We survived. I may have more to say about it later. Maybe not.
I will say that I knitted and read, since my kind husband did the driving. I usually find the Stephanie Plum novels excessively violent, but I found that Three to Get Deadly made good freeway reading. My state of mind matched the heorine's perfectly. Granted that she was finding gory corpses and I was merely traveling on freeways, it still made it easier to relate.
I was doing my errands yesterday, and thinking about the flat world. I went to the farmers' market, where I talk to my friends, buy flowers from people I go to church with and snow peas from people who buy books from me, and admire all dogs and children and musicians. The pharmacist tells me about his adventures at the Art Walk the night before. The butcher knows how big my family is, and therefore how big a roast I need for my crockpot. At the fabric store, the ladies greet their regular customers by name.
All this Mr. Friedman calls "friction." A flat transaction might be my stop at the the gas station, where I put a card in the machine and agreed to an automatic carwash. A computer or perhaps someone from Bangalore took it from there. I don't know the people there -- or maybe I go to church with them. How would I know?
To me, the "friction" is a good thing. I like seeing people literally stop and smell the flowers -- or the artisanal bread, for that matter -- at the market. I like my pharmacist, and enjoy talking with him. I like the fact that the meat market I go to is owned by a family, just as the store where I work is. Going to the gas station is not enjoyable, even if it is efficient.
It is some years since those of us who work in retail realized that people no longer need us to get stuff. You can buy stuff online in your pajamas if you want. People won't actually come to your store unless it is more amusing than the other things they might do that day.
Friedman, in The World is Flat, talks about the kind of people who can expect to have jobs in a flat world. The cheapest, of course, but that isn't an option for most of us in America or Europe. We have to be among the four kinds of people Friedman says can count on jobs. We can be special, specialized, "anchored" (doing a job that has to be done in situ, like cutting hair), or really adaptable.
I thought about my daughter, who will get back to the U.S. today and almost immediately have to begin job-hunting.
Since I am her mother, I can't be trusted to judge whether she is just personally special enough to count as "special" in Friedman's terms, but I have seen the kind of responses her performances get, so I am inclined to say that she is. Still, I am biased, so we'll let that pass.
She does have specialized skills as a musician. Computers cannot sing. Even the software now used to improve vocal performances cannot actually take the place of musical ability. I heard it demonstrated on NPR once, and the end, the fellow demonstrating it said to the NPR anchor providing the singing, "It's better, but it isn't really good, is it?" People continue to need human musicians, and you can't just go with the cheapest, either.
I can't decide whether her work is anchored or not. That may be one of the things that is changing with technology. I know that working singers can often live wherever they please and travel to work. Still, it does seem as though live music continues to be desirable, as it has been for millennia.
Being really adaptable seems to me to be the most desirable of the four, and perhaps the most attainable for most people. On my first day of graduate school, I caught a ride with a prof, who told me, "It is good to be able to wear a lot of hats." This has been the most useful piece of career advice I have ever received.
We will be picking up our kid at the airport in Kansas City tonight. This means a long drive, a lot of time on freeways trying to find the airport, and night driving. I wish I were not going. However, we do get to have our kid home for a week or so, so it will be worth it. Fortunately, I am not the one driving. Even though I now cope with my agoraphobia much better than I used to, I do not think that I could drive on city freeways in the dark. We would just have to stay at the airport till light.
It seems to me that I have spent most of this spring driving to and from Kansas City. Although I have spent the week suffering from insomnia and the day so far suffering from nausea (this is known as "anticipatory distress" and is actually the worst part), I think that it is somewhat easier now than it was at the beginning of the year. Whenever I think that, I remember Chanthaboune cheerfully shrieking "Immersion!" as she drove me around and over terrifying overpasses while we searched for the museum. I think "desensitization" is the word, not "immersion," but that may be what I was supposed to do this spring. I will be glad when it is over.
