Elizabeth Moon's Blog, page 9

Socks: one pair down, two more coming

I finished the rose-nep socks yesterday:  Plymouth Yarns Galway Nep, a discontinued yarn, in a rose color with multicolored "neps".


This is their first wearing: straight off the needles, for a full day and night, so they begin "setting" to my feet.  My 49th pair of socks completed, though not all the socks were for me.   After they're washed (hand washed) and dried, they'll go into the regular rotation.  The light was going tricky this morning (started clear sun, but by midmorning high clouds were blowing across) so the next picture needed a touch of histogram adjustment (and the one above could've used a touch more.)  I rolled up my jeans to give a better view of the Eye of Partridge heel reinforcement; it continues under the heel for the length of the heel pad.


Two pairs are now on the needles: a brown-heather pair begun when the previous medium blues came off the needles, and a pair I started last night.


The multi-colored yarn is Mountain Colors "Bitterroot Rainbow" and the warm brown heather is Ella rae Classic #178.  I'm considering striping both of these...the brown with a dark green or a "golden" green (I have both in the stash) and the multi-color with the saturated colors in its mix.  Or maybe not.  It's more fun to knit stripes, but then it's more tedious to weave in the extra ends.  One-yarn socks have only two ends (unless something goes wrong, like a flaw in the yarn that requires cutting out a bad place) and that makes them quicker to finish.  Brown-heather is now the leading sock, and the multi-color the following; I would like to finish the brown by the end of this month and the multi-colored by the end of March.  Then start the summer socks, which go faster usually: two pairs a month are possible.

January Socks in Work

Socks overlap: I like to start a pair when I turn the heel of the socks just ahead of them, and sometimes I get lucky and am ready to turn the heel of the "behind" pair when I finish the "front" pair.  Not always.  So far this month I've finished one pair (medium blue) and started a following pair (rose with speckles), but wasn't down to the heel turn for some days after finishing the blue.  So when I did turn the heels of the rose pair, I started a brown heather pair (a warm orange-tinted brown).     Here's where they are, now.

The rose socks are past the little bump on the top of the foot and have had their final decrease before the toe, so there's just straight knitting, no counting, for a few more inches.  The brown socks are still on their ribbed cuffs, one just over two inches and the other just under; they'll end up at five inches before I switch to plain knitting.   I've not made socks in either of these colors before, though I've used the rose as a combination with other colors in the summer short socks.  These will be "fill-in" socks, to complete the seven pairs in a week's bag of socks (there should always be five: red, blue, green, turquoise, and purple, plus any two other colors.)  Once I realized I wasn't limited, in socks, to the same colors that look good near my face, I went just a little crazy...I can wear yellows, coppery tones, etc. on my feet.

When the rose socks are done, I'll add their final picture here, as well as on Ravelry

First Finished Socks in 2016

And here's the "denim blue" pair finished:



It was a gray day when I took the picture, so I lightened it somewhat.  The yarn here is Ella rae Classic # 46
The rose socks (Plymouth Yarns Galway Nep, discontinued color) are past the ribbing and onto the plain knitting between the ribbed cuff and the heel flap.  The pair after that is not fully on the needles yet (one is, with the ribbing started for stability.  The other will be within a day or two.  I can't put the second sock on the needles right now for LifeStuff reasons.  It's my 50th pair and I chose a color type I haven't used yet: a brown/gold/orange heather.  The yarn is Ella rae Classic #178.    No pictures of these yet; they'll get their chance when they're done.

2016 Socks Starting

The blue socks showed up in an earlier post--still not finished, as Christmas/New Years/book revision-before-Editor-gets-back-after-holidays is not conducive to finishing a pair that continues to have problems (like knots in the yarn, indicating a tie done at the factory).   So, seeing more problems ahead, I elected to start another pair to take on the first convention trip of the year, GAFilk in Atlanta (a great filk convention, by the way--thoroughly enjoyed it!)  and chose Plymouth Yarn's Galway Nep in a rose color, that I've used for striping short socks before.   Here's where I am, not quite halfway through January:


The blues are past the heel turn; one is past the gusset decreases and the other is just starting them.  Behind them, the rose pair has completed the ribbing on one sock, and has a row or two to go on the other.  They will wait until I finish the gusset decreases on the blue pair and then proceed slowly while the blues charge ahead to finish (I hope!) by the end of the month.  However, there's other work to be done (the annual report on our wildlife management project), plus revisions requested by Editor when they come in, plus work around the house beyond daily chores.
Last year's sock total was  2 pairs of regular socks for a friend, 8 pairs regular socks for myself, and 7 pairs short socks for myself.  17 pairs total.  I hope to finish 1, 7, and 7 this year, and do my first pair of fingerless mitts.   Anyone who wants to see all the sock pairs done last year can check on my Ravelry projects page.

