I am not sure where Not Another Teen Knitting Book gets its title, because it is so obviously another teen knitting book. It is a cute one, though. It is set up like a high school yearbook, with a collection of patterns for "preppies," "populars," "goths," "skaters," etc. Also for prom, sports, and other events. The patterns include socks, hats, scarves, sweaters, wrist warmers, bags, and so on. A good assortment, all definitely for young people. There is basic how-to-knit information. I would not buy this for a teen wanting to learn to knit -- I'd go with Teen Knitting Club, which strives to give new knitters the information they need to become good knitters.

But if I were looking for patterns that teens, especially girls, might wear, or looking for a book for a teen who already knits, this could be a good choice.

We sell both of these books in the store where I work. Yesterday the teachers were back in school and the end of the school day coincided with a storm of monsoon-like proportions, so I had a quiet day at work. I refreshed the store.

Usually, when I am moving things around, I try to create alluring vistas that will entice the visitor to continue around the store and see all the wonders therein, but yesterday I was too tired for that. I was just fluffing the product -- that is, spreading things out to make it less obvious that we are sold out of all kinds of stuff.

There were still people coming in and being aghast that we were out of solid black border, but I am tired and subsisting on convenience foods and have developed a seemingly permanent pain in my neck and shoulders, so I just didn't care.

I helped them, of course, and was pleasant to those who were pleasant to me, and I was relieved to be able to get some of the non-customer work done, but really, whether they ever got a two-line gradebook or not was a matter of complete indifference to me.

I bet that most of the people who are supposed to help us in public situations feel that way. I don't, normally, so it hadn't struck me before, but it makes a big difference.

Actually, #2 son has taken over the cooking of dinner -- I swapped him, so I am cleaning the kitchen -- and last night we had frozen ravioli with jarred sauce but fresh homemade focaccio, all of which was quite good. The kitchen also was cleaned, and I did get a little start on shoveling out the house yesterday morning. I went to bed early, and am feeling nearly normal today. If I continue cleaning instead of going to the gym for the rest of the week,  we should achieve something like normalcy. And I think I will have the weekend off.

So I may be more compassionate today.

It is the first day of school . My youngest is starting at the high school. This means that I am slightly nervous for him. Actually, I always am slightly nervous on the first day of school, until I hear from my kids that they had a good day. I am not as nervous as I was on their first day of kindergarten, but it is the same sort of feeling.

I have the house to myself. Obviously, I am going to clean the house before work, since it will not be filled with messy boys all day. I'll get back to the gym tomorrow, or possibly after I've had a day off. If I clean the house very vigorously, I may be able to consider it exercise.

The Wall Street Journal had its approximately-annual report on happiness. Money doesn't buy it, in case you were wondering. People living on less than $20,000 p.a. are less happy than the rest of us -- and it startles me that this figure hasn't changed in the 20 years since I first read it. Apparently, $20 K is what it takes to live happily in the United States. People making over $90,000 a year consistently report themselves as happier than those making under $20,000, but there are no other significant differences correlating happiness with income. And when those making $90,000 a year were asked not to rate their general level of happiness, but to state how they felt at a given time, they were more likely to report feeling angry or anxious than happy.

It used to be that just over 1/3 of Americans reported themselves as "very  happy," and now it is just under 1/3. This may merely reflect the growing poverty rate under Mr. Bush, showing the shift of more folks into the "unhappy" under-$20,000 group.

Yet research has pretty consistently agreed that people's external circumstances affect their happiness only briefly.

I figure that anyone living on minimum wage in the U.S. (this translates to a little less than $10 K p.a., so even two full-time minimum-wage jobs won't boost you into the happier group) has to deal with little irritations all the time. They can't afford a car, or if they can, they can't afford to maintain it. They can't fix or replace broken appliances, their housing situation is shaky, their neighborhoods are scary, their utilities are always on the verge of being turned off, they face little humiliations and inconveniences all the time. Thus, their bouts of unhappiness in response to circumstances are closer together than those of more affluent people.

The Journal didn't spend much time speculating on why poor people might be less happy, but they did have an idea about a factor that seems to affect the happiness of richer people. Specifically, commuting. Having a long commute is one of the best predictors for unhappiness. This is because, as they put it, "traffic is a new hell every day." So, the temporary unhappiness created by circumstances comes up anew each day, as some new inconvenience arises. Kind of like being poor.

