Chanthaboune and I were talking yesterday about the B-list feeling. Feeling like you're on the B list doesn't mean that you don't get invited to parties, just that you suspect that you don't get invited to the coolest ones. It's not that you aren't appreciated, but that you aren't appreciated as much as you want to be. Not that you are excluded, but that you are included with less enthusiasm or thoroughness than you hoped for.

It's hard to get sympathy for this feeling. There you are, telling your sister how lonely you are and He hasn't called, and you have to end the conversation because a passel of frat boys is at your door wanting to take you to dinner. Or you turn down most invitations because you are too busy and then feel slighted because you didn't have the chance to turn down one you noticed you didn't get. It just isn't rational, is it? It's hard to get sympathy even from yourself for this kind of feeling.

I was checking in books at work yesterday and read one of the new ones: I Am the Turkey. In it, a kindergartner is chosen for the part of the turkey in the Thanksgiving play. With the help of his older brother, he feels pretty B-list about this. He was wanting to be a pilgrim. There is of course a crisis in the play and the turkey saves the day. In children's books about the B-list feeling, this is invariably what happens. In real life, you don't win everything, you don't get invited to everything, not everybody likes you, and you have to just put on your big girl pants and get on with life. (I'm not sure where the expression "put on your big girl pants" originates, but The Princess uses it and it stuck in my mind.)

This weird looking thing is the Third Hand. I love it. It allows me to put jump rings on consistently.

As you can see by the splashes of solder all around it, it has not turned me into an expert solderer.

However, I feel sure that practice makes perfect.

Here are the slides I have soldered, arranged with the ones that must be used as tree ornaments hidden inside the branches or on the side next to the wall at one end. At the other end are the ones that have reached the level of skill that we might call rustic, or engagingly primitive. They could be put on cords and used for bookmarks.

In fact, I like these well enough to show you a closer picture.

All the Christmas catalogs that have been arriving are showing these things.

This allows me to see mass-produced professional store-bought ones and notice how mine do not have the high bead that good soldering brings. Some of mine are practically just tinned. They also are mostly not smooth and jewelry-like, though they do have cooler collages than the store-bought examples. I do not aspire to the store-bought smoothness, actually, but I am hoping to reach folk art before I begin doing the ones for Christmas gifts.

I am running out of microscope slides, too.

The background for these pitiful objects is my summer table runner.

The other side of it is my Autumn table runner.

Seeing it reminded me that I had wanted to make a table runner for The Princess's wedding gift. I had resigned myself to buying her something, but her mother told me yesterday that she was so excited about the handmade gifts she had received that I am now thinking I could make the gift I had originally planned back when there was plenty of time. It is still 23 days till the wedding, and 73 days (that information courtesy of Lostarts) till Christmas. I could do it.

I have looked back in my xanga to see how long this one took to make, and I find that I did it in a week. And it has a lot of handwork, as you can see from the in-progress picture below. I could make the one I was planning in 22 days. Well, 21, since I can't very well carry it to the wedding.

 The rule actually is that you can give a wedding gift any time up to the first anniversary, but I think the day before the wedding is the real-world deadline for people you actually see regularly.

Spanish class ended last night. In six weeks, I learned how to say that I have things and am things, and then where I and the things live and hail from, and what color these things are.

This is not how I would have arranged the class. Still, it has ended and I now have that extra half hour on Wednesday afternoons into which I can perhaps fit some knitting or table runner sewing. Not soldering, because then I would be late to choir practice and smell of solder when I got there. Knitting can be picked up and put down easily and doesn't even make you smell of sheep.

I am continuing with the second Log Cabin sock, and working on Pipes when I need something less demanding. Many people dislike doing the second sock, because they have a Been There Done That feeling about it, but I like it. I may make another pair after these. However, once I finish this particular sock I will swatch for #2 son's sweater. We are expecting a frost tonight, so the days of fires and sweaters are now upon us.

This morning I have a dental appointment and must take #2 daughter's Pumpkin Ale to Dr. T and pick up a paper from Partygirl and get a copy of the transcript form for #1 daughter and contact solution for #1 son, so I will not be making anything at all.

A while back there was a discussion on a number of blogs -- including at least Ozarque, Chanthaboune, and The Water Jar, and probably others as well -- on poetry and song. Some of the questions these folks brought up were these:

Do people still read poetry, or are songs now the only exposure we get to it?
Is the poetry in popular songs uniformly rotten, and if so, is it in the nature of songs that they should be so?
Is poetry debased by the rotten doggerel in pop songs, or will it eventually be strengthened by the constant exposure of young people to the form?

