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Knitting Confession

I’ve been knitting seriously for about six years. I can make basic socks, a scarf, mittens, whatever. I’ve posted pictures of some of my work, and it’s decent stuff. Wearable and attractive. Even creative. But most of the detail work in my knitting has been from stranded colorwork.

Confession. I don’t really know how to read a knitting pattern. Not well, anyway. Mostly, this is because I never knit to other people’s pattern, but use some design templates I’ve found such as Elizabeth Zimmerman’s seamless yoke sweater, or Wendy’s Generic Toe Up Socks, then added color details as it suited me. The colorwork? Mostly easy, because I learned how to do stranded colorwork from the We Call Them Pirates hat. Yes, that is a pattern, but using some really simple stitch techniques so I didn’t get bogged down in the chart. I’m confident enough with this kind of thing that a steeked Nordic sweater only presents the problem of what sort of pattern and colorwork would look cool on it.

However, I’d like to branch out. I’d like to make an Aran sweater; I’d like to add texture detail on socks. But for the most part, the charts with their symbols weren’t making sense to me.

Why? I was expecting to be able to skim them.

You can’t skim when you don’t know the language. Just sayin’.

I get this with my computer students all the time. They don’t have the vocabulary for whatever it is we’re doing, and it short circuits their brains. Abbreviations and symbols are difficult to decipher until you’re actually fluent in the language. When you’re used to things being easy and fluent, going back to it being tedious to decipher can be a bit of a difficult leap.

The simple fact is that while I can knit some classes of garments quite well, and am a structural thinker, until I’m fluent with the language, puzzling out the charts and patterns for textured knitting is going to be hard. Nothing wrong with that mind, but I’d gotten too used to knitting being easy and automatic and had forgotten that tacking on a new skill is going to require more concentration.

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The First Time Having Socks

I’m knitting a pair of socks right now.  Pattern?  Heh.  I don’t really use one.

What I do (for you knitters out there), is a figure-8 cast-on toe-up sock knit in a stockingette with short row heels and a 2X2 rib for the cuff.  It’s the way I made the first pair of socks I ever made, and I like the basic idea.

I don’t even know if I do the short-rows “right”, mind.  But since the shape works, I don’t really care.

Hand-knit socks are funny.  If you’ve never worn them, the idea of getting socks as a gift seems a bit lame.  I get that. But I’ll tell you what, the look on a person’s face when they first try on a well-knit pair of hand-knit wool socks is funny as can be.   They look apprehensive at first, trying them on.  They don’t want to offend, but really, it’s a sock. How exciting can a sock be?  Besides, a hand-knits sock made to the specs of a specific person’s foot can look weirdly-shaped — not at all like commercial socks.

So here the person in, trying on… socks.  How silly.   They poke in the toe, and slide it over the foot gingerly.  After all, this is something hand-knit, and the maker is right there.  What if they <gasp> tear the sock that the knitter is clearly so proud of? How are they supposed to react?  Then, as the sock slides over the foot and nestles over the heel, the wearer gets this goofy look of bliss on their face, holds out the foot and wiggles the toes.  There is this dawning look of delight, rotating the foot and grinning.

You knitters know what I’m talking about.  I just wish I’d the sense to get pictures of people trying on hand-knit socks for the first time.

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Exercising While Fat

A friend of mine got yelled at out of a car window recently. She’s the author of Living ~400lbs and discusses being at the sigma six of the weight curve, being active, and life at that weight.

Being active? Yeah, like me she believes in working out. Just because it doesn’t automagically make you skinny doesn’t mean it’s not worthwhile. (We’re both technical people and by the nature of the work, that’s darn sedentary. We have to do something.)

I have a question for people: Do you deliberately put yourself in situations where you are likely to be mistreated on a regular basis? If not, why do you act surprised when a fat person doesn’t want to work out publicly? The very worst years of my life were high school, where I was yelled at, harassed and mistreated on a daily basis, and I could not get away from it. As an adult, I am not likely to choose to be in such a situation again. Not ever.

One of the lovely things about being in my forties and having developed a prickly hauteur is that being on the wrong end of this sort of rudeness is rare. But it’s not unknown. A gym patron made a wisecrack about my weight a few months ago. This individual and I do have a bit of a teasing relationship, but I did let him know that he was crossing a line. I did have to be professional about it as I work there, mind.

