Month: October 2010


  • I’m not feeling well this morning. Probably allergies. Yesterday was a beautiful fall day, so I went outside and breathed, often a mistake for me. I got the grocery shopping done, though, and finished and sent a proposal for a website.

    I also cut out a nightgown of green silk, something I should have done a few months ago, since now we are on the verge of flannel weather. And knitted, and read, and made cupcakes.

    I gave them pale orange frosting, but that is it for my Hallowe’en preparations. For the first time in decades, I didn’t decorate or make special foods or anything.

    I have some work to do this morning, and I’m supposed to go to church and sing and then this afternoon I am supposed to go pick up a tree, but I really feel like going back to bed or at least lying on the sofa with Kleenex and tea.

  • Since I had to get up at 4:00 a.m. this week I woke up at that time today, too, even though I could have slept in. The dogs also woke up early, and have been barking and carrying on ever since. I still have some work to do for the week, and had imagined that I would leap right in and get it finished so I’d have the day off after dawn, but so far I’ve just been roaming around the internet.

    I hardly ever do that. If I’m at the computer, I’m working. If I’m not working, then I don’t want to be looking at a screen. But this morning I hung around the forums and read weird stuff about the filming of The Exorcist and  have otherwise been wasting time. Any minute now I’ll probably go look at sock patterns.

    I finished the Silk Fountain cowl last night. It’s very cozy. I’m seeing cowls like this in all the magazines now — #2 daughter told me about them a year or so ago but she’s always ahead of the curve. They seem like a nice alternative to scarves, should it ever get cold this year.

    So yes, I’m going to get to work now. Later on, I plan to clean house, do the grocery shopping, bake, maybe sew. That sounds like fun, doesn’t it?

  • I’m suffering from insomnia, which I sometimes do, so I thought I’d catch up over here.

    Sunday I went with La Bella, La Tenora, and Egypt to see Urinetown. It was very good, and thought provoking.

    Monday I wrote the website for the scientist; I’m expecting to make changes on that in the next day or two. I also had continual emails on all sorts of prospects and ongoing projects.

    Tuesday I worked on the embroidery pattern website. It was a bad decision from the point of view of business, as #1 daughter pointed out. She’s managing a Brookstone store at the snazzy mall in the Next County for a few months, which should help with our business’s cash flow, though it means I won’t have her help with all the large quantities of work we’re bringing in to help with the cash flow. I think she’s excited about it — she stopped by for lunch in her manager gear and seemed to enjoy it.

    Yesterday I met with a prospective client and The Computer Guy (who was showing off his iPad — I wasn’t too very covetous). It was a good meeting and I think they’ll probably sign on. We have a lot of stuff in progress and a lot in the pipeline, but that means we’re putting a lot of time into research and proposals and stuff like that.

    I’m also working this week on articles for the upcoming issue of the magazine I write for. And I’m getting up with my husband at 4:00. So being awake at 3:00 (since 1:00, actually) is only slightly early. However, it means I’m really tired in the evenings, and I have punked out on all my evening stuff this week.

    My hydrangeas are looking lovely, but also we have colored leaves and even some falling leaves, so there is a bit of fall feeling.

  • I’ve enlisted my little toy friends to spread the lace out a bit so you can see it.

    No, I realize that you can’t see anything. Lace is like that.

    Here’s a conversation I had with #2 son, by text:

    “Can I bring some of my teammates to stay the weekend of Nov 6 and 7?”

    “Of course.”

    “Okay. 14 to 20 people okay.”

    “Okay, Sleeping bags, right?”

    “Alright. Do you think Dad would be willing to cook one night?”

    “I’m sure he would.”

    So I am looking forward to a lively weekend.

    I’ve had other interesting conversation via text and instant message. The Computer Guy and I debated the precise meaning and usage of “low temperature furnace.” #2 daughter and I considered the relative cuteness of a passel of nocturnal creatures. #1 son and I worked on his resume.