I was thinking about all this in rehearsal last night, as we are singing a very impressive poem, "Fenscape," by Jan Godfrey. I tried to find out more about Godfrey, but found only a children's book author of that name, and a use of the name by poet and novelist Janet Frame, whom I mention only because she comes from the town where Sighkey and my sister live.

In any case, here is the beginning of the poem:

"after winter rain
the enormous sky opens blue eyes to wetlashed wonder
at its own shattered reflection
a blink a breath caught
held in
cracked ice mirrors,
thin-light fingering heaven's seamless hem"

Leaving aside the problem of what a seamless hem might be, this is a wonderful poem, and I wish I could direct you to it. If nothing else, I have guessed where the line breaks are, based on the music, and I am probably wrong.

Our director, Jason Thoms, set this to music, and it is good listening, too. But it is Serious Music. (The subject of the poem is the Crucifixion, so that is appropriate -- Pokey, if you need an impressive modern Easter piece, you might look into it.) Popular songs could just as well use good poetry, but they generally don't.

"It's getting hot in here/so take off all your clothes" is of course the example that springs to mind. There is another song which I may not be quoting accurately, but which I heard about a hundred times during one of this spring's road trips: "There ain't no harm in my looking at your huh huh."

It really isn't the subject matter. Another piece we are singing is the ever popular "Come Again! Sweet Love Doth Now Invite," which includes this line:

"...To see, to hear, to touch, to kiss, to die
with thee again in sweetest sympathy"

Death being as you probably know a common euphemism for orgasm at the time. It is possible that the rising notes, the rests, and the dynamics make this more evocative when sung than when merely read. Click here for a selection of midi files if you want to hear the tune, or here to hear it sung as a solo piece, or here to read the poem.

It's pretty good poetry.

Nowadays we often hear madrigals as some variant on this internet joke:

"THIS SONG IS IN ITALIAN,
THIS SONG IS IN ITALIAN,
FA LA LA LA
LALALALALALA

BUT I DON'T KNOW THE WORDS,
BUT I DON'T KNOW THE WORDS,
FA LA LA LA
LALALALALALA"

We're singing mostly in English, though. That means that folks can appreciate the poetry -- as long as they can disentangle the words. There are plenty of "fa la la la" bits, though, that being the 16th century equivalent of  "holla holla holla."

I am taking Lostarts's excellent advice and finishing the sock right up in my limited knitting time. #2 son's yarn arrived, and I am in search of a suitable pattern. Lostarts also suggested the Knitter's Handy Book, which I own but have never used. This would be a good time to try it out, perhaps, although I would really like to be able to show #2 son a picture and make sure I am knitting what he wants. #1 son has also asked for wrist warmers, about which I have been snide in the past. I may be snide about them in the future, too, but I guess I will make him some anyway.

However, my "jeweler's third hand" also arrived, so I intend to play with my soldering iron while listening to madrigals until time to go to work. Fa la la la la!

Happy Socktoberfest!

I am making the second Log Cabin sock. It doesn't look any different from the first, so I won't be giving you pictures of it much. I am also making some progress on Pipes. I am eager to get back to Erin as well, and the yarn for #2 son's sweater will be arriving soon -- he has alerted me that he wants it for Christmas. I also have a long-ignored prayer shawl on the needles. And there is the other long-ignored shawl, one I am making for myself but which has been languishing unworked for about a year now.

As you may have noticed (if you always read my blog and have total recall) I am not one of those knitters who has lots of Works in Progress. Two is about my speed. I am currently letting the socks be my epic project and Pipes be the zombie project. Once the socks are finished (this week) I could shift and let Erin be the epic project.
Or I could do some sort of rotation: socks on Monday, Pipes on Tuesday... Or be a mad sock-knitter during Socktober and go back to sweaters in November.

One thing that I am sure of is that I don't have time to do calculations and trial and error for #2 son's sweater. He wants a plain gray sweater shaped like a sweatshirt. If any of you can point me toward a good, accurate pattern for such a sweater in a boy's size 14 in worsted weight, I'll be very grateful.

While I am still reading The Physics of Superheroes, I am also doing some creepy reading for the Autumn Challenge. I am afraid that the timing is a little off for where I live. Reading creepy books in front of the fire while the sky drips cold rain from its dismal gray clouds would be the best, and we are still enjoying Indian summer here. Nonetheless, I am reading The Black Opal, by Victoria Holt. The Little Friend, my first creepy book for the challenge, was distinctly Southern Gothic. The alcoholic mother, the absent father (he wasn't a riverboat gambler, since it's set in the 1970s, but he could have been), the assorted mad relatives, the crumbling ante-bellum mansion -- she might have written it with a checklist by her side. The Black Opal is British gothic -- pregnant governess, gypsies in the woods, mad servants...