#1 son is driving #2 son to school, now that they are at the same school. I've made a deal with them to contribute to their gas money as long as they keep excellent grades. We can look at their grades online, so they have agreed to show me their grades every Friday. This keeps them from the horror of riding the bus. I always rode the bus, so I don't know what the big deal is, and I have never bribed a kid for grades before, but I have agreed to this. They waited until I had not had a day off in two weeks, and had a broken refrigerator and a broken computer. In this weakened state, I agreed to the mad plan in question. It was presented as my helping them to achieve their goal of having excellent grades this year for the sake of their college applications by keeping them from having to take jobs and/or have a long bus ride which would interfere with their study time, not as a bribe.

At this point, I might agree to anything, so I guess I should be thankful that it wasn't worse.

Clever #2 son got us back online with a denizen of the computer graveyard in the garage. We have however lost all our pictures, music, and all the other stuff we should have backed up onto disks and didn't. All my bookmarks are gone, which I suppose gives me freedom to come up with a new list of blogs for daily reading.

We still have no refrigerator and are subsisting on convenience foods, which is bad for my digestion and my mood. Since I a) still haven't had a day off, b) am exhausted when I get home and by now also when I get up and c) live with a bunch of cavemen, the house is in squalor. As for work, I offer you the immortal words of That Man when I asked if he was going to rehearsal after work: "I am going home to the jacuzzi. And I may drown myself."

I have just barely finished the colorwork for Pipes. This is a selection of traditional Fair Isle patterns done in the traditional Fair Isle method, but it is not traditional Fair Isle. It repeats motifs, and has multicolor motifs on a plain ground, both of which disqualify it.

It is perhaps an example of how to use Fair Isle for someone who doesn't like Fair Isle. To me, it is a bit reminiscent of Latin American knitting designs in its effect. #2 daughter, for whom Pipes is destined, finds Fair Isle too folkloric. When she and her siblings were little, I knitted them things with designs from the wonderful out-of-print New Directions in Fair Isle, with bees and leaves and bunnies and things. So she may also find Fair Isle childish. She likes this take on it, though.

The sock on the right is a traditional two-color Fair Isle, and Erin, below, is a modern Alice Starmore Fair Isle, using the multi-shaded approach that is most characteristic of 20th century Fair Isle.

The story that the residents of Fair Isle copied their designs from dead Spaniards washed up on their shores is false, by the way. They really copied them from a woven shawl someone brought back from the Continent.

Just so you know.

Our big exciting news is that #1 daughter and Son-in-law will be visiting in about a week. #2 daughter is also coming for the weekend during their visit. I am very excited. I hope to have a day off between now and then to clean the house. Today, however, I have church immediately followed by more work.

Right now I am off to catch up on your adventures.

My computer died this morning as I was getting ready to post. I am hastily posting this at work so that those of you who email me will not expect responses. The refrigerator is waiting on a part that will take two weeks to arrive, so we are now without a computer or a refrigerator. While I know that most people throughout time and space are in the same boat, I still feel a little dejected.

Formerprincess had some questions about the SWAP. I began composing an answer at her site, but it got too long, so I am posting it here instead.

Did #2 daughter choose the colors for Pipes? Yes, she did, They are the colors of her SWAP, as it happens. She also picked the colorwork designs out of my Fair Isle chart book.

When you plan a SWAP, you are supposed to determine your best colors and pick three: two basics and a contrast. You can have other contrasts, too, but essentially you begin with two main colors. One should be a neutral and the other can be a "fashion color," but something you consider basic.

Did we buy all our fabrics at once? Well, we tried.

You are supposed to find a print with those two main colors in it. You use that print to make a two-piece dress, buy basic fabrics in solids that match the colors in the print and use them to make suits, and then get the contrast solid or solids for blouses. You can also pick a plaid or check to make a jacket, being sure that the plaid will work with your print.

For preference, you buy all your fabrics at once. We actually did not succeed at finding that pivotal print. Both #2 daughter (at left) and I (at right) found prints with one of the colors and plaids with both, and that was the best we could do.

We visited our local fabric store during a sale, and made two online fabric purchases, plus an online yarn purchase. There have been a few little trips to pick up zippers and such, but otherwise that was all our shopping.  Four shoppings over two and a half months, roughly. People with more choices locally, more robust budgets, and/or higher tolerance for shopping might be able to do it all at one go.

