I worked six days this past week in order to make up for taking a day off for #2 daughter's recital and leaving early for her graduation. I don't mind working on Saturday, but there are consequences. My house is a mess, there is a backlog of laundry to be done, the grocery shopping didn't happen till 6:30 this morning -- and yet, since I worked six days, I feel entitled to sit around and knit all day.

After church, I plan to do a good bit of knitting. There is no chance that I will finish the Regal Orchid Jasmine sweater in April (I would show you my progress, but 5" of stockinette doesn't look different enough from 3" of stockinette), but I am quite determined to finish it in May. While I knit, I must read the April book for my real-world (wait -- I think people now say "land-based," as though they spent a lot of their time at sea) book club.

It is also getting close to the deadline for the mystery contest #2 daughter and I are collaborating on. Her part in the collaboration got derailed by the whole senior recital thing, but she has promised to get it finished today.

We have been collaborating mostly via IM.

It took me a while to get used to Instant Messaging, but now I love it. At first, I was always getting messages saying that I had too many characters, because I am accustomed to writing paragraphs. I also had trouble keeping the questions and answers in the right order. Once I got used to that, though, I came to prefer it to other forms of long-distance communication. You can get up and make tea without missing anything, for one thing. I still have a hard time talking to two people at once, though I know that my kids can hold about eight conversations simultaneously.

But what is with the emoticons? You know, the little faces you can put into your messages to show how you are reacting to your interlocutor's message.

There is one with one eye bigger than the other and a weird lizard-like tongue action. There is one with staring eyes and tape over its mouth. Pokey and I decided that these were to show that you were concussed and kidnapped, respectively.

How often do you need to show that you are concussed or kidnapped?

And yet there is none for sarcasm. Nothing for sardonic glee. Nothing for confusion. No approximation to "well, I told you so" or "pull the other one; it's got bells on."

Nonetheless, I anticipate that there will be mystery-writing via IM, knitting, and reading going on today. I would like it if I could also fit in cleaning, cooking, and gardening. Sewing would also be good. And #2 son and I plan to watch King Solomon's Mines. He has become a great fan of H. Rider Haggard. I haven't read the book, though I feel somewhat familiar with the overall story because I have read Elizabeth Peters's Amelia Peabody mysteries, which have cribbed quite a bit from Haggard.

The book is in my stack of unread books. I rarely have a stack of unread books. I guess this fits with my unaccustomed stash of yarn and backlog of uncompleted projects (still at Step one of the chaise longue, too...). Life is just very busy. However, since large parts of the busy-ness involve sitting (whether in a car, on the couch, or at the computer), I can hardly claim to be overworked.

If you feel overworked, I have just the song for you. Our anthem this morning is "My God is a Rock in a Weary Land." We have been told to think of the Supremes while singing this. If you go to this page and scroll down to "Jesus is a Rock in a Weary Land," you will be able to hear a midi file of this very lively and encouraging song. You may be comforted by the words, but if not, you will be energized by the tune and able to hop up and do that work.

One of the things I like about blogs is that you get to see other people's lives -- things that may be commonplace to them, but exotic to you. I like to hear about the climate where you live, and the things you do for fun, and your work. Usually, when I write about my work, I tell you about things involving people, data, or books. These are usually the things that strike me as interesting. But it strikes me that you might not ever have received an order. I am going to share that with you.

Well, I think I already told you that The Princess and I unloaded 900 pounds of product off these pallets.

We knew that it was 900 pounds, because the driver called and said so. They often do this. They say that they are in Ft. Smith with 800 pounds of books or in Tulsa with 11 skids of wooden toys, or whatever. I assume that their hope is that we will say, "Okay, we'll meet you at the loading dock with a forklift!" Actually, we would have to say things like, "It's just me and the dog. Good luck finding the door."

So we unload the boxes from the truck or the pallets and carry them into the store. Then we check them in. That means that the people in the back room give us long, long rolls of labels. We open a box and find that it contains, as it might be, Giant Inflatable Insect Parts, Multicultural Play Foods, and Wooden Base Ten Blocks. We must find the label for each and put it on the item.

