet and opera, after all, both of which are a great pleasure for me. I'll watch the performances for you if you will watch the sports on my behalf.

I am also in this knitter's sewalong. I got confused about it and thought it wasn't beginning till the 20th (it ends on March 20th -- that is my excuse). Fortunately, Khali Mama is also in it, and her post alerted me to my error. It actually began on the 15th. I have some catching up to do.

So yesterday I bought the fabric and the pattern, which I present here in a blocky photo. I have noticed on the sewalong blog that this sort of photo is de rigeur. I think it will look very good with Erin, my current (aside from Knitting Olympics) knitting project. Erin is below on the right, for color comparison.

I think it possible that I will get this cut out tonight, in alternation with the Knitting Olympics. Then I can sew it over the weekend. We are expecting snow, so a stay-at-home, needlework-filled weekend is in order.

There are actually sewalongers who have finished their skirts. This is not going to be me, even if I don't get too caught up in handwork. My skirt involves a zipper, and I know from experience that putting in a zipper is not something I can toss off with a light laugh.

Challenges are good.

Now, I realize that my remark above on staying home this weekend rather implies that most of my weekends are filled with madcap hi-jinks or high-level meetings or something, and you know that this is not true. In fact, I have another encyclopedia entry to re-write, a workshop on Monday to prepare for, the story contest to work on, and a lot of neglected domestic work to do, in addition to the knitting and sewing. So I will be, as always, busy in my harmless and low-key way. If you are out having adventures, have an extra one for me.

# 2 son and I were talking about soda drinking and bone strength, and he pointed out that he had never broken a bone. "Not even when..." he began, with the air of one who has an argument-clinching point to make, and then his voice trailed off. He quickly changed the subject.

I understand this, because I too have sentences like that. You start them and only after you have spoken do you realize that it's going to end up with "...the time I camped out on the Marine base" and decide not to finish the sentence after all.

#2 son is a bit of a daredevil. Sometimes, long after the event, he will mention the time he jumped over the fence and was caught by his shirt and nearly strangled, for example, but usually he keeps it quiet. In fact, when asked about a new 6-inch gash on his arm, he can not only contrive to behave as though the wound is a complete surprise, but as though the body part itself is unknown to him. He gazes at it with comical befuddlement, apparently having no idea how the arm or the cut got there. He certainly didn't notice when it happened. And he hasn't been doing anything dangerous. Not him. Nosirree.

It is just as well that I not know these things.

Some people are more overt about their eccentricities. Last night one of the basses came to choir practice with headphones and a little radio so he could listen to the game. He had the radio balanced on his head, under his hat, so you might at first think he was trying to be discreet.

But then, throughout the practice, he kept shouting out bulletins.

"They've just fouled our boy!" he'd call as we built a tricky chord in the  Beethoven. "It's 32 and 38!" he'd shout just as the director told us to go to rehearsal 35, thereby confusing our Oldest Member hopelessly and ensuring that his basset-hound notes would be further off than usual.

Janalisa and I added an unusual harmony ourselves at one point, since we were singing on page 12 and the rest of the choir was on page 8 -- and it was all the fault of the guy with the radio.

The Empress and I were chatting about events of the day -- probably much the same conversations you have been having. What exactly is the difference between a plan and a plot? If the White House categorically denies something, should we just go ahead and assume that it is true? What does etiquette require of one if one inadvertently shoots someone while hunting? Is it worse if one was hunting illegally, having failed to pay for a permit? Is it better if the victim is also an opponent of gun control?

Anyway, the Empress was saying that she thought the U.S would, in our lifetimes, cease to be a World Power.

I should explain, for any international visitors, that in Hamburger-a-go-go-land we divide nations into those which are major players in global politics and those which -- while of equal importance by any other reckoning -- are not. This distinction is what made Mr. Bush's talk about "coalition forces," which pretended that nations such as Tonga and Fiji were joining with us in some sort of international approval of our invasion of Iraq, so ludicrous.

Anyway, The Empress was wondering who might supplant us. The E.U.? China? Wal-Mart?

And I was wondering what would become of us. Would we be like Rome, essentially gone but with reminders of our past glory -- perhaps Coca-Cola and the blue jeans so often worn by people shouting "Death to America!" -- left behind? Or like Germany, a nation with an embarrassing political past rarely mentioned, but which makes people worry a little lest we regain power? Perhaps we will manage to be like the U.K., a nation which has outgrown its imperialist past but continues to be an important force in world culture.

I'm having a bit of international correspondence. I had an email about genealogical stuff, in French, from a lady in Argentina. After I responded in my limited French, apologizing for its limitations, she answered with a much longer email -- in Spanish. Since my Spanish is even more limited than my French, I am afraid I will have to run her through babelfish.