Both are well written, though The Black Opal has no pretensions to literariness. But I disliked The Little Friend enormously, and am enjoying The Black Opal enormously. I think it is the level of realism.

In the same way that I never minded reading my kids fairy tales (which are full of gore and horror) but dislike their playing video games like Vice City, I like a good formulaic gothic story. The Little Friend did, it is true, have its madwoman in the attic, but it had meth labs and child abuse and an ambiguous ending, all of which unpleasant things are all too common in real life. The Black Opal has so little in common with reality, or at least with my own personal slice of reality, that I can enjoy it as I would a fairy tale. We are not going to see scenes reminiscent of Wuthering Heights on the news.

Today we are expecting a book shipment -- though it will not include The God Delusion, as we missed the narrow window between the street date and the warehouses being sold out. And there is an alto sectional tonight, at which I will be caught not knowing all the notes. Since I am only barely literate in music, I have to learn the music by rote. In a full rehearsal, I can follow my neighbor (although this results in one's being a fraction of a second behind, and is therefore not a good strategy) when I forget how the piece is supposed to go. Obviously, I will have to devote part of this morning to plunking out the shaky sections on the piano.

But tomorrow is our average first frost date. It may soon become autumn here, and I will be able to sit before the fire with my creepy novel and wooly sweaters.

The Princess's bridal shower was a success.

I had been planning some autumnal goodies for it (Partygirl was doing the meatitude and I was in charge of the sweetitude) but then she told me that she was planning a "pink and girlie" theme.

You can see from these pictures that it was indeed very pink. Partygirl's husband is a competitive rose grower, and he provided lots of roses for the decor. Lots of roses pretty well covers the decor when you are going with pink and girlie for a theme.

Serendipitously enough, that very day I got in the mail a frugalreader book with an extra tucked in -- a Lando'Lakes butter cookbook with a special section of cookies and tea cakes for bridal showers. Pink and girlie all the way.

#2 daughter returned to her midwestern fastness and I got in some knitting time with Pipes.

This weekend was very fun, but that girl didn't get a single home-cooked meal while she was here, and I will be skipping the gym this morning to shovel out the house.

I am reading The Physics of Superheroes by James Kakalios, a book which uses comic book phenomena to explain basic tenets of physics. If you have ever felt that you didn't completely grasp Newton's second law or anything like that, I strongly recommend this book. He had noticed that his students complained that the examples about the behavior of balls and feathers had no relation to their daily lives. When he uses comic books, they do not make this complaint. "Apparently," he says, "they all have plans, post-graduation, that involve Spandex and protecting the City from all threats."

 Yesterday morning began with a lightning trip to the farmers' market, where we scored the last box of raspberries among other tasty stuff. Then we began the search for a suit for #1 son's homecoming.

It is difficult to find a small size suit on short notice.That Man (who loaned #1 son his very upmarket gear when we couldn't find anything at the stores) says it's because Americans as a group are getting bigger.

I don't know, but we picked up the suit, bought the flowers, dropped off the guys at home, and hightailed it to the party we were late for.

#2 daughter and I had a good time at the party. It was a sit-and-talk kind of thing, with brunch, at Janalisa's place. We knew some of the other guests, and would like to meet the others again, and the time flew by.

 So much so that we barely made it on time to #2 son's climbing competition.

The climbing place is out in the country. We saw a hint of fall color on our drive out there

It is an odd building. Somewhat odd on the outside, where you see a big metal building with a tower in back.

And very odd on the inside, where the walls of the rabbit warren of rooms are studded with real and fake rocks and "features" for climbing.

I was reassured. The boys go climbing with some frequency, and I was glad to see that there were plenty of safety precautions, that a lot of the climbing could be done fairly low, and that all the floors were well-padded. People spot for one another, and the older climbers give advice and encouragement to the younger ones. All in all, it seems to be a wholesome way to spend an afternoon.

# 2 daughter and I enjoyed watching the climbers clambering across the ceilings. It was pretty clear that it requires muscle, skill, and focus.

A climbing tea, had come in from the state capitol for the competition, and they seem to have scooped the pool. We drove #2 son and a couple of his buds home and they pointed out to us that the team not only had the experience, but they also had a coach standing there telling them what to do. "It was still a lot of fun," said Ewok in a satisfied voice.

I had noticed that the coach had also given some tips to other kids, including #2 son. In fact, the supportiveness and camaraderie of the climbers -- particularly since it was a competition -- impressed me very much.

 #2 daughter and I had one complaint. Wait, I take that back. #2 daughter was complaining a bit about the extreme smelliness of the place, but I think that is unavoidable if you have a closed space filled with sweaty guys.

There were a few girls climbing, but the great majority of the participants were guys from 12 to perhaps 30. As far as smell went, we might as well have been in a zoo. But, as I say, that seems natural, and we didn't notice it much after the first hour or two.