Most orders can be checked in within one day, even with customers to look after. I usually do them myself, or with the Poster Queen's help. An order this size takes about a week, and we often have help from the back room -- in this case, The Princess worked with me. During this process, there is plenty of time to plan out a mystery contest entry, decide on the next knitting project, or contemplate philosophical issues.

Now, when I check things in, I label them and put them away immediately. To the right you can see what the Summer Bridge section looked like when I emptied the last box.

However, when there are as many boxes as are involved in 900 pounds of math manipulatives, this is easier said than done.

This is what it looked like when the last box from that order was emptied.

The people unpacking give up, you see, after a while. There is too much to put away without major reorganization.

Some give up early, unpacking and immediately piling stuff on the floor in heaps. I give up the last of all, probably because I am usually the one who has to put the stuff away.

But even I give up when it begins to look like this.

Once everything is checked in, it is time to reconcile the order. That means taking every box without a label and every label without a box and figuring out why there is a mismatch. Did someone put a label for the 200 7/8" transparent counters in 4 colors on the package of 250 3/4" transparent counters in 6 colors? Was there a keying error or a picking error on the other end? Is something backordered or discontinued? This gets tiresome after three or four hours.

Once the order is reconciled, it is time to put away anything that is not already put away. In this case, that would be about 600 pounds of stuff.

Here is how you do that, in case you ever find yourself with this task on your to-do list. First, mark out a section (in your mind -- you don't have to draw on it) as "the time section" or "the fractions section" or whatever it might be. I do a little mental math first, so that I can be certain that, say, one grid or four shelves or whatever it might be will be the right amount of space. "The right amount of space" in our store means that there will still be room for the other items, and that the stuff in the section will pay its rent, so to speak, with the amount of money it will bring in.

Empty it completely. Resolutely refuse to look at any other section.

Stack all the things that belong in that section according to size and shape. Now you can begin putting things away in the section. Start with the largest things on the bottom and work your way up according to size -- saving some middle-sized things for the top, where small things would be hard to reach and big things would hurt if they fell on your head.

Try to put things in a logical order so you can find them again -- here, for example, you can see that all the demonstration clocks are together, the overhead clocks are together, and the time games are together. (The grids to the right and left of the time section are being resolutely ignored.)

Also try to put things into blocks or rows, so that people's eyes are not fatigued, but with a bit of asymmetry to draw their attention on to other things.

For some reason, people love to come and shop through stuff while I do this. Everything is in piles on the floor according to size or in horrifying heaps because I haven't gotten to its section yet, I am putting stuff away as fast as possible, and people insist on coming and cooing over it and pawing through it, even if they have to endanger themselves to get to it. This is a mystery to me, but I try to be pleasant and helpful to them.

Aside from that last bit, this method of organizing things will also work for your pantry or craft cupboard at home.

However, if no one is paying you, you might decide to go knit or read blogs before you actually finish.

Since I get paid for this, I am heading back to the store today to finish it all up. For some reason, the elves did not come and do it in the night.

KaliMama asked for a picture of me reading and knitting at the same time, and I happen to have one. I am wearing Siv and knitting Hopkins, so this is in the nature of a historical picture, but this is how I do it. Nowadays, when I am reading a thin book, I use a kitchen clip to hold the book open, but essentially you have to read part of the page, then shift the elbow. Not terribly convenient, I suppose, but I do it all the time. So did my grandmother, for that matter.

In this picture, I am working with two colors and therefore holding yarn in each hand. I add this note for knitters who like to check out people's knitting technique. If you can't tell whether I use the left hand or the right to hold my yarn, it's because I do both at once for colorwork.

Yesterday I skipped cardiopump class and instead came home after my treadmill stint and did some sawing. I have completed step one of the chaise longue.

