Arkenboy came by the store yesterday, and I made him look at my Link Campaign Log.

Sometimes I haul That Man over to see the store blog's footprints, or report small page rank victories to The Empress, but they don't know what those things mean, and haven't seen the changes taking place, and so cannot be expected to appreciate them.

It's kind of like knitting. You get excited about a particular stitch or how you have finally mastered picot hems or something, and you have no one to share this great news with because, let's face it, the great majority of people Really Don't Care.

This is one of the big reasons for knitting blogs: to link the members of a group too small to predominate in a physical setting, but large enough to seem really big in a virtual one. As far as I know, there is no blog community for people having to learn computer skills with no help and no book for heaven's sake. I wish there were. Except that then there would just be whole crowds not knowing what we were doing, whereas the online knitting community includes some experts. Computer experts do not, I think, admire one another's site maps and answer questions like "Look at my visitor tracking stats -- am I correct in thinking that this shows improvement?"

So, though I was interested in what Arkenboy had to say about St.Patrick's Day in Kansas City (yep, they act like it's Mardi Gras), I was also in fact wondering whether I could in decency ask about the site map. And I decided, what the heck, he's dating my daughter, how can he refuse? And asked him. And persisted, too. When he said, "Remember I told you X and Y..." I said, "Yes, I remember, but I don't understand what X is or how to do Y."

He was quite helpful. And looked impressed, too, even if he was thinking "Gawd, she doesn't know what she's doing at all, does she?" I'm going to make that boy a cake.

#2 son came to work with me and we got three shelving units filled with packed, labeled boxes. I went to choir practice -- very relaxing, that. The Chemist told me that she had had a bad day at work and so had gone to the American bakery afterwards and had an eclair. I think singing is better, though.

Then I came home, spent some time with the family, and went to bed, where I dreamt that pornographic links had suddenly appeared on the store website.

As I recall, one was called "Recalcitrant Girls." Now that I am learning so much about SEO and so forth, I can promise you that nobody is searching for porn with that string.

Although I could be wrong. I have had people come to my xanga having looked for "knitting sluts." I would not have thought that there would be a lot of searching for that going on.

Here is the completed back of the Bijoux Blouse -- that's an Oat couture pattern, in Endless Summer Connamara, on #2 needles, for the wandering knitter who chances by.

Yesterday morning I took my computer to the computer hospital. Only one worker was there when I arrived, a slight fellow who rushed out to help me carry in the ailing electronica.

On the left as I entered was a normal service desk, except that it was covered with a welter of wires and papers. On the right was an ordinary retail shelving unit -- with its pegboard back facing the door. The retail goods were hidden on the other side. Lighted display cabinets held empty boxes, stripped wires,and other rubbish. Wastebaskets in plenty were in evidence, but all surfaces held what appeared to be trash.

Also there were computers. Lots of computers. The worker explained to me that he was trying to get the techs to where they could reliably identify the right computer for the right customer.

"They don't remember people's names," he said. "Just what they did to the computer."

This was why another customer was on the way to swap the computer he'd been sent out with for his own computer.

I think this happens among medical professionals sometimes, too. The difference being that, if you go to pick up Aunt Ardyth at the hospital and they, thinking of her only as The Spleen in Room 412, give you someone else's auntie by mistake, you will usually notice.

I have trouble recognizing my own car in a parking lot. I surely cannot be expected to know whether I have actually received my own computer.

"They're great techs," the worker continued, "but they're not very organized. That's why they hired me"

I carefully did not look at the room.

The computer is supposed to be returned in the next day or two.

I went on to work, where Blessing and I got a start on packing up the back room, and I returned to the question of the site map -- and solved it! Well, no. Actually, I solved the problem of why I couldn't get the site map generators to work. It was another of those things like a knitter who didn't realize that you turn around at the end of the row. It is no wonder that Arkenboy isn't able to help me with these things. He has met me. He has no reason to think that I am a complete idiot. It doesn't occur to him that I might need these things pointed out. But the sad fact is that not only am I completely at sea with these tasks, but the people I work with know even less than I do.