The thing that really got to us was the chalk. I have chosen these pictures to show you because they have no recognizable faces, but all our pictures look like this -- as though they were taken in a snowstorm.

Fortunately, the handbells are doing the anthem in church this morning, because we can hardly breathe, let alone sing.

Following this excitement, we rushed home to get #1 son ready for homecoming. He looked very sharp, and I am waiting eagerly to hear about the dance. I feel quite sure that I will not hear about it from him, though. "It was okay," and grunts in response to direct questions are about what I can expect from him. Dating teens should arrange to have the girl in the couple visit the mom of the boy and tell her all about it.

We were not able to fit the grocery shopping in at all, so that is the first order of business this morning. Then, once I have that done, I will bake the goodies for this afternoon's bridal shower. Then church and the party. #2 daughter will be leaving from there, and I will be staying to clean up.

While I had fun yesterday, I must say that if I had had the forethought to take my knitting with me, I could have had that second sock well underway by now.

It has come to my attention that I began my sock reassurance program with an airy "knit the leg" while actually getting started has its difficulties.

I am therefore going to show you the beginning of the second sock before we get to finishing the first.

If you have your foot all knitted and want to look at a toe, skip on down.

The picture above is there to make a simple point: cast on all the stitches normally, onto one double pointed needle.  Sometimes folks think they should cast their stitches on in the even distribution they plan for when they are knitting on their dpns, but I think that is more difficult. So this is a dpn with 48 stitches on it, the number for beginning the sock.

The next thing is to knit back cross those stitches, and it is at this point that you will distribute them on the needles.

I usually use 4 dpns, so I want my stitches to end up on three needles: half the stitches on one needle for the front of the sock and the other half on two needles for the back. If you like to use five needles, then you can put them evenly onto four needles and have one left to work with.

The alarming aspect of this step is shown in this picture. While you knit with all the various needles, you will have the previous ones hanging down. You have along tail of stitches with a bunch of needles threaded through them and it is at this point, I surmise, that Formerprincess decided her knitting would never be a sock.

When you have stitches on all three needles, you will join them together.

At this point, you will have that triangle of needles that you see when you watch people making socks. Up until that point, it all seems very chaotic.

Now that you have the stitches all together and joined and are knitting in a circle, there is a light visible at the end of the tunnel. But it will still take a couple of rows before you quit feeling as though you are trying to subdue a porcupine. The key to success at this point is to keep going, bearing in mind that it will be better soon.

There are so many circumstances in life in which this the best strategy that it is good to have some practice.

Now, let us suppose that you have gotten to the foot of the first sock and knitted it until it is the length you want. You will now go ahead and do the paired decreases on alternate rows that you did before, when you were knitting the gusset. The effect on this occasion will be entirely different. Last time, you had a different shape to begin with, so it was a geometrically different situation. Do not think that you will end up with gussets again.

Instead, the toe will become rounded and smaller and end up looking like, well, the toe of a sock.

You will bring the number of stitches down to 8 or so, and then you can finish it off in whatever manner you prefer.

You can find endless discussions on the web of the various virtues of kitchener stitch versus 3 needle bindoffs, but I think that with 8 stitches it hardly matters. Do whatever you prefer. Sometimes I turn the thing inside out and crochet it up.

What harm can you do with 8 stitches?

You will inevitably end up with a sock, such as this one, the Log Cabin sock from Handknit Holidays.

We are heading to the farmers market this morning, and then to seek dress clothes for #1 son. There is a party after a bit, and I suppose at some point we will buy groceries.

And right now my offspring are chivying me to hurry up, so I will post without proofreading. Who knows what I might have said up there?

 I had a rough day at work yesterday. We didn't have anything people wanted, I couldn't help anyone, and most of the folks I saw or spoke to were angry.

Chamber singers rehearsal was just what I needed. Music is relaxing in the same way that dance is: completely involving, but different from what I'm usually thinking about. After a couple of hours concentrating on the harmonies when Diana removes Love's fiery weapon (fa la la la) and getting the pax hominibus to go with a swing, I felt much better.

My Socktoberfest sock continues. I am making the Log Cabin socks from Handknit Holidays in sport-weight Wool-ease on #3 needles. Ozarque said that sockmaking directions sounded like word problems in arithmetic, and of course she has a point. "If you begin with 48 stitches, turn the heel and pick up stitches along the sides to reach 60 stitches, how many rounds of alternating k2tog and ssk..." I hope that it makes more sense if you are actually knitting a sock, which Ozarque is not doing. I am now imagining poor souls attempting to knit a sock and getting the leg finished, perhaps in some fancy pattern, and then finding their eyes sliding off the page when they attempt to make the heel.

