Robin McKinley's Blog, page 141

Teeth, chocolate and bells

 

I've been to the dentist again.  He has many children to put through college.*  This time however I came home with TEETH.  Well, more teeth.  Oh, all right, one more tooth.  But it's one of the big fat chewing ones.  Plus a recap (so to speak) of the one behind that.**  The truly horrifying thing however is the Next Phase which involves a phoenix egg and a sliver of bark from Yggdrasil and a drop of water from Charon's bow-wave and one or two other things that . . . well, I really could buy a new car for what the Next Phase is going to cost.  But ordinary dentists won't look at my teeth***  Would it be so bad living on porridge for the rest of my life?  Porridge and cake.  I tweeted when I got home, numbed to the eyeballs barring the distant precognitive throb, that I was looking at my nice healthy green salad in dismay because it required chewing and would it be so bad to have cake for lunch?  —And was promptly encouraged by several responding tweeters.  Twitter is dangerous.  In a lot of ways that don't make it onto the stats.

            Cake may have been somewhat more prominently than sometimes on my mind today however because last night I made:

Leftover-Christmas-Chocolate Bars

I realise that the concept of leftover chocolate is foreign to many of us, and once upon a time it would have been foreign to me too and at least mildly implausible to Peter.   But that was Then.  This is Now.  Peter has mouth trouble and I have Post Menopausal Zero Metabolism.  Meanwhile, however, we are notorious for loving chocolate, so people tend to give it to us.  I do not wish to discourage this excellent habit.  And furthermore now that I've invented Leftover-Christmas-Chocolate Bars I may have to arrange for leftover chocolate henceforth.† 

Preheat your oven to 350°F.  Butter a 13 x 9" pan 

¾ c butter

1 ¾ c sugar

2 large eggs, room temp

1 ½ tsp REAL vanilla††

1 ½ c all-purpose flour

1 ½ tsp baking powder††

½ c unsweetened cocoa powder

1 c chopped-up Leftover Chocolate.  The point here is that it should be lots of different kinds.  I had four or five different sorts plus some ginger fudge.  Don't chop too small or it'll disappear in the baking.

Cream butter and sugar.  I scrape with the spoon in my right hand and knead with my left.  Better results sooner.  Beat in eggs and vanilla.  Then the dry stuff.  Be sure everything is THOROUGHLY mixed.  Then finally stir in the chopped-up chocolate.

            Bake about half an hour.  I started checking after about twenty minutes because there's kind of a lot of chocolate involved and I wanted to make sure nothing untoward happened.  It'll still be slightly squidgy when you take it out, and I assume it'll fall a little—mine did, but I was expecting it to.  This is a sign of excellent chewy-squidginess-with-crunch-around-the-edges to come.  I also wasn't sure what the ginger fudge would do if it was baked so I sprinkled it over the top and put the pan back in the oven for five minutes, just to melt it enough to stick.

            From a health and safety standpoint I have to admit these are not a great deal better than pure chocolate, but they are fearfully good.  And they give you something to pass around during your handbell tea break.†††

* * *

* Not to mention the horses.  I was going to say that I didn't think they went to college . . . but in fact one of them does.  And horse college costs as much as human college.  Maybe more. 

** Was I just In Denial or, thirty years ago, did dentists lead you to believe that once crowned, your tooth or teeth will stay crowned?  This is I think the third refit I've had.  At vast, three-years-undergrad-at-Cambridge prices, of course.   And that doesn't count the disintegrated root canals, which were another thing that thirty years ago were supposed to be for life.  Pardon me, but first-world life expectancy for women has been well over fifty for longer than the last thirty years.  Teeth:  design FAIL.   

*** At least not any longer than it takes to scream and run away.

† I'm aware that this is not an original idea.  I've done something like it before myself.  But this is probably the first time I've thought 'why don't I sweep up all the bits and pieces from not-quite-as-indulgent-a-Christmas-as-in-years-past and do something egregious?' 

†† Maybe.  I was making them at the mews and Peter doesn't seem to have a set of measuring spoons.  I know he made me take the fourteen or twenty-six spare sets of measuring spoons^ away with me but I hadn't realised he didn't have any.  This Will Be Rectified.  Meanwhile after forty-odd years of baking I probably know what a measuring-tsp quantity looks like.

