I've been spending what little needlework time I've had working on the SWAP Part III, and mostly just knitting for the SWAP Part III.

But then #2 daughter mentioned that the baby shower she is hosting is on the 18th. And I remembered that I was making a baby sweater for the occasion.

I am using this pattern. I started this a long time ago -- possibly when I first learned that the mom-to-be was expecting -- and at some point I dropped it.

Once I started working on it again, I remembered why I had allowed this to languish in the UFO state. The yarn is unpleasant to work with. It splits. It slithers. It wrestles with you for control of the needles.

Nonetheless, when I expressed regret that I hadn't gotten the sweater finished, #2 daughter suggested that I could still finish it in time, and maybe I can, if I use all available knitting time for it. It is a wee little sweater, after all.

I like to make something really tiny for a new baby. All my babies were eight pounds or more, and had nothing to wear that actually fit them at first. of course, they grow out of anything tiny very quickly, but if I make them something tiny, they can look soignee for those first few days till they grow into the things other people have given them.

We are very busy at work. Yesterday I got my lunch break at 3:00 and left the store about twenty minutes past closing time, and I was the first to leave. Today, we have all our workers scheduled. This means that we will have someone at each computer to check people out, someone to put things in sacks, someone to scurry around repairing the depredations to the stock, and still have a person available to help people with things like "I just got my first job. What do I need?" or "I was going to do monkeys, but the teacher next to me already did, so I want to return all these things and find something else. Can you help me?"

I think that if I start right now, I will be able to have breakfast and do my computer work and still get to the store on time. The grocery shopping will have to wait.

I punked out on the usual Thursday evening walk last night. It was late by the time I got home, and I was seriously tired, so I made dinner, talked to my daughter a bit, and then installed myself on the couch with a book and knitting.

My husband headed out for a tournament. I don't know whether I have mentioned before that he is a very good pool player. He has trophies for it. He has been playing in this local tournament for months, taking his team to continuing victory. We wished him luck and sent him off.

#2 son and I whined and begged until #1 son went out and bought us candy bars. Then we watched Burn Notice on TV and ate said candy bars, and I guess that is as low as I was able to sink.

I was thinking about a little conversation Lostarts and I had. She maintained that it is worse to say negative things on your xanga than to say them out loud to people in the physical world. This she based on the sensible point that a lot of people could conceivably read what we say, and also that our readers might not care to have to read negative things.

I don't say negative things about other people very often, either aloud or in writing, but I do whine at my xanga every August. I tend to think that this is okay, for two reasons: a) it's my journal and I'll whine if I want to (you are singing that line, I hope), and b) you don't have to read it, while you sort of have to listen when people tell you things.

I figure that you could look at your calendar and say, "Ah, it's August, Fibermom will be whining. I'll go back and read her in September."

So today I want to complain in a peevish way about something very impersonal and unimportant. You have been warned.

Southern Living, in their most recent issue, showed a house with a bookcase prominently featured, and the books were shelved with the spines toward the wall. Yes, you read that right. The pages of the books were facing out.

Now, Southern Living is unsound on book storage in general. They are always showing books in tall stacks with a vase of flowers on top, an arrangement which only works if you never actually read your books or even look things up in them.

But this was a new low.

I guess the idea was to provide a uniform beigeness, but how on earth is anyone supposed to find the books? And if you never want to retrieve books, why keep them at all?

There.

So yesterday I set out on my errands -- bank, post office, spying on the competition, used bookstore for my Book Club -- and thence to the IRS.

Actually, that was sort of fun. The IRS agent had my sheaves of papers, a couple of calculators, and some pens in different colors, and she was definitely getting into the whole puzzle aspect. Now and then she would run back to her office and do things with the computer and then come back out. She was talking about it all sort of excitedly, and then I would say something like, "So, can I assume at this point that I do not in fact owe the IRS $2600?" and she would say, "Oh, no, I'm not saying that."