Armed Insurrection and False Claims

The armed gang that occupied the headquarters buildings of Malneur National Wildlife Refuge and is now (according to them) planning to stay there and start farming the land is one of many anti-government groups that have a seriously skewed understanding of government, law, the Constitution, and their "rights."  They have previously demonstrated a willingness to threaten violence (threatening to shoot federal employees doing their job in Nevada) and have boasted since how happy they would have been to kill every federal employee there.   Now they have seized territory and plan to hold it--an act that, from anyone else, would be construed as an act of war (seizing territory from a sovereign nation.)    They have said that they have women and children with them to act as human shields should they face a forceful attempt to evict them from the territory they are holding illegally.  One of them, stroking his rifle, announed that no, he wasn't ever going to surrender and go to jail.

This is armed rebellion against the lawful government (which they claim is unlawful) and it is the same attitude that began the Civil War.:  "we have a right to whatever we want".  Aside from using women and children as human shields, which is a sign of degeneracy and cowardice.  At least the Johnny-Rebs didn't do that.

Among the claims made are that the family the gang of thugs showed up to "protect" were subject to illegal "double jeopardy" when their sentence was changed.  Double jeopardy applies to someone being acquitted for a crime and then re-tried for the same crime.  What happened here was that the trial judge did not impose a mandatory sentence he should have, and an appellate court insisted that the mandatory sentence be applied.    Another claim is that the federal government, with the BLM, has "cleared people off of their land" in the west.   That did happen when the government moved Native American tribes around, but that's not what these bozos are talking about.  What they're talking about is that the federally owned lands administered by the BLM--land that belongs to the whole country--puts some requirements on use by private individuals:  if you run cattle on it, you're supposed to pay a fee.   This land does not belong to ranchers just because their cattle are on it--they *lease* grazing rights, and the BLM does limit how many cattle they can put there.   In return, the BLM does many things to improve the range, to help ranchers deal with predators and competing livestock (such as wild horses and burros), to improve water supplies.  Many ranchers get along with his program just fine.  Others...think they should be able to use any land that's not privately owned for whatever they want.

The refusal to accept that the government can own land, and manage government owned land for the best interests of the country as a whole, is part of the larger picture of anti-government activism.  These people not only want public lands (rangeland, wildlife reserves, etcl) "returned to the people" (by which they mean a small minority of the people--them and their buddies) but they want National Parks, state parks, county and city parks, military bases...everything....returned to private ownership.  And they feel that they have personally been harmed by any regulation of their activity on public lands (including damaging them.)

Many ranchers in the west do not own all the land they use.  Some lease private lands; many lease public lands.  But use does not translate to ownership.   If you rent a building, you don't acquire ownership no matter how many years you rent it, or what improvements you put into it.   And as knowledge about resource management has grown, the management of federal lands has changed, heading in the direction of sustainability of the resource, and also multi-use sustainability.


So these guys stomp into our national wildlife refuge, take over the buildings and claim they're not going to leave.   They're going to convert the refuge to farming.  They've already started shooting wildlife, just to prove they can.  They've already said they're keeping women and children in the refuge for human shields.  And some of their supporters on Twitter are claiming that "the ranchers are the new Indians and the government is the thief, stealing their lands."   (The real Indians, by the way, are still there, and would still like the land back from the feds, but the bully boys aren't supporting the Indians...or vice versa, because the Paiutes  know that these guys--and those like them--have robbed Indian graves and sold skulls and any artifacts buried with the dead.  They're concerned about their sacred sites.)   They have shown no interest in or respect for the purpose of the sanctuary and they are in a position to do great, permanent harm, especially since they have been reinforced with fuel and other supplies that can damage the natural water, soil, vegetation and wildlife.