^ When I was first over here, it was hard to find measuring cups and spoons in standard American sizes so I got . . . kind of paranoid.  And would come back from a visit to the States with my suitcases not merely full of All Stars and black jeans but measuring cups and spoons.  Glass jugs—which I prefer—have a built in population control mechanism, but metal measuring spoons live forever.  I may have got a little carried away with the reserve measuring spoon sets.

††† I've been trying to figure out if there's a way to mention this on the blog that won't just bore you all to death.  I need to gloat here, okay?  You might give me the benefit of remembering that I had a brain full of dental anaesthesia this afternoon, and in fact when I'd tried to practise on Pooka before real people showed up with real handbells it had been so awful I'd considered that perhaps it wasn't the anaesthesia at all, I really had lost my mind.  So I was feeling pretty cowed when Niall came in, started unwrapping handbells^, and said that we were going do an exercise that James had had the Saturday handbell group doing last weekend, which you might call Merry Go Round Plain Hunt.  Plain Hunt is the pattern-before-the-pattern to all bell ringing:  it's the first thing you learn after you can more or less handle your bell, and it gives you a dreadful clue^^ of what is to come.^^^  Merry Go Round Handbell Plain Hunt is that after you have rung however many ordinary 'courses' as they're called of plain hunt you pass one bell to the person on your left.  And then you ring normal plain hunt again.  On whatever weird pair of bells you're now holding.  This is not how you ring handbells:  you ring the trebles, which are the one and the two, or the three and the four, the five and the six, or the tenors (if you're ringing on eight), the seven and eight.  This is what you learn;  this is what you're used to.  This is what you can COPE WITH.  But for merry-go-round, after the first pass you're holding the one and the eight, or the two and the three, the four and the five, the six and the seven.  Which means that diabolical SHAPE of what you're ringing is blown to pieces.  I can't do this! I wailed—I can't do anything unless I've thought about it and practised it first.  I can't think handbells on the spot like this.

            But I did.  It just about killed me, but I did it.  I got it.  I got all of the weird pairs:  the 2-3, the 4-5, the 6-7, the 8-1.  Yaay me.  Gloat.

^ And yes, I agree, one of the reasons I need my own set of handbells is so I can knit little storage bags for them.

^^ Although not nearly dreadful enough

^^^ ARRRGH.  Have just wasted half an hour trying to persuade either Google or any of my three bell-ringing simulators to produce a diagram of plain hunt major.  It can't be this hard.  So, here.  I've just written it out.  Make that scrawled.  The point is just to look at the shape of what you're ringing if you're ringing two bells.  The method line is the same for everybody:  you go straight out to the back, strike twice in last place, go straight down to the front, strike two blows in first place, and go out to the back again till someone says 'that's all'.  The only trick when you're ringing it in the tower is where you're starting in this very straight in and out pattern.  If you're the two (or any even-numbered bell) you go down to the front first;  if you're the three (or any odd-numbered bell) you start by heading out to the back.  Easy peasy.  Now get your head around it if you're ringing two bells.  The front and back pairs are still pretty simple;  they stay pretty parallel, one 'blow' as it's called apart, and they only have to remember to cross at the front and the back.  (The treble is in red, and the two is in blue.  I should have done them both in the same colour, but bell ringers are trained to think of the treble by itself, because it usually is.)

            But look at the shape of what the 3-4 rings  (both in green).   This is what I mean about the inside pairs.  The 5-6 is like this only mirror-image.  (I will spare you why the 5-6 is worse than the 3-4 in bob major.) 

Yes, I should have used a straightedge to draw the lines.

ARRRRRRRRRRGH

Frelling bloody arrrrrrgh, that is.  FLAMBOYANT GODS OF ALL THE BLASTED HEAVENS HOW I HATE WORDPRESS. 

With apologies to anyone who was trying to read tonight's post while WordPress and I were fighting over it.

More . . . um . . . knitting

 

I've had my FIRST KNITTING PHONE CALL.  It was LOVELY.  Oh, and I can knit and listen, if I'm interested.  I don't even have to stop to wave my hands around.*  I'm not sure that being interested is good for the knitting, however.  This second square** is emerging a lot lumpier than the first one. 

Lumpy. But still knitting.