All the Argentineans I have ever met have been very fun people, so I look forward to continuing my conversation with this distant cousin of mine, once we can work out the language question. She certainly sounds livelier in Spanish than in French. In French, she offered me her distinguished compliments (people say that kind of thing in French letters all the time) while in Spanish she finished her missive up with "CCCHHAAAAUUUUUU!" and a kiss. There must be dour and tetchy Argentineans, but I haven't met any.This lady is a descendant of a fellow who emigrated from France to Argentina in 1890. My family just cannot stay put.

A small family emergency kept me home last night, so I did some more knitting.

I am knitting more, with the Knitting Olympics, and more single-mindedly. Normally, if I had a very twisty-turny knitting project like this going on, I would also have some plain knitting to alternate with, or some sewing, or some altogether different project. In this case, of course, with the honor of Wales on the line, I am knitting these triangles with every spare moment. The result is a sore wrist. It got quite painful last night. I will take a day off -- choir practice tonight, anyway -- and start up again tomorrow. The triangles are beginning to line up better, but this piece may still have to be felted.

If I end up competent at modular knitting by the end of this project, though, this pretty camisole would be the next modular thing I would make.

This is basically the ubiquitous mitered corner square modular thing which you see all over the web, but the setting and color treatment make it prettier, to me.

And here you can see a very interesting modular knitted hat. All this should prove that, in spite of the appearance of my current project, modular knitting can be done.

Happy Valentine's Day!

Pecan caramel rolls will be taking place shortly, and the table is already properly covered with heart-decorated things and candy.

My husband greeted me this morning with "Happy Valentines Day! What are you going to give me?" Fortunately, I had already received a really charming e-valentine card from my friend La Bella, so I did not feel the need to point out to him that he had it backwards. Yes, I know that's sexist.

Local papers have been bristling with articles about how not to feel sad on Valentine's Day if you don't have a valentine, but I think we should all continue to celebrate this day as we did when we were children -- give valentines to all your friends, and eat candy.

I am about to go send e-valentines to people but first I went and looked at my site meter. I put one on my xanga at the beginning of the year.

It was Spinner Mom who inspired me to try a site meter. She said it was fascinating, and indeed it can be. I go now and then and see that someone from the Czech Republic has visited and think "Ooh! How cool!"

This time, however, I saw referrals from Google. I think I was invisible to Google before, and I don't know what changed this. But it is interesting to see what searches lead people to me. I think that the depraved person who found me by searching for "knitting sluts" ended up at a reflection on the unhappiness caused by the sexual irresponsibility of the women in "Sex and the City," and I hope he took it to heart. But I am a little sorry for the person who was searching for "chlorophyll in negative numbers." I often write about math and science, but I am aware that I don't say much on these subjects which is actually useful.

Here are some thoughts on modular knitting which may be useful if you are considering trying out this method. You can do it all with just a knit stitch, if you want to, and still get some texture. You can use just one color in a row and get some color action. The multidirectionality makes it hard to read while you do this type of knitting, but it does give it shape without much calculation. You need to be able to increase and decrease, and accuracy is a plus.

In the particular pattern that I am using, there is an A section and a B section. The B section makes perfect sense to me and I can do it without any suffering, but the A section is still a matter of carefully following the "K1, K1inc, K5, turn, s1, K4, K1inc..." Once I get to where I actually understand the A section, I am sure that the experience will be greatly improved. Note that I am assuming that I will be enlightened about the A section at some point, though I have been knitting it for four days with no dawning of comprehension.

Today I will have no knitting time at all. So it may be that tomorrow I will return to it refreshed, and the true inwardness of the A section will reveal itself to me in a blinding flash of light. Or not.

This blogger says that you can click on pictures to embiggen them. I really like that word. You will also find at this blog a non-comprehensive but really long list of the Knitting Olympics teams.

Knitting Olympics teams include Australia, Canada, the U.S. sock knitters, Ireland ("Drink first. Then knit."), Finland, Luxembourg, New Zealand, Germany, Norway, Portugal, California, Wisconsin (Team Cheese), Connecticut, Alaska, Minnesota, Virginia, Boston, Pittsburgh,  and of course Wales. There are also some more exotic teams, such as Team Goth, Team Merlot, and Team Cat Bed. I think it would improve the real Olympics if they had teams like this.

(Oh, and did anyone understand what the announcers had against the Russian fellow who won the gold medal for cross-country skiing?)

Elsewhere in the virtual world, there are discussions of a study of a whole bunch of post-menopausal women which found that telling these women to change their intake of fat didn't improve their chances of avoiding cancer and heart disease.