    #1 daughter and I had this exchange about one of our designers, who is very fond of urban grunge in black and red. His first draft of all sites is black and red, whether they are baby clothes or condoms:

    CHOMPHOSY    :     omg S3 is so cute

       i made this big point of not having a black and red site for this nice older lady selling embroidery patterns
       and he has made her a black and pink one
    rosalyne01 :     lol
       It’s good of you to find that cute :P
       bless his little heart
    CHOMPHOSY :     Ayyyeeee!
        He just made it red and black!
      with dragony things!

    Also I had eleventy thousand emails. It’s almost like working with people.

  • The Habitat house was a fun experience, and it looks to be quite a nice house. I don’t think that I was very useful, actually. It took me 12-25 strokes to hammer in each nail, where I think it’s supposed to take about four.

    The woman I was working with was worse than me, and after a while she quit and went off to help with lunch. I was not going to quit, because I’m like that, but it was hard not to think that there was very little point to my being there, as unskilled as I am. Still, I did get the tasks assigned to me finished, and I don’t think anyone will have to do them over or anything.

    After lunch it began to rain, so I came home and knitted and read. Later on I had some blogging to do, but it was mostly a restful afternoon. 

    The Silk Fountain cowl from Luxury Yarn One-Skein Wonders: 101 Small Indulgences very distinctly takes more than one skein of the Japanese yarn. It is not the yarn recommended in the pattern, but it does have the same yardage, so I don’t know what to make of that in terms of the “one skein wonder” claim.

    I thought, as I got to the end of the skein of purple yarn I was knitting it with, about making stripes. Striped lace seemed odd, though.

    So I frogged it and switched to a tweedy variegated skein for which I have other skeins that match some of its solid bits. I’m alternating rows and ending up with a nicely variegated lace with a garter stitch edging that neatly turned out to be all in the tweedy part.

    It’s nice.

  • Here you see the beginning of the Silk Fountain colw from Luxury Yarn One-Skein Wonders: 101 Small Indulgences.

    The pattern claims that it can be made from the quantity of yarn you see here. If so, I can make a whole wardrobe of these from lovely yarn I have around the house.

    The yarn here is a Japanese wool I got from SuperBuzzy. The picture is intended to distract us all from the fact that I didn’t clean my kitchen and am currently half an hour late for the Habitat work day.

    I was also late getting my grades in, worked out even minimally only on three days this week, have been eating who knows what, and only vaguely recall the last time I actually talked with family members. I haven’t paid for #1 son’s tuition yet, either.

    This is not good. All I can say is that it’s been a long week.
    *******

    Back now from my adventure at the Habitat house. It was fun. I did hit my thumb with a hammer, just like a cartoon, but I didn’t fall off the ladder. It probably took me ten times as long to do anything as it would have taken someone with skills, but they don’t care about this at Habitat. We had lunch and talked about spiders.

    If you spend a few hours building a house, you then feel completely okay about lazing around afterwards. It’s a gloomy day, and I have Yorkshire tea and an endless supply of novels via Kindle, so I will knit and read.

  • In addition to the catalogs coming to my door (and may I say that copywriters at the Vermont Country Store, who have always been able to make underwear sound as utilitarian as frying pans, have now achieved the feat of making vibrators sound like a special medical thing for elderly people, like nose hair clippers? I admire their skill), I also got a list of cool gifts from #1 daughter. She did the research for a magazine gift guide I wrote, and found a stunning collection of goodies:

    • Logitech Revue brings you Google TV, which lets you watch both broadcast and internet TV, and even to search for “cooking show” or “Sean Connery” or whatever, and have any available program pop up for you.
    • Parrot AR.Drone Quadricopter is a remote control flying thing with cameras which you can control from your phone.
    • The Livescribe 8 GB Echo Smartpen remembers not only what you write or draw with it, but also anything that’s said while you’re writing or drawing. So you can tap on its special paper and hear the discussion about your drawing, the meeting or class where you took the notes, or the remarks you made on the phone while doodling. You can also upload the whole thing into your computer and send it to someone.
    • Fascinations Levitron Omega is a levitating top. I don’t think I need to tell  you what’s great about that.
    • Xbox 360 Kinect is a motion game like Wii, but with no controllers, so you can freely dance or kick balls or whatever, and see your avatar moving just like you on the screen. This may cause your kids to think that the real world is superfluous, but it looks like fun.