However, while I was able to generate a site map, and got all excited about it and tried in vain to get anyone else to admire it, I was not able to save it. The computer just gave up at line 64. Of 71,964.

Today I will try again. We are only about a week and a half from closing the store, so I will also be doing lots of packing. It would be good if we could get all the non-retail stuff packed up this week.

The computer hospital could pack up in a day. A broom and dustpan would do it. Still, I am hopeful that they will cure my hardware.

  I finished the apron on Sunday as planned. I was not able to post a picture of it yesterday because my computer has the collywobbles. And the picture I have posted today seems to be worse even than usual, for the same reason. Having wasted large amounts of time on it yesterday, I am taking it to an expert this morning. Two days without gym time right there.

As a result of this irritating event, the apron did not result in wine-tinged laughter in the crepescular recesses of my kitchen, even though I wore it last night while making chicken with artichoke hearts, roasted peppers, garlic, and wine.

#2 son said reasonably, "Of all the troubles we've had lately, this is the smallest." He is right. He should also get points for saying that even though the computer troubles spell spring break without computer games for him. (He has a Wii and a Playstation, so that may be helping him be philosophical about it). And he was the one who remembered the existence of an old computer in the closet.

This computer is so old that it cannot work with our broadband connection. We used a "free trial" AOL disk that turned up as we searched for our system restoration disks yesterday to establish a dial-up connection.

An ancient computer on a dial-up connection means that you click to get to a page and go make and eat steel-cut oats while waiting for the page to load. Also, you cannot type very fast or it loses its place. I may not be around much till the other computer is fixed.

Yesterday I tried to do the store blog at work. The computer there is fast, but it is a Mac. All entries must be done in html. I do not know much html. Also, the whole time I was trying to write, people were talking to me. I have noticed before that people do not understand that I can't chat and write at the same time, even when I tell them so. I can chat and knit or clean or arrange books at the same time, but writing requires concentration.

Blessing was telling me about her visit to Graceland. Also about the picturesque terms for trouser fitting troubles: muffin top, diaper butt, camel toe. I am sure it is good to know these things, but I cannot pay attention to them while writing.

Customers kept coming in, too, even though I had gone to work half an hour early for the express purpose of getting the blog entry written. "Did you lock the door?" my mother asked when I complained about this to her.

I had not done so. I imagined that the darkness and the "Closed" sign on the door would suffice, and after one person came in, I could not very well lock them in, even if I forebore to give a sinister chuckle while doing so.

I bank online. I talk to my kids online. I pay my bills online. I keep up with you guys online. I do a lot of the research for my writing assingments online.

Still, as #2 son pointed out, this is a small trouble. He referenced the refrigerator and oven breakdowns, which interfered with his meals. I am thinking of the fact that my son-in-law has been sent home from the submarine with panic attacks, an event which is bound to have an effect on his career, and the fact that my husband is only just beginning to relax about the gang of murderous tax accontants he has been worrying about. And my job, which is still pretty up in the air.

So I am not going to whine any more about the computer. Neither will I attempt to proofread this screed, as I estimate that I will be able to shower and dress while it posts. Who knows how long it would take to spell-check?

computer troubles today -- see you later!

I spent a good amount of time yesterday sorting, scrubbing, and dusting. #2 son helped me with the errands, and I went to his gymnastics session.

I sewed the facing to the jacket, which I think will solve the problem eventually. However, I still spent a bunch of time trying it on, pinning, taking it off, stitching a little bit, trying it on, pinning, stitching a little bit, etc.

I think I will finish it today, but not in time to wear to church this morning.

The reason that I did not complete it yesterday -- nor the apron -- is that I knitted these wrist bands for #1 son.

I have said before that I would not knit anything for that boy ever again. He nags and criticizes and stands over me while I work and just generally makes himself a pest when I knit things for him.

The solution is to make something that can be completed in one day.

I asked him to pose for this picture in the Wonder Woman position, but he refused.