Many people are interested in this because they seek loopholes, and I have sympathy for that. However, the thing about this that interested me is what it shows about science reporting.

Following years of evidence that reducing saturated fat and increasing fiber have beneficial effects on health, there is this study that finds no statistically significant difference in the incidence of breast cancer, colorectal cancer, or heart disease between old ladies told to improve their diets and those who were not told to do so. Do folks respond by tracking down the raw data, comparing this study with others that appear to contradict it, and gathering all the information before making a decision? Of course not! What kind of headlines would that provide?

The headlines people are going with tend to be things like "Nutritionists Know Nothing! Break Out the Sausages!" More accurate headlines ought to be things like "Nagging old ladies does not prevent cancer!"

Here's the scoop. First, this was not a controlled study of what the women ate. Naturally. Unless they were institutionalized, no one could keep proper track of what people actually ate for eight years. Instead, this was based on annual self-reporting -- forms filled out by women who had either been told to reduce their fat intake, or not to make any changes.

I do not want to make generalizations about older ladies, but I wonder whether all those years of training did not cause at least some of them to overestimate their success in making the changes the doctors had told them them to make.

But let's suppose that they were accurate in their reports. The women claimed that they had reduced their fat consumption from 35% to 24-29%. Just for perspective, I tried to find something in my kitchen that contained 24% fat. Nothing but oil and butter met that level. There was no distinction made between lard and olive oil, walnuts and Twinkies. They were also told to eat more fruits, vegetables, and whole grains, but weren't able to succeed on the whole grains thing. Again, no distinction is made between peach pie and fresh peaches, or between Triscuits and brown rice. So, as far as we know, we are looking at a very slight change in eating habits.

The ones who were supposed to change their eating patterns were reminded often that they were supposed to do this, and met with nutritionists. They -- and the control group -- were also presumably bombarded with messages from the world outside about the importance of reducing fat in their diets. This is one of the messages that everyone has grasped by now, resulting in "lite" hot dogs, Snackwell's cookies, and baked potato chips -- but not, in the population as a whole, in a healthier eating pattern.

It would have been great news if the researchers had found that telling people to eat less fat prevented cancer, but it is not amazing that this turned out not to be the case. What is amazing is that it was reported as proof that all the nutritionists have been wrong all along.

I read some years ago that the level of knowledge about science in the population as a whole now lags so far behind the level of scientific knowledge among scientists that we would believe anything if it were reported to us as "Scientists have learned..." The example, I believe, was that cups could be turned into sentient beings. As long as it was presented as something like "scientists have learned how to stimulate molecular change in seemingly inanimate porcelain with lasers," we'd believe it.

Perhaps we would not all believe it, but I can sure see it being reported in that way. Any study that can be presented as a gripping headline is immediately treated as a breakthrough. If at all possible, it is treated as something that contradicts all previous knowledge on the subject.

The result is that many of us think that scientific information is in a constant state of turmoil, or entirely unreliable. Health textbooks from 1914 warned of the dangers of cigarette smoking, but people have made fortunes by pretending that they had no idea that cigarettes were bad for them. Nutritional advice has been roughly the same throughout my lifetime, but people ignore it on the grounds that it is constantly changing anyway. Our government is able to claim that environmentalists are relying on fuzzy numbers and uncertain science, and more or less get away with it.

"More or less getting away with it" is where I am on my modular knit bag, too. On every row, I find myself having to fudge extra stitches or add some to make it work out. The effect is imprecise to say the least. The triangles do not line up properly, as you no doubt notice in the picture. However, I persevere. I feel sure that I will have the hang of it by the time I get to the end. The bag itself will have folk art charm. And I can still felt it, after all. I may just develop that into a threat, to be used against recalcitrant wool. "I have a dryer, you know, and I'm not afraid to use it!" Dal ati!, Daliwch ati!  Which means "Keep at it! Don't give up!"

Dawkins has some political commentary sort of moments in this book. For example, in the middle of a discussion of New World Monkeys, he bursts out "The present leader of the largest nuclear power in the world... thinks the word is 'nucular." He has never given any reason to suggest that his wisdom or his intelligence outperforms his literacy. He  has demonstrated a predilection for 'pre-emptive' first strikes. What are the odds against a terrible mistake, initiating Armageddon?... We came awfully close in 1963, and that was with an intelligent president."

Shortly beyond that point we come to the earliest primate, the tree shrew. No surprises there, because of course we are primates and of course the earliest primate is the tree shrew, but the next branching point is the rodents.