An article in Knitty introduced me to the useful concept of Epic and Zombie knitting. Epic is stuff like Hopkins, above, and Zombie is stuff like the prayer shawl at right. Ideally, you would have one of each going at all times, so that you can choose something simple or something complex, depending on your mood and the gripping-ness of your current book.

During my sawing, I had much leisure to contemplate another distinction among craft projects.

There are Normal projects, like baking muffins or knitting hats, which most people do. I know there are people who buy muffins, but there is certainly nothing eccentric or daring about deciding to bake muffins.

(I had a sudden recollection of X-Entertainment's attempts to bake cookies, but surely he is an exception.)

Then there are Loony projects, like deciding, in the absence of any experience or skill, and even without the ability to distinguish between a bow saw and a crosscut saw, to build a chaise longue out of pallets. Or to make an origami wallet out of cloth, again in the absence of any skill, knowledge, or experience.

(And, by the way, if you like to see people at your site meter from Estonia, Italy, Singapore, and other exotic climes, then you should put the word "origami" into your posts.)

However, there are a number of things that began as loony projects on my part -- canning, making soap, felting -- which have become enjoyable skills, contributions to the household economy, and even ordinary parts of my household routine. If you are willing to do something badly while you learn, you can eventually gain all kinds of handy skills.

Therefore, I am making a plea on behalf of loony projects. Go ahead! Build a spaceship in your basement!

On the left, if you look closely, you can see Falstaff's bud. Falstaff actually has two buds, total.

This is not a prolific rose, but each blossom is gorgeous and heavily scented. The flowers are deep crimson with the old-fashioned mega-multi-petaled shape.

One year, possibly in a spirit of competition with Montezuma, Falstaff sent up one single cane with one single blossom on the top.

He looked like an idiot.

On the right is New Dawn. If your monitor is better than mine, you will see that she has lots and lots of buds. No color peeking out yet, but she is a pale pink beauty. Falstaff may win the race to have the first blossom, but New Dawn is obviously going to outperform him when it comes to the whole bower of roses thing.

I guess New Dawn is the soprano of my rose quartet. Falstaff has to be the bass. Montezuma is the tenor, and a flashy fellow he is, too. However, being a modern rose, he takes longer to wake up in the spring, and never wins the earliest-bloom race.

Think of him as the guy who comes in late, but everyone puts up with it because he sure can sing. Montezuma is a coral-colored rose, with mild scent. Mine is inclined to put out weird science fiction monster canes that curl around on themselves, get 4" thick, and have enormous spiky thorns. A bit scary. My husband says this is the result of uneven watering, so I try hard to water Montezuma evenly.

If I want to stick with this metaphor, I have Joseph's Coat as an alto. A boy alto, I guess. Not too many blooms, but they are stunning, multicolored, and fragrant.

I have finished reading Moll Flanders, but am nowhere near finishing the Regal Orchid Jasmine, the Moll Flanders sweater. I posted over at the Knit the Classics blog, expressing my astonishment that the members were able to finish a project every month, and the answer came back "Uuuhhh, finish?"

 Not so much to see, admittedly. We are in the long stretch of stockinette, perfect for reading and relaxing. Not so perfect for photos. Great color, though.

As for my furniture plans, I have borrowed a saw from my dad. However, it has rained, and I have had choir practice, so no further sawing has taken place. I must work this Saturday, and #2 daughter's graduation is next Saturday, so the project stretches out into the future, but I am determined.

By the time the roses are in bloom, I should have a chaise longue from which to admire them, as I read and knit.

#1 son said, "Why would you want a chair made out of garbage?" It would have been a great moment to point out the value of recycling, the satisfaction of making things oneself, the sheer MacGyvorosity of building such a thing -- but I was not in the mood. Perhaps he will see it himself.

The Wall Street Journal yesterday had a story with a sad and pathetic undertone.