We figure we will average less than $20 per garment by the time we finish them all, and we are using wool and silk and microfibers, so we think this is a frugal approach to clothing.

Did we buy all the patterns at once? No.

You are supposed to use "TNT" patterns -- tried and true ones that you have made and fitted before. We hadn't been doing enough sewing to have TNT patterns. We had to learn about that.

So we put some thought into what kinds of things we needed and would like to make, and moved on to the next step: storyboards. These are drawings of the garments with swatches of the fabrics. Some of the sewing bloggers have very snazzy ones. I particularly like the electronic ones where the images are line drawings till they are sewn up, at which point they are colored in with the fabric. This is mine on the left.

Using our storyboards, we made our list of desired patterns and picked them up at 99 cent sales. Specifically, Hancock fabric had 99 cent sales on the different companies' patterns at one-week intervals this summer, and I ducked in before work and got the ones we had chosen. We each bought about 5 patterns total -- that is, $5 on patterns.

There was some trial and error. We are still gathering up the courage to make jackets and pants, but have gotten to the TNT stage with tops and skirts.

Do I just work on it whenever I get a chance? Yes. Since I have a plan, I can easily do that. That is one of the things I like about it. I can load up the machine with gray thread and do all the gray seams when I have an hour or so. Another time, I can do the burgundy seams. We did start out with a sewing marathon weekend, though, and that was great.

Another thing I like about the SWAP is that I wear the things I've made often.

Previous to this I had sewn things like this lovely bag. It took ages, because I made it up as I went along, and I love it, but have carried it only twice because it doesn't go with anything I own.

I made it as part of the Sew?I Knit sewalong. At the same time, I was reading in the sewing blogs about a contest in which seamstresses made an 11-piece wardrobe in four months. I realized that I was sewing two things a month, and could if I followed the SWAP surely make myself an 11-piece wardrobe in a year, and perhaps one for my daughter as well.

I am finding sewing with a plan equally enjoyable as when I did random forays, but much more sensible, as Formerprincess says, and certainly more useful. Not that I plan to give up sewing things on mad whims. In fact, I have a mad whim that has been nagging me ever since Dweezy brought it up, and I may give in to it any time now...

The SWAP is not without consequences, however. For example, I have been completely happy wearing ill-fitting rags to work for years. But now I notice it and feel like Lord Emsworth. Or perhaps like his sister who tries to make him dress decently. The things I have sewn thus far aren't really suitable for my job, which involves a certain amount of physical work. I wear them to church and social occasions. But I may have to include some work clothes, if I keep becoming self-conscious about wearing tattered schmattas.

SWAP Report

Yesterday, having determined that my schedule was not as bad as I had been making it seem in my mind, I decided to take an hour to work on my SWAP.

This is one of the great advantages of the Sewing With a Plan system -- if you have an hour to sew, you do not have to spend it in deciding what to make or buying fabric or finding the pattern pieces or any other preliminary work. Having already done all that during the planning stages, you can just jump in. I watched part of The Phantom of the Opera and cut out my next two garments.

After the opening scenes, which were quite cool, the movie was a deep disappointment, but the cutting went well.

After work, we tried to fix the refrigerator. My husband's first hypothesis was that it simply needed defrosting and a thorough cleaning. He put it up on a car jack and cleaned it to within an inch of its metal life. I cleaned the floor under it. We returned it to its place, plugged it back in, and turned it on. As of this morning, the thermometer inside it still registers 70 degrees, so this was clearly not the solution.

Oh well.

There was also knitting. I am 4/5 of the way through the colorwork for Pipes.

We ate pancakes from a "complete" mix (just add water) with syrup for breakfast and frozen things for lunch and dinner. They were not as bad as I had thought they might be. Just sort of artificial tasting, not like real food. #2 son admired the pancakes. He felt that they were better than whole grain pancakes, the normal fare at our house. But #1 son allowed as how he thought that homemade food was better and healthier than convenience foods.

That realization might be worth something. I had not asked him, after all, he just volunteered the opinion. #2 son is watching the Food Network, and has volunteered to cook dinner once school starts and his schedule is more settled (his social life interferes with any demanding chore like cooking, poor butterfly). We are hoping for a speedy recovery for the fridge.