Are you surprised? Did you know that our nearest non-primate relatives are rodents? Not only was I surprised, but I was unhappy about it, too. Dawkins can talk all he wants about the sheep-sized rodents in South America (declared honorary fish by the Catholic church back when they had fish on Fridays) and the recently-eradicated donkey- and rhino-sized rodents, but I still think it is like meeting a group of near cousins who happen to be gangsters. Who wants rats in the family?

Why couldn't it have been giraffes? Or tigers?

After I had finished the grocery shopping but before I got around to scrubbing the front porch, it began to snow. I had checked out the local craft store for books on modular knitting, without success, and had found to my surprise that my own collection of knitting books had nothing to say on the subject. So I got dinner into the crockpot, staked out a spot in front of the fire, armed myself with Dawkins and a cup of tea, and tackled the modular knitting without assistance of any kind.

It is clearly too late to join Team Angstylvania, but check it out anyway.

Here is the headband. It would be tedious to detail all the ways in which I did this wrong. My personal favorite was when I had the two rows of triangles point to point, as though I were doing a Statue of Liberty effect. Now, though, I have a reasonably winsome little headband, for GlazyJ's five year old or for the gym, as the case may be.

I have begun the bag satisfactorily. It will not look like the inspiration piece, I am sure. However, I think I will be challenged, finish it by the deadline, and know how to do modular knitting by the time I finish.

The goal of finishing by the deadline is a bit easier than it might otherwise be, because I have no pattern, so I can declare myself finished when the time or the yarn runs out.

I am just repeating the headband to make a fabric of interlocking triangles. I have added some striping to the light-colored ones. I think this will be a handy little bag for times when I just need my keys and my billfold. I will probably line it, and if it looks too funky I will felt it. If that makes it too small, I will declare it a cell phone cozy or something. One way or another, I will complete it, whatever it is, by the end of the Olympics. Dal ati!, Daliwch ati!

Something like 3300 knitters all cast on together during the opening ceremonies last night -- and I was almost not among them. This is because my husband wanted me to drive him somewhere. For a moment, I considered explaining that I was competing in Women's Modular for the Welsh Olympic knitting team and could not miss the opening ceremonies, but only for a moment. I could envision the look of blank incomprehension he would offer me.

So my plan, which included cleaning up the house, preparing a well-balanced dinner, and checking all my knitting books for a modular pattern before the opening ceremonies began, had to be adjusted. I did start on time, but in a house in complete disarray, with popcorn and pizza for the meal (#1 son helped me out with the menu -- can you tell?)

Here is the cat, completely unconcerned about the total disarray.

I have decided that my event is learning modular knitting. I will make a headband according to the pattern and then, eschewing Sighkey's tempting suggestion of a matching garter, figure out how to make a matching bag.

I like this one, from the Knitting Basket. Obviously, I do not have time to order their pattern. However, it is just a rectangle. Once I master modular knitting, I should have no trouble whipping this up -- or perhaps a much smaller one, given the time constraints.

I believe that this is essentially the same as Tychus, with some modification to make it flat rather than curved.

A little math should do it. Suggestions welcomed.

If you noticed any overtones of sarcasm here, it is because I am not finding the modular headband at all easy. This is good, since it is a challenge, and it may turn out that the headband is all I can accomplish in the allotted time. This is because the directions read like this: "K1, K1inc, K2, turn, K2, K1inc,K4, turn, K1, K1inc, K7, turn..." That's just from memory, but I promise you that this gives you the feeling of them. And they go on like that for entire paragraphs.

So if you look away from them for a moment -- perhaps to admire the cows being pushed around by skaters while people in cow-patterned party clothes dance on ice -- then you have barely any hope of guessing where you are when you look back at the directions. And should you look away for any length of time, possibly distracted by the patterns of the Estonian delegation's mittens, or trying to get a clear view of the New Zealander's cape, it is very easy to find that you have done half the current module on top of the previous module. In short, I spent equal amounts of time frogging and knitting. Here is all the progress I made last night.

I do have to say that the textiles at last night's ceremony were not impressive. Some interesting things were done with fur and feathers, but I think that the next Winter Knitting Olympics should begin before the athletic one, and we should all knit some snazzy scarves and hats for the teams. There are enough of us that we could have done that.

Now, in case you were wondering about the Bad Soap, I can report that it is rehabilitated. Having left it in the crockpot all week, I took an electric mixer to it, and poured it out into a mold to see what would happen. When I filled the emptied crockpot with hot water, I got all these lovely soap bubbles, and this morning the soap itself was recognizably soap, not pond scum. We have saponification!

My plan today is to get all my errands and chores done in the morning so that I can spend the afternoon and evening knitting (and frogging) for Team Wales. Y Ddraig Goch ddyry gychwyn!