    Apart from costly electronic toys, I’m making things. The thing I’m working on most right now is #2 son’s sweater, and I’m going to make #1 son a hat, but the thing I’ve been thinking about knitting is the cowl.

    I’m working on a Habitat for Humanity house tomorrow, so I might clean my kitchen and do my grocery shopping tonight. Not a very festive way to spend an evening, but I have today set aside for writing up my Top Secret website (no, no website can be top secret, really, I’m just squeezing all the thrill I can out of it) so I may have had enough excitement by the end of the day to relish the routine.

  • Today I got to go to a lab and see an amazing machine involved in special military stuff.

    The Computer Guy came to the door to let me in and take me back to meet the scientist. We peppered her with questions  designed to winkle out the best keywords:

    “Could we say ‘RF and microwave’ here?”
    “Say I wanted one of these machines, I’d call down the hallway and say, ‘Let’s buy a ____.’ What word belongs there?”
    “Would it be correct to say that accuracy and precision are the most important characteristics of this item?”

    She answered with things like, “Possibly ‘milliwave’ might be more accurate” or “Really they should just call me.”

    She was completely relaxed about the weaponry. I asked about security (I’m thinking I can write things about how the thing allows in situ testing, so there are fewer security issues), and she looked at me as though I were crazy. “Oh, I guess you would be able to keep your processes secret that way,” she slowly allowed, clearly thinking about industrial espionage rather than any more sinister purposes.

    I do have a NDA, so she wasn’t that relaxed, I guess, but I think most people would remark on the danger or something. I am probably one of a relatively small number of people you’ll meet who has had a chance to touch this stuff.

    I am also, and I thought at the time how lucky they were in this, one of the few people you’ll meet who actually knows how to spell all the words she was using.

    Still, I’m looking forward to the project. And it was extremely cool to go into the lab and look at the stuff. 

    I taught research skills to my early morning comp class and they did better today. We were looking into an Elizabethan murder, which might be easier for them to work with because they don’t come to it with preconceptions.

    Also, I calculated final grades for my eight week class. It’s nice to be through with that one. It means I no longer have to drive clear up to the Next County every week. I hate grading people, though. I always feel sorry for the ones who get bad grades, though they clearly deserve it.

    We were working on proposals, too. It’s a tough call with proposals. You want to put in enough work that it’s likely you’ll get the job, but not so much that you might as well have done the job already. But it involved site analysis and site architecture, two very fun things.

    What a geeky day!

    Then I went and played handbells — very badly — and sang not so badly. We’re going to sing the Robert Ray Gospel Mass, which is quite nice.

    I’m going to finish the evening with Better off Ted and some knitting.

  • I was being snippy about 1980s hymns last week (and I don’t plan to take it back) but there were some good ones written in the 1990s. I really like this one, new to me as of yesterday, from 1994:

    Praise the Source of Faith and Learning, by Thomas Troeger
    Praise the source of faith and learning who has sparked and stoked the mind
    with a passion for discerning how the world has been designed. 
    Let the sense of wonder flowing from the wonders we survey
    keep our faith forever growing and renew our need to pray:

    God of wisdom, we acknowledge that our science and our art
    and the breadth of human knowledge only partial truth impart. 
    Far beyond our calculation lies a depth we cannot sound
    where your purpose for creation and the pulse of life are found.

    May our faith redeem the blinder of believing that our thought
    has displaced the grounds for wonder which the ancient prophets taught. 
    May our learning curb the error which unthinking faith can breed
    lest we justify some terror with the antiquated creed.

    As two currents in a river fight each other’s undertow
    till converging they deliver one coherent steady flow,
    may we blend our faith and learning till they carve a single course
    and our seeking and our yearning join in praising you their source:

    Praise for minds to probe the heavens, praise for strength to breathe the air,
    praise for all the beauty leavens, praise for silence, music, prayer,
    praise for justice and compassion and for strangers, neighbors, friends,
    praise for hearts and lips to fashion, praise for love that never ends.

