Posh is finally finished:
Pattern: Vogue Knitting Summer 2005 #26
Yarn: Stacy Charles Posh trimmed with Stacy Charles Muse.
The pattern originally called for a tie on the front which I have decided not to use as it annoyed me. At the moment I am leaving it with no closure as it seems to hug the body a bit and stay in place. If this proves inadequate I will probably put in a couple of decorative hooks and eyes just along the front:
I have been caught up in reading historical fiction the past few weeks, mostly at the gym, as I have been limiting my fiction binges to the exercise bicycle, but even so, I have done little other reading. I am still working my way slowly through the November Atlantic Monthly for example, even though I have had it over a week. I have been working my way through Mary McCarthy essays at bedtime, but so slowly that I think I have been on the same essay for a week now, after starting off at great speed and reading one or two essays a night. All things come in waves I suppose.
The fiction was fun – a good read as opposed to good writing, but every now and then that is all that is necessary, just to involve oneself in a story and get lost for a little while. I know I tend to get too wrapped up in the stories I read, always have, probably at this point, assuming I am half-way through my life and haven’t yet mended my ways, always will.
I got too wrapped up in television as a child as well. I know it worried my parents at times – I would dream about things I saw on tv – and I still have to be careful not to get wrapped up in silly television programs. To achieve that I tend to avoid them. I suppose this is a character flaw I inherited from my father who was always more of a dreamer than a doer. When I was young I wanted to act and I don’t think I was all that bad at it, strange as it may seem, being shy may not have been a hindrance. I have always found it easier to pretend to be something else than to be myself in front of other people. I don’t play those games anymore, although I did in my youth, and I got myself in trouble a couple of times with people reading more into the role I was playing than I ever intended. I suppose that I now come off as more standoffish than anything else, although not intentionally, because I am still not totally comfortable with myself.
Back to the topic at hand: I have always had a weakness for historical fiction, especially about the Tudor and Elizabethan periods. I am sure this colored my choice of 16th and 17th century literature in college even though more recent literature was much more popular.
The two novels I have been reading, The Other Bolyn Girl and The Virgin’s Lover, both by Phillipa Gregory have been highly entertaining and have fleshed out characterizations based, at least loosely, on historical fact. At any rate the stories have been tied in to historical fact enough that they do not seem completely off base, and the story line is strong enough and they are well enough told tales to keep one involved. They also do not sin too much by indulging in the modern tendency to make historical characters think and act like modern people with our mores and values. That, it seems to me, has always been the thing people have the most time understanding about history, that people of a different time cannot be judged for not thinking like people of today.
I have always been able to read popular fiction and enjoy it and still appreciate more literary fiction, although many people I know seem to fall in one camp or the other: the “popular fiction” crowd and the “literature” crowd. I have always maintained that an even a mediocre novel is more entertaining than a mediocre television show or movie. But I am not completely indiscriminate, I can follow a good story line, but if the writing is too terrible I just can’t get through it, and some marginal tales I probably skim more than actually read as the text is not worth savoring. Still, there have been some popular novels in recent years, and some popular writers, who have completely lost me and I wonder how people read them. I suppose other think the same of me sometimes. If this were not the case, probably far fewer books would be sold.
Garden update:
Iris bed, fall planting mostly completed.
The long stone planting bed. It is not one made from uniform flat stones as most of the stones were used in the original bed (I can see now why it fell down) with supplemental stones gleaned from around the property. This new bed appears pretty stable if not uniform in appearance. We will see how it weathers.
I have been working on the second sock, not all that much, as knitting time has been limited, but I am making good progress:
The fifth needle, down in the cuff, marks where I was on Monday at the time of my last post.
I bought more sock yarn (it was half price) since I know I will knit more socks simply because I like the portability of them when I don’t feel like lugging a big knitting project around. I am really looking forward to wearing the first pair.
Both of these yarns make me smile.
I am going to have to try a different sock pattern, I don’t love this one, but I know I will find the perfect fit.
I was absent from blogging while my telephone line was down. Yes, I am still a part of that backward part of the world where the phone lines are not buried and are subject to wind damage. I am also not yet a part of the high-speed Internet world, although that is due more to my own laziness; I must clear enough of the basement from the detritus accumulated by myself and DH, otherwise known as darling-pack-rat, so that some limber and ambitious soul (who I will pay well) can run new wiring through my narrow, rocky, and otherwise unpleasant crawlspace otherwise known as a basement.