The Sew?I Knitalong still doesn't have a May project posted, but I am thinking of doing some sewing on my own today anyway. I have a lot of cleaning and errands to do, I want to get in a good bit of knitting, I have to do some gardening and get #2 daughter's room ready for her, and I hope to make further progress on the chaise longue (or Chair Made from Garbage, as the boys call it). Nonetheless, I plan to fit some sewing in there.
I have been influenced by the Australian Sewing With A Plan idea.
You may think that Australians spend all their time either at the opera or barbecuing shrimp on the beach, but in fact they are mad keen home sewers.
And they have this idea called SWAP -- Sewing With A Plan. The idea is that you follow some simple guidelines to make 11 garments that constitute a wardrobe. There are sewing bloggers all over the web who do this over a period of four months in a SWAPalong.
At first, I merely admired this. But then it struck me that, with the Sew? I Knit sewalong, I have been making one or two garments a month. At that rate, I could make a SWAP in a year. In fact, I have made four things, all of which have been creative impulses, and none of which goes with anything in my wardrobe or with each other. Naturally, I don't use them much.
Now, you may be thinking that I am not one to talk about wardrobes. "She has only been to the mall three times in the past twenty years," you are thinking, "She only owns six pieces of clothing apart from her sweaters. She is not sound on the subject of clothing. I will not listen to her."
I understand this reaction. However, I am a reformed character. Look. I 
have a wardrobe. There are khakis hanging beyond those shirts, and a jacket. Not a great deal of variety, I grant you, but still. I own twenty pieces of clothing.
I will pause here, because I know you are feeling like the young man in Mark Twain's "The Esquimaux Maiden's Romance."
'Guess how much he is worth--you never can!'
I pretended to consider the matter deeply, she watching my anxious and labouring countenance with a devouring and delighted interest; and when, at last, I gave it up and begged her to appease my longing by telling me herself how much this polar Vanderbilt was worth, she put her mouth close to my ear and whispered, impressively:
'Twenty-two fish-hooks--not bone, but foreign--made out of real iron!'
Then she sprang back dramatically, to observe the effect. I did my level best not to disappoint her. I turned pale and murmured:
'Great Scott!'...
'Oh, I'm so sorry! If I had only thought--'
'Well, it's all right, and I don't blame you any more, for you are young and thoughtless, and of course you couldn't foresee what an effect--'
'But oh, dear, I ought certainly to have known better. Why--'
'You see, Lasca, if you had said five or six hooks, to start with, and then gradually--'
'Oh, I see, I see--then gradually added one, and then two, and then--ah, why couldn't I have thought of that!'
'Never mind, child, it's all right--I am better now--I shall be over it
in a little while. But--to spring the whole twenty-two on a person
unprepared and not very strong anyway--'
Yes, well, now you will have recovered yourself sufficiently to continue.
So I am thinking that while I am going to the farmer's market and the pharmacy and the meat market, I will also go to the fabric store and find a nice print fabric with which to begin my SWAP.
If you ever have a couple of hours to spend in the kitchen, make some chocolate eclairs. They are a lot of fun, and worth making from scratch.
#2 son was impressed, as I always am, with how the same simple ingredients -- butter, eggs, cream, sugar, flour -- can be transformed into so many entirely different things. "It's chemistry!" he said, and of course he was right.
I am still reading The World is Flat by Thomas Friedman. I read the section on education, thinking that it might be more interesting -- I can get pretty emotional on the subject of education, after all, so my own concern about the topic could have infused Friedman's words with excitement. Well, Friedman's views on education are as follows: we in the U.S. are poorly educated slackers with bad parenting skills. Yawn.
Friedman continues to claim that there will be new and unforeseeable jobs in the computer world. I read about a new one in The Wall Street Journal. Now, if you cannot get a union job in a factory or a minimum-wage job with no benefits at Wal-mart, you can work for Photobucket, scanning for offensive photos. This job involves scanning 200 images per minute in search of offensive stuff. Computers can't do this, and it could be hard to outsource this job, what with cultural differences. One worker was quoted as saying that he wished he could rinse his eyes out with bleach at the end of the day, but I would think that the sheer dullness would also be a problem.
