In response to comments, let me tell you a little more about the socks. Well, sock at this point. This is being done in Knitpicks Essentials on a size 1 sleeve needle. I prefer circular needles, even when I'm knitting on the flat. Erin, for example, is being done on circular needles (size 2). I'll switch to sleeve needles (which are small circular needles) when I do the sleeves, and I'll work them in the round. I'll switch to dpns when I do the heel of the sock, back to the sleeve needle for the foot, and then to the dpns again when the toe is too small for the sleeve needle.

Since I'm doing this in stockinette, with just a few rows of ribbing, I took some elastic thread and crocheted around the top with it. This needs to be crochet, because you can crochet onto the surface of something. Back in the day, all knitters could crochet; it was considered a normal skill for finishing. If you are a modern knitter and you don't know how, then this is a great time to learn! Either that, or you could pick up stitches in the elastic thread and knit them, and trust that your sock tops won't show. You can buy this thread in white or black at your local fabric store. I do this trick on cuffs, too, if they seem inclined to stretch out. 

However, thanks to the politics,  I got some more done on Erin.

My husband is a big fan of CNN. Usually this means breathless accounts of celebrity gossip or overemotional reports on some hapless crime victim or something, but I've actually been joining him to watch the campaign. It's interesting this year. His Lao-English dictionary claims that a Democrat is in favor of freedom, while a Republican is in favor of customs. He was a little confused, because he had thought that one of the parties would be the communists. My husband has lived in the United States for 30 years, but he has an amazing ability to ignore that fact.

I usually think of voting as the equivalent of hiring someone. Our political system is designed so that no one person can have enormous amounts of power. However much the president may wish to be king, he doesn't live in the age of absolute monarchy. So, even though we Americans do generally feel as though the president is at fault when things are bad and it is a tragedy when the other side wins, we actually most need someone who won't humiliate us in the world at large.

My family's current jobseeking adventures make me notice that the resume isn't everything. #1 daughter, having quit school to get married and then followed her Navy husband around for some years, doesn't have the education or the experience she would like to have on her resume. But having someone who looks and sounds like her in the front office automatically raises the tone of an organization. She now has a nice position in the office of the District Attorney four hours south of us. She had a good recommendation, she is smart and works hard, and they will be lucky to have her, but we have to recognize that her face is her fortune.

#2 son had a group interview with Coldstone Creamery. He is just 16, a small guy, has never had a job before, doesn't have a driver's license, and is generally not a shoo-in for a job. He does, however, have an exceptional quality of enthusiasm. When they divided into small groups, he led his team to write a new jingle for the company, organized the others into a doo-wop group to back him up in singing it, and enjoyed the process. When the interviewer asked whether he was the leader of the group, he modestly said, "We really haven't established that." We don't know whether he'll get the job, but I would like to have that level of excitement in the sales staff at the store.

Just so with the candidates. Bill Richardson may be smart, experienced, and bold enough to speak out against the war, NCLB, and other stupid shenanigans of the current administration, but he isn't cool enough to hang with Clinton and Obama, so he's out. Huckabee didn't accomplish much as governor, besides wasting a lot of money weighing schoolchildren, but he's the one of the Republicans whom I cannot imagine arranging a hit. I hope to vote against him in November.

The CNN guys were talking a lot about "style over substance," but maybe it's just like my kids' job interviews. Maybe some of the qualifications wouldn't come across on paper.

I've been working out every day so far this year. True, that is only nine days, but still. I've included walks, abs class, Pilates, weights, and core class. I've also been making a real effort to keep the intensity up, rather than having leisurely strolls on the treadmill while reading.

The result is that there is no part of my body that isn't sore.

Now that I'm playing bells in the bass clef, that probably counts for some exercise, too. The players around me complain of the weight of the bells. I do not complain about this. I try not to complain at all. However, I still get lost with great frequency. The new pieces last night (and yes, there are new pieces every week) had all these key changes. Other people can tell from this what bell they are supposed to be playing, but I cannot. Plus there were accidentals. And complex rhythms, and times when I was supposed to play two bells at once. And swinging and shaking and damping of various kinds. So there were issues of mere physical speed in addition to my usual inability to keep track of what measure I was on.