After a bit, she called out from her computer, "Bingo!" just as they do on TV detective shows. She was very excited. At that point, it was clear that I do not actually owe the money, but it is not at this point clear that I won't have to pay them anyway.

The agent closed up at this point and said things like, "I can't tell you what to do, ma'am, but I can kind of nudge your arm in the right direction." They aren't very good at hinting, these IRS agents, but they do let you guess what you should do and then they say, "You could do that" with a significant glance.

I have six weeks to work out the mess before they start.... I don't know, frankly, what they will do after six weeks, but they have given me a hold.

So I got home and my hands had sort of just stopped shaking and then I got a phone call with further horrible news. Or maybe not. Let's just say more excitement.

I met with the choir that I am directing, to the extent that I am capable of directing, and then with my Bible study group. it is customary to begin with a little report on the week. I told them all the things that had transpired since I had last seen them.

They were impressed, I'll tell you. Others have more serious problems, but no one has had the sheer number of things I have dealt with in a single week.

Then I had Bell Camp. We learned how to hold the bell correctly and how to ring it. The woman next to me could not grasp the right direction in which to make her circle. Her difficulties with this completely overshadowed mine. I think I may get the idea during this Camp. Our director is very patient.

Then came my regular choir. I did get into a slight bit of trouble by insisting that "There is a Savior" would be improved by maracas. It might have been my sotte voce "cha cha cha"s in between the phrases that irritated the sopranos, though.

Here's the sheet music, and here you can listen to a snippet of it. Mentally add "cha cha cha" at all the rests and see if you don't agree with me.

Today I return to the store. The Poster Queen emailed me with the news that we are running out of things to buy, but that there are lots of boxes to unpack. If the elves would just get onto that overnight, it would help a lot.

Customers came in yesterday unable to remember their names or the names of the things they wanted, unable to write a check in fewer than three tries, and unable to stop talking.

This may be part of what is so stressful in my life: sheer contagion.

But I also received yesterday a notice from the IRS telling me that I owed them $12.60 for having filed my taxes late. This is a very small thing, especially since I did my taxes in March, and especially since I got a refund, but it is a good example of the sort of thing that is making my life stressful right now. It is not that big a deal, but I have to do something about it. I will have to find copies of my forms and make further copies and buy stamps and send off papers and stuff. You get a few dozen of these things at once -- and that is the smallest -- and it begins to mount up. Especially if you are working a lot.

Today I am not working. I did a couple of hours of computer work already, and I am planning to ignore the rest of the computer work that needs doing, because this is my day off. I had intended to do quite a lot of things today, but that was before the Evil Dog foiled my plans for sleeping last night. Toby whimpered and barked and whined all night long.

I got up and let him out, and got up and yelled at him, and finally pulled his crate into the pantry in hopes of hearing him less, and he's lucky I didn't shoot him.

Not that I have a gun, or would know how to use it, or indeed would even contemplate actually shooting him, but all these facts are just further examples of Toby's good luck, that's all.

I think that digital clocks make nights like this worse. You can see that is 2:00, 2:47, 3:11... The night passes so precisely when there is a digital clock on the bedside table, and you can see the chances of getting a reasonable amount of sleep slipping away.

So I am going to pare my goals for the day down to the absolute minimum and fit a nap in between errands and choir.

Those are roses from my garden up there, by the way. Falstaff, to be exact.

Coming back to say that I decided to call the IRS, and have now been on the phone with them for 45 minutes, and they are telling me that I owe them about $2,600.  I guess  will be spending the morning at the IRS office. This is not shaping up to be a good day.

I think of myself as a lucky person in general. I have very few problems. I have some stress in my life, as who does not, but mine is almost always about either time or money. Right now, both. I once read, and always keep in mind as much as possible, that any problem that can be solved with money is not a problem. And time crunch isn't really a problem at all. It's stressful, but by its very nature it isn't permanent. Einstein said that time was God's way of making sure things didn't all happen as once, and that system generally works, even if there are little spells when it seems not to.