What is more common for me is a locker room comment about my “bravery” for appearing in a bathing suit. No, the women aren’t trying to be mean at all. They’re being genuine. They recognize that many women who would benefit from the joint-friendliness of water exercise don’t because they’re self-conscious in a bathing suit, and no wonder. People can sometimes be obnoxious. I had to work up the guts to go work out in the college pool with all the young athletes! One thing I did notice is that it wasn’t the athletes or the hard cores that were likely to be jerks. The one time I was messed with in a lane at the college was in the evening (On land I was on crutches from knee surgery and feeling vulnerable. I swear it can be like blood in a shark tank to a certain type of person) and it was a frat boy who thought he was funny. I don’t think he found being dunked by the fat lady quite so funny. But that kind of thing can get you down. I don’t get crap in the pool much these days. My skill makes it obvious I belong there and making a comment only makes you look like an ass. Thing is, as far as I am concerned, you don’t have to earn the right to work out by being really skilled at something. You have a right to go into a gym and be clumsy or slow or whatever. You have a right to walk down the sidewalk or ride a bike, or whatever you want to do.

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How to Make Dessert Shooters

I’ve been doing No-S as a diet lately. If I’ve never mentioned it before, it’s quite simple. No Sweets, No Snacks and No Seconds, except (sometimes) on days beginning with S. It’s less of a quick weight loss scheme and more of a way to regulate eating. While I’m not overindulging, I’m certainly eating enough!

But, being an S-day, I wanted a treat. While a huge sweet would be perfectly legal, I like the idea of moderating treats. You know, like they say the French do. (Wonderful food, but small, delicious portions).

So, one of the things I’m doing for treats is making them deliciously special, but small.

Small is definitely the point here. This is a mini martini glass.   It holds about two ounces, so you’re talking about something the size of a shot glass.  In fact, shot glasses make superb glasses for dessert shooters.  (Hey!  Maybe that’s where the name came from.  Hint:  Yes.  It did.)I bought these glasses because I love a dirty martini or an appletini, but frankly, those 8 oz. cocktail glasses I have are just too big for what is essentially a drink that’s pure alcohol.  (Trivia fact: Cocktail glasses used to be about 4oz.   They’ve gotten bigger!)But not only are they good for enjoying alcohol in moderate amounts, they’re good for enjoying desserts in the same way.
The principle behind a satisfying dessert shooter is to layer tastes and textures.  The base layer should be fairly firm.  Think cake, cookies, or anything sweet that retains a reasonably firm texture.This particular shooter has small cubes of pound cake I had left over from the pound cake.But in building your shooter, you don’t have to choose something neutral like vanilla pound cake.  You can pick something strongly-flavored like gingerbread, dark chocolate cake or anything that has a firm texture and a distinct taste.
Remember, principle is to contrast flavor and texture.  So if you choose a neutral base layer, you should be choosing something with a stronger, more distinct flavor.  If you chose a strong flavor for the base layer, choose a milder flavor for the secondary layer.In either case, you also want to contrast not only the flavor, but the texture.  The base layer should have a firmer texture, so the secondary layer should be something smoother or creamier.  Think ice cream, pudding or something along those lines.This particular shooter is using mint oreo ice cream.
After you add the secondary layer, you can use a tertiary layer of some other flavor. In this case, I didn’t but repeated the pound cake/ice cream theme.
The final layer can be another flavor if you wish.  In this case, hot fudge, which gave not only a flavor and texture contrast, but a temperature one, too!This is also a good time to use a garnish, if you want.  Say a berry or two, or maybe a sprig of mint. My grocery store didn’t have any.  Hey, I live in rural New Hampshire and it’s February in a snowstorm.  What the devil do you expect?

These were a big hit at my house this evening! Everyone in my family loves tasty things, and this was an amazingly easy treat that looks impressive and tastes wonderful. You could make up a bunch of these for parties. Because they’re so quick and simple, you could even serve several different sorts to suit several tastes.

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The F-Word

Recently I had to listen to a series of tapes for something.  While I can’t quote from them, I’d like to present a fictional bit of dialog that gives the general flavor.

“Did you close the fuckin’ door?”

“Yeah, baby.  I closed it.  Don’t fuckin’ worry about it.  Could you help me put away the fuckin’ groceries?  I got your favorite fuckin’ ice cream.”

“Fuckin’ A!  That’s great, sweetheart!  We can fuckin’ eat it while we’re watching that new fuckin’ movie by Micheal Bay.  Think that’d be some fuckin’ fun?”

Now, I’d be the first to say that my general speech is not drawing room fashion at all –at all.  But after listening to several hours of the aforementioned dialog, I just want to limit my vocabulary to the mildest of Mauve Decade euphemisms. No, not out of prudery, but because the Heavy Seven have been overused to the point of not delivering their original intent – shock value.  The f-bomb[1] is no longer shocking or anything in many contexts.  It’s just boring and tedious.