The Journal has been reporting a lot lately on internet pornography, and I have noticed it because this issue has also been coming up at Xanga. I used to be in the "You can always close the page -- just keep it away from the children" camp. But the other morning, while drinking my tea, I was googling for paisley fabric.
#2 daughter says that I cannot have paisley fabric. However, I think she is wrong, because a) while I am not fashionable, I am surprisingly good at predicting fashion trends and I believe that paisley Will Be Worn this fall, and 2) since I am not fashionable, I can wear what I want.
Anyway, about the third item was "Paisley Hunter," which I naturally took to be a hunter green paisley fabric. I had the word "fabric" in my search. I clicked on the link and found myself face to -- umm -- face with a whole passel of pornographic pictures. Now, if you go search for "paisley fabric" and find this link and click on it intentionally, you should not be shocked, because I have warned you. But this is not something you want shoved in your face with your pre-dawn cuppa.
One of the proposals The Journal wrote about was a suggestion to corral all pornography in .XXX places. Sort of like having a red-light district in your town. Many people -- notably the politically powerful Focus on the Family group -- feel that having such a section of the internet would suggest that the government or the community or someone approves of the stuff. It seems to me that it could be helpful. But I think all the offensive stuff should have to be sequestered there. The proposal as it stands doesn't require pornographers to use these endings. That is because the proposal as it stands is just about making money.
This is one of the few interesting things about Friedman's book, to me. He seems to be a nice guy, and yet his concerns and interests in economic matters seem to be entirely amoral. Even when he is discussing what I would call moral issues, he is amoral about it. His suggestion that we as consumers like Wal-mart's immoral business practices while we as workers and citizens do not is a claim that we are concerned about our personal convenience and inconvenience, but not about any abstract or altruistic matters.
I must go help put the finishing touches on the eclairs now, so I will leave you with that thought.
Silferts tells me that some people read this blog from some other place, where you cannot see the book right above these words. Therefore, she says, rather than knowing the title and author and cover design, they just get "this book".
I had no idea. I'm terribly sorry. I am going to tell you from now on what book it is that I am talking about. In this case, it is The World is Flat, by Thomas Friedman. Friedman continues to be dull, but he also continues to be cheerful, which I like. In the part that I am reading now, however, he is acknowledging that there are some concerns. He mentions that Marx predicted some of the points he is making, and that some people say he is just giving a nicer name to phenomena which have been around for a while (I know that his discussions reminded me of the 19th century many times).
His response is to suggest that part of this new world is the necessity to "sort out" our multiple viewpoints. As consumers, he says, we like Wal-mart's efficiency (though I have noticed that consumers don't like the lack of choice and the death of local businesses attendent upon it), but as workers we dislike their ruthlessness and as citizens we dislike their taxpayer subsidies (in the form of Medicaid, subsidized housing, food stamps, and other such assistance for their workers). He does similar analyses of outsourcing to India and Mexico. It is hard to tell, he says, who is exploiting whom.
I have not finished the whole section, but it appears that his position is basically that the newly flattened earth allows everyone to exploit everyone else, if they are clever enough, so it is all fair and okay. He also seems to have faith that things will end up being better in some unspecified way that will bring prosperity to all the world's people. At this point, I am reminded of the Middle Ages, when each young man (assuming that he was born into a position that allowed it) could set out with his lance to seek his fortune, perhaps vanquishing three dragons and winning the hand of a princess along the way.
In the real world, I am sewing shopping carts, singing Handel, still on Sleeve Island, preparing for the weekend trip to fetch #2 daughter, and -- the big deal for today -- helping #2 son bake traditional chocolate eclairs from scratch for his French class.
This book is surprisingly dull, at least the half of it that I have read so far. This is a book claiming that our world is in the process of changing right now to the same degree as the changes during the Great Age of Exploration or the coming of the railroads, and it is boring.