So I went to the store and bought some boxed foods that could be kept in a cupboard or freezer and prepared without the use of milk or eggs or indeed any fresh ingredients of any kind. This is what I came up with. Not, perhaps, enough to feed the family till the refrigerator gets fixed. It depends how fast my husband is.

These are things that I remember from my childhood. Most of the things fitting the description were complete mysteries to me. I considered buying Banquet dinners for the boys. They were on sale for $1 each. I stood looking at the meal of fish, macaroni, and pudding, and wondered what you could put in those things that would make it possible to sell it for $1. Corn and palm tree by-products, of course, but what would they taste like? I passed over them.

I went on to work, where we were mad busy, and one customer stayed till 6:30. When she finally left and I got all the paperwork done, I got home in time to cook chicken (thawed in the microwave) and noodles and frozen vegetables.

Then the Schwan's man arrived with a bag of frozen dinners. "Is this your order?" he asked skeptically. I usually get fruits and veg from him, with the healthier pizzas and sorbet. I explained my plight: the work schedule, the dead refrigerator. He was quite sympathetic and assured me that he would bring me dinner "any time." By which of course he meant, on my scheduled day and I will pay him large sums of money.

Actually, these prepared foods cost the same amount that I usually spend on groceries for a week. The amount of actual nutrition I've bought is not comparable to my usual haul, but we will see how everyone likes it.

#2 daughter likes her new job, and finishes early enough to go on to the temp job she needs to finish up, and is enjoying her rehearsals as well. Her car arrived and she is beginning to move into her apartment a bit. #1 daughter will be coming to visit in a couple of weeks.

# 1 son was complaining a bit yesterday. "I had to get up at 9:00," he said, "and lie around for hours. Then I had to play basketball in the hot sun and come home and lie around some more." It is possible that I have been whining about my schedule too much. He could -- gasp! -- be making fun of me. I am hitting the gym only a couple of times a week and being pretty adamant about spending the evening relaxing with the family, so I actually am getting enough R&R. I should quit whining.

Especially now that I have all those magical prepared foods.

Yesterday was a pleasant enough day. We sang from the Cokesbury in church, always fun. The director exhorted the congregation to sing "boisterously" and they did so. Then I went to work, where people were mostly pretty cheerful. It was only moderately busy, and I gave myself permission not to scurry around doing extra things between customers, and was therefore able to read Terry Pratchett's Only You Can Save Mankind. I do try to read, or at least skim, all the books we sell. At this time of year, though, most between-customers time is devoted to cleaning up messes.

I had taken my knitting, in case there were no customers at all, but it was actually a pretty good day, numbers-wise. I got home to find the boys watching the Monk marathon and joined them, and got the center row of the colorwork done on Pipes. I am using traditional Fair Isle patterns, but in a very different style, as #2 daughter is not a fan of Fair Isle. She finds it too folkloric.

My daughters both called me, which was nice, though both of them are finding life a little trying.

So am I, at the moment, because my refrigerator quit working. It has done this before, so I thought my husband could perhaps fix it before all the food spoiled and had to be thrown away. No such luck. I am not sure why he didn't get around to it this weekend, since I was at work and do not know what he was doing, but today he has a dental appointment after work, so he just told me to throw everything away.

I will have to skip the gym this morning in order to go to the grocery again in search of non-perishable foods for the boys' breakfasts and lunches. They were doing pretty well with cold cereal and milk, and ham and cheese sandwiches. Hot cereal and peanut butter sandwiches will turn them surly, though. They may just have to be surly.

We will be thankful for the Schwan's man (we expect him today) and the cases of MaMa noodles on the pantry floor.

The other thing I did yesterday was to look at the Mary Maxim catalog before throwing it out. I wanted to see whether they carried size 1 sleeve needles, because I cannot find mine. They don't, but they do have other remarkable things. Now, usually the Mary Maxim catalog's main message to me is that making really ugly useless things takes just as much time and effort as making beautiful useful things -- I am sure that a 15" Christmas tree fashioned of safety pins and plastic beads is labor intensive. But this time they are also offering lighted knitting needles. They might allow you to knit in the movies or while camping, or perhaps they would be a good accessory at the next rave you attend.