Should you ever want to make these, you will find it very easy. They are just like the cuff of a sweater, or the beginning of a sock or a mitten. I made these of worsted weight over 40 stitches on a #2 sleeve needle. If you customarily make socks or mittens, you probably have an idea how many stitches you want to use. If not, swatch and calculate.

Cast on, join without twisting, and work in 1x1 rib for desired length. Bind off.

Now take a handy crochet hook and some elastic thread and slip stitch across the inside surface. You do this by putting the point of the hook under just the back stitch of each rib. Pull the elastic thread through, keeping a loop on the hook. Move on to the next rib and pull the new stitch through the old one so that you have just one loop on the hook

This is a good thing to do for any kind of cuff, especially in cotton yarn. It gives a nice snug fit. It is a good rescue for stretched-out cuffs on old sweaters, too, or socks made a little too big.

I have never found that it matters much what size crochet hook you use.

The wristbands received the coveted "thumbs up" of approval.

In Sunday School, we are doing a unit on haves and have-nots. The past couple of weeks, we have had presentations from people who have done mission or service projects in Tanzania and Belize, and the first week we looked at information on poverty in our own state. This week we are looking at scriptures on the subject and examining what we've learned about poverty in Tanzania and Belize and in our own state, in light of the scripture.

I think the study is proving an eye-opening one for the kids. Last week a man from the church responded to what we had been discussing. "People in poverty in our country are rich compared to people in other countries," he scowled, "and these left-wing liberals want us to be so sorry for them. They should just go get a job."

I rarely encounter anyone with this attitude, though I had understood that they were out there.

It reminded me of a book called The Undeserving Poor which I once read. It pointed out that, statistically speaking, anyone in  the U.S. who gets married and stays married and gets a job (any job) and keeps it can expect to be out of poverty within five years.

Any conclusion based on statistics will not be perfectly true for all cases, and there is always the correlation vs. causation question, but the book went on to suggest that it would be possible to cope with poverty in the United States pretty effectively if we were not so wedded to the idea of personal freedom.

I don't want to suggest that this was the thesis of the book; indeed, it critically examines the notion of a "culture of poverty," is critical of the attitude expressed by the Republican at my church, and is generally a left-wing liberal book. At no point is the author suggesting that a lack of personal freedom would be a worthwhile trade-off for an improvement in the poverty rates. Indeed, the book overall supports the conclusion that poverty is a matter of injustice, a position which is also the central claim of the materials we are using to teach the Sunday School class.

The part that I am thinking about this morning, though, is the one one that talked about programs that have involved doing whatever it took to get the recipients to work every day. These programs are effective, but were judged too coercive, too expensive, and too intrusive. Programs encouraging marriage have been ridiculed , often for very good reasons, and are so incompatible with prevalent attitudes in Hamburger-a-go-go-land that there simply have never been any that could be examined for their success rate.

It is like solutions to AIDS or heart disease. Yesterday I did no movement more vigorous than scrubbing the floor, and ate nothing that I should have and lots of things I should not have. A public-health movement that would have someone snatching the pizza from my hands and shooing all us observing parents out onto the gym floor would probably be far more effective on the American rate of heart disease than one that involves posting pyramids hither and yon.

Perhaps this is what we should do with our teenagers. That summer between high school and college, all of them could be official nags for the government. The dedication that keeps #1 son mercilessly hovering over me saying, "Why aren't you working on my wrist bands?" every time I set one down to drink some tea could be harnessed for good. An army of teenagers nagging adults to give up smoking, wear their seat belts, go to their entry-level jobs, eat their vegetables, and drink responsibly would give the kids the chance for revenge on the adults who have nagged them all these years, while also providing non-coercive (since they have no power) yet desperately annoying motivation to the adults.

I'll go write a letter to my senator.

I may be the last on the block to play this game.

Aprons - always, for practical reasons. I am making a cute retro one today, though.

Baking - Favorite thing to bake:  I do lots of baking -- bread, cakes, pies, cookies, muffins. Too many to have a favorite.

Clothesline - Y/N? Forbidden by the neighborhood agreements, but I hang my sheets out on the porch, so whoever made that rule gets his comeuppance.