As a writer, I’m all about using language to deliver an emotional impact, mind you.  The thing is, shock value of any sort requires judicious usage.  If I called someone “cupcake”, ferinstance, every single time I’d been vexed, it would have no impact.  However, it’s a well-known verbal tic of mine that people know gets used when a serious line has been crossed.  The rarity value gives it its power.

I’m not saying swearing doesn’t have its place.  It does.  But after the last few weeks, I sure have decided I want to do it a bit less!

[1] Not that I’d never use the word, but how often would you use it if you limited yourself to discussing copulation, in which case, it might be le mot juste.

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Back in the Pool

I’ve been psycho busy today. Taught a class this morning; had a meeting this afternoon. Fortunately it was at the gym and right before lap swim started for the afternoon. So I wore my bathing suit as my underwear before the meeting at the gym and brought my gym bag. You see, I was feeling grumpy and stressed and achy, so I thought I’d go ahead and work the kinks out in the water. I’ve been trying to get in more exercise and my joints were hurting. Hence, the swim.

Ahh, swimming, why I have neglected thee?

It’s been too long since I’ve gotten my butt into the pool. I’m weak as a cat. It took me half an hour to swim half a mile. That’s really kinda slow for me. My upper body isn’t as strong as once it was. That’ll change soon enough, though I expect I’ll be sore in the morning.

But, oh swimming feels so very good. There’s something almost magical about slicing through the water, concentrating on the breathing rhythm, and feeling the bubbles slide past. I generally get out of the pool after a good swim feeling an enormous sense of satisfaction, bordering on afterglow.

Now why was I not swimming again?

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At the Foot of the Throne

I’ve released At the Foot of the Throne as a Kindle book.  It’s 99 cents, so not a huge risk if you wanna check it out.

Rags to riches and finding True Love is not always all that the fairy tales say. In AT THE FOOT OF THE THRONE, two countries stand on the brink of war, and a young villager finds herself thrown into the center of the conflict.

A small shepherding community on the border of Lotharia and Sudra is destroyed leaving Marra the sole survivor. Pitched into the unstable politics between the two nations, Marra finds herself ordered to rebuild the strategically-important town in the hopes of preventing a war between the two nations.

If you don’t own a Kindle, but want to get it anyway, keep in mind that Amazon has e-reader software for its book in many formats — PC, MAC, and many mobile devices.

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Efficient Wood Stove Heat

A fan in a window with duct tapeI have a wood stove, and while I love it, it has some of the drawbacks of something that uses ambient heat to raise the temperature in the house. The heat tends to stay in a single room.

When I was a child, our wood stove was in the basement in the laundry room. Sure, sure, there was a straight line from the wood stove up the stairs to heat the house, but still, when it was 90 in the laundry room it might be 60 upstairs.

Daddy rigged up a fan system that was controlled by a temperature switch to help with this. I never did pay attention to the details, other than knowing it existed, but that was enough to help me solve my own problem in my house.

My wood stove is in the jungle room, a plant-filled entryway to my house that leads into my kitchen through a large open doorway. It also has an open window frame leading into the dining room and living area of my home. Without a fan, I can heat the jungle room to around 80 without significantly warming much more than the kitchen. I like hanging out in the jungle room, as it has comfy chairs and it’s nice to be in a room with lots of windows and plants, but I’d rather get more efficient heat in the rest of my house!

I have a fan with a temperature control, though I can’t just set it to, say 65F. It’s just a wheel with no actual gauge, but that’s okay. I can put a thermometer next to it and set it to come on when the temperature gets where I want it, manually. Then, if I put the fan in the window leading to the rest of the house it automatically will blow the warm air from the jungle room into the living and dining room, making the wood stove a much more efficient source of heat for a larger part of the house. It’s also nice because we don’t have to turn it off at night. When the fire goes out and the temperature drops, it’ll turn off all by itself.

Yes, this is rigged with duct tape. Possibly next summer I’ll build some sort of fancy frame to insert into the window for it, but hey… it has a light side, a dark side and it binds the Universe together.

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A Single-Tasker I Love: Amazon Kindle

I got a Kindle for my birthday. I’ve been reading books electronically for years, so obviously as e-readers became more accessible, it was inevitable I’d want one.

I really, really like it. I’ve already read a couple of novels on it (I’m in the process of re-reading Snow Crash). I’ve also explored several of its features, but for me, it’s about the books.

