So I Finished Figure 72

...and went straight on to Figure 78, Sechseckiges Deckchen mit tiefen Zacken (hexagonal doily with sharp teeth).
This one is all nice and organized in the center, and gets a little strange towards the edges. I'll be interested to see how it blocks out.

Once again, I found the chart was cut along the left side and pasted back together missing some stitches. In this case, the first part of the chart was shown twice, and the second part was symmetrical, so I think I have it worked out.

It's like codebreaking, especially since the original instructions are not only in German, which I never studied, but also in the lovely and confusing fraktur.

A complete puzzle from start to finish - I guess only my fellow puzzle fanatics can quite understand the fascination and the satisfaction of wrestling it into submission.

I've gone and ordered the other two Christine Duchrow books published by Lacis, and their somewhat abridged version of Kunst-Stricken. It was the devil to try and find used copies of these books that are still in print and on offer from the publisher - apparently while I wasn't looking, the used book market fell on its head and forgot that "used copy" was supposed to mean "cheaper copy".

One of the great delights of the early internet for me was the sudden access to used book markets. Instead of contracting with a book-finding service, I could go to AbeBooks or BookFinder and poof! find a copy of a great out-of-print book for half the price or less of new.

Now it looks like some of the used booksellers aren't doing their own research and checking for in-print status and new-from-the-publisher price, especially not for niche things like reprints from small publishers like Lacis.

Instead they're checking Amazon, seeing a price of $36, and pricing their copy at $36. Meanwhile, the new price is $22. hmph!

Knitting Tragedies

Not the kind involving 500 stitches escaping off a circular needle.

I love lace knitting. But once in a while I run my head painfully hard into the brick wall of how undervalued this particular lacemaking technique is.

Yesterday was one of those days.

I stopped at the Blue Star Antique Pavilion and browsed around until I found these three doilies: Both of these patterns are in Knitted Lace 2 (Kunst-Stricken II).

The two white ones are the cover doily of the first section of the book.

The second one is a very pretty doily called "Anemone", on page 25 (page 17 in the original).

The tragedy?

I paid 88 cents each for the white ones. $1.88 for the colored one.

First Amendment

I shouldn't have to say this, and I don't like having to say it, because political stuff tends to make me sputter incoherently. I like to write and talk, but I don't argue well.

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

And yes, "free exercise thereof" does include religions that I personally think were made up by charlatans; and speech that makes me want to administer dope slaps; and assemblies of people with opinions I consider regrettable.

Because the whole freedom thing means not just for me, but also for them.

That's what this country is about.

And tomorrow: Back to knitting. Or netting. Or dog pictures.

In Which the DH Learns About Mice

Once upon a time, there was a smoked turkey.

The smoked turkey was eaten up, and its carcass put into my big canning pressure cooker and made into soup stock.

But the cook (my dear husband) ran out of time to make soup. The canning pressure cooker was too big to fit into the refrigerator.

So the cook had a bright idea: he would put the kettle of stock outdoors, where it was 14 F (-10 C) and thaw it and make the soup later.

Monday there was a snowstorm, and after driving home from work in the snow, he cleared the driveway with the snowblower and came in too tired to make soup.

Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday went by.

Thursday I glanced at the top of the canner when I came home from work at night (in another snowstorm) and wondered what those black specks on the top of it were.

Friday morning in daylight I took a good look: a nasty little mouse had climbed on the top and tried to get in by gnawing off tiny bits of the rubber safety seal.

Argh.

Fortunately it didn't get in . . . but I don't guess the canner will get left out in the snow again any time soon.

Oh, No I Don't!

I was reading an article the other day, and later when I went to work I was still thinking about it.

It doesn't matter what it was about, because basically what it was about was fear. What it boiled down to was the article said, "Here is another thing to be afraid of, here is why it is scary, booga booga booga booga booooooo!"

And why I was still thinking about it is that I don't need any help being afraid. I have one of those five-alarm adrenal systems that goes off with lights and sirens and big red fire engines for any teeny change in my life.

When I was a kid, my heart rate would go up if I had to wait at a different bus stop. I do not need anything new to worry about.

I can already take the stuff that I know about farming and pesticides and herbicides and the water table and soil micro-organisms and fungi and extrapolate, and keep myself up nights.

I read a lot. So with about five minutes' head start, my little rabbity mind can be running zigzags in the brambles about pretty much any subject you can think of, "Oh no oh no oh no oh no!"