Being one who does not think about things that I can do nothing about, I also neglected to keep any record of my activities during the 5 day on-line moratorium. Nonetheless, here are a couple of quotes, without comment, that have been on my mind:
—-
“Watching the courage of ordinary low-income people as they deal with the aftermath of Katrina and Rita, it is hard to decide which politicians are more contemptible – Democrats who are rediscovering poverty and blaming it on George W. Bush, or Republicans who are rediscovering poverty and claiming that the government can fix it. Both sides are unwilling to face reality: We haven’t rediscovered poverty, we have rediscovered the underclass; the underclass ha been growing during all the years that people were ignoring it, including the Clinton years; and the programs politicians tout as solutions are a mismatch for the people who constitute the problem.”
Charles Murray, editorial, WSJ 9/29/2005
—–
And further, from the Comment section of the new (November) Atlantic Monthly:
“Things Left Undone”
Richard A. Clarke, Atlantic Monthly, November 2005
“And now we see that our ability to deal with the aftermath of disasters, whatever their cause, has actually regressed since the mid-1990s when FEMA was an independent agency with cabinet status run by competent and nonpartisan personnel.”
And further down:
“People concerned about readiness on the home front have taken to comparing the cost of specific projects to the “burn rate” of spending on the war, as in this analysis published in Mother Jones: security upgrades for all subway and commuter-rail systems, or twenty days in Iraq; security upgrades for 361 US ports, or four days in Iraq; explosives screening for all US passenger-airline baggage, or ten days in Iraq.”
In conclusions:
“Many Americans are familiar with a prayer of confession, perhaps learned in childhood, that includes the line “We have left undone those things which we ought to have done: and concludes “Have mercy upon us”. It is time we admit we have left things undone, and set about doing them.”
All in keeping with my own drivel from previous posts.
The telephone line has been out of service for 5 days. It was restored today about 4 PM. I immediately got on-line and started to catch up, to no avail. The back-log is too great. I suppose that this should only encourage me to move forward with my plans for a high-speed cable modem, but the basement clean-out which must precede the rewiring of the basement is enough incentive to let it slide a little longer.
Meanwhile, I will get caught up, hopefully, just in time to fall behind again this weekend when I must be at a conference.
Tonight was knitting night. No computing or sewing here.
Meanwhile, while the phone was down I was busy; I was not busy thinking about what I would do if I had phone service and a computer connection. I actually thought about the computer very little. I have long had a great capacity for ignoring things I don’t like or can’t change.
The Bernina and the Elna were fired up this week in practical activities rather than creative endeavors. A front ripped through on Thursday on the same wind that frizzled my telephone line into non-functioning status. I finally was motivated to switch the closet to fall mode. The sewing room has been packed with clothes in need of mending or alteration and I have been busy: taking in, letting out, and mildly altering the shape of many things. The results are gratifying but not photographically interesting.
I also started to realize that some of the fabrics that were put aside as transitional sewing have now missed the starting bell and will not be used until next spring. They are awaiting the opportunity to move into out-of-season storage. Of course as soon as I get the fall clothes out, move the summer clothes to the darker reaches of the closet, and start to think of wools and fall fabrics, the temperatures shift again and we are back to having days in the mid to upper 80s. I think Autumn is just a big tease.
Pardon the strange sizing and typing in my earlier post. I was trying to do something reasonable, the phone line went down three times during that post, each time I got it back I couldn’t see what had been done before.
No excuse really, but I don’t have time to deal right now and there is too much to do.
Sanity will return sometime.
[update] I might have it fixed. Any remaining bugs will probably sit. If it is really weird, let me know.
I’m back from the dead. Well, dead as in dead telephone line anyway. Our phone line has been out since Thursday morning and I have not been able to connect to the Internet or what-have-you, and therefore have not been able to post. I have survived very well. Verizon thought they fixed it Friday, they thought they fixed it Monday, but today the telephone actually works again. Hooray! Hooray!
The good news is that they have discovered greater troubles on my line and have to trace it back through the town. I have service in the meantime. Perhaps this will solve the fuzziness, static, buzzing and occasional dropped lines we get here!
I still want to upgrade to some kind of higher speed line someday, but we have to rewire the basement for new cable wiring before that can happen. It will happen, but when????? when I think of it at a practical time to call the electrician or am not crazy with other activities.
Knitting Progress during the Missing Days:
To begin, nothing has been completed, not that I haven’t tried.
POSH
Posh has been completed and assembled, at least as far as knitting with the yarn called posh is concerned. In a desperate attempt to finish in September I worked frantically only to discover that I did not have the right size crochet hook to finish the edges!! In fact I don’t have a hook anywhere near the right size. Yet another unfinished project.