However, I can't deny that I am currently experiencing more stress than is necessarily good for me. So I thought I would check the advice out there on stress management.

I must report that there don't seem to be any new developments in this area since the last time I looked.

The experts recommend that you not take up negative responses to stress such as substance abuse, procrastination, overeating, or avoidance of problems. They think you should instead go for exercise, relaxation, time management, and a balanced life. Avoid arguing with people, read, take baths, eat wholesome meals, practice a hobby.

I sometimes think that I could respond better to stress if I had better, nobler problems. Rising expenses and tuition or 54-hour work weeks seem tiresome. Teenagers who eat like locusts so we run out of food early in the week is almost sordid as a problem. How can I expect to show patient fortitude when my problems are so dull and petty?

Surely, given a really good problem, I could be like Joan of Arc.

I think I had better quit ruminating on this. I do not really want any good problems. Or any new problems, for that matter. I had three new ones arise yesterday. #2 son said, "Why do these things always come in groups?"

Maybe they don't. It is just that we don't notice them unless they come in clumps.

We are very busy at work, which is really good. But the experts always point out that sources of stress don't have to be negative.

Time for a wholesome breakfast.

I got the grocery shopping done before church, and then the guys helped me clean the house, and even to wash the dog. I sat down in the reading corner with my knitting and read The Last Summer (of You and Me), a book loaned to me by The Poster Queen, which I enjoyed greatly. It reminded me of my own youth, walking down to the beach whenever we felt like it. Time was so completely unimportant in those summers.

My own children got to walk to parks, fields, and woods, but the beach was the location of my own summers of childish freedom, so that is what is more evocative for me.

The book is a love story, a coming-of-age story, a lovely book, but the ocean was a major character in my reading of it, and I found it very relaxing.

Having the house clean and tidy was a big part of it, too. I am not a meticulous housekeeper, and I don't know many of those, either. At least not in my generation or my daughter's. In fact, a nurse of my acquaintance may have expressed the current majority view when she said, "Honey, there's medication for that."

But having an orderly space before your eyes is more restful, I think, than disorder. Being able to put your hands on your tools right away and set things in a handy place while working is more pleasant than pushing things out of the way to set something down or rummaging around for what you need. Accordingly, I felt entirely unstressed by the time dinner needed to be prepared, and quite enjoyed cooking up something good for the family.

This is tilapia with a brown butter and triple citrus sauce, mashed potatoes, corn, green beans amandine, and watermelon.

If you have a wearing day -- or week or month -- at work, but can come home to an orderly house and a proper meal, it probably would not feel so bad.

A butler, that's what we all need.

The cat agrees, I can tell.

Anyway, I took the advice of Peg Bracken and timed some things. She says that if you realize that it only takes five minutes to make your bed, it won't seem like such a big deal to do it.

So I discovered that it takes less than five minutes to get properly ready for bed, with dental floss and alpha hydroxy cream and hanging up your clothes and everything. And it takes less than ten minutes to get dressed like a grownup in the morning, with shoes and make up and stuff.

There is therefore no need for me to race to the computer in the morning in my pajamas and work like a fiend until time to go, then race out the door looking like a bag lady or a superannuated pre-teen. I'm writing this down to remind myself of that fact.

It does, however, take nigh on to an hour to cook a meal like the one in the picture. Some things require time, and time is a bit of a luxury these days.

This is all that I have accomplished on the Doctor's Bag. I really like the texture, though my boys claim not to be able to discern any pattern in it, even when they compare it directly with plain stockinette. I hope that your computer reveals some pattern.

This is the one with the badly-written pattern that slows down the knitting considerably. I am thinking that I should just rewrite it. This would take less time than trying to knit from the badly-written pattern in the first place. 

I had a rough day yesterday. I don't want to write about it, particularly, but I will say that no one died in the course of it. In the light of day, that seems like an important point that I should have appreciated more at the time.