This may be the writing style. Although, as you know if you read this blog all the time and have total recall, I read a lot about economics and find it interesting, sentences like " The scarcity of capital after the dot-com bust made venture capital firms see to it that the companies they were investing in were finding the most efficient, high-quality, low-price way to innovate" belong in the annual report, not an actual book. The sheer number of hyphens on every page is enough to warn us that this book is not belles lettres.
It may be the fact that Friedman refers to the region where I live as "a Li'l Abner backwater" in spite of having been able to find sushi to eat with no difficulty, to his reported surprise. Nah, I wouldn't hold that against the book, and his remarks had already been reported in The Wall Street Journal anyway. I just felt I had to mention it.
It is possible, though, that the history of Wikipedia and Pay Pal are not actually interesting enough in and of themselves to require such a wealth of detail. But the overall thesis of the book is interesting.
When the great ships confirmed that the world was bigger than the Europeans thought, this book tells us, there was a globalization based on nations: "What is my country's role in the world?" When faster modes of transport allowed international trade without the efforts of a Marco Polo, the question became "What is my company's role in the world?" And now, with the internet in place, the question is, "What is my place in the world?" The world's flatness is the flatness of a computer screen.
Friedman says, essentially, that now anybody gets the work who can do it the cheapest. This is fine for us in the U.S., where we are never the cheapest, because it will "free up" our people and capital for more interesting work. What that more interesting work will be cannot be predicted right now. Whether farming out the dull stuff is morally desirable is not considered.
Naturally, this makes me think of the age of colonization. Today's Scramble to the Bottom has to remind you of the Scramble for Africa. Are both Europe and Africa better off today for having had those colonial relationships? Friedman thinks so. His position is that the international economic pie is getting bigger, even if we can't see that it is, and that a little fear is good for everyone, because it encourages change, and that you can't make an omelette without breaking a few eggs.
I have often thought that this time period would be to future economists a great watershed time period, but I had been thinking that it would be the end of robber baron rapaciousness, the point at which the goal of providing the world's affluent people with mountains of cheap material goods at any human or environmental cost gave way to something else.
If you mostly think of globalization as something that exploits people in poor countries, threatens the livelihood of the poor in wealthy countries, hastens the harm being done to the environment, and does away with the specialness of local commerce and regional variations, then this book offers a cheering alternative.
Once you struggle through the detailed history of fiber-optic cable.
This is our neighborhood park. It is the site of public concerts in the summertime. I used to go, when the kids were young enough to sit with me instead of going off with their friends. Now, I listen to the music from my front porch.
It is the place for playing Ultimate Frisbee, and a favorite spot for morning walkers.
The other park has tennis and basketball courts, a swimming pool, and a little castle, so it is the more popular of the town's two big parks, but this one is great for walking.
Before I joined the gym, I used to bring the dogs here for a morning walk.
Toby would start out fairly excited upon first getting in the car, lolling his tongue out of his mouth and wagging his tail. He would stick the tip of his nose out the window and drool on the glass. He would begin whining with excitement when we dropped #2 son off at school, and be absolutely beside himself with excitement by the time we actually reached the park. His whining and fidgeting would goad me into yelling at him, which he probably thought was my way of expressing how incredibly excited I was to be going to the park, too.
Then he would be so thrilled that he would weave from side to side of the path, as far as his leash would allow in either direction. It would take half a mile before he could calm down enough to walk normally. But at that point, his largely unsuccessful stint at dog school would return to his puny mind, and he would settle into his Controlled Walking. By the time we got back to the car, he would be tired and happy, and flop into the seat with a quiet grin.
The gym is better in many ways for me, but it is sad for Toby.
The chaise longue (or "chair made of garbage," as the boys call it) has been cut.
#2 son helped me with it. He made me lunch after church, and then came out and deconstructed and constructed. My husband hovered over us, occasionally snatching a saw away and showing us how to do it correctly.
I know that I had said this lawn chair would be finished by the time the roses were blooming properly, but I was mistaken about that. We have completed only Step 3, and there are 6 steps in all. We have reached the point of needing some hardware, though, so we were able to quit with honor.