Last time I whined about bells here, something that is becoming a weekly  feature of my xanga, people suggested that I quit. (Quit bells, I mean. People probably also wish I would quit whining, but that is another story.) I was surprised by that suggestion. And then I had to wonder why I was surprised. After all, here I am doing something I don't get paid for, and I don't like it and I do it badly. It makes sense to ask why I am doing it.

I may not have mentioned that I am also acting, all this year, as greeter for Bible study. It is inconvenient, and means that I miss the hymns. It also is a security measure, so I am really standing for half an hour at the front door policing the people: do they have name tags? Are they heading to the children's area without authorization? Keep in mind that I am easily bored, very laissez-faire in my philosophy, and not all that friendly. You know this "greeting" is not something I enjoy. I am sincerely hoping that doing this for a year will make me immune to future requests of this nature.

But if I made a flow chart for decisions about volunteering when asked, for schools and churches, it would be a very small chart. "Can I do this?" would be the only question. If the answer is "yes," then I do it.

That doesn't mean that the answer is always "yes." I declined to teach the Senior High Sunday School this year because, for some very specific reasons, I felt that I needed to be in Sunday School myself. I declined to teach a Wednesday night class because it overlaps with choir and bells. I declined to head the care ministry because of my work schedule. I once had to pass on bringing sausage biscuits to an elementary school classroom because I didn't know how to acquire them (now I would know; I think I took muffins instead). But if I am asked and can do it, I do it.

This is because I am the Slave of Duty. And because I know that schools and churches run on volunteers, and someone has to do it.

Where the bells are concerned, it is possible that I will actually learn to do it more quickly than someone with less musical background would. Everyone else in the bell choir has done this for years. In fact, I think most of them have done it for decades. It is too early for me to give up merely because I am bad at it. And it is possible that this will move me up from near musical illiteracy to actually being able to read music well, which would be very useful for me.

However, if people keep referring to us by excessively cute terms, I may have to draw the line. "The Ding-a-lings are playing this morning" is not amusing at all. Really.

I have also been knitting every day. This is my zombie project, the gray socks. Knitpicks Essentials, #2 needles, normal mathematical socks.

There was too much going on yesterday for me to work on my Epic project.

I have been making my three contacts daily for my business, and I have even been keeping up reasonably well with the housekeeping. The thing I haven't been successful with doing every day is getting dressed before I start working. But that will surely come. It is early in the year.

Today #2 son has his first job interview. He is trying out at the Coldstone Creamery, which is about to open a branch in our town. If he gets it, we will have full employment in our household, and will no longer have to pay any allowances. And it has just struck me that he has worked before. He has been a paid actor. But I think that this would still be his first job interview, rather than audition.

I am going to go get dressed before I actually start working. I have already done a couple of link requests, but it is still early enough to count, don't you think?

How interesting! I had a comment and a couple of emails suggesting that it wasn't that Mr. Huckabee doesn't know that people are primates (information I had suggested was common knowledge), but that he doesn't think it's true.

I was a little bit mystified by this. After all, if we're not primates, then we'd have to be... reptiles, or rodents, or monera, or something. Right?  Or do creationists reject the standard taxonomy entirely and have some other system I've never heard of? I checked with a creationist of my acquaintance.

"You don't really think of yourself as an animal," she said, "if you're not thinking hard. I mean, do you think of yourself as an animal?"

"Well, yes," I had to reply. "There's only animals, plants, and fungi, so I always do think of myself as an animal." Of course, I was leaving monera and protista out, since it would have weakened the rhythm of my sentence.

"If someone asked me whether I was animal, vegetable, or mineral, I'd pick animal," my friend explained, "but I don't think of myself as an animal usually."

I was fascinated. "Then where do you fall in the classification of living things?"