If that happened to you, you could of course make a thumb instead and end up with a mitten. Or you could make legwarmers, or even wrist warmers, which have never made any sense to me. Perhaps they began as socks and the knitters gave up when they came to all that math.

The good news is that once you have gotten to this point on the sock, all that is past. There is no more counting, even, till you get to the toe. You have created a heel and gotten back to the original number of stitches (for the Log Cabin sock, 48) and now you just knit around until it is long enough. At this point, I would usually put the stitches back on a sleeve needle (a 9" circular needle) till the toe decreases begin. In this case, it is handy to have the front on a separate needle because of the cables, so I am sticking with the dpns.

How long is long enough? If you are making socks for yourself, then it is handy to know that the length of your foot is just about the same as the length of the inside of your arm from elbow to wrist. This allows you to check the length of your sock without taking your shoes off, which is good if you are knitting at a public lecture or a fancy party or something. If the sock is for someone else, you'll just have to carry a tape measure.

Now that we are past the complicated part, we can do something else while knitting: read blogs, practice songs... I am fact-checking an article for our state history encyclopedia. Unlike my previous assignments, this one is about something that took place during my lifetime, which has made it a different experience. I felt detached and interested while I read about political scandals of the 19th century. The subject of my current article was involved in a political scandal of the 20th century -- specifically, President Clinton's tomcatting.

Because I've been asked to find a good source, I've been reading through newspaper archives in an effort to find something that isn't a report of other people's reports. I hadn't previously registered how much of our news reportage ends up being gossip. But I figure someone must have actually talked with the woman and filed that first report, so I am slogging through all these articles from 1988, and something odd keeps coming up.

I remember when the scandal was in the news all the time. I don't recall that "Was that the best he could do?" was a central theme, but apparently it was. My encyclopedia subject was Miss America the year before she claimed to have been involved with Clinton, and reports of her involvement frequently say something suggesting that at least this one was pretty. I don't recall that the elder Mr. Bush's "White House call boy ring" inspired judgements on whether the boys were cute enough for the politicos involved to have bothered with. I haven't heard anyone speculating on the physiques of the pages Mr. Foley preyed upon. Is this something to do with the gender of the people involved? I don't know. It just strikes me as odd.

#2 daughter is coming home tonight. I will have to give up saying "home" now that she actually has her own home, but it isn't easy. My elder daughter has been married for three years, and I still catch myself saying she is coming home when I mean she is coming here. #2 daughter and I have a couple of parties going on this weekend, and we have to get #1 son kitted out for Homecoming and attend #2 son's climbing competition. I have no intentions of trying to accomplish anything this weekend, though I wouldn't be at all surprised if I finished this sock.

 Scene from choir practice last night:

Director: "They say that they have the biggest organ in the county..."
Suwanda: "Lots of men say that. It's never true."

But we were talking about Socktoberfest, weren't we? I was thrilled to hear that Formerprincess is joining in the festivities, making socks. She also commented on a photo of mine. I had no idea that my photos were even available to look at. All the pictures I've taken in the last couple of months are there, including things like my eighty-seven attempts to upload buttons in a way that would make it possible to put them into my sidebar. I am now feeling as though I ought to edit them in some way. If I ever learn how, I will.

Ah, yes, Socktoberfest.

I have never been to an Oktoberfest celebration, but #2 daughter went to one recently, and they appear to involve dancing, drinking beer, and saying "What the heck" in various languages. These activities go perfectly with the knitting of socks. Here is the Log Cabin sock at an earlier stage, so you can see the method for checking the squarosity of the heel flap. You just grab the needle that the stitches are on and fold it diagonally to meet the beginning of the heel flap. If you get a proper triangle, you have a square and can proceed.

Then you turn that heel and regather all your stitches into a circle, as shown in an earlier post. I put the Log Cabin sock out with the roses for this step.

It is lovely out in the garden early in the morning. It is very jungly, since I gave it over to the weeds and mosquitoes,  but that has not inhibited the roses.

Quite the contrary. Here they are, reveling. They are probably saying "What the heck!" to one another in rose language, and doing whatever the equivalent of dancing and drinking are for plants.

We also have tomatoes and peppers.

Salsa is in the offing.

There is always a bit of a race between late tomatoes and the first frost. If the tomatoes are still green when the first hard frost comes, you have to go ahead and pick them and make green tomato mincemeat or something.

I would prefer to let them ripen and make salsa. At the moment, it is hard to imagine a first frost ever arriving, but it is bound to.

This weekend is homecoming, after all. There will be a parade and a dance. #1 son is attending the dance with a girl we do not know. He needs a rather large sum of money to do this, and has run through most of  his summer earnings already, so he has been trying to negotiate a deal.