They were talking about another in the rash of recent announcements that stuff isn't as good for you as once thought. In this case, it was a pair of studies checking to see whether calcium supplements protected older women against hip fractures. You might have seen the headlines saying that calcium just didn't do the trick. This article mentioned that only about half of the women in the studies actually took the supplements regularly -- 57% in one study and, I believe, 54% in the other. If only the women who said they took the supplements were considered, then the results showed a statistically significant improvement.

This mirrors recent announcements that low-fat, high-fiber diets don't reduce heart disease and cancer (among women who don't actually make those changes in their diets), and that mental training doesn't reduce loss of mental acuity (among old folks who don't actually maintain mental activity).

The sad part is this sentence: "The researchers were disappointed that the results were so dependent on compliance."

Now, you and I might think it pretty obvious that you can't test the results of a treatment without factoring in whether people were really following the treatment or not, but apparently (and according to The WSJ)  this is customary. The medical community, which cannot after all force anybody to eat whole grains or drink their milk, wants to be able to find significant results merely from telling people to do stuff. They can control what they tell people to do, so it is a terrible disappointment to find that telling people to do stuff doesn't cause them to have a healthier old age.

Isn't that sad?

Perhaps the medical community needs to be more persuasive. They could take a leaf from my pharmacist's book and be more empathetic.

I had some trouble getting my prescription filled this month -- I won't tell the whole boring story. Just suffice it to say that I had to talk to three people in the doctor's office and go to the pharmacy twice. So it was actually a day late by the time I got it. I expressed concern about this. "These are my birth control pills, " I said, as though the pharmacist might not know that, "I can't just skip a day."

The pharmacist, who looks about 24,  told me I could just take two right away and return to the usual schedule without any loss of effectiveness.

"So I can take two and not worry about it?"
"I would," he said firmly. "I wouldn't bat an eye."

Knowing that a boy would skip a day of my birth control pills without batting an eye might not be completely reassuring, but I did what he said. I'm pretty compliant.

But even I have not followed my doctor's orders to the letter. I think that I would if I were in a study, just for the integrity of the data. Fortunately, I am not in a study, so I just feel sympathy for the researchers in The WSJ story, and go ahead and eat the occasional piece of key lime pie.

But I think Chanthaboune hit the nail on the head back when they designed the new Food Pyramid. They did this, you may recall, because the old one wasn't working. People just kept on eating cheeseburgers and fries. And key lime pie. They thought this new design might do the trick, but Chanthaboune said no. "It's just a piece of paper. Now, if it had electrodes..."

The lecturer at my Tuesday class last week ran through a number of examples of things that people hate. Do you hate it when someone cuts you off in traffic? Do you hate it when you get junk mail or telemarketer's calls? And so on. She didn't say do you hate it when your yarn splits or the yarn supplier takes more than three days to get your fibers to you, but she could have. She asked us to raise our hands if we could relate to any of those statements. If so, she said, "you have a pet peeve. And look around. What a sisterhood we have in our wickedness!"

We laughed. I had not raised my hand. I don't get peeved very much, and if I do, I don't keep it and make a pet of it.

The lecturer was making a point about complaining. I am not one of those who thinks that complaining makes you feel better. Occasionally, you need to get something off your chest so you can move on, and occasionally you need to ask for a change in something because it isn't right. But most of the time, in my experience, complaining makes you feel worse.

Our lecturer was saying that it also has moral and religious consequences. She was claiming that enduring hardships and wrongdoing uncomplainingly was good, that it was virtuous, that it glorified God.

It seems to me that one valid reaction to this is that religion is truly the opiate of the masses; by encouraging us to endure uncomplainingly, she might be discouraging us from speaking up for justice and decency.

Another is revulsion at the idea of a god who wants people to suffer in silence. Partygirl was in fact brought up to believe that people should offer up their sufferings to God.  How many steps is that from a god who wants human sacrifice?

And yet -- no one has a pet peeve like child labor or sexism. These things are too big for peevishness. None of us whines about exploitation of farmworkers. For these things, you either care enough to do something about it, or you don't.