All my Baen Free Library books, as well as several I’d bought from Baen are already loaded on it. Basically, if it was in a format Mobipocket could read and is not DRM protected, you’re golden. Yes, yes, you have to use the USB cable to do it, rather than download it directly to the device, but I don’t consider that a major problem.

And, of course, I’ve a plethora of books from the Gutenberg Project. They’re also happily nestled on my device.

That being said, yeah, yeah, I’m buying and downloading from Amazon, too. But it’s less than 15% of my electronic collection.

So, how’s the device versus the way I’d been reading on the netbook and my Android?

It’s superior the netbook and my phone for reading a book. The e-paper display does imitate a book better, and the fact that the screen is not backlit does make it much nicer to read in bright sunlight. It also means that there’s less of a battery drain. I read for hours at a time, so this is very significant. It’s lighter than my netbook, and has a larger screen than my phone – better imitating the positives of the paper book experience. It has 4GB of memory, but that’s effectively a little over 3GB for the user. To give some perspective? I have 197 novel-length books on my Kindle right now, and still have 2.8 GB free.

The Kindle also has a lot of “nifty features” that I probably won’t use much. Text to speech? I’m an audiobook addict and all, but it doesn’t replace a human performance. Oh yeah, audiobooks! I have an Audible account that I did wind up linking to my Amazon account. However, I’ll probably be pretty unlikely to use the device for listening to audiobooks. I still want a more portable device for that, as I tend to listen to audiobooks while I’m doing chores. Also, it doesn’t have a sleep timer, so it doesn’t serve my habit of listening to audiobooks as I fall asleep.

You can browse the web some from it. It’s okay, but my phone serves that purpose better for my on-the-go needs.

So, I don’t love the Kindle for the add-ons. I love it, but I love it because it’s very, very good at what it was designed for – to read books!

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How Smart Phones Ruin Shopping

One of the delights of being Da Mama is to send a husband and child out on a shopping trip. Watching them screw up is fun. There is nothing more enjoyable than the anticipation of a soul-cleansing scream at the family for Doing It Wrong when being sent out shopping.

My parents understood this perfectly. Mom would write out a list on the back of an envelope and hand it to my father. Dad would take the envelope as importantly as a five year old sent to the corner store and go to the grocery store. The list would say:

  • Butter
  • Milk
  • Eggs
  • Cream
  • Chocolate chips[1]

Simple, yes?

Well, we usually ate margarine on our bread, but Dad realized vaguely that margarine and butter weren’t quite the same thing. He’d stand perplexed in front of the dairy aisle for at least 20 minutes, while time was dribbling away to get the damned Toll House cookies done so that we could have food to feed our ravening hoard of relatives come some sacred holiday.

Daddy, a Captain in the Overthink Army, would get some weird oil product we’d never bought in our lives. Never mind that for the past 20 years of marriage, his wife had always used butter and only butter to bake those confections of delicious goodness, chocolate chip cookies.

Eggs were another conundrum. Should how many should he get? And what size? Does the color of the shell matter? These things are a terrible dilemma. Getting it wrong meant that he was not being a Very Useful Engine and a fate not to be borne.

As far as chocolate chips? Look, there’s only one type of chocolate chip. We all know that if you’re making Toll House Cookies, you only use Nestlé’s semi-sweet chocolate chips, even if they are encouraging third world mothers to starve their babies using watered down formula. You gotta have standards, people.

Did Daddy understand this? He did not. As far as he was concerned Hershey’s was the final name in chocolate[2]. But Hershey’s chocolate chips do not have the piquant bite of Nestlé’s, and the cookies would be All Ruined in the eyes of his children. Really. There’d be tears, weeping and refusal to eat cookies. Honest.

So, all in all, that was a lot of pressure to put on a man who might be able to program a missile to follow an escaping Godless Commie spy out of honest American airspace, but was helpless when he was faced with the complications of kitchenry.

The eyerolling at home was wonderfully entertaining.

Do I get this pleasure? No, I do not. If my son (to pick a person at random) in a fit of forgetfulness while contemplating whether Sonic the Hedgehog could beat Starscream in a battle to the death forgets to bring his grocery list with him, I just get a text message and a request to email it. Worse? If the guys aren’t sure what they’re supposed to bring home, do they guess like any normal male so I can roll my eyes at how little they understand about how the home is run?

No.

I get a phone call.

I am deprived of the little pleasures. Pity me and my sad existence.

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[1]Mom only sent Dad out for small lists when she was in the middle of doing Serious Baking in anticipation of guests arriving the next day.

[2] Households with interfaith marriages do have their challenges, don’t they?