What I ought to do today is stay home, lying on the couch reading and knitting and occasionally calling out for someone to peel me a grape. Unfortunately, we are having appraisers in tomorrow and there is also no food in the house to speak of and my kid needs school clothes, so I will actually be going to church and then cleaning house and shopping.

 If you click here, you can see all the completed SWAPs from the summer SWAP contest at Sewing Pattern Review.

This is a useful site for seamstresses. People review sewing patterns there and tell about the problems they encountered and how they dealt with them. We probably need something like that for knitting.

We are very busy at the store, and I am personally very busy with the work I do outside the store, and this is how August normally is, so I won't complain. Our competitor went ahead and opened, even though he has no workers and his store is all in boxes. I think he had to. Not to do so would be like having a toy store and opening the day after Christmas. I am not gloating out loud, though I appreciate your kind reassurances about my having done so already.

I started the back of Ivy last night, and cut out another piece of my SWAP, while watching What Not to Wear and  Monk and Psych. I don't get home early enough to watch the preceding shows, but I happen to know that they are Seinfeld, Scrubs, and The Daily Show, all of which I like. This means that, were I at home early enough on Friday evenings, I could contentedly watch six TV programs in a row, making up something like five hours in front of a TV set. I don't think this has been true for me since Saturday morning cartoons when I was a child.

I probably wasn't ever allowed to watch cartoons for five hours, but I remember Saturday morning cartoons as going on approximately forever.

I am not good at TV, though. I think it likely that, now that I have learned what time these programs are on, and what channels they appear on, the schedule will change and I will be incapable of finding them again. #1 son was watching with me, and said that I was just like Adrian Monk with technology. He exaggerates, I think.

I also am not good at sitting still for long periods. I like to have movie marathons when my daughters come to visit, because we talk all the way through them, and I sew and knit as well, but in general, it is an effort for me to watch a whole movie at one time. I get up and do things and miss the best parts.

But I am thinking that I could cut out all the pieces for the SWAP on Friday evenings while watching TV. Then I could do the machine sewing on Sunday afternoons, and the handwork in bits and pieces in the evenings after work, and thus get everything sewn.

Some of the participants in the summer SWAP contest made way more than 11 pieces, and I took comfort from that. Of course, they are better seamstresses than I, but I am better than I was last year. The reason I found it comforting is that I am still dithering over the jacket question. I made my storyboard with a second jacket taking the place of the sixth top.

This is the jacket in question. I had intended to make it out of the mushroom wool gabardine, but had second thoughts. This jacket is very stylish for this fall, but it may be too trendy to have staying power. It also seems to be designed to be worn closed, and I rarely leave my jackets closed even if I start out that way. On What Not to Wear last night, the hosts persuaded a woman who had always dressed in fleece that she could indeed dress in jackets if she practiced. I have worn jackets enough to be at ease in them, but I always unbutton them at some point. Also, I am not very good at making jackets. I have made two, and both gave me lots of trouble. So, with all this in my mind, I cut this jacket from a lovely spruce green wool from the clearance table, and left the gorgeous mushroom gabardine alone.

I am thinking I might make this jacket out of it. This jacket has raglan sleeves, so there is no setting-in required, it has the asymmetrical wrap closure that is in style this year, and no buttonholes. It seems likely that I would have success with this pattern, and that I could wear it for more years than the other one.

With this jacket, I would probably have enough of the gabardine to make the skirt as well, so I would have another suit. Since I am doing all my workshops here instead of taking them around the way I used to, I end up having the same people in them over and over. Naturally, the most important consequence of this is that I have to come up with new stories all the time, but it does also mean that I don't want to have just the one workshop-giving suit.

 However, there is also this beautiful thing from Vogue. Vogue calls this pattern "advanced," and I tend to consider their "Very Easy" patterns  advanced,  so I may have no chance of success with it, but you know I like a challenge. And the gabardine would be so good for all these details. The McCalls wrap jacket might look better in something heavier that would have more substance and shape of its own.