Even as I write this, though, I realize that it is false. Right now, all over xanga, there are people whining (check it out, I am using the word advisedly) about free speech. You would think that freedom of speech -- an essential tenet of our national philosophy, and one which is actually threatened at the moment by our own government -- would be too big for peevishness, but it is being discussed in terms more often used for people who have cut you off in traffic. And I went to school with a guy who once ill-advisedly whined, "I don't know if I should go back to Beverly Hills and join my father's psychiatric practice, or go to Colombia and join the revolution." This phrase became, for all of us who heard it, emblematic of the whining approach to social justice.

When I show my concern about child labor by courteously encouraging all the people and groups that I can to use fair trade coffee, tea, and chocolate, and use it myself, I am doing more than I could do by whining and complaining about it. Obviously.

But this reminds me of the first time I heard this idea -- that we should suffer uncomplainingly. At the time, I felt that I would be able to suffer more nobly if only I had more noble things to suffer. Suffering because I had too little money, or mastitis, or ticks in the yard -- how, I wondered, could anyone be noble about such ignoble troubles?

Yet how much does it matter if I suffer nobly over the sufferings of enslaved children picking pesticide-laden coffee -- when I don't have to do it myself? Is there anything good about the real victims of the practice having to suffer uncomplainingly?

We are back, I think, to the idea of the pet peeve. The xangans who are whining about free speech are pretending that they are concerned about free speech. Their rants are filled with personal peevishness and self-pity, so they are not actually about free speech. My classmate who was deciding between a continuation of his life of luxury and political action was whining about his inability to make up his mind -- or to be a radical without inconvenience.

Whining doesn't persuade people to join our cause, but just reveals the self-pity under the whining. Complaining doesn't make us feel better, but shows us in a worse light -- to ourselves and to others. Vituperation and retaliation increase the sum total of wrongs without benefiting us or changing the original cause of our complaints.

When it comes to the right response to the kinds of sufferings I face in my own life -- grief, inconvenience, uncertainty, difficulties in relationships, scary roads -- then I think the lecturer is right. For the sufferings caused by exploitation and oppression, I'm not sure.

But at the very least, we should learn to tell the difference.

You know when you see those little groups of men working on the road, where only one appears to be working and the rest are standing around? Though I had never before considered the possibility, I now think it is entirely possible that the one who is working is the guy who believes that only he can use the tool correctly. Everyone else is standing there trying to be supportive.

This is how the garden construction was at our house yesterday.

Things are perking up in the front garden, and we got the back garden planted. This circumstance caused me to think about the contrast between the two, which is in many ways a picture of the contrast between my husband and me.

Or one of them. We balance one another in a number of ways.

The front garden is intended to look wild and natural and sort of as though it were a particularly lavish little woodland glade that ended up in front of my house. #2 son and I planted it a couple of years ago, and I add stuff every year.

My husband never criticizes this garden. He waters it sometimes, and helps me weed it, and tolerates it.

There are columbines here, and snapdragons, and salvia, and pinks, and violets, and the little yellow bell things the name of which I have forgotten.

I like them all squished in there together.

 When the perennials need a little help, I put in a flat of impatiens, which will spread out soon  and cover all the exposed soil.

I like the crowded effect, the enormous variety of textures and shades of greens, the rambunctiousness of the flowers in summertime.

The centaurea -- bachelors buttons or raggedy sailors might be what you call them -- are really too tall for the front, but I let them bloom there for a while. I planted them in the back years ago, but they apparently wanted to be in front (where there might be a few rays of sun), and I have a few volunteers out there every year. They get cut for the house once the rest of the flowers are blooming profusely.

Everything spills out onto the path and looks modestly riotous.

I would do this in the back, too -- and I suppose to a limited extent I do, since I have planted roses and herbs in just such an untidy confusion between the house and the vegetable garden. I also encourage the hedge of brambles and honeysuckle on the other side. And I have planted daylilies and zinnias and irises here and there, too. These flowers might not really have all ended up out there together on their own, but by now they have a fine jungly look which I like to imagine looks natural.