    That’s a completely modern hymn, isn’t it? Compare it with this 1980s hymn:

    Called As Partners In Christ’s Service               

    Called as partners in Christ’s service,  Called to ministries of grace,
    We respond with deep commitment  Fresh new lines of faith to trace.
    May we learn the art of sharing,  Side by side and friend with friend,
    Equal partners in our caring  To fulfill God’s chosen end.

    Christ’s example, Christ’s inspiring,  Christ’s clear call to work and worth,
    Let us follow, never faltering,  Reconciling folk on earth.
    Men and women, richer, poorer,  All God’s people, young and old,
    Blending human skills together  Gracious gifts from God unfold.

    Thus new patterns for Christ’s mission,  In a small or global sense,
    Help us bear each other’s burdens,  Breaking down each wall or fence.
    Words of comfort, words of vision,  Words of challenge, said with care,
    Bring new power and strength for action,  Make us colleagues, free and fair.
     
    So God grant us for tomorrow  Ways to order human life
    That surround each person’s sorrow  With a calm that conquers strife.
    Make us partners in our living,  Our compassion to increase,
    Messengers of faith, thus giving  Hope and confidence and peace.

    It really isn’t that one is more current than the other, just that one is better poetry. Maybe, as Picasso said, you have to make new things ugly before you can make them beautiful.

  • The guys from Mumbai gave me a bonus, which was nice of them, and I do think their site turned out well.

    The KML? Not so well. I spent hours trying to get it right, and Google Earth kept taking me out to the middle of the ocean and drowning me.

    I don’t plan to give up. I still have more grading to do, and I didn’t fit in the Australians, so I will be spending a lot of today at the computer, too, and I can continue making minuscule adjustments to code with no success.

    How, you may be wondering, did I manage not to finish my work yesterday? Part of it was the hours on KML. But part of it was also that I quit early. I made chili and lemon cookies for me and #1 son and spent some time reading the mail order catalog that have been piling up, watching The Cashmere Mafia, and otherwise lazing around.

    I like mail order catalogs, actually. It’s fun to look through them. There are weird things for sale this season, though. Vampire Knits: Projects to Keep You Knitting from Twilight to Dawn has directions for all the little accoutrements a vamp needs, such as a pillow saying, “got blood?” and charts allowing you to declare your allegiance to Team Edward or Team Jacob.

    Subtle Butt is a packet of charcoal pads you can attach to your undies to… No, I can’t finish that sentence. You can go look for yourself, if you like. Suffice it to say that one catalog I received described these as “The Perfect Stocking Stuffer!” In a fraternity house, maybe.

    And who among us hasn’t wished for a device allowing us to make hot dog shaped hamburgers? I don’t have a link for this one, but believe me, it actually exists.

    No doubt these ideas will help you with your holiday gift list.

    It is now Kitchen Week on the HGP:

    Holiday Prep:

    • Make one batch of Holiday Goodies.
    • Make one extra meal for freezer again labeled HOLIDAY MEAL.
    • Buy two canned food items from menus (get 2 of each item, one to use and one to donate to food drive).
    • Buy 1/8th of TO BUY gifts. Save all receipts, note return policy before buying. Ask for gift boxes.
    • Wrap and label packages. If needing to ship, get some shipping boxes now and store packages in them.
    • Work at least 1 hour a day on homemade gifts.

    Checkpoint Week! Evaluate Your Progress:

    • If unable to find an item for a person on list contact them or their family for ideas.
    • If a homemade gift is not going well, set it aside for after Christmas and decide on another gift.
    • Buy pumpkin for Halloween.
    • Review costume plans with children.

    I’m keeping up fairly well, actually, and my kitchen definitely needs a Kitchen Week. However, if you haven’t been keeping up, you’ll be glad to know that it’s still one week to the Christmas Countdown, a simpler six week plan.

    Either way, planning ahead will protect you from giving odor-neutralizing underwear to your friends and family. You’ll still have time to knit them some vampire gear instead.