There is a fair amount of blooming going on.
According to Partygirl, roses always bloom for Mother's Day.
The chaise, however, may take a bit longer than that.
Still, not all the roses are blooming very briskly yet, although each one has at least one blossom. The lavender which sits at the roses' feet is also blooming. The chaise needs legs and a U-shaped piece (the directions for the U-shaped piece are what convinced us yesterday that we had done enough for one day).
The vegetable garden has been hoed.
There are blossoms on the peppers. They don't look very pretty yet, because they are all just babies, but the baby weeds are gone, so they are happy. The shadow of the grill falls right across those peppers, I see. I shall have to move it. It's bad enough that the vegetable plants get stepped on by basketball-playing boys.
The Regal Orchid sleeve is getting long.
Oh, and I made some M&P soap -- White Tea with Ginger and Honey.
That's about it.
We had a lazy day. Talking with #1 daughter on the phone and my mother on the computer were the high points of the day.
The laziness wasn't bad either.
The Book Junkie has issued a Summer Reading Challenge, and I 
have accepted it. Maybe you would like to do the same?
The original challenge is to read 2 books a week for the summer, for a total of 28 books, posting about each one. However, it is a flexible challenge. Some folks are reading a book a month, or trying a new genre or something like that.
I toyed with the idea of trying a new genre. After all, there are genres I don't read: horror and Westerns come to mind. The idea of reading horror and Westerns (although I have read The Exorcist and Lonesome Dove, so I guess they would not be entirely new...) is unappealing. It is also hard to see any real benefit to me from doing so.
Also, let's face it, summer is a challenging time of year for me without adding anything. And yet, I like to have a goal of some kind. So 28 books it is. Last year, I read through the entire Knitting Blog ring. Clearly, my summer goals are low key.
Yesterday, I took my sons shopping. We went to the mall. I bought shoes. I wanted to put in the amazing parts first.
We started at the bakery. There are two bakeries that we frequent. One is the French bakery. The other makes excellent croissants, but also has doughnuts and wedding cakes, so it cannot be the French bakery. It is also the workplace of the handsomest man in town. The boys had sausage rolls and croissants with ham and cheese and chocolate doughnuts and hot chocolate.. I had fruit salad. And pastry. I was in a bakery, after all.
Then we went to the Co-op for granola, freshly made sourdough bread, and sundry other less interesting things. And then to buy shoes. At the mall. The shoe store #1 son prefers was offering two pairs for $89.95, which they seemed to feel was a great bargain. My last visit to the mall was almost exactly one year ago. This year's visit was less traumatic. In fact, though #1 son did say to me, "You want to get out of here as fast as possible, don't you?", I didn't really find it unpleasant. We went to two stores (and had been to four before reaching the mall), and I could have gone to another. I even thought that I might go back in the near future and buy another pair of shoes for myself. Not that I will actually do that, but the fact that it crossed my mind seems significant.
We got home in time for lunch and to make the pleated bag. It is not precisely what I had envisioned, but I like it very well.
I lined it with canvas, but did not put in the pockets and divisions I was planning. I may go back and do that later.
I put a bit of elastic inside the sides, as they would not fold themselves in and stay there, while sewing the pleats made the opening of the bag too grudging. The closure is a Chinese coin sewn on with a bead and a self-fabric cord. The handle is store-bought, and I attached it with self-fabric tabs.
There was an enormous amount of hand stitching done in tiny little spaces, so I was glad to have Pride and Prejudice to watch, but this 2005 film was not, it seems to me, as good as the 1995 BBC version. It was pretty, but there seemed to be a lot of anomalies -- people's behavior didn't ring true, and their manners seemed off. Perhaps I am wrong about that, since I was not alive in 19th century England, but I found it distracting. With the bag finished, I took the Regal Orchid sleeve back up and got it to 11".
Following the afternoon's stitching, I did a bit of hoeing in the vegetable garden, and then we saw our boys off to their friends' houses and passed a quiet evening.