It's clear that they will not leave without violence and are doing their best to position themselves as poor innocent victims of a brutal regime.   In situations like this, "patience" and "negotiation" don't work because they're intending to hold out a long time and "negotiation" gives them more time to make act like the victims when really they're the aggressors.   In my view it was and is a mistake not to have interdicted access for recruitment, supplies, etc. from day one.   It was a huge mistake in Nevada two years ago not to return and handle the Bundy issue firmly and completely.  Now we have these people claiming it proves God is on their side that they got away with terroristic threats and theft (they owe the BLM--and us as taxpayers--millions.)    It will be a bigger than huge mistake--even if they agree to vacate--to allow them to do so without a complete surrender and fast trip to jail.

Not So Merry Socks

There's nothing visibly wrong with this sock:


Yes, the ribs twist a little, and some of them are less straight than others, but otherwise...it fooled me into thinking everything was just as OK inside as outside.
But no....this sock has a hidden flaw that would soon caus it to fail and unravel....a flaw caused by my failure to ensure that the yarn I was knitting with came straight from the ball without taking any detours through (for instance) the gap between needles, in which yarn can in fact be trapped after being carried somewhere in a bag.  Which leads to starting to knit somewhere other than where the knitter left off last time.   And worse, a strand of yarn carried along without being incorporated in the knitting, making it vulnerable to injury and over-stretching.    Like this:


I found it when I put my foot through the part-sock to check whether I wanted to add an inch to the ribbing beyond its usual length (no, was the answer to that.  Five inches is still my favorite length) and caught a toe in the loop.  When I turned the top down, it was really obvious that had happened...a needle's worth of knitting skipped with the yarn "carried along" inside.   I'm still pondering how exactly to fix it, given my skills and the problem.  It could be solved by ripping out all the knitting back to that row, to where I didn't knit sixteen stitches, but that's a lot of ripping out, and yarn can react badly to that much undoing and then redoing.  Certainly I'd have yards and yards--about 40 yards, at a guess--of yarn to treat so that it would knit smoothly again (dampen it, wind it with just enough tension to straighten the kinks around something like a paper towel or toilet paper roll).  Or...I can cut it, attach a longer length of yarn to each end, and weave the ends in and secure them.  (It's not long enough to weave in both ends as it is.)  That's going to be a bit tricky, too, because the yarn's under a little tension now and will tend to creep back through the stitch it was connected to.  But I prefer that to frogging/ripping back so many rows with yarn that I know fuzzes up when ripped, however carefully.

It's frustrating because I have had the problem before and caught it sooner, and I do try to be sure the yarn runs directly from the ball to the point where I'm knitting, with no detours...but I didn't try hard enough this time. It's also frustrating because I did notice the little "jink" in the rib that is connected to the strand behind, about two rows beyond it, but I did not investigate the cause--I thought it was just an inadvertent change in tension.

Advice to others--don't make this mistake; it's a pain to fix.   Background advice: haste makes waste.  I wanted to finish this pair by the end of the year, so I was knitting as fast as I can (which isn't that fast) AND knitting distracted (TV)  which is asking for trouble.

On the bright side...I managed to do my very first bit of "stranded knitting" (albeit not stranded colorwork)  with amazing ease.

Merry Christmas Socks

These are sorta plain brown heather socks...but they're Christmas socks because I finished them on Christmas Eve, for someone else.  Many mistakes delayed these socks, but they're done now, with love and prayers for the recipient, who will get them late, but no less wrapped in love.

Christmas wishes to those who celebrate, and to others, may you have peace and joy in your own way. 

Otherwise Christmas is unseasonably warm--has been warm for over a week--and was downright hot in church last night.  The choir, crammed into the choir pews behind banks of candles, and encompassed in long choir robes with cottas over them...was soaked through by the end of the service.  Some people felt ill and had to leave.  The air conditioning and even the fans broke down; repairs brought only a tiny trickle of air into the sanctuary until someone had the wits to open the downstairs outer doors--but it didn't cool anyone who wasn't at the back of the church and in line with the stairs.