Donuts - Have you ever made them?  No. Beignets, though, which are about the same thing.

Freezer - Do you have a separate deep freeze?  Yes, praise the Lord.

Garbage Disposal - Yes. 

Handbook -   Martha Stewart's Homekeeping and How Clean is Your House?  What I really like, though, is the place in the old Betty Crocker cookbook where it says to lie down for a moment and rest on your kitchen floor when you are exhausted from housekeeping. I don't think my floor is ever that clean, but then I also never get exhausted from housekeeping.

Ironing - I don't iron. Though I am trying to get in the habit of doing it when I sew.

Junk Drawer - Y/N?  nope 

Kitchen - Color and decorating scheme? I'm turning it into a Provencal haven, but right now I think it's sort of retro country cute. This is because the main decorative element is my collection of pitchers and teapots, many of which are in the shapes of vegetables. Apart from that, my kitchen is pretty small and utilitarian.

Love - What is your favorite part of homemaking? This was Formerprincess's answer, and it is my favorite so far: "I like it when Maria has left and the house is clean. " For me, though, variety is the spice of life. I like most parts of homemaking some of the time, and don't like the repetitive nature of it. So I guess I would have rotating favorites.

Mop - We recently took up the Swiffer.

Nylons - I don't see the connection with housekeeping. I clean house in jeans.

Oven - Do you use the window or open the door to check?  The window is black.

Pizza - Vegetables. However, the other pizza eaters normally outvote me, so I actually usually have meat.

Quiet - It is almost never quiet at my house. It is sometimes incredibly loud. Again, I don't see the connection with housework, but I guess you have limited choices with the letter Q.

Recipe card box - Y/N ? No, I use notebooks. I own a recipe box, and at one time I used it, but now I think it is a historical relic. I remember seeing my grandmother's after she died. She had recipes for only about four things, but multiple recipes for all of them. It was as though she were seeking the philosopher's chili and cherry pie.

Style of house - Ranch.

Tablecloths and napkins - Y/N?  Always.

Under the kitchen sink -   Cleaning supplies.

Vacuum - A black monstrosity called "The Boss". My husband bought it, and the menfolks do the vacuuming. My husband is a foreigner, and he thinks that the vacuum is like the lawn mower -- a machine for men's work. I try to keep him from seeing any women vacuuming or mowing lawns.

Wash -  Every day.

X's - Do you keep a list of things to do that you cross off?  Yes.

Yard - Y/N? All household members work in the yard, each according to his or her ability.

Zzz's - Last homemaking thing before bed: I know that I ought to do homemaking things before bed, but I don't. That's all there is to it.

I am planning a domestic day today. Groceries, intensive cleaning, sewing, knitting.  I woke up around 3:30 thinking that this would be the perfect day to wash my great-grandmother's rug and put it into the dining room, which may just be proof that you shouldn't pay any attention to things that wake you up like that.

#1 daughter is feeling depressed in a snow storm up there in the Frozen North, with her husband off in a submarine at the North Pole. #2 daughter has Arkenboy visiting her (he is taking Pipes and some books to her for me, bless his heart) and in her neck of the woods they celebrate St. Patrick's Day as though it were Mardi Gras, so she is probably having fun. #1 son is going camping. #2 son has gymnastics. That's the plan.

The SewIKnit kitchen project deadline is today. Since I am the only one so far who has posted a finished project (a hot mitt), we may have a bit of leeway. Still, I hate to miss a deadline.

Fortunately, there is a tradition among craft blogs for such occasions: we show our materials, and describe what we had planned to do. This is almost like having actually done it.

Here, therefore, are the fabrics for my intended Provencal kitchen projects.

I ordered these on my birthday, as a birthday present to myself, and they just arrived yesterday. I had picked up some faintly Provencal fabrics from the clearance table at the fabric store as well, and actually cut out an apron. These fabrics, along with the scraps from the apron, are supposed to become a table runner.

I like table runners a lot. They are to quilting what scarves are to knitting: they are relatively quick, use such small quantities that you can enjoy really beautiful materials without much investment, and they can be both useful and decorative without fitting concerns.