"We just sort of slid past that in school," she said, having attended a parochial school where they taught literal creationism.

"You didn't study about taxonomy or the animal kingdom or anything?"

My friend frowned. "We're the ones who classified everything," she said at last. "We're not in the classification."

So there you have it.

Oh, and also in response to comments, George Bush did at one time remark that he thought it was time for humans to go into the solar system, so that's why I used that example. I wouldn't make something like that up.

Having completed Book 3 of my book project, I am preparing to send the first three out for beta testing (if you are a teacher and you want to test for me, let me know) and starting on book 4, the third grade book.

The first task involved in this is to mentally gather up all the stuff in the frameworks for state history and shake it around like a kaleidoscope until it comes down in three subunits.

This seemed like a really sensible thing to do, and the kindergarten book divided itself up naturally in that way, but it gets more difficult as I go along. The third grade frameworks include explorers, westward movement, the Louisiana purchase, sources of electrical power in the state, the concept of war (actual data about war is for 4th grade), physical maps, rivers and mountains, the meaning of "entrepreneur," technological change, and "cultural traits of ethnic groups that live in" our state.

Movement could be one -- that could include explorers, Westward movement, changes in transportation and communication technologies, and rivers. Or Physical Geography could include rivers, mountains, and electrical power (if you push it hard, it could fit in). Or Diversity could include culture contact between explorers and pioneers on the one hand and native peoples on the other, plus characteristics of ethnic groups and ... umm... diverse forms of electricity. Technology would work for electricity. Growth and Change would cover quite a few, and I could stick life cycles in there, too.

No doubt taxonomists feel this way sometimes. It's fun, actually. But also somewhat suspenseful. I realized late yesterday that I hadn't included the State Anthem in the second grade book, and I see no obvious way to include it in the subunits of Careers, Rocks and Minerals, and Native Americans. I will shoehorn it in today, in between contemplations of Hernando De Soto and hydroelectric power.

Let joy reign unconfined! I finished the rocks and minerals subunit, which had been on my to-do list longer than  was fully enjoyable. I have now completed 3 of the 7 planned books.

I've also completed a couple more bands on the front of Erin. She has escaped felting, at least for the present. That is always a possibility, though.

Watching the candidates has allowed me to make some good progress on my Epic knitting project, though rehearsals and class and so forth are starting up again, so it will probably slow down.

I've been following the career of Mike Huckabee with interest, so someone sent me a clip of his answer to a question on evolution in a previous debate. I don't write much about politics here (I want to keep this a friendly place, after all) but I do write about evolution from time to time.

If you've been kind of engrossed in your knitting for the past century a while and don't know about evolution or what it has to do with politics, check out Dexter's post on the subject for some clarifying links.

I think the point of the sending was not so much about evolution as about Mr. Huckabee's response, which included a bold statement about his belief in God (the sender probably was in favor of that) and also the sentence, "If anyone wants to believe that they are descended from a primate, they are welcome to do it."

Well golly. I should hope so. Humans are primates.

#1 daughter and a friend have been debating the question: is Mike Huckabee as stupid as George Bush?

Well, no. Of course not. Actually, I saw him on The Colbert Report last night, and he was playful and witty. It takes a sharp brain even to keep your temper on that program, it seems to me, let alone actually keep up. He can't be stupid. But is he as ignorant?

Perhaps.  Not knowing that humans are primates is right up there with not being clear on the fact that the Earth is in the solar system, isn't it? I'm not sure. It may be that the solar system is grade 3, while the classification of the animal kingdom is more a middle school thing. Or at least fifth grade.

I'm horrified that we're having to compare these two things in the context of a presidential election. Remember how much scorn was heaped on Quayle for misspelling "potato"?

Our standards have really lowered, haven't they?

I also heard this clever, though unkind, statement about Clinton: "All notes; no music."

I had to come back, because I went to Google to check the quote, and was startled to see that in all the excoriation of Huckabee on this statement, no one is pointing out that humans are primates. Didn't that bother anyone but me?