And progress was halted for a while yesterday while I ripped the first few rows out.  Twice.  Despair was narrowly averted.  Well, more to the point, not knitting any more till Fiona comes back next month was narrowly averted.***  I am now grimly soldiering on†, but Fiona did teach me to count my stitches, so if I get to the end of a row and seem to have fifteen instead of fourteen, I choose the flimsiest of them and knit it firmly to its fellow next row.  Whereupon some other wisp of yarn will have got itself separated off . . .  And although I am being careful to finish a row before I put it down, there seems also to be some kind of flow to knitting row after row—or at least there is when you're a beginner who still has to remember things like . . . uh, everything.  Every time I put it down and pick it back up again my yarn persona seems to have drifted slightly in some alarming new direction.  It's only a hellhound blanket. 

            Since there was plenty of other stuff to tell you about on Monday I didn't get to the knitting bag.   How cool is this.††  

Knitting bag. With honest-to-goodness knitting in it.

I was looking for a needle case:  I'm willing to risk the occasional snappage of a standard bamboo needle††† but I became globally paranoid with the arrival of my beautiful rose-ended needles and keeping them in a floppy tote bag with the yarn and the books‡ just wasn't on.  So:  needle case.  Clearly I therefore also need more needles.  More beautiful needles that need to be kept in a needle case.   But while I was fondling needle cases‡‡ I saw this knitting bag.   I had to have it not because I urgently need a specific made-for-the-purpose bag to keep my yarn in, although dedicated kit is always attractive and desirable, but because of that totally cool little hole for the yarn to feed through.  It is pretty cool too, although the first thing that happened was that I couldn't get the yarn through it and skinned the outer twist of the yarn back about eight inches which I then had to cut off and start again.  GAAAAAAH.  And what happens now is that the yarn jams inside the knitting bag instead of outside, but . . . it's still cool, having a knitting bag.  With knitting in it.

           

            I am deranged.  This is not news.

 * * *

Hole. For the yarn to come through. If you do it right.

* So, do us flagrant gesturers do it just because we're hopeless fidgets?  I always thought we were expressing our largeness of soul and passion for life.  Okay, and that we're hopeless fidgets.    

** YES I AM STILL ONLY ON MY SECOND SQUARE.   There is way too much other nonsen—I mean, fascinating pursuits, not to mention hellhounds, speaking of pursuits, and a living to earn, in my life.   At the moment my evenings, already under permanent strain by the blog, are relentlessly further bent and confined by the double glinty-eyed demons of Handbells and Voice.  Last time I was having voice lessons there were still only three of us for Thursday handbells.  And I made some wild claim about learning my last pair, the 5-6, the other inside pair, for bob major this week.  Nobody told me the 5-6 were the worst.  Niall—who usually rings the 5-6, just sits there smiling.  They're worse than the 3-4.  Waaah.

            Meanwhile I'm slightly frantically trying to remember what I used to know about singing and warm-up exercises and so on.  And trying not to remember how neurotic I am about anyone hearing me.^  Are you sure you can't hear me after you go to bed? I have said (several times) to Peter.  I'm asleep three minutes after I lie down, he replies.  Not to worry.  —I'm also wondering when I used to find time for this. 

Needle case. With a more tactful selection of flowers. And more to the point, hardback. Like a book. Only with a zipper.

          Also meanwhile I have a friend who with press of career and life and so on has let her drawing and painting slip, and has been emailing me about how good it feels to have started it up again, and her experiments with painting media she hasn't tried before.  I wrote back to her, sigh:  Drawing is probably the top of my list of things I'm Really Not Going to Get Back To This Life^^, and that forty and fifty years ago I had far more discernable talent for drawing than I did for anything musical^^^ . . . which doubtless explains why I've ended up plunging so heavily into music.

            My friend, who clearly falls into the glinty-eyed demon category, replied, and I quote:  You do know that drawing would take you no time at all to get back into, right?   Unlike music, which requires an instrument, a teacher, and unbroken slots of time, a drawing takes a pencil and a notebook and whatever 5-10 minutes you've got to spare here and there.  I see no reason why you shouldn't do both.  Perhaps we should sketch together when next I visit.  Sleeping dogs are a good subject.

            Emphasis mine.  SPARE?  I just filled the 5-10 minute spare slot with knitting.  I also wish to point out, on the subject of only needing a notebook and a pencil, most people just open their mouths and sing, with their built-in instrument, if they feel like a little musical self-expression.  Noooooo, I get all excited and start taking voice lessons and harassing poor innocent music teachers into starting brand new singing groups.^^^^  I'm not good at casual.  Although it's true, I've still got a sketchbook or two around somewhere. . . . 