Did I run right out and look for a crochet hook? No. There is no store that close. Did I call up and order one? No. I hoped to go by the new LYS today, but canceled all my plans to sit here and watch the TelCo repair man come and go. I did get both freezers defrosted while I waited though.
TESLA
I am knitting on Tesla again. I tried it on and decided that I needed to add more shaping through the waist and torso and so have added a few more decreases. The fabric does not have a lot of give and it kind of bags on the string I used for trying on. Having side seams would have added a bit of structure but the yarn probably would have sagged between them. Hopefully the sleeves and the neckline shaping will work as well. It is really a guessing game as I go, but that is what makes knitting fun, if slow.
SOCK
I have overcome SSS and started the second sock. I have almost 1 inch of ribbing knit, not great progress I know, but I haven’t really devoted that much time to it. At 84 stitches around on tiny size 0 needles it is not a fast project.
MISCELLANEOUS OTHER PROJECTS
I knit a swatch with a sample of Austerman Labella which I got from Elann. I like the fabric I knit and it would make a great lightweight cardigan. That was my car project coming home from Pittsfield/Hillsdale on Sunday. We went to dinner at Aubergine after our last Pittsfield concert and I needed something to knit in the dark. Neither Tesla nor sock would have been appropriate, Labella really wasn’t appropriate either as it was hard to feel the stitches. Still, a passable swatch was created. I have been thinking about it. I know that yarn went on sale this morning but as I had no phone service at that time I haven’t checked the status of the yarn at Elann. It is not like I am going to run out of knitting projects anytime in the near future.
What have I done today? Sometimes I don’t remember and I wonder what I did all day and why nothing got done on the big projects: All in all it was a typical day for a housewife and part-time office manager, and I am happy with what was accomplished. I really have no complaints about my life but I harbor suspicions that I could get a lot more done if I tried harder.
We got up a little early this morning at 6:30. I was very draggy this morning and moving slowly.
Made Breakfast, cleaned up the kitchen, made bed.
Put away yesterday’s handwash. Washed pantyhose followed by a silk sweater.
Added water to the pool for one hour. Swept deck and front walk.
Cleaned all 3 bathrooms including thoroughly cleaning out vanity and cosmetic cabinets in yellow bathroom. Master bathroom only required a few grungy spots and areas that George tends to miss on Mondays.
Washed outside of Stove Vent
Washed towels and bath mats.
Ordered yoghurt from Old Chatham Sheepherding Company.
Called Shirley Cunningham and had nice discussion about her fitting system and ordered first part of fitting program and a couple of books.
Post to Purls and Murmurs
By that time it was 11:00 and time for me to get dressed and ready for the day.
Attempted to call Mom, left message.
Read Times Literary Supplement of 9/23/2005
12:30 left house:
manicure at Polished
Mother Earth’s for gluten-free groceries
PetCo for a fresh water circulating dish for Tabasco, and cat clippers.
Sew N Vac to pick up the scissors that were mended.
Post Office for mail
Home at 3:00
Talk to Mom
Office billing, payroll and miscellaneous accounting and bookkeeping work
6:00 Feed Tabasco and assemble new “fresh flow” water bowl. Tabasco accepts flowing water immediately and rejects bowl of standing water.
Knit until George comes home.
George comes home at 7:30. Talk.
Cook dinner: approximately 30 minutes:
Breaded Veal Cutlets
Fresh Tomato wedges
Buckwheat spaetzle with garlic
peas with Shiitake mushrooms
Plan menu for next week.
Make grocery list.
Finish knitting last sleeve of Posh.
Place order with Professional Cutlery Direct. Computer is slow . I order replacement utensils but forget to order roasting pan I wanted. It will keep.
Continue reading “A Bolt from the Blue and Other Essays” by Mary McCarthy
Lights out at about 12 Midnight.
I have been working on Posh since Sunday, well, mostly Sunday and Tuesday, when I made great progress on the last sleeve:
Posh was great car knitting as we were meeting friends for dinner after our weekly concert in Pittsfield and I knew we would be driving home in the dark. Neither Tesla or the sock are suitable for nighttime car trips as I can’t feel the stitches adequately without looking.
I have suddenly gotten in a mad rush as I realize that I have finished no knitting projects this month and it is so close to the end. I will finish the sleeve today and get the sweater assembled. I hope to get started on the front edges, if not finished. I. Must. Finish. Something.
It’s not just knitting. I have done half the sewing I planned for this month and have been slow at gardening progress as well. Everything seems to take longer than I planned, especially the yard work and construction, but then I suppose that is always the case. I am basically lazy. If I didn’t set lots of goals for myself I would probably get nothing done.
It’s that old "protestant ethic" work-driven upbringing coming back to bite me.