We always bought our girls prom dresses and had their hair done and all that, and his homecoming expenses seem to me to be in the same category. This doesn't seem to involve taking him out to buy clothes or sitting and waiting while he gets his hair lacquered into fantastic shapes or anything. We just have to hand over money.

It always seemed to me that getting daughters ready for prom was a foretaste of wedding preparations, including the helpless feeling that really it shouldn't cost that much. I always remembered a colleague's advice. He told me, when we were doing our first of many prom seasons, "Just run off the cliff." He gazed out into the middle distance, seeing all the lemmings with their spaghetti straps and dyed-to-match shoes and last-minute trips to the florist for babies' breath for the hairdo.

This may be true with the boys as well. The groom's family doesn't get all that involved in the preparations, but they probably have to fork over the spondulicks for the son's part of the proceedings.

Oh, that's right, we were talking about Socktoberfest.

At this point, you have more stitches than you began with. I have 60 here, and I began with 48. So you must get them back to the original number, unless your foot is way bigger than your ankle.

Here's how you do it.

You knit down from the heel to the end of that first needle (green in the picture), and decrease a stitch. You knit across the front (the purple needle in the picture) according to the pattern you have chosen. Then you decrease one at the beginning of the last needle and knit back up to the heel.

That's a decrease row.

You must alternate decrease rows and plain rows, in order to get a nice triangular gusset on each side. You keep doing this till you get back to the original number of stitches.

Now, there are very few things you can do to mess up the turning of the heel, but this part -- though not hard -- is fraught with peril in the sense that you can make a number of different mistakes.

For one thing, you are still doing the front of the sock as well. If you have cables, as I do, or lace or a color pattern or something, you have to keep it going even while you are paying attention to the decrease rows. There is a pat your head and rub your stomach aspect to this which makes it easy to lose track of your pattern. A row counter and/or checking off the rows on your chart or pattern can help with this.

You also have to remember which row is supposed to be a decrease row. Not only is it easy to forget whether you are on a decrease row or a plain row, it is also possible to get confused about whether you began the round at the heel or the front (you did it at the heel) and think you are beginning the next round when you are really finishing one up, especially if there is a complicated pattern going on with the front of the sock. The solution to this, for me, is to look at the stitches as I approach them and see whether I increased last row or not. This works better for me than counting.

It is also important that you have paired decreases. That is, you knit two together on the downward needle and ssk on the upward needle. Otherwise, you will still end up with a sock, but you will not get those pretty triangles you can see above.

All in all, it is probably wise to put down your book while you do this, and maybe also not to watch any very exciting movies. If you are watching breathlessly to see what the creepy music means and maybe calling out to the heroine "No! Don't go in there! Or at least put on a bathrobe first, and pick up a hammer!" then you could easily decrease when you shouldn't.

In case you are looking for a creepy book to read, I want to recommend one that I will not be re-reading, but of which I was recently reminded: Perfume. Very creepy indeed, and Literature to boot.

#1 daughter has already bought her copy of The God Delusion (I am waiting for That Man to push the button on the book order) for the 2006 Richard Dawkins Readalong. She says she is looking forward to the disputation even more than the book itself, so I hope you will consider joining us in this. Highly opinionated responses are welcome, but being angry and attacking people are forbidden. Or at least, as the apostle Paul exhorts us, be angry and sin not.

I will need to get through the gussets before I begin reading or disputing anything so very enthralling as that.

I've begun my latest fact-checking assignment, and it is clear that there is a lack of good sources. My subject is not a politician but an actress, and one known for her scandalous private life rather than any actual acting.

So the first difficulty was that all online research on this women turns up screens full of her naked image, so I can't do online research while my kids are at home. She is a living person, and not one who is mentioned so much in books, so that knocks out more of the usual sources. I foresee a trip to the library to use the newspaper files.

#2 son gave me more detail on the sweater he wants, and I ordered the yarn for it. I used to knit sweaters for my children all the time when they were small and would cheerfully wear whatever I put on them. Now I make sweaters for them only very hesitantly -- a scarf or a hat that is not worn is not that big a deal, but a sweater represents so many hours that I really don't want to make it if the recipient isn't going to wear it.

Not everyone feels this way. There are several popular knitting bloggers who brag that they make sweaters for themselves which they never wear. It is the process of knitting that appeals to them, and the product is not as important.

We have a number of sweaters that my grandmother made which are being worn by the third or fourth person to own them. I can't help but feel that she would be gratified by this.

At the other end of the spectrum are the table linens I inherited from her. There were stacks of hand-embroidered pieces which had been labored over and then put away and never used. I unfolded pieces in the styles of the twenties and thirties and marveled at them. Were they stored for Special Occasions by their makers? Were they made by dear friends of my grandmother's as gifts for her and put away because she hated them, but never felt she could throw them out?