My husband does not want his garden to look natural. There is plenty of nature around. His garden is a work of art.

We built the edges (or rather, he did, while the rest of us watched admiringly), dug in plenty of humus and composted manure, and planted the vegetables in nice rows and blocks. The one plant by itself at the front is basil, because there is only one. He tried to let us say where to put things and to be open to suggestions and all that, but we can tell it is artificial. When I suggested putting in some beans, he said "Beans?!" with the tone of voice Chanthaboune would immediately recognize as calling for the rejoinder, "Someone's been making sock monkeys?!" I should have planted the beans earlier if I wanted beans. However, we will be adding cucumbers. A space has been left for them.

The whole thing has been thoroughly watered in, and we should have plenty of nice vegetables all summer. Much more and better vegetables than if I had been in charge of the planting.

I have to confess that even while my husband was raking this lovely rectangle into Zen smoothness, I was thinking about messing it up. I could plant trailing nasturtiums around the edges. I may or may not resist the temptation to do so.

I didn't get very far with my building project. In fact, I got about three inches into the first cut when I realized that I did not have the right kind of saw. My husband already knew this, but thought it would be more amusing to watch me discover it myself.

I left the building project and took #1 son to get his car stereo. My husband said, "You aren't going to buy any new tools, are you?" I agreed not to, leaving the saw procurement in his hands. He was also in charge of the planting -- my part was to buy some manure on the way back from the electronics store.

It took a while at the electronics store. We had the misfortune to get an extremely unhelpful clerk. At one point I said, "So you have no answer at all for my question?" She allowed as how she didn't, and I asked if there might be someone else who could answer it. "Maybe someone with more experience?" She said no one could answer my question, and there was no one else around. I asked the differences among the various CD players at different prices. "Features," she said. "Brands."

I would have left, but #1 son was determined, and has been saving up.

She was very friendly once we actually brought out our money. Still not helpful, but friendly.

When we arrived back at the house with 120 pounds of organic humus and manure, the house was empty. I had the place to myself till after dark, when my husband returned without a saw.

Feeling unequal to continuing the various outdoor projects by myself, I spent the time instead working on the mystery contest (which had been on hold till after #2 daughter's recital) and Knitting the Classics.

The front of the Regal Orchid Jasmine grew by about three inches, and I am nearly finished with Moll Flanders. Over at the KTC blog, there has been discussion about whether Moll is bad, or -- as she claims -- forced into her badness by circumstances.

Over at Ozarque's place they have been talking about good and evil relative to one of her books. Someone questioned whether the character in question was really evil, or just a pain.

This is sort of how I am feeling about the question of Moll's badness. Is she bad? Surely she is. She has about a dozen children in the course of the book, and deserts them hither and yon without a thought. In fact, she is so very "easy come, easy go" about them that when she actually expresses concern about the future of one of them (number 10, I think), it is unconvincing. She commits bigamy casually, losing contact with the various husbands who survive her but going ahead and marrying new ones.

She is a thief, she sleeps with and even marries men for money in the most cold-blooded way, she lies and cheats as a matter of course.

But she doesn't seem particularly evil. When her life is easy and someone is taking care of her, she behaves well for years on end. It is when she faces some difficulty -- poverty or insecurity of some kind -- that she turns to crime, or to things that were crimes in her day.

So she seems more lazy and self-centered than evil. But she deceives herself. She claims that she is driven to crime by poverty and friendlessness, yet there are many widows in the book making their livings by respectable means. She claims to be astonished when she ends up in some difficult circumstance with a man, yet her behavior leading up to the problem would be scandalous even today, let alone in her day.

In short, she is just like many of us.

Today I must bake for the church bake sale and plant the vegetable garden. If my menfolks don't feel like working on it, I will begin it myself, which will infallibly cause my husband to come make sure it gets done right. I have asked to borrow a saw from my dad, so I do not despair about my building project, either.