However, since the fabrics arrived yesterday and I have a job and all, I doubt that I will have either the apron or the table runner completed by the deadline.

Of course, if I ignore the deadline, I can make both at my leisure, and perhaps continue on from there with Provencal curtains, tablecloths, napkins, chair cushions, tea towels, and appliance cozies. Sun and joie de vivre will fill my kitchen, and there will be lots of wine-drinking and laughter all the time, rather than boys complaining that I am making them eat healthy food and my husband giving lectures on the proper way to load a dishwasher.

Actually, I expect to complete the apron this weekend, and also to decide what pattern to use for the table runner, after which decision it will be about a month before I actually finish the table runner, depending upon the excitement level in my life and how successfully I ignore my other WIPs.

The small pieces of fabric in the picture above (fat quarters, to quilters) came from Keepsake Quilting, my main source of quilting cotton now that our local quilt shop and my daughter's local quilt shop have both shut down.

There is another table runner I have been planning to make for some time, a Thimbleberries design, with six little houses under a starry sky.

So when I was perusing the Keepsake Quilting catalog and I saw that they had not merely the Provencal fabrics, but also a packet of 10" squares called "Building Materials," I thought that would be perfect.

I figured they would include brick and wood and stone patterns, maybe some Mediterranean roof tiles or something, and I could make the little houses from them and that would be extremely cute.

As you can see, there were brick and wood, and stone as well in the collection, but there are also fabrics for those who like to build from ... hair. Or animal fur, feathers... electricity... pure thought...

I like the open-mindedness with which they approached the question of "building materials." There is enough wood and brick and stone in there for my little houses. I am not sure what I will do with the others.

It is good that it is Friday. I woke up at 4:00 again (I guess it is good that we have switched to Daylight Savings Time, since I am no longer waking at 3:00 a.m.) with a compulsion to come out and add our logo to the new website I am fooling around with in order to add content to the main website. I spent yesterday signing up at directories, which is quite amazingly tedious after a few hours, but it does seem to be the Thing to Do. Along with Link Maintenance and monitoring Saturation.

I am largely wishing that I had known about these things sooner, though regrets about the past are not just tedious but also pointless. I am doing a lot of work, and hoping that the things I am doing are the things I ought to do, and that they will succeed in time.

This weekend, though, I will be working on my writing assignments, sewing, knitting, and cleaning the house, all of which are things that can show immediate and satisfying results.

I was checking out the shelter mags while on the treadmill recently, and thought about good photography, and how deceiving it can be.

Martha Stewart is the worst on this -- rest assured that pipe cleaners and rickrack never look that good in their natural state -- but decorating magazines can be almost as bad. They'll take an iron bedstead with a shabby granny square afghan, an old pair of boots, and a galvanized bucket of wheat, and take pictures with such gorgeous lighting and camera work that you are tempted to recreate the whole thing in your own home. If you did, it would look like a bunch of refuse.

Some knitting books are like that, too. With fetching models, lovely scenery, artful lighting, and poses which obscure the knitted item but highlight some few square inches of the stitches into wonderful abstract textures, they make the patterns look gorgeous without actually giving any indication of how they will look when you knit them.

Norsk Strikkedesign is not that kind of book. The models may be beauties, but they look as though they are being prepared to be burned at the stake. They stand -- in fields of rocks or blurred backgrounds -- with their arms hanging hopelessly at their sides, the sleeves covering their hands entirely.

If they have not just stepped out of the tumbril, then they may look so scared because Stacy and Clinton are rushing toward them to point out that their boxy sweaters make them look dumpy, skinny as stick insects, or both at once. Especially since they are way too big.

There are a couple of dozen sweaters, some with interesting shaping (that one where the model is cowering against a tree, possibly waiting to be shot? That could be a pretty little jacket if it were made in her size). There is a child's sweater (though, since it finishes out at 35.5 inches, many adults could wear it), and some hats and bags and socks and things. Once I've made something, I'll tell you what the items look like in real life.