Here's what #1 son did over the weekend. He gave me permission to use this picture, since there is no actual face involved.

This is what is known as a "dino." When you are rock climbing, and you leap from one hold to the next rather than keeping hold of one till you grab the next, that is a dino. I don't know why.

There was a large group of guys on the trip, and their photos all show them practicing their climbing skills in non-dangerous ways, often spotting one another. I found that cheering.

If there were episodes of dangerous climbing, drunken roistering, and so forth, then they very sensibly did not post them on Facebook.

Nowadays, that counts as a sign of unusual wisdom.

That's not what I did over the weekend. I did a little housework, some light reading, a bit of knitting...

 CNN aired the Republican and Democratic debates last night, the perfect opportunity to get on with some Epic knitting. I decided to do a set-in sleeve for Erin, but to continue with the colorwork as it stands.

This is Alice Starmore's Erin, from The Celtic Collection. I'm making it in Elann's Peruvian Highland Wool, on #2 needles. I have been dismayed at the number of breaks in some skeins of this yarn -- one skein of Tuscan Green had more than one break per row, which makes me fear for the future of my sweater.

Coming back to say -- Kali Mama just made the clever suggestion that I felt Erin and make a bag out of her. That might be a better plan than finishing her as a sweater...

You can see from the part of the inside that shows here that I do colorwork with two hands and weave as I go.

It is good to know where people stand on these divisive issues.

It was interesting last night to see both parties' debates. We got to see Romney sneering throughout his opponents' answers, and the petty bickering that should not have taken place in public. #1 son, who will be voting for the first time this year, had a lot to say about the candidates' self-presentation. He is most interested in the economy, among the issues. We were all surprised to hear the Republicans talking about the environment as much as they did. Richardson seemed to feel that he was having his final opportunity to present his resume, which led to a lot of repetition from him, but he also made the most amusing remarks. I was glad to see Clinton have an opportunity to address directly the fact that so many people dislike her on a personal level, and it was interesting to see the candidates interacting with one another.

#2 son gets back to school today, but my husband is home again, so I will still be trying to get the rocks and minerals subunit finished to a background of kung fu movies. That's my excuse. The fact that I am doing store blogposts and SEO whenever I feel uninspired about the rocks is probably more to the point, but all those things have to be done, after all. I'd better get started on them.

A Joyful Epiphany to you!

This is the end of the Christmas revels. Tomorrow we get back to work (all that work you've been doing since the 24th doesn't really count). In order to avoid bad luck, all the greenery and other decorations must be removed today.

Unless you observe Carnival, in which case you started celebrating that last night with a Galette des Rois or local equivalent, and will keep it up till Mardi Gras.

I have one more song for you: "Behold That Star." This is a very happy song, and lots of fun to sing in groups or by yourself. I was feeling moody yesterday, myself, because of having to deal with a little crisis, but am back to being happy again today. Our external circumstances affect our moods for such a short time that it doesn't really make sense to allow them to affect us at all. We should be able to say, "I'm going to feel better tomorrow, so I might as well go ahead and feel better today. There is no benefit to being upset."

That might make us seem like Vulcans or something, though. I guess we should be able to be moody sometimes.

In addition to taking down all the decorations and coping with the current crisis, I took a walk yesterday. This is for the sake of my New Year's resolution to do 30 minutes of cardio every day instead of 30 minutes three times a week, which was my average last year. I've been quite faithful so far.

Unfortunately, the dogs are not good on walks. I wouldn't mind taking them all if they were. But Fiona, the big dog, practically pulls your arm out of the socket in her desire to run like the wind. Toby insists on stopping to mark every single thing you pass, so that you have to pull him along like a pull toy half the time.

I have not yet taken Spicer for a walk, so I don't really know how she is at walking, but she is more of a lying around dog than a vigorously moving dog, so I have my doubts about her. She might not be up for the full 30 minutes.