I may be (for which feel free to read "am") preparing to miss the deadline for the Knit the Classics, but I am well in time for the bagalong. Here is the Origami Bag.

I was concerned that this would turn out to be more of a concept than a usable bag, but that is not the case. Piled above the bag you can see all the stuff I am carrying in it.

I made this from directions here. After my experience with the origami wallet, I was tempted to add batting, or interfacing or something, but the instructions seemed so certain that I decide to try them before altering anything. They were excellent, and the bag is perfect with the multiple layers of fabric and no further stabilizer.

That doesn't mean that I didn't fool around with it at all, of course. It was designed with a drawstring, which would have been sweet and informal.

However, a friend of mine had recently shown me her gorgeous custom-made purse from a well-known designer, which had a handle of thick twisted cord, and I decided to copy that. This handle also allowed me to maintain the angular shape of the bag. After searching a bit for a suitable cord, I found a curtain tieback which worked perfectly. I used a couple of thinner cords to outline the bag and anchor the handle.

This bag would benefit from accurate measurement, cutting, folding, and stitching. This has nothing to do with me, of course; I mention it only in an effort to be informative. The origami part of the bag is the fact that it is made from a single lined square, with no further cutting.

In order to fully appreciate the bag, you have to see all the pockets. There is a center section for large things like your checkbook or billfold. There are two outside pockets, one on each side. I closed one with the same pearl beads and rouleau loops I used on the origami wallet (left over from my daughter's wedding gown), and left the other open to show the pink linen lining.

Each outside pocket has a little inside pocket for small things, too.

This was the only part of the instructions that I found a little confusing. It says "Sew closed" at a point at which you have about eight things you could conceivably sew closed. Sewing the outermost fold closed gives you the little inside pocket in the picture on the right.

On the other side, I left that fold partially unsewn, to make a special spot for my origami wallet.

Since the wallet is made of the same fabric as the bag, it is essentially invisible in this picture. But I tried.

You can make this bag with any square of cloth -- the directions suggest using napkins (in Hamburger-a-go-go-land, that is a thing we use at table to clean our hands, not the thing we put on babies' bottoms). I used scraps, so my only cost was the cords, which -- even using the ready-made curtain tieback (which gave me a much quicker and snazzier handle than what I had been planning) -- came in under $4. The custom purse I mentioned above costs just under $300. Not the same thing, I realize, but it's worth mentioning.

My adventures in origami have been successful. So I am now ready for a new, mad craft adventure.

Fortunately, I have these in my back yard.

These are the pallets from which The Princess and I unloaded 900 pounds of math manipulatives.

And fortunately, the wonderful KaliMama sent me this:

Namely, directions for making this clever chaise longue from a pallet.

Now, there have been questions regarding my fitness to make furniture from pallets. I draw your attention to the bench upon which the origami bag is sitting. I made that.

I did use my special furniture-building method. The first step is to take the plans for the thing to the lumber store and have someone help me find and cut everything. Step two is for me to round up some of my husband's tools and start in, with verve and dash, following the directions to the best of my ability. Step three is for someone, provoked beyond endurance by my incompetence and lack of accuracy, to take the tools away from me and finish the furniture. Step four is for me to paint the item (and I especially like the stenciling on that bench. I did a table to match).

It is my belief that, if I were ever allowed to complete a piece of furniture, I would succeed. Verve and dash can make up for a lot of inaccuracy and incompetence.  I am also quite good at reading directions, and armored with lots of self-confidence and can-do spirit.

So this is the plan for the weekend.

My husband and #1 son will take apart several of the pallets. #2 son already helped dig the garden, as you can see. Now the guys will use some of the pallets to edge the garden, and add composted manure and whatnot.

The plants for the garden are sharing the bench with  the origami bag and the container of torenia at the moment. There are also some seeds. So once the garden is all ready, we will plant these vegetables.

Meanwhile, I will build a couple of chaises longues from the remaining pallets. Knitting will also take place. And baking for the church bake sale and Mission Fair.