A person can go crazy living like that.

Fortunately I discovered walking and meditation and drawing and poetry at an early age.

More on that tomorrow!

I'm A-LIIIIIIIIVE!

Hi, I'm alive, didja miss me? Huh, didja, didja?

Saturday I spent the whole day at the Michigan Fiber Festival in humid 90-degree air, and after we got home, two internet installer guys in a van showed up to replace our broadband wireless receiver.

I thought, Great! Because the old one would work, then not work. Then work a little. Then work great for two days, then not work.

So they replaced the Jiffy pop receiver with a square-looking one, and came inside to test the speed. It looked great!

"Thanks a lot!" I said, and they got in their van and drove away, and I'm sure they had no sooner turned onto the street when our son said, "Mom, my game isn't downloading!"

Sure 'nough, it wasn't. Nothing was. Tried powering down the new receiver and powering it back up. Nothing nothing nothing nothing.

Sunday we were at the fiber festival again most of the day, but at the end of the day, still nothing!

We called them on Monday. Blah local tower down blah. And it just happened to coincidentally go down seconds after we got a new receiver? Hm.

Tuesday: tower up, no internet detected. Argh. Called and complained.

Today: called again. Sat and listened to terrible hold music for about half an hour. Sounds like they stretched an old Andreas Vollenweider tape, chopped it into pieces, and put it back together with masking tape.

Finally got different guy who had me unplug the antenna while he did . . . something. Then plug it back in to see if I'm connected. Whoa, magic, internet!

I'm back, hi hi hi!

Fiber festival report later while I recover from this bout of internet withdrawal.

Copy Cat

So much happened in the last couple of days, I keep realizing I left things out.

For example, fizzy ice cream doesn't really have a different taste. It's fizzy like a carbonated beverage. It tastes like fizzy mint chocolate chip!

Sunday I went out and mowed the grass despite having no power. It hadn't been mowed for nearly two weeks, what with rain and all, and it was shaggy everywhere. (Thus the importance of knowing how to wash mower exhaust and grass bits off without a shower.)

So I know for a fact that this tree was not down Sunday evening.

Apparently, yes, if this tree's friends jumped off a bridge, it would, too!

It fell over some time in the night Sunday after we went to bed. We had no wind in the night, but there it was, down in the freshly-mowed grass, Monday morning.

This was an old sweet yellow cherry tree from back in the days when our property was planted with sweet cherries, mostly red, and peach trees. It had the one little live branch on the side.
Mr. and Mrs. They sometimes say that if you grow yellow cherries, the birds won't get them, because they don't perceive that the cherries are ripe. But I guess the cedar waxwings never got the word, because they would always feast on them.

sigh One more tree to cut up for firewood.

The other thing we did was decide we were old/soft/rich enough to finally cave in and buy a generator to run the fridge, the freezer, and fill up the pressure tank with water every so often.

I have a big black rubber calf-watering tub I put under the eaves and catch lots of rainwater to flush the toilet with during times of no electricity, but rainwater off my roof is not drinking-quality water.

With the means to keep food cold and run the well pump, we can go without power for days, days I tell you.

And I have to go off on a minor rant here about the whole driving-into-the-storm thing . . . Friday while Mr. Amazing and Son were off at the movies, I sat with the battery-powered radio and tried to find anything, anything about the local weather.

With nothing else to do, I went up and down the dial listening for weather reports or local news, and thoroughly missing my online weather reports and radar.

I found a great big zero. The closest local station was playing the baseball game until it got rained out. Then the local announcer opened the phone lines so people could call in and talk about the baseball game.

It would have been really nice (she said sarcastically) if some station somewhere had mentioned that oh, by the way, severe thunderstorms are expected north of us, so we would have known not to go driving into flood conditions. But noooo, it was more important to play lame music, commercials for products which I will not buy on principle after listening to the annoying and intelligence-insulting commercials, or canned programming from goodness knows where while totally ignoring that anything local exists.

By which I mean to say we didn't know that storm was coming and drive into it anyhow - we drove north not knowing it was there and did the best we could once we were in the thick of it.

Random Thing I Forgot

(I'm still blaming this cold.)

The other random thing I meant to post about, which I just remembered, was about parent-teacher conferences and the No Child Left Behind act.

Our third-grader maxed out on the reading section. (Did I ever mention that we really really like to read in this house?) He got 411 out of a possible 411.