The Christmas breakfast (waffles, a rare treat) stuck in the waffle-iron after two waffles, and was abandoned for converting the waffle batter to pancake batter and cooking on the griddle.  That worked.  We will deal with the waffle iron when it's thoroughly cool.  (There is no such thing as a truly non-stick waffle iron.)   Next comes the opening of presents and then a few other chores before I put the ham in the oven and potatoes in the pot.  And when the ham comes out, the bread pudding goes in.

Christian? Really?

I was trying to hold off all the rants I wanted to rant until after Christmas, but unfortunately (for me and maybe you)  the frothing, foaming self-proclaimed Christians have already slobbered their poison over the whole Christmas season, even before Advent 1 and continuing right up through Advent 4 to now, two days before Christmas itself.  So in defense of the Christianity that's founded on the actual words and deeds of Jesus Christ, and not on every paranoid fantasy about, and vicious hate-filled threat to, everyone else, I have to speak out.  Yes, I'm annoyed.  Beyond annoyed.  Just as I was a few years ago when I posted Things Jesus Didn't Say.   This post will combine religion and politics because the self-proclaimed Christians who are actually bigots and about as Christian as a box of doughnuts run over by a dump truck also combine religion and politics and even say they should be combined.  Fine.  I'm combining them differently.

A Christian--the real kind--has one big command from Jesus and some subsidiary ones that give examples of what the big one means.  The big one: "Love one another."   Examples include "Feed the hungry, house the homeless, clothe the naked, deal fairly in any business (addressed with specifics to tax collectors, soldiers and judges but generally in "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you"), avoid litigation, avoid showing off your religion by praying in public, avoid ambition--to be famous, to be privileged, etc.,  welcome in the stranger, help those in need even if you don't like their kind, love your enemies, do good to those who screw you over,  don't judge others, fix yourself before you try to fix others."   There are more examples, but those crop up in more than one Gospel.  Don't be greedy.  Don't be proud of your possessions.  Don't try to get rich in things; get rich in virtue.  Know (find out, accept, and speak) the truth, for truth makes you free.   No dirty secrets, because they will all be revealed in time.   Love.  Love enemies.  Love strangers.  Love the poor.   And what is "love" in this context?  Jesus specifically mentions that his followers will be known and judged (not by each other) on whether they actually do feed, clothe, house, welcome in, etc....or not.  Because every one they help, is as if they helped Jesus...and everyone they don't help is as if they turned their back on him.


So look at the most prominent Christians running their mouths in politics these days.  What are they saying and doing?   This one wants to "carpet bomb" the Middle East for not being Christian.   Another one wants to bar all Muslims from the country--including refugees that absolutely fit Jesus' description of the victim in the Good Samaritan story--and deport the ones already here.   And by the way, get rid of the Mexicans because they're all criminals and drug dealers.   They want to get rid of an existing and effective women's health system because of one thing it does that they're against.   They're against gays.  They're against equal pay for women,  a living wage for low-wage workers,  unemployment insurance, any government funded health care or food programs for those in need because somebody, somewhere, might be getting too much assistance and it might be "bad for business."   They've made, or tried to make, rules against anyone feeding the hungry homeless, anyone helping Syrian refugees; they threaten lawsuits and jail time for the "crime" of helping the wrong people (whoever they decide is wrong.)   They make up lies about people of color, about the poor in general, and do their best to spread  fear and hatred.  There's no love, no compassion, in any of it--except for themselves.  They feel very sorry for themselves and complain endlessly about a war on Christians (including not giving them enough respect and power and saying "Merry Christmas."   The form of so-called Christianity that spawned the Westboro Baptist Church group, that's found in dozens of little splinter groups, has made its way into a large segment of American "Christian" churches so that most of what they do is condemn other Christians who don't hate who they hate, and nonChristians. 

Last week (or the week before--I lose track--) a guy on Twitter asked indignantly how could we (Americans who are Christians) accept someone who didn't accept Jesus as his/her personal savior.  And to any real Christian, the answer is obvious:  do it same way Jesus did.  The same way Jesus taught:  they're neighbors, and thus to be cared for and loved.   Syrians, whether Christian or Muslim.  Mexicans, Salvadorans.  Indonesians.   Every race, every nation, every religion, every group.