That sounds like fun, doesn't it?

Timestep29 told me that the fellow who sings about the freakin' weekend (and presumably all the rest of the salacious stuff we listen to in cardiopump) is named R. Kelly, and that he had composed an opera. I was enormously excited about this. Just the thought of an opera by this guy was so astounding that I immediately (well, after thanking Timestep) googled it, in hopes of finding some arias about taking off all one's clothes because it was getting hot on the dance floor. Something like Rigoletto, maybe, with overtones of Carmina Burana.

Imagine my dismay when I learned that it was actually a soap opera. Not the same thing at all. My eyes must have slipped right over the "soap" part.

Ah, well, into every life a little rain must fall.

On the plus side, I finished the back of the Regal Orchid Jasmine.

(This is, for any knitter who happens by, Elsebeth Lavold's "Jasmine" from the Summer Breeze Collection, in Endless Summer Luna, color Regal Orchid, on #2 circular needles.)

Here you see it blocking. There are different views of blocking. Some fully wash and block their swatches. Some only block finished garments. Some don't block at all. I'm blocking this because of the lace, and because I want to be sure to have accurate sizing. Since it is not for me, I don't have the option of trying it on when it's finished and then adjusting. But I still just dampen it and pin it out on a towel. The white thing in the picture is a sweater of the proper size, for comparison -- a helpful thing to have on hand when blocking.

Here I hope you can see the lace. It is a nice little leaf lace, not so delicate as to look silly in this DK weight yarn, but enough to make the sweater special.

I have read the term "moose lace" for lace made in heavier than lace weight yarns. I like it, myself. The edge stitches and the row of yarnovers right beside them should make this a nice detail at the seam, without making the wearer feel like her bra strap is showing.

The pattern did not say to switch back to the smaller needles for the ribbing, but I did. Ribbing, especially in cotton, has a tendency to splay out instead of drawing in. So I did the last seven rows on #1 needles. In theory, I could have continued the lace on the #2s while ribbing with the 1s, but I did not. This gives a firmer edge, which is good, but does not, I think, interfere with the pattern.

It would be nice, too, to put the lace stitches on stitch holders and do the ribbing, and then continue the lace up into straps, grafting them at the shoulder. That would be a pretty sleeveless top, and not a difficult adaptation.

Here you can see how the lace forms the raglan edge.

Usually, when I make a raglan sweater, I do it in one piece. But the Brooklyn jacket I made last year was a sewn-together raglan, and it came out very well, so I have high hopes of this one.

The Poster Queen sent me one of those forwarded messages that starts out "You know you are..." It pointed out that our state has four seasons: Nearly Summer, Summer, Still Summer, and Football. This seems very close to the truth.

Here are my irises, arguing in favor of the existence of spring.

Spring is sort of chancy here, though. We think we see it coming, we watch for it over the horizon. Most of us have shivered our way through outdoor Easter services in spring dresses and long underwear.

Then we see it coming, and even see it burst forth in forsythia and bulbs and blossoming trees. Everyone is happy. Spring is here!

The next day, it is 96 degrees, the pansies (winter flowers, here) behave as though someone stuck them into an oven, and spring is over.

From then on, it is Nearly Summer. And I guess it is that now, with a corner of my garden beginning to bloom. (Well, yes, I still have lots of phlox, bless its heart, but for some reason it doesn't count as much. I didn't even put it in the picture.)

I wish I could take flower pictures like KaliMama or Rosalyne01. It might improve my flower pictures, I suppose, if I waited until the sun was actually up instead of sneaking out in my nightgown first thing in the morning to check on them. But I digress.

Having had just spring (e.e.cummings) and being now well into Nearly Summer, I am glad to be knitting cotton, and I hope that M will be able to wear her sweater when I finish it in May. She lives in another state, and I hear that it has been unseasonably cold and damp there. There will of course be plenty of opportunities to wear it over the years, and it should be just right for evenings on the beach at any time of year, but I am hoping to speed up on it anyway.