They also featured a raglan sweater with a cable at the raglan, just as the Jasmine sweater uses a band of lace. I was thinking of doing this myself, and was glad to see that it looks good. I'm not doing this soon, of course, as I have a lot of projects in the queue already, but it is still a good thing to know.

There were not, however, any lighted cable needles.

The black spot to the left is in fact the sweater I am knitting of Knit Picks new yarn, Telemark. I have given it a name: Pipes.

I used to be opposed to the naming of sweaters, finding it a little precious, but now that I find myself writing about them, I have to admit that saying "Jasmine" or "Hopkins" or "Pipes" is much handier than saying "the second Elsebeth Lavold lace raglan sweater" or "the sweater I am making out of variegated yarn, against my better judgement" or "the sweater I am knitting of Knit Picks new yarn."

Lisa Boyer recommends naming projects mysteriously. She points out that if you name something "Roses," people will expect to discern some roses in there, and be disappointed if they do not succeed in doing so. However, you have no idea why the heck I have named this sweater Pipes and will not be disappointed when you see only a shadowy shape on your screen.

Actually, when I scan this sweater, the picture comes up nicely and shows the sophisticated color combination and nice geometric patterning. It is only when I push the "best for web" button that it turns into a black spot. Some of you may be able to see it quite well.

I continue to like this yarn. It has a firm, smooth hand and should be very good for a cold winter. #2 daughter, for whom it is destined, is now living permanently in a gardening Zone 5 region, so she will need something warm.

We do not need anything warm here right now. It is hot and muggy and horrible. When Pipes gets a bit bigger, it may have to join Erin in the knitting basket, waiting for cooler weather. That's Erin on the right, there.

Erin and Pipes are both the kind of sweater that is made in one piece. That makes them bigger and heavier to knit than the more modern kind that is knitted in pieces.

When knitting things flat and sewing the bits together came into fashion in the 20th century, it was felt that this process made for a better fit and a more sophisticated look. Tricks of shaping that people are now rediscovering (changing needle sizes for waist shaping, for example, and short row shaping) were looked down upon as peasant methods. Seams were thought to provide greater stability and a more chic line.

Knit to Fit, a textbook I inherited from my grandmother, assures us that now (in the 1950s) thanks to more scientifically designed foundation garments, women had better figures and could wear better-fitted garments. Thus, the new dressmaker-styled sweaters. And of course the bother of sewing all the bits together.

I assume that what the authors had in mind was this silhouette, popular at the turn of the last century. This is Elizabeth Catherine, my great-great-grandmother, who was born in Missouri in 1847.

Her father was a slave runner from Virginia who settled in Missouri after he had given up this wickedness and commenced to do good works, and eventually ended up in the legislature.

Elizabeth Catherine had a passel of children, and was quite an old lady by the time this picture was taken, and wouldn't have looked her best in a fitted sweater.

This is what old ladies looked like in those days. Nowadays many of them do indeed look far more chic than this. I don't know whether it is the result of scientific undergarments or not.

 In case you are wondering, here is a picture of a scientifically designed undergarment from that era. I can't quite imagine Elizabeth Catherine in such a thing, but perhaps her daughters or granddaughters wore them. Maybe her great-granddaughter, my mother, did. Someone must have worn them. I think they were the equivalent of the Wonderbra in their day.

The 1950s, when the first edition of Knit to Fit was written, complete with exercises to do (answers in the back of the book) and the correct prices to charge for finishing a sweater for a client (with and without ribbon), was the day of the Hollywood Sweater Girl. Sweaters had been things worn for work, and then for sport, and by the 1920s (when the Prince of Wales was photographed in his golf sweater), they became something to wear in the drawing room in order to show how sporty you were. Perhaps like our designer sweatshirts now. In the 1940s and '50s, they became staples of women's clothing, helped along by Lana Turner and her ilk, presumably in their scientific undergarments.

I will be joining the old ladies for Sunday School this morning, and then church, and then going back to work. There could be sewing and knitting at some point before and/or after these plans. I will endeavor not to consider how scientific the old ladies' undergarments might be during class, as it is none of my business. I am not knitting sweaters for any of them.

Yesterday's post brought lots of good advice. I do not include the suggestion of frozen toast, which I assume was facetious.