Jesus never said "Love the people just like you; it's OK to hate all the ones who are different."  Quite the opposite.   Jesus never said "Carpet bomb the people who don't believe in me."  Or "God hates fags, so picketing the funerals of dead soldiers is a great idea."   Or "Shooting black people to prove whites are superior is fine with me."  Jesus never said "Vandalize mosques and synagogues, go right ahead."  Or "Blowing up clinics is fine because abortion is wrong."  Or "Treat your neighbors badly if you disagree with them about religion or politics."  Jesus never said "Be afraid of everyone different, and out of your fear, hate them."  And quite the opposite of the selfish whining about being "persecuted" because someone says "Happy Holidays" instead of "Merry Christmas" like one of our Texas bureaucrats straight from the Bigot Belt who threatened to slap anyone who said Happy Holidays to him. 

We have people in politics who claim to be Christian but go out of their way to hurt the poor, hurt the sick, hurt women, deal unfairly with everyone if they can, hurt people who are not just like themselves.   Friends, these are not Christians.  That is not my judgment on them: that is what Jesus said (among other places, in Matthew 25: 31-46.)    It does not matter what church someone says they belong to.  It does not matter what they're "against."  It matters whether they are doing what Jesus said to do.   So consider, when a news story quotes someone who claimed to be a "Christian" or "Christian leader" or a "Christian group"  what that person or group is really doing.  Is their message love, compassion,  and are they doing those things Jesus said to do?  If not,  call them out for not being real Christians.   Yes, we can say that.  We can say "You are not Christian, because you do not follow Jesus Christ."

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I will add another thing, because in the last few decades of increasing polarization it's something we've lost sight of, something important to both religious folk and political folk (and everybody's in at least one of those categories.)   Disagreeing with someone is not the same thing as hating someone.  I disagree with a lot of people about a lot of things (climate change, the right use of short-grass prairie, the best way to train a horse, the best behavior management technique for children, the best balance of STEM and humanities in elementary education, what to do about the war on drugs, how to make the perfect apple pie,  how to make chili, what to do about terrorism, religion, and politics.)   I am passionate about many things, and my disagreement ranges from mild (OK, you can put mushrooms in your chili if you want to, but keep it out of mine)  to extremely strong (I'll spare you examples for the moment.)   But disagreeing with someone--in private or public--does not mean I hate them.   Does not mean I'd whack them with a bat, shoot them, hang them, blow up their house, pay them less if I were hiring,  refuse to rent to them,  scream at them on the street, picket their house or business or religious center. 

Disagreement is inherent in having a diverse society: we are not always going to agree.   Hatred is fatal to a diverse society.   I grew up in a very diverse society--in a place where several races and cultures met uneasily and children had the opportunity to learn to disagree without fighting (not all did--depended on the parents)  and refuse hatred.   In high school, those of us of the "discuss it" faction (rather than the "reach for the knives" faction) had spirited arguments about religion, politics, race, culture.  We did not hate each other.  We were friends who disagreed.   We didn't expect to agree even in long term, except that fighting and hating were not ever going to lead to anything positive, and discussion (even argument) might make some things better in the political/social realm.   Most of us were some form of Christian; some were Jews.  Among the Christians, we represented groups that had fought long bitter wars--a lot of bad blood on both sides--and we knew about those--but set them aside.  Between the Christians and the Jews lay the then-very-recent memory of the Holocaust...which we kids agreed we could do nothing about except determine to remain friends and not let that happen again.  What we were working on, and hoping for and expecting was a workable agreement that let each one remain what they were--or change--in a compromise that meant nobody stole the whole box of tennis balls and everyone had a ball to play with.   (Several of us were in a tennis class together.  The metaphor came up frequently as we argued.)

We didn't get that done.  We didn't get it done in part because we thought (as HS students sometimes do) that problems had permanent solutions our elders had been too blind or stubborn to see and take care of...we failed to consider that social problems, human problems, change with every new human who enters the equation, and thus are endless.  Hatred has to be countered every single year.  Disagreement has to be protected every single year.