In the picture above, you see the dogs taking part in the conversation about which one dog should get to go on a walk. I actually took a series of pictures of them, because they kept moving around, looking at each human in turn, trying to telepathically convey their feelings on the matter.

We could easily tell what they were saying. It was "Take me! Take me!"

In the event, I took Toby, and we quite enjoyed the springlike weather. He was too worn out to chase the ducks by the time we got to the pond, and I just did pull him along like a pull toy as he attempted to lift his leg on every raised area in the landscape, so it was fine for me. I think I will take them in rotation.

The best plan, of course, would be for each human to take one dog and for all of us to go out walking together. The sad fact is that no other humans in the house want to walk for 30 minutes. 10 is about their speed. Sigh.

The other thing that I did was to think about what I ought to knit next. I had planned to do a sweater from  Lacy Little Knits, and had bought the yarn and everything. The yarn turned out to be unsuitable for the pattern. I do not have another suitable yarn, and I am not even thinking about buying new yarn to do that pattern with. I have a full-blown stash now, something I never intended. I have always been the kind of knitter who decides on a project, buys the yarn, and makes it. But now I have a bunch of laceweight, all the worsted for Erin, and a bunch of Telemark in various colors.

Having had to give up the pattern, I then considered what else I could make with the yarn. I have started and frogged several different things. I will doubtless come back to the laceweight yarn in due course, but I will have to find just the right pattern first.

What's the problem? you are thinking. Since I have a stash, I can just move on to the Telemark and make something nice from it.

Unfortunately, I have not only a stash, but also a WIP. The lovely Erin is still on the needles. How can I move on to another piece of colorwork with Erin unfinished and her fate undecided?

My musings on the problem of finishing Erin are posted on May 25, 2007, if you are wondering why I don't just finish it. In short, it is a boxy sweater with large horizontal stripes, and I have realized -- since starting it back when I didn't think about things like that -- that it will not be a becoming sweater for me, however lovely it may be in and of itself.

Also, I had begun the Doctor's Bag in Telemark some time back. The only color I have enough of to complete the Doctor's Bag in is navy. It is clear from the small amount that I completed that the lovely texture stitch is completely lost in navy.

The pattern is also irritating to work. I set it aside till I had time to write it out in a more sensible way, but even as I write this, I am realizing that I would be disappointed in it if I finished it in navy. The Doctor's Bag will have to join the Lacy Little Knits sweater on my list of things I intend to make someday.

So I was thinking about making a sweater with the Telemark. I was thinking in fact of doing Carpathian Black Roses from the Nordstrikke book. You can see its schematics in the book.

It does not have the fashion issues of Erin. It has its major patterning up near the wearer's face, and has a bit of shape to it. A main color of navy with the colorwork in grays and rose shades could be very pretty.

However, I would then have two Epic projects on the needles at once, and no Zombie project. And both my Epic projects would be colorwork. This means that, when I got sick of doing colorwork, I would have no other, simpler project to provide respite from it. Nor even some cables or lace to turn to because a change is as good as a rest. And nothing simple enough to knit while I read, either, which is pretty essential.

Yes, I actually spent a whole lot of time thinking about this yesterday.

Now, I also have a couple of skeins of fingering weight yarn left over from Ivy, so I decided to try out the Carpathian Roses chart with a sock. Socks are mostly Zombie projects, if you make plain ones. They just have a couple of little flurries of fanciness, with a good amount of plain stuff in between.

Perhaps by the time I finish the pair, I will have made up my mind what to do with Erin, or the laceweight, or the Telemark.

This is the cake that I took to the party last night. It was very fun. Lots of interesting reminiscences. The group I was with had all known one another for decades, and I was a new person to tell all the best stories to, so I got a sort of recap of the Greatest Hits.

Today, I have a really nice Epiphany hymn for you. "Brightest and Best of the Sons of the Morning" was written by a CofE guy, Reginald Heber, who set out to write a hymn for each Sunday and feast day of the Cof E calendar, and almost made it. This is his hymn for Epiphany.