The best part of this book, to my mind, is the charts. The colorwork is very impressive, including stylized fauna and flora, geometric designs, sinuous curved patterns, and traditional Scandinavian designs combined in interesting ways. There is a witty cat chart, complete with fish skeletons, there are some that look like Renaissance and Jacobean crewelwork or tapestry, there are all-over Moorish arabesques and Pucci-like swirls.

There are some texture designs as well, but it is even more difficult to guess what they look like. One is a coat, which is actually photographed quite clearly, but looks mostly as though the wearer is standing inside a huge pile of ropes. The cabling might really be nice, on a much smaller scale, but it is hard to tell.The other cable designs -- including the gray edging of the cover sweater which you may be able to see here -- look as though they might be quite beautiful, but are photographed blurrily in muddy colors.  Swatching would be necessary for me to get any real idea of the patterns.

I plan to try out some small thing from this book on an experimental basis, but I will definitely be using the charts for other purposes.

The directions are written in traditional fashion, with charts and schematics and thorough finishing directions.

I've added a knitting project to my list of WIPS, though not one from this book. I printed out a pattern for a peace armband to which Kali Mama furnished a link, thinking that my sons would think it was cool. They did not. However, #1 son wants a plain ribbed one in stripes, so I have agreed to make it for him. It is his turn, and the small scope of the project should allow me to finish it before his nagging gets intolerable . He picked some yarn from the crafts cupboard for the purpose.

Now I guess I am in a critical mood, because last night in choir practice I found myself feeling downright cross. We had only ten present, three of whom are new since last year, and the director and older choir members persisted in saying things like "We don't have to work on that one -- we've done it before."

They do this all the time. A piece that the choir did five years ago, before most of us were even at the church, doesn't need to be rehearsed at all, because "we've done it before."

At one point, while practicing a new arrangement of "The Palms," the men had some difficulty with a line and the director said, "We'll just do it the old way."

This is not the first time he has done that. Let me clarify: he is saying that they will sing it, not as it is written, but as they may or may not remember it was written in a different arrangement which they used to sing. Is it any wonder that we find it hard to get and keep new choir members?

Afterward, the Chemist and I roped one of the new people into doing a trio with us. She turns out to be good at arranging things. We are doing a traditional Lenten hymn, "If Thou But Trust in God to Guide Thee," but with a lush, close harmony that gives it a Medieval air. And, under her guidance, a couple of solo bits to change it up and keep it interesting. I think it will sound good.

It would make a good sound track for the film in which the Norweigan knitting pattern models are apparently taking part, the one about the martyrdom of young women on a rocky coastline, in gigantic formless sweaters.

I like to lend people books.

Really, it is worse than that. I press books into the unwilling hands of people who have incautiously said something that reminded me of some book. "You'll love this!" I say, ignoring the fact that I have perhaps never seen them with a book and that they have never mentioned reading a book.

Cleverboots escaped by saying flatly "I don't read," but most people don't think of doing that.

Thus it is that my books sometimes stay loaned out for a long time. The borrowers (and I use the term loosely) never get around to reading the books, and they know I am the kind of person who will ask how they liked it when they bring it back, so they just keep the book. Sometimes for years.

This has a positive side.

That Man returned a stack of books to me yesterday which I had completely forgotten I owned. Several vegetarian cookbooks, it was, and an omnibus of five P.G. Wodehouse novels.

Pretty exciting, that. I can now look forward to Thai Noodles with Garlic Chives and rereading The Old Reliable.

My menfolks have a term for vegetarian recipes: "side dish."

There is a scene in one of Wodehouse's short stories in which Bingo and Bertie find themselves in a ladylike cafe, lunching upon something like half a grapefruit, cocoa, and a macaroon instead of the customary veal chop, pommes frites, and English peas. This is how my boys would feel if I offered them Broccoli Risotto Torte for dinner.

I am continuing with my studies at work. I have moved on from "Que busca?" and "Le puedo ayudar?" to "Necesito X" and "Donde esta Y?" If a Spanish-speaking customer comes in this week, I shall perhaps be able to understand what she wants, but I will have to take her arm and lead her silently over to the item. Maybe next week I will learn things that mean, "Right this way."