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Solzhenitsyn said that the line between good and evil runs right down the middle of every human heart--and is swayed back and forth by circumstance.  So every day, every act is moving that line in someone's heart.  Scary.   One of the things a Christian is supposed to do is keep that line toward the good side in his/her own heart--on the loving-people side, the forgiving-people side, the understanding-the-other-guy side.  Why?  Because the other things Jesus taught don't work if you're working from a base of arrogance, smugness, and hatred.   If you hand out food to the hungry in a way that makes them feel you despise them for needing it--if you are grudging and condescending when helping anyone--if you lecture them on how wrong or stupid they were to be in that fix--if you make it clear they're a drag on society--you're creating more misery.  And you're moving their line over where it's easy to start being resentful, angry, even hating.   So for the Christian, there's always the need to monitor one's own internal line--which side is it on?--and do those things that bring it back, not to smug moral superiority, but to alignment with what Jesus actually said.  Love, not hate.  Serving, not being served.    Disagreement is no excuse for shoving your internal line all the way over to hate.

Comments disabled for the usual reason.  No time to keep this from being a cesspit if someone's so inclined.   I have many things to do before Christmas.

The Colors of Oaks

European Oaks, I've been told, do not change color in the fall and winter.   Some North American oaks develop brilliant color, and among these are several species of oak that grow in central Texas.   They change late--later now than fifteen years ago, pushing the ones in our yard to late November and early December, instead of early -mid November.  Years back, the oak leaves might have blown off by Thanksgiving; now they're just starting to turn then.  But this year, this week, they've been developing color.

What makes oaks very different from other deciduous trees in terms of the effect is their leathery-shiny surface, and the variability--even on one tree--in the way the leaves turn.  Sunlight glints off the leaves as well as penetrating them, so the tree sparkles and shimmers with color (very unlike the fiery glow of a sugar maple in New England, which has broader, thinner, and matte leaves, not glossy at all.

These were photographed with the sun behind me, showing the "shine" on the surface and the variatility of the leaf change.  These are all still on the tree--one branch of one tree.  This particular tree, when fully changed, ranges from a medium to a dark red with a few yellow and orange leaves.
Seen from behind, with the sun coming through, there's another effect:


same tree as above
This red oak is almost touching a Caddo Maple on the right; this oak develops oranges and yellows and some light/medium reds; the maple develops a clear yellow following lime green (dark green summer foliage.)

The front yard largest red oak is the only one we bought (a gift from my mother.)   The other red oaks we have were planted as acorns dropped from trees we spotted out in the country--and then visited at the right time to pick up fresh acorns and plant them.    We've also planted bur oak acorns--bur oaks develop only a rich gold color (in some years no color)  but have the advantage of being disease and drought resistant.    They were once known as "prairie oak" and formed the famous "oak openings" that Native Americans and pioneers both liked to camp in.

Here are some trees "front-lit" by the sun in various colors.

                 
Orange-gold in front, red behind             A different mostly red, with still-green smaller one behind
These trees are stunning if you're standing under them or with the sun on the other side.

So if only people would quit tearing down "brush" and let the young oaks grow (or plant the acorns)  we'd have plenty of fall color around here.  Oaks grow slowly until they get their tap roots down into a moisture source (supplemental water for the first few summers really helps)  but most of these oaks are only 20-15 years old.   They don't show a lot of color as young trees, usually, but show more color every year as they reach maturity and start producing acorns.  This year we had a huge crop of acorns.

Sock Update

The latest pair is now on my feet:  plain turquoise socks, the usual pattern, nothing fancy.  



This is not the best pair of socks I've made, but it's also far from the worst, and my feet have now been happy in it for hours, so it's a WIN.
It's the ninth pair of full-size (taller cuff) socks I've completed this year (two pair were started in 2014), and the sixth pair of full-size started/finished for myself this year.  Sometime this week I should finish the second pair for a friend.   There are seven "sporty shorty" pairs for the year, too.   The next pair for myself is on the needles, just cast on today.  Recently three old-faithfuls gave out (Blue One, Purple One, and Red Two.  Green One is the only first-year sock still wearable...well, Red Two doesn't have an actual broken thread, but while washing it today I saw that one more wearing would probably make several large holes.  Red Two is older than Purple One (it was the 4th pair made, June 2012.  Purple One was the 9th pair made, early in 2013,  and it failed in an unusual place--the very front of the sock in the cast-on row.)

I'll be pushing on socks again this coming year.  Another seven pairs of the shorties, and if possible another seven of the regular socks.  I need to get to the point where all the socks have enough lifespan that I can do fewer pairs/year (and thus have time to play with knee socks, fancy colorwork, cables, etc.