He learned to read by having Calvin and Hobbes read to him. Which probably explains a lot.

Then he took the STAR reading test, which claims he reads at 11th grade level (??) and says

"(child's name) likely reads for pleasure, information, and academic purposes. He can use indexes, glossaries, and footnotes in textbooks. (child) likely previews chapters before reading and takes notes while studying.

At this level, (child) needs to continue to read nonfiction materials, classic literature, and the daily news. . . . For optimal reading growth, (child) needs to continue recreational reading on a daily basis, ... identify bias, persuasion, and propaganda within text, and learn strategies for acquiring specialized or technical vocabulary."

O-kay. He's 8. Eight. Let's cut him a little slack on classic literature or learning to identify propaganda, eh?

And the stupid No Child Left Behind downside of this is that no matter what he scores in the reading section next year, even if he maxes out AGAIN, his achievement level will be:

"NO IMPROVEMENT"

And the school gets a ding against it, because the pupil showed no improvement.

Out of Print Books (Yes, Again)

Drat! I checked out another great knitting book from the library, only to find it's out of print and used copies are going for $82 to $195 on used-book websites like Alibris and Abebooks.

Oh, for the days when I could look up a great out-of-print book on the internet and find it for less than its original selling price, rather than four or five times the original price.

The book is Twined Knitting: A Swedish Folkcraft Technique by Birgitta Dandanell and Ulla Danielsson, the English translation by Robin Orm Hansen.

Here is an interesting tidbit. If you check out the 2007 BookFinder.com Report, issued annually in August, three of the top 10 searched-for books in the Crafts, Hobbies & How-To category (including cooking and gardening, sports and hunting, etc.) are knitting books:

#3 June Hiatt, The Principles of Knitting
#5 Alice Starmore, Aran Knitting
#6 Susanna Lewis, Knitting Lace: A Workshop with Patterns and Projects

Three out of the top ten, in a category that includes the cookbooks. Ever checked out how many cookbooks get churned out in a year? Just look at the size of the cookbook section in a bookstore, used or new.

Aran Knitting has appeared on the list every year starting in 2003.
The Principles of Knitting has appeared on it every year since 2004.
Knitting Lace has appeared every year since 2005.

We knitters really really want our out-of-print knitting books.

Someday someone will finally figure out how to do real print-on-demand and fairly compensate the authors and publishers.

And when that happens, we knitters are going to keep those Xerox DocuTech and IBM InfoPrint POD machines humming day and night. For years.

Sun, What Sun?

We had a couple of glorious days of winter sun, and first thing this morning, the weather forecast promised more.

But when daylight started to arrive, the sky looked like my 10:49 AM photo below.

"Mostly sunny"? This is "mostly sunny"? Where is this sun of which you speak?

By 10:25 AM the forecast had been revised to read "Partly sunny".

What part, exactly? The part above the clouds?
[There should be a N-S-W-E photo of the sky here!]


[shaking head]

Looks like excellent knitting weather to finish turning a pair of sock heels. I've finished knitting the decreasing part of the Jardin sock heels, and have started increasing again.

And while I'm knitting sock heels, I'm thinking about lace knitting. Some beautiful laceweight yarns are singing to me from my stash.

On My Nerves

I was going to try to write a cheery post about supporting the local animal shelter by buying plates of chocolate "stuff" (cookies, fudge, chocolate-dipped pretzels) at their Choco-Mania fundraiser, one of the least painful fundraisers I've ever given money to.

Then I thought I'd write about going ice skating twice in two days, and how good handknitted socks felt in rental ice skates.

Instead I ended up Googling stuff and got wound up and overwhelmed. I've got stuff bugging me, and I feel like that crabby poster that says, "I've got one nerve left, and you're standing on it!"

I probably should have stayed the heck off the internet and just knitted. It would have been more soothing.

Thing one I'd rather not go into in detail about. In sum, we're having some difficulties with our son's school, or our son is.

I've written about six sentences after the previous one and deleted them. Okay, make that seven. It's very hard to rant about something when you don't want to be specific. Anyway, that's the main one that's making my stomach hurt.

Thing two on my nerves is whatever Blogger changed.

Something changed so that in Firefox, my browser of choice, I can no longer use any of the little buttons at the top of the compose window: I can't bold or italicize text, create links, quote, or upload a photo. Known issues lists this as "Spell check is broken," but I don't use spell check.