I have also been indexing and achieving saturation and working on the old SEO right and left. I spent yesterday increasing my link popularity (link management, as you know, is something to which the good e-commerce maven devotes an hour or two a day). One of the suggestions for this was to write an article on some topic that allows you to plug a link or two into the text, and submit it to one of the surprisingly large number of sites that exist for people to snag articles from.

I was surprised by this because I often run into things that I have written, without attribution, here and there on the web. The idea that there are sites where you can legitimately offer up your writing for free when there is apparently very little embarrassment about cutting and pasting seems odd.

However, it also seems worth a try.

Do you have any suggestions for a topic? What, in the field of education, seems sufficiently broad and non-controversial that people will want to post it on their websites in order to increase their content (another thing you do when seeking to improve page rankings)?

My current writing assignments are a press release, an article on Swiss immigrants, and a romance novel outline.

Variety is good.

I really enjoyed this movie (Stranger Than Fiction). It has literature, music, baking, romance, heroism, math, and the following deathless exchange:

"I'm going to my needlepoint and revolutionary overthrow group. Wanna come?"
"I left my thimble and my socialist reading material at home."

I probably have that wrong,  but it was clever.

I watched the movie with my boys and it beguiled the time while I took out all the lovely topstitching at the bottom of my jacket.

When I frog knitting -- that is, pull out the stitches, rip-it, rip-it -- I usually don't feel too bad about it. I know that I can do it again.

But my having been able to do that topstitching was a bit of a surprise to me. So it was not easy to take it out. However, once I had taken out the topstitching, it didn't feel too bad to take out the seam. And once I had taken out the seam, I was surprised to discover that the lining was about an inch shorter than the outer fabric.

I have no explanation for why this should be the case, but it does explain the problem.

I now have a very nice jacket again, albeit one with unfinished edges. I will return to the pattern and see whether that facing piece (I thought it was to do with the trim I left off) maybe was of some importance after all.

And I am actually pretty confident that I can do that topstitching again.

Long before that, I skipped the gym in favor of a neighborhood walk to search for signs of spring.

Actually, it was still cold and dreary. Since I chose to cross the road and go to a neighborhood of undistinguished architecture, there was nothing much to look at besides bare trees and dormant lawns.

I also managed to choose one of those roads where all the dogs have a barking pact, where one of them begins it and they all join in as though the passerby were a basketball game, so that I walked down the road to an ever-growing chorus of maddened barking.

Possibly not the best route for a peaceful morning walk.

I could hear the woodpeckers over the dogs, though, and there were many other birds doing that aimless tweeting they do.

Here is a dogwood with little buds.

Dogwoods like to wait and bloom all at once, all together, so that we leave our houses one morning with skeletal trees and come home that afternoon to a great cloud of blossom all along the road.

It is one of the best plant tricks around.

There were also, I am sure, snakes moving around.

Once, when my kids were younger and we were homeschooling, we went to the Nature Center at the lake to do a signs of spring scavenger hunt. One of the signs is that the snakes start moving around again. Sure enough, as we kicked through the leafmold in the forest, a snake crossed our path.  My daughters squealed but I was very happy. It isn't every time that nature cooperates with one's lesson plans.

I saw no snakes yesterday morning. I did see the neighbor's horses frolicking around, but I think they are too far away for you to see them.

And I did see some lamb's ears. This sort of lettuce-shaped stuff is so fuzzy and soft that you want to pet it, and you can, too, since it is a plant and cannot run away from you.

It is a nice sign of spring.

Another early sign of spring was the lines of bags of yard waste out waiting for pickup.

We have a public mulching/composting program here for people who don't care to do it themselves. And yet folks will fill up paper bags with yard waste every time they clean up their yards.

It irritates me, though I haven't even cleaned up my yard, so I probably shouldn't be judging my neighbors.

I got home chilled enough to be inspired to put beef stew in the crockpot, thus setting the stage for a peaceful evening watching a movie with my kids. I must do that more often.