I gave some to the museum where I worked for their women's history collection, since the makers had themselves apparently chosen to put them away and never use them. A museum is the place for that.

I also gave a knee sock I had knitted from Scottish wool. "A" sock is correct there, because one of the socks was lost or destroyed, so the other was useful only as an example of handwork.

But I kept some of the lovely bridge cloths and things. I use them carefully and rarely. They will not last as long in use as the ones in the museum, but I imagine that the shades of the women who made them must be happy that someone is using and enjoying them

As sweater season is at least in the offing, I went through my stack of sweaters and had to admit that I can't really wear Siv and Hopkins any more. Oversized and comfy is one thing, but these sweaters are just too big. I contemplated frogging them and reusing the yarn. I thought of the hours of Viking cabling and Celtic colorwork and couldn't bring myself to do so. Perhaps I will be able to at some point... After all, reclaiming the yarn would allow me more enjoyable hours of cabling and colorwork. I thought also of cutting them up and making cushions from them. In the end, I folded them and put them away to decide about later, and that might be how all those linens were preserved, too.

I must get back to my scandalous actress before the boys get up. I'm working on the Log Cabin sock's gussets while I google (and, now that I know what "gusset" means to the Brits, I can savor the irony of that), and I will show them to you tomorrow.

Happy Socktoberfest!

In yesterday's thrilling installment, we got through the knitting of the sock leg and prepared to do the heel. I dutifully photographed the knitting of the heel flap and turning of the heel, and then my batteries gave out. Still, since I promised I'd show you how to turn a heel today, I intend to do so. As it happens, I've done that before, and I have pictures left over from then. So these are not pictures of the Log Cabin Sock, but the process is just the same, so here they are:

You knit back and forth on the heel stitches (half the total number you cast on) until you have a square. Your pattern might tell you a number of rows to knit, in which case of course you should do that, but your goal is to get a square. I just fold it in half diagonally to make sure of its squareness and then I know that I have finished the heel flap. That is the name of this bit: the heel flap. It is important to slip the first stitch of every row when you knit your heel flap; your sock pattern will tell you to do this, and you should not ignore that instruction and knit your merry way along without slipping that stitch. Believe me.

With that done, you are ready to turn the heel. Now, last time I wrote about this, I was a little snippy about how frenzied people get over this easy process. That was before I had spent the summer frothing at the mouth over setting in sleeves. Some things seem hard to some people, that's all. But the various schemes for avoiding turning a heel will give you an uncomfortable sock, so it is worth getting comfortable with turning the heel. See the picture at the left, how I have not gone all the way to the end of the row? And yet I have turned around and begun knitting back the other way. This is called a short row. Your pattern will say something like "K14, turn." You might slip a stitch or something, but you will leave some of the stitches unknitted on your needle and turn around and go back as though you had finished knitting the whole row. The result is that you will have one part of the row that is only maybe 24 rows high and the the other part of the row will be 25 rows tall.

That means that the stitches on the left hand needle will no longer line up precisely with the stitches on the right-hand needle. There will be a bit of a jog there. When I get back to that point on the next row, I'm going to work the stitches that don't quite meet up together as though I were decreasing. Then I'll work one more stitch and turn around again.

You do this several times. The result is that the middle of the heel has more rows in it than the edges, which gives you a rounded shape.

The only way I know of to mess this process up is to count wrong and end up with your roundness on one side rather than in the middle. So when you do that first couple of rows, make sure that you are leaving the same number of stitches behind on each side -- probably about a third of the stitches on your heel flap.

Then you can just do the rest by eye, or you can count, doing the decrease one stitch earlier each time. However, the whole process takes only about 10 rows, and it is very few stitches, so if you are not happy with the results, just pull it out and do it again till you like it. Once you have done this successfully one time, you will find it easy in the future.

With the heel turned, you will knit across the stitches and then knit down one side of the heel flap -- remember? that square you knitted before.

Since you slipped the first stitch, you will have longer stitches to knit into, and can easily and evenly pick up the number of stitches your pattern instructs you to. The Log Cabin socks require you to pick up 11 stitches here. If you are not using a pattern, be sure to write down the number of stitches you picked up so you can match it on the other side. You may think that those slipped stitches make it obvious, and they certainly help, but they are not foolproof.

I like to use the same needle to knit across the turned heel and to pick up the stitches on the side.

Now you will knit back across those stitches you have been ignoring while you did the heel. You worked your heel on half the stitches of your tube, so the other half of the stitches have been waiting patiently for you to get back to them. Now you knit right across them, continuing any pattern you have going that you want to continue on the foot. That is the front of the sock you are doing there.