In the United States, this hymn was changed (for the Presbyterian Hymnal at least) to "Brightest and Best of the Stars of the Morning," because "son of the morning" was used to describe Lucifer, AKA Satan, at one point (Isaiah 14:12, to be precise). The new words would of course refer to Job 38:7, "when the morning stars sang together, and all the sons of God shouted for joy."

I have all these references at my fingertips because I own The Penguin Book of Carols, which goes on at this point to say, "Several hymnal editors have refused to include the hymn on the grounds that it incites star worship."

I know I've shared this with you before, because I absolutely love that idea.

I mean, there you are in church. You have gone through the solemn time of Advent and the holy time of Christmas and come back to church for Epiphany --

--- I know this about you, because if you are Baptist or atheist or something, you're not going to be singing Epiphany hymns, now are you? Anyone might sing Christmas carols, but Epiphany carols are kind of specialized. Atheists aren't even in church on Epiphany, I bet.

Anyway, there you are, filled with the joy of the season and perhaps some nice leftovers from Twelfth Night parties, and you sing these words:

"Brightest and best of the stars of the morning,
Dawn on our darkness and lend us thine aid.
Star of the east, the horizon adorning,
Guide where our infant Redeemer is laid."

The sweetness of James Harding's fine Victorian tune caresses your ear, and a strange sensation steals over you: a desire to worship stars.

Huh? Can worship be incited? Is a church a good place to incite worship of inanimate objects, even really big ones like stars? And, if it is possible to incite worship, how could it possibly be done with words like that? Is the incipient star worshipper going to hear that the star is "bright" and "adorning" something and even, hey, "of the east" and be moved from love of God (who is also in that sentence, with a capital letter and everything) to love of stars?

Why wouldn't it lead to worship of horizons? or infants?

Maybe the objectors are bothered by the fact that the song is apparently addressed to a star, once you replace the "sons" with "stars." Maybe the idea of the Star of Bethlehem as a metaphor for God bothers them.

I may be hindered in understanding this by a lack of knowledge about star worship, too. I don't know what a person who, singing this pretty hymn in a blameless pew, felt incited to star worship would do next.

I went to Google with this question, because it is after all the 21st century, so that's what we do. I found this demented website which explained that "When Israel fell into musical idolatry God turned them over to the worship of the starry host." I assume that this covers the topic pretty throughly. Like so many mad ravings, the discussion at that site is really deficient in structure, so I am not sure I have grasped what they're saying. They are, however, the top website for incitement to star worship, so I guess they have some authority.

I think modern idolatry tends to focus more on material possessions than on stars, but this may again be ignorance on my part. I think, though, that if I wanted to incite someone to worship something, I would give away cars rather than writing hymns, especially such mild hymns.

"Worship a star!
We'll give you a car!"

That might work better.

Tonight, Twelfth Night, is the last night of revelry before you start getting serious again. We will therefore be taking down the Christmas tree and wreaths and garlands. Note how I say "we," as though other people at my house were likely to help me with these tasks.

They might, though. Maybe I can incite them to housekeeping.

I went to a party at Janalisa's last night, where we made jewelry. I had never made jewelry before, really. I made soldered charms in 2006 and put self-adhesive pin backs on some and jump rings on others so they could be worn on a chain, but that is the sum total of my previous experience.

Most of the ladies were making necklaces, but since I was in this as a learning experience, I decided that I probably could figure out for myself how to string beads and instead made earrings.

If you are thinking that these do not look like the earrings I would normally wear, you are quite correct. When I wear these, people will think that I am a far more exciting person than I really am. They will probably ask me to carry secret messages for them, and I will end up having amazing adventures.

If so, I will tell you all about it.

Also, last night, I heard some remarkable gossip. I had the usual conversation which I always have when I meet groups of new people: "Where do I know you from?" they ask. I name the store. "Of course!" they say. "The Store!" This is why strangers were telling me remarkable gossip. I am not going to repeat it, you understand. It was just remarkable enough that I had to mention it.