Ah, Saturday.
Big Girl Knits is not as controversial as The Da Vinci Code (no announcements about it yet from the Vatican), but it has gotten a whole lot of attention around the knitting blogs.
The first question with this book has to be this: How big a girl do you need to be before this book is useful? The quick answer: the patterns start at size 14 (national average here in Hamburger-a-go-go-land). Finished measurements range from 40" to 60". The patterns tend toward the trendy. This could be the perfect knitting book for big girls with modern tastes. By comparison, my other trendy knitting book, Denim People, has no sweaters for women larger than 40". Some stop at 36." And, in fact, a quick check of my entire knitting shelf shows that 42" is the top regular size. So if you are a really generously built woman, you might find that this book is your favorite ever.
But that was only the quick answer. Because there is a section before the patterns begin (as well as a lot of stuff in the pattern section) that could make this book useful for many other knitters: the section on fitting. It has a completely different approach from all your other knitting books.
Before reading this, I would have said that fitting wasn't an enormous issue for knitters. Sweaters are generally fitted at the bust, so you do a little calculating to make sure it fits there, and the rest of the sweater floats tactfully down the body. Set-in sleeves can include geometry and trigonometry, but that is a dimensionality issue, not so much about fit.
I think I was wrong.
For one thing, not everyone has his or her largest measurement at the bust. You might be blessed with a Jennifer Lopez kind of bottom, or you might be a guy with a bit of embonpoint. This book will tell you how to fit your sweaters at other spots, whether you're a big girl or not.
For another, tact is not everyone's main requirement for clothing. You might want to show off your bodacious bosom. This book tells you how to make your sweaters a bit more shapely. Again, this could be handy whether you are a big girl or not. My daughter has a very slim hourglass shape. If she knits a classic sweater, she has a choice between wearing it tight and looking boyish. This may explain the classic sweaters her grandmother and I have given her (not tight), and how they sit in her dresser. And if you are a C-cup like me, or bigger, then this book can help you get a sweater that is big enough in the bust without leaving 10" of ease at the waist, or falling off the shoulders -- again, whether you are a big girl or not.
So this book does not contain classic sweaters. You can use your calculator for those, and this book will give you some helpful suggestions.
There are lots of little worksheet-cum-charts which will help you with the math, too, if you are one of those knitters who says "aargh!" when people like me throw around phrases like "a little calculating."
Now, I can't say much about the patterns, because I have not knitted anything from this book. (I always get cross at people who write reviews at Amazon of knitting books without having knitted anything from them, don't you?) There is a wide variety of patterns -- socks, mittens, wraps, coats, pants, skirts, and a bag as well as sweaters. Since it is a collection of work by various designers, there is a lot of variety rather than a single unifying look.
If you are a size 14, and accustomed to looking at sweaters worn by size 2 models and guessing how they will look on you, you may find it difficult to look at these sweaters worn by size 24 models and guess how they will look on you. But it is nice to see curvaceous beauties, and to read positive words about them.
There are also some surprises in this book. I don't think I had ever previously encountered the measurement known as "tasteful nipple distance." And there are instructions for how to throw a measuring party for all your friends. By a remarkable coincidence, KaliMama had a post just yesterday showing her in the recommended outfit for such a party. She's not that big a girl, but she appears to be prepared anyway.
So, to sum up, if you are a knitter who is more than 42" around, you should probably get this book, if only because there are so few alternatives. If you are not that big a girl, or maybe not even a girl, but have been disappointed with the fit of your sweaters, then you should still consider this book. If you are a size 14 or 16 and are perfectly happy with sweaters from common knitting books, then just check it out at the library and see whether you like the patterns or not.
#2 daughter is still in the UK, where they had a heat wave in the low 70s and were having PSAs about avoiding heat stroke. The Americans of course found this hilarious (in our part of Hamburger-a-go-go-land, we don't consider it hot till it's in the 90s), but I trust that they did not point and laugh.
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