Just clicking on the bold button creates an error in JavaScript Console,
"Error: Blsp is not defined
Source File: http://www.blogger.com/v-app/scripts/1211516377-richedit.blogger.js
Line: 412"

What the heck does that mean? Is "Blsp" Blogger spell check? I have no idea. All I know is last Sunday it worked and Tuesday it quit. The only button that works is the video upload one.

I can create posts in IE and all the little buttons work. Yarg, I hate using IE. Why would Blogger break things so they work in IE and not in Firefox? Boy, is it irritating to want to open the blog and complain, and find the compose window doesn't work unless I use my least favorite browser.

Maybe I'll feel better in the morning. When we're supposed to have a high temperature of 10 degrees.

Curse You Stupid Darkness!

Me and Lucy Van Pelt.

This was going to be a post about how grateful I was that I was too cheap to be scammed.

Yesterday I fell for a phone scam where some guy calls up and tells you he's a police dispatcher and needs you to call this number to talk to an officer at the scene of a fatal accident. Supposedly they got my number from the cell phone of the person in the accident.

"This number" is a *72 phone command that forwards your phone to another number, and as soon as you do that, the idea is that they start using your forwarded phone number to make calls to goodness knows where, which unlucky you get to pay for.

Fortunately for me, we're too cheap to pay for call forwarding, so it couldn't work. It just rang through to that "Your call cannot be completed as dialed: please hang up and try again" error message. I was feeling really grateful to be cheap, as soon as I figured this all out with the help of Snopes.

And then I was going to go on about mittens and weather where the rain or snow or rain or snow (whichever it is just now) blows straight sideways at 20 or 30 miles an hour and never bothers to actually land.

Instead, first I had a kid home with a mild cold.

Then I got a call from my husband at work: this time he didn't hit a deer in the dark and the lashing rain on the way to work. Instead he hit: a tree. Okay, it was a fallen tree that blocked the road completely from side to side. And he did brake before he hit it. And it was punky and rotten. And I'm certainly grateful he's okay.

The car, however, with only a payment or two left, is going to need some repairs.

Today is My Birthday

So yesterday I bought myself another sweater.

Not because I was cold -- because it was made of lovely angora yarn. 3USD. 11 ounces.

The yarn at the neck and top of the sleeves is mostly-white, shading to black at the cuffs and hem.

The yarn is five-stranded, shading from four white and one black at the top to four black and one white just above the bottom. (They aren't plied together, just stranded along and knit together.) At the color changes, the yarn was knotted at the edge. It spit-splices (I know, OH YUCK) beautifully.

They did cut and sew the tops of the shoulders, but I don't think I'll lose more than a row or two.

Introvert, Ranting

CoffeeLady left me a comment and mentioned being called a word I just hate: "anti-social". Grf. I got called that in high school, and I never liked it.

I'm not "anti" anything social. An introvert is NOT a broken extrovert. Sheesh.

I think of us introverts as being like soap bubbles: if you blow one bubble, it floats out there all perfect and round. If you blow another so it sticks to the first, both of them get a flat spot where they touch. And if you blow a whole big froth of bubbles, the ones in the middle get flat spots all over until they look more like crystals than bubbles.

Extroverts patently love being in the middle with flat spots all over. Introverts are soon ready to get out of the froth and fluff back out to their own nice spherical bubble selves.

We're not anti-social. [growls again] We don't need to "get over being shy". We're just introverts.

Still Life with Crabby Rants

Book Rant

"American" editions of books, like Terry Pratchett's "Bromeliad" trilogy.
Was it really an improvement to change Granny Morkie's, "Cheek!" to "Cheeky!" ?
Or to change Cut-Me-Own-Throat Dibbler's infamous sausage-inna-bun into a hot dog?

A) I'm insulted by the assumption that I can't figure out what the author meant in the original version from the context.

B) Hello! This is the 21st century. I have friends all over the world online who I can email and ask if I really can't figure it out.

C) Just imagine Dickens bowdlerized into American English. Ow. The very thought makes my brain hurt.

Shoe Rant

Bells, Tinkingbell, Samurai Knitter, Sheepish Annie and RoseRed all have been doing shoe posts lately. Cute shoes, kid shoes, comfy shoes. Argh.