When I left my house, my kids and JBek were playing Jungle Buzz and eating pizza (yes, I had some), and even now I have a cake in the oven which I will be taking to tonight's Twelfth Night party, even though it is only the eleventh night, so we are clearly still feeling pretty festive. I packed up the Christmas books and music and movies yesterday in the course of housework, along with most of the other decorations. We still have the tree up, and some wreaths, but otherwise it doesn't look too much like Christmas.

Today's song is an Epiphany hymn.

"O Morning Star, How Fair and Bright," by Phillip Nicolai. Nicolai felt moved to write this hymn one day after seeing 30 graves dug for victims of bubonic plague, crowning a week in which 170 of his parishioners died, so I guess we shouldn't be complaining. Here you can hear the midi with the sounds of bells, organ, or piano. Here, at the Ethereal Library, you can see the sheet music and Catherine Winkworth's translation of four verses. Here at Choralwiki you can find the German and Dutch words, another translation into English, and -- if you feel like clicking around a bit -- arrangements by our old friends Bach and Praetorius, as well as some other folks. Here is a nice YouTube recording of Bach's cantata using this hymn. It has the sheet music and everything, sort of like the "follow the bouncing ball" thing they used to do on TV, so if you are having the kind of Twelfth Night party where a group of singers and a cornet and violin might be gathering around the old computer to run through a cantata, you will be ready.

No, I have never been to a party like that. They probably don't exist.

I just want to mention quickly the book I am reading, The Bachelor by Carly Phillips. It was given to me by Partygirl, and it is a basic trashy Ro-mance novel, but its flimsy plotline centers on crocheted panties. It persists in using "knit" and "crochet" interchangeably, but I find it so remarkable that there should be a novel that revolves around hand-crocheted panties that I am prepared to overlook this. You may recall the Polish crocheted panties that were in the news a few years ago; I reckon Phillips was inspired by those stories.

I guess I could use all that brown laceweight to make some of those. To go with my nice barbaric earrings. In case I end up at any wild parties where the entertainment is group singing of cantatas.

Dadjoke asked what happened to the cereal. Here it is. I keep the food that people eat spontaneously in the kitchen. Things for cooking with, or unopened boxes, stay in the pantry. I was able to put the cereal into the kitchen. Thus the lack of cereal boxes in the tidy pantry

Not very exciting. But go read Dadjoke. He has a new xanga and needs greetings. You might think that he is a jocular dad, from his name, but that appears not to be the case. In fact, I think he used to be Scrawnyjohnny. Maybe he filled out and gave up his old xanga name.

Having spent a full day yesterday trying to finish up the rocks and  minerals subunit, including a walk in the bitter cold during which I figured out what to do with the whole rock vs. mineral thing, I headed off to bells practice.

Miss B and I switched bells, so I now have middle C. Middle C, for the non-musicians in the group, is the one in the air between the treble and bass clefs, with the line through it. It is the easiest note to recognize. The picture below shows how it looks, depending how much of the staff you get in your music. The additional pictures at the bottom, labeled with the parts, apparently are intended to show how various singers feel about middle C.

As a singer, I do feel about middle C the way they say an alto should. As a bellringer -- the world's worst bellringer, let me remind you -- I like it a lot. I can recognize it easily.

I also have B, as well as B flat and C sharp, but all of them are close enough to middle C that I can recognize them without counting up or down. You would think I would be in clover, or the bell-like equivalent of it.

Here's the thing: as a member of the bass clef, which is where middle C hangs out in bell music, I pretty well don't ever get the melody. Thus, I lose all the advantages of knowing the tunes to some pieces. "Jesu, Joy of Man's Desiring," for example,  is a very familiar piece for me. I know the soprano and alto lines, and the melody line of the accompaniment. The bass line of the accompaniment, which is what I am playing, was a complete surprise to me. We did it at such a slow speed that I couldn't even pick out the tunes I knew, and there were so many errors in all the lines (as the other bad players and I messed up) that I lost my place repeatedly. I played the right notes, of course, but not at the right times. So they were wrong notes.