The Ann Klein jacket might also be difficult enough that I would never get around to cutting it. At the very least, I would have to make a muslin first.

I do own a couple of lengths of other fabrics that could make nice jackets, but they are in a glen plaid and a houndstooth check, neither of which would work for this jacket. I could certainly just make the muslin out of muslin, but doing so would lengthen the sewing time considerably without giving me any more FOs.

And yet, this is another trendy jacket. If I wait and make it next year, will it be as clearly last year's jacket as a trumpet skirt with lace godets would now be obviously last year's skirt?

The other jacket that I put into the storyboard is this shawl-collared one from Simplicity.

This jacket is pretty much exactly what I like in a jacket,  with a shawl collar and a traditional shape, and it would obviously require tailoring skills. More, perhaps, than the Ann Klein Vogue jacket, which might just require sewing and architecture.

I have a berry and gray wool fabric that I bought to make this jacket from last year. I had watched it go from $30 a yard down to a manageable price and then snapped some up.

I have never yet gotten the courage to cut it for this jacket. I would have to match the pattern at the seams, after all.

I am determined that I will do so this year. I have gotten better at set-in sleeves and at buttonholes. I have learned how to fit things. I think that perhaps, in the month of October when things are usually relatively calm in my life, I could make this.

But perhaps that is enough courage to expect of myself for one SWAP. On the other hand, seeing the completed SWAPs with extra pieces allows me to contemplate adding a couple more jackets to mine. Since I have not sewed anything at all yet, I can contemplate such things. We'll see what really happens.

There's the back of Ivy. This sweater is the kind where you leave the final stitches on a holder till the end. I like that, because it makes a nicer joining of the pieces, but it means that you don't block the separate pieces. So here Ivy is, top on the needles, bottom curling, sides rolling, a gray rectangle.

I think I mentioned the competitor who is opening a store like ours in the town we moved our store from. He had planned, according to our spies, to open in July for Back to School.

Teachers begin, depending on the school, anytime from Monday to August 20th, and Back to School is in full swing.

Our competitor is not open. He has not been able to find a manager. He lives in the next county from us. His new store is filled with boxes waiting to be unpacked and racks waiting to be filled, he has a want ad on his door and in the newspaper, and it doesn't look as though he has any chance of opening in time to catch the shoppers. The Empress and I surmise that he, doubtless being as busy as we are at his main store in the next county, is having to drive up here and try to stock the store himself. We are hoping that he regrets his hostile action.

So last night, after a 12-hour work day, I dragged my exhausted self over to Partygirl's house for a small neighborhood stroll. As we passed someone's hedge of shrub roses, I told her about this situation with the competitor.

She was shocked. She told me not to gloat. She wouldn't hear of my gloating, even when I pointed out that I wasn't exactly ill-wishing him and that at one point I had been hoping that he would contract ringworm in addition to having his new store fail, but had given up that cruel thought. Even when I reminded her that I had done nothing to harm the guy and his problems were not my fault but his own. Even when I argued that I had never met the man, and was merely exulting in the abstract. She cut me off completely, and we spoke of something else.

Japanese beetles, I think, followed by the priesthood of the believer.

Is it never acceptable to gloat over someone else's misfortune? Even if they deserve it? Even if their misfortune is your good fortune? Even if they never know that you are pleased about their suffering?

Maybe if you only say it in your xanga and not out loud?

I finished the back of Ivy. It still looks like a gray stockinette rectangle.

Ivy is part of my SWAP. In general, I think that things you have sensibly planned to include in your wardrobe are less fun to photograph than things you have decided on a mad whim to make. This may explain why so many knitting blogs have so many pictures of things like cabled fingerless mitts in variegated yarn.

I will try to get a nice picture, though, for the sake of any knitters out there. I always want to see your knitting, even if it is rectangular.

I have a workshop this morning, and have already been working for two hours, and That Man emailed me last night to say that the store had been a zoo while I was home working at the computer yesterday.

So -- zoom -----