[photo: my lovely grass-mowing shoes]

I'm shoe-challenged, myself. What usually happens when I shop for shoes is that I start at one end of the aisle, in the midst of cute shoes in a variety of colors, and as I walk toward my size, the cuteness dwindles, the colors fade, and by the time I get to my size and width, I am looking at:

One Pair of Tan Boats, Oars Optional.

*sigh*

Cold Rant

I'm feeling better. I actually knitted one row of spiral ribbing on my SuperSocke socks yesterday. (I realized how energy-zapping this particular cold was Sunday when I couldn't find the energy to read. Me, not read? [checks for pulse] )

I'm at the stage where you feel better but sound horrible (read: gluey consumptive-sounding cough), so people look at you sidelong in stores and edge away, wondering if there is something preventative they could take.

And if it could possibly be strong enough.

Stupid Spammers!

Grrrr! I hate spammers!

Not only do I get plenty of spam in my regular email, I also run and moderate several Yahoo groups. Lately they've been getting spam, too.

Even though I have to approve new members.

Even though I have to approve the posts of new members.

Even though I clearly state in my group descriptions that I will come after spammers with the thinnest steel lace-knitting needles in my possession and I'll --

Okay, well, no, the description actually says I have a zero tolerance spam policy and I will report spam to Yahoo for "Violation of TOS" (Terms of Service).

This works best if the spammer has a Yahoo ID. I report them to Yahoo Mail Abuse for sending the mail via Yahoo, and I turn them in for Yahoo Groups Abuse.

There are few things as satisfying in the virtual world as getting that email from Yahoo that says "We have taken action in accordance with our Terms of Service Policy," . . . and then to click on the spammer's ex-Yahoo ID and get a "Not Found" error message.

Awww, poor baby! Diddums widdo Yahoo ID go bye-bye?

That's what you get for trying to spam a group that says "Want to spam the group? The moderator has a zero tolerance spam policy, and will file a "Violation of TOS" report as fast as she can type."

Someday

Someday, the printing industry will enter the 21st century. How many times have you gotten a great knitting book, a relatively new knitting book, with a living author, from the library, and thought it was so great you wanted your own copy? And then tried to find one, learned it was out of print, searched for it on Abebooks or your choice of used-book service, and found the thing is considered "rare", so the book is going for $90.00 -- or more?

Me, too.

Then I've taken the step of looking up and emailing the publisher, thinking if I gave them the heads-up that their book was selling for a hundred bucks on eBay, they might consider doing a reprint, only to get the email brush-off (if they replied at all!) telling me to check Abebooks or eBay.

That really irritates me when I sent them an email detailing the current prices on Abebooks and the results of recent auctions on eBay.

Then to rant about this on various Yahoo lists, only to be told condescendingly, pityingly, silly little infant, that of course the printers couldn't do another printing -- didn't I know that they would have to do a minimum run of X-thousand copies and sell X copies to break even?

Well, I aced Econ. in college. I understand supply and demand fine. And I deeply resent being forced to rely on the honesty of other library patrons for my ability to continue to re-read a great book, or work a knitting pattern in a book I CAN'T own, because it's not in print and used copies are rare and expensive IF you can find one. Especially since you know and I know that if I am willing to throw my honesty out the window and spend the time, I can make my own copy in these days of scanners and home copiers.

If I understand that I can digitize a book and make a copy, how come the publishing industry doesn't do this? If they get X requests for a book, hows about they digitize it and do a "print on demand"?

I give you, just for example, one of the Xerox DocuTech printing and publishing machines. Here are a couple of juicy details:

Prints up to 135 pages per minute at 600 dpi

Provides standard stitching and thermal binding finishing

Sounds to me like that could print out my "out of print" book in under two minutes.

Don't love Xerox? Okay, how about an IBM InfoPrint? Same basic idea, different manufacturer.

When I am Queen of the Universe*, every little hole-in-the-wall bookstore will have access to real live honest-to-gosh print on demand printing. If I come in and want a book that's "out of print", the bookstore owner will be able to order me up a copy, whether they print it right there in the back room, or have to "order out". The publisher will get their five cents. The author or copyright holder will get their five cents. The bookstore will get their five cents. And I will be able to toddle home with my OWN legal, paid-for copy, to sticky-note, and put bookmarks in, and keep for the rest of my life or the duration of my interest.

* And I already have the promise of several votes based on my position that in the 21st century, there shall be no such item as an "out of print" book.