This made me think about advice. I like advice. My job involves giving advice, of course. Sometimes I am really just required to confirm people's decisions ("Oh yes, that yellow looks great with that border"), but there are many cases when people come back to tell me that my advice to them made a big difference in their son's reading or their classroom management, or that they loved the book I recommended, and I find that gratifying.

I try to restrain myself from giving advice to people who don't want it and haven't asked for it, but it is a bad habit of mine, I know. I try not to give unwanted advice to my children, especially the grown-up ones. There are many comic strips and TV shows to remind us that people hate being given advice unless they ask for it. And it seems to be widely believed that women, especially, only want sympathy when they complain about something. They don't want suggestions about how to fix it, we are told, just validation for their feelings.

But I like being given advice. I don't know everything there is to know, and I like learning from other people. Other people who are less involved in our difficulties can often see things more clearly than we. And we can end up with more options. In fact, if I didn't want suggestions, I probably wouldn't mention a problem. Why bother?

In the matter of convenience foods, it seems pretty clear that they are not magic. Oh, the Schwan's man is pretty magical, but otherwise it doesn't actually seem to be faster or easier to use convenience foods than to make stir-fries or curries or to put something in the crockpot or the rice machine. That is, for things that I can imagine eating.

Pre-cut vegetables and bottled sauces or seasoning mixes seem like a worthwhile investment, and boneless chicken and ground beef. Apart from that, I obviously have to just suck it up and cook dinner.

Last night, in a spirit of experimentation, I did not cook dinner. My sister, after all, doesn't cook dinner. Maybe she has given in and begun cooking by now, as it is some years since we discussed it, but last I heard, she just let everyone fend for him or herself.

So I said there were leftovers in the fridge, and told everyone to eat something. I had popcorn and fruit. #2 son went online to look for recipes, but gave up upon seeing the ingredients lists of the things that appealed to him, and said he wasn't hungry. Eventually, my husband sent #1 son out for a sack of cheeseburgers. I recommended salad as a side dish. The boys laughed. It was clear that I had fallen down on the job. I am not sure how my sister arranges things, but we were all pretty disgruntled about my experiment. "We should have more chocolate," said #2 son.

If we are to believe popular theories on how men and women communicate, I would only tell you this so that you can sympathize with me and validate my having failed to do my job (we have a division of labor at our house; my chores are seeing to the food and clothing, as in cooking and doing laundry, shopping, mending, and so on). I would want you to share your feelings about times when you have fed your family cold cereal for dinner. Of course, I am interested in your feelings and it is always nice when people sympathize with one and absolve one from wrongdoing (especially when we know that we were in the wrong, as in this case), but that would not be my communicative goal.

Actually, I liked the practical suggestions from yesterday. Does this make me masculine? Here is a some advice for men predicated on this view of male/female communication:

"Call her bluff - Women like to talk about “feelings” and say that they want us to talk about them too. The truth is that women have no interest in really knowing how we feel. What they really want is for us to shut up and to listen to them. Since real men have two “feelings” - hungry and gassy - wives really don't care to hear about our emotional state.

When your wife starts using phrases such as “opening up”, “getting in touch with your feminine side”, and other nonsense she picked up from watching Oprah, just tell her what she thinks she wants to hear. Explain to her that you often have “body image” problems and that you occasionally feel the need to eat chocolate after your catty co-workers hurt your feelings. Finish this off by asking her to hold you while you “have a good cry.”

After that, you can rest assured that she'll never ask you to share your feelings again. In fact, she'll go out of her way to avoid getting to know too much about you. And that, after all, is the key to happy marriage. The less a wife knows about her husband the less there is to dislike."

This is from The Evangelical Outpost, and is I assume intended to be humorous. But it is in the form of advice for a specific problem a man had mentioned: namely, that of having to talk with women who want to discuss feelings and/or vent about things with no actual plan to improve anything.

James Dobson, a quite famous guy in evangelical circles, had specific advice, not intended to be humorous, for women who were unhappy that their husbands didn't talk with them enough: get girlfriends. Talk with your mother and your sister and the ladies at church, and leave your husband in peace to watch the ball game. When you really want him to do something, then you can talk to him, but otherwise, stick with the girls.

Well, I think I have done enough random chattering for the morning. Life is real, life is earnest, and the breakfast is not going to cook itself. I must got to the pharmacy before work, and obviously also to the grocery, armed with your excellent suggestions. Thanks again.