In fact, there was one measure (measure 110) in which I had 4 quarter notes and a half note. All but one on B. The fifth was a C. This piece is in 4/4 time, so you should only have 4 quarter notes, or perhaps 2 half notes. There shouldn't be 5 counts of B. That seems wrong. The director, when asked, saw nothing odd about it. Presumably there is not, in the world of bells, anything odd about it at all. To me, however, this sort of thing is very confusing. If you are singing music, you get something for every potential note. If you aren't supposed to sing there, you get a rest, which is a little mark telling you not to sing there. With bells, you have to count up all the various notes, and they often don't add up to the right number. Or at least that is how it looks to me.

So I continue to be the worst bellringer in the world.

Actually, I think it likely that I will be able to continue getting on top of the pieces in time to play reasonably accurately, if not well, by the time we play them in public. My goal for the bells this year is to get to where I enjoy playing.

Maybe next year I will get to where it's music for me.

Following the misery of bell practice, I enjoyed choir practice. It is a completely different experience for me. Even when I make mistakes in sight reading (which I do, constantly), it's temporary and fixable, which is not how bells feel.

Enough whining. I return to the rocks and minerals.

"Jesu, Joy of Man's Desiring" can be the song for the day, even though it is not especially intended for Christmas or for Epiphany. It is always a good piece, and you can sing it or play it on your guitar or tap it out on water glasses with a spoon, and it will always be beautiful. Johann Schop wrote the tune, but J.S. Bach arranged it, and he generally gets the credit for it. Martin Janus wrote the words in 1661, and Robert Bridges translated it a couple hundred years later.

Actually, if you look online, you can see Josh Groban listed as the composer of this piece. That is of course loony. However, Groban did bring this piece to the conscious awareness of a whole bunch of people who wouldn't otherwise have known it, so he deserves some credit.

It may happen some day that you are sitting quietly knitting, reading a good novel, and you suddenly think to yourself, "Life is real, life is earnest. I should not be so idle."

Obviously, you try first to resist this thought. You remind yourself that the writer of the book has worked very hard to entertain you. Should you allow all that hard work to be for naught?

You may even remind yourself that you normally work quite hard yourself, and that you are entitled to a certain amount of lolling about. "They also serve," you might misquote to yourself, "who only sit and knit."

You might think about the scarf you are knitting, and its value, and the number of hours you would have to work to purchase a garment of equivalent quality for your son.

With this and other sophistry, you might be able to give up the feeling that you ought to be doing something more exciting, or at least more productive.

But perhaps mere willpower will not be sufficient. If that is the case, I have the solution: go clean your pantry. After you do that, you will be delighted to return to your lolling about.

That is what I did.

I know that some of my readers are scornful of my messes, but I feel that the pantry was messy enough to satisfy the most severe of my critics, and it took me an hour of serious work to get it decent.

Especially the high shelf, which I can't really reach. That is why I keep all the vases and the silver epergne up there. That is also why the vases end up in other places; I am not tall enough to return them without some significant effort.

So I made the effort. My pantry is clean and tidy.

It may need some more groceries in it, but they will have a nice home to go to when and if I ever get around to buying some.

After doing that, I was able to return to the scarf and finish it contentedly. Today I get back to work, and this evening I have rehearsals for choir and bells. My husband also went back to work this morning, thank goodness, and #1 son will also be back at work. Fond as I am of them, I have to admit that it is easier for me to work without a background of kung fu movies and Dragon Ball Z games.

In addition to work, you will want to prepare for Twelfth Night with some more good Epiphany carols.

Allow me to offer you "De Tierra Lejana Venimos." This is a very pretty song from Puerto Rico, about following the star and seeing the King of Kings and all that. It has a fine dramatic sound to it, so you could dance to it with a rose in your teeth if you are not bothering with Epiphany.

Here are the words for it in English. I think it would sound good with guitar and trumpet.