Since the front of the sock is often covered by the shoe, many sock patterns stop the fancy stuff here and continue in plain stockinette stitch. If you wear low-cut shoes with your socks, wear socks without shoes (I won't tell your mama), or enjoy the knowledge that your socks are fancy all the way to the toe, you can keep going with your lace or cables or color work or whatever, just on these stitches.

In case you want to do that, you will want to give them their own needle. (If you are using five needles, in the British manner, you can divide the front onto the second and third needles.)

Then grab your remaining needle and knit up the other side of the heel flap. Make sure you have the same number of stitches on this side as you did on the other. Your pattern will generally tell you how many, but the main thing is that it should be the same as the other side.

Keep knitting till you get to the middle of the heel. Now, as you can see, all your stitches are back together, evenly distributed on your needles and ready to knit the foot gussets.

This whole bit that we have just done here requires enough concentration and counting that I would recommend putting down your book while you do it, but it is not hard once you get the hang of it, and should not discourage you from making socks.

And you will be glad of your nice wooly socks once the weather changes. Leonidas and Craftymommavt are already having fall where they live, and I suppose Sighkey is enjoying the first signs of spring, but it is in the 90s here, and I have baby tomatoes in the garden. This is good, since I was too busy the first time around to can any salsa. I now get a second chance.

#1 daughter has changed jobs, and is beginning today at Pier 1. Personally, I couldn't stand to stay in the Abercrombie & Fitch stores for even one hour, so this seems to me to be a reasonable decision. Since she is going to work primarily for social reasons, she will be better off in a place that is quiet enough to allow conversation, and where there will be grownups to talk to. In her interview, they told her that they knew Southern girls were good at chatting to customers. She agreed, and I guess that was not by any means the worst thing they could have said.

#2 daughter also has a new job, but she has not changed jobs, and is merely adding one. She got the choir directorship she was waiting to hear about, and also has a full-time day job and a temp job organizing a music library, the lead in a play, and singing in the KC symphony chorus and some other choir I don't know the name of.

I don't have a schedule like that, but I do have lots of assignments right now. I have another fact-checking assignment from the state history encyclopedia, this one involving the first Miss America to become a Playboy cover girl. We have a very colorful history, and at least she didn't shoot anybody.

(I feel as though I ought to explain here that many of my previous assignments were about politicians from the 18th and 19th centuries, all of whom shot someone at some point, often right there at the capitol. We were the Wild West at the time. By the 20th century, we had given this up, and our politicians were no more likely to shoot anyone than those from any other state. For a while, though, I was arriving at work and saying, "This guy shot someone, too!" practically every time I had a new person to look up. It remains a significant part of my fact-checking experience.)

My homework for tonight's class includes the question, "How is knowing the difference between right and wrong different from passing judgement on another person?" This strikes me as quite a profound question, and is one that I have been contemplating quite a bit in spare moments this week. I think there is a continuum from not caring at all what anyone does to setting oneself up as the arbiter of right and wrong for everyone. I have wondered whether our admiration for being nonjudgemental has contributed to the present horrible situation in which our president has declared that he can decide what tortures are acceptable. The idea that Americans are engaged in torture should be horrifying all of us, but it appears that some of us are not horrified at all. At the other end of the spectrum we have people who have picked out some one particular wrongdoing and devoted their lives to irritating folks who commit that one, breaking commandments right and left as they do so. Hmm. This should lead to some interesting discussions.

I am reading detective novels rather than Gulliver's Travels for KTC (which I have read before, but it has been a long time, so I am looking forward to re-reading it) or The Little Friend for my real-world book club or anything creepy for the RIP Challenge, so when it comes to reading I have assignments but am not doing them. I will get to them, though.

The HGP wants us to bake cookies, make a guest basket for the bathroom, and clean our kids' rooms, and a frolicsome week that will give me. I am hostessing a bridal shower on Sunday, an undertaking requiring delicate comestibles.

And we have received the early mp3s from our Chamber Singers recording session. Since I cannot even put buttons into my custom module, I obviously don't know how to let you hear these, but I'll tell you that I was pleasantly surprised. However, it was also clear that we all need to practice more on "O Magnum Mysterium." A bit shaky, that, on the entrances.

And #2 son has requested that I make him a sweater for Christmas. He actually asked me to put down the sock and begin knitting his sweater right away. I do not have the kind of yarn stash that will allow this, and of course I have Pipes and Erin on the needles waiting for it to be cool enough for a lapful of wool, but I may go ahead and get the yarn for his sweater ordered. He wants a plain gray sweater, which could be a good zombie project to balance the epic nature of Erin and the math required for Pipes.

The socks will have to be finished first, of course. I think they count as an assignment.