Needle case cradling precious rosy needles. Which need friends.

^ Okay, the required number of New Arcadia Singers has just gone up again.

^^ Which puts it at the head of the queue for my next life

^^^ When I was very small I was one of those notorious children who sang everything on one note. 

^^^^ Large ones.

*** All the knitters out there are telling me chirpily that the books will make sense to me now.   Sure.  Like geometry makes sense to me because I can plant up a flower-bed.  Although there might be some frightening truth there about my gardening technique.

† New mantra:  It's a hellhound blanket. It's only a hellhound blanket.  The hellhounds won't care.

†† This was the moment that Fiona mentions in her forum comment.  I turned away for a moment—just a moment—to look at needle cases.  She was moseying around the yarn shelves carrying one skein and looking mild and meditative and totally in control.  When I turned back again the clerk had just carolled a sum that would almost buy me a new car^ and Fiona has her arms around enough yarn to bomb New Arcadia.

^ Wolfgang's yearly road test is coming up in about a fortnight and . . . he's sixteen years old.  And they haven't been an easy sixteen years.

††† Although Fiona says they're tougher than you think.  Mmm.  Tougher than she thinks, maybe.  She's smaller than I am.  She has no hellhounds.  She lives in only one house.^

^ Although she did fall off her chair for no discernable reason (also mentioned in the forum).  This is hopeful from a standpoint of the reliability of fellow klutzim reportage. 

‡ Increasing numbers of.  I'd better learn to understand them.  And the yarn?  Feh.  I'm going to develop a stash.  I'm not even trying to resist this inevitability.

‡‡ There was one that was more emphatically rosy than this one, but I discarded it regretfully because it had a lot of white fabric background.  I tend to think in terms of bloodstains for most things.  And those whacking great darning needles you use to sew up look absolutely like major blood-letting to me.  Although there's another seventy-eight and a half squares (or so) before I have to think about this.  The needle case will have worn out by then.  Of course I'm not going to finish one project before I start on the next.  How would I develop my stash with that ridiculous attitude?

THE SPEED OF DARK by Elizabeth Moon

 

This is a warm, engaging, human and humane book:  what I like best about it is the glimpse into the life of a character so not like most of us . . . and yet very like us after all. 

            This is the book I was reading at my last Octopus and Chandelier rehearsal last Sunday week—the book that pulled me into its story so persuasively that I could forget that sitting and waiting is not in my skill set.*   EMoon and I had a swap a few months back:  she wanted a copy of the now out of print A KNOT IN THE GRAIN and I was having trouble getting hold of SPEED.  Although it claims to be in print it kept not arriving and I had grown testy. 

            But the edition she sent me** happens to be gorgeous.  Hardback.  Leather.  Gilt-edged.  Eeek.  So I haven't been reading it in the bath.***  I read a page or two standing up in the kitchen† and you know that eyeball-sucking sensation when a story really wants to make off with a large portion of the next day or two of your life?  Yes.  Like that.  So I knew that standing up in the kitchen was not how I wanted to read it:  I wanted to read it in a great thrilling whump.  So what an excellent thing I had a boring rehearsal ten days ago.

            Lou Arrendale is autistic.  He works in a special department of a large corporation with other autistic people—autists—in an area set up for their special needs:  Division A.  The story takes place in some undefined time in the near future in what still looks like present-day America.  There are a few crucial differences:  one of them is a live space-exploration programme.  Another is a cure for autism.  Autism is now treated in the womb, before the baby is born;   Lou is a member of the last generation of 'genuine' autists, of people who have had to learn the hard—the gruellingly hard—way to cope in the 'normal' world.  Lou is the high functioning end;  not only does he have a good job, he lives alone in his own apartment, and drives his own car.  He also takes fencing lessons, and has a heavy crush on one of the women he fences with. 

            At the beginning of the book, Lou is in his psychiatrist's office: 

            '. . .  If they aren't going to listen, why should I talk?

            'I know better than to say that out loud.  Everything in my life that I value has been gained at the cost of not saying what I really think and saying what they want me to say.

            'In this office, where I am evaluated and advised four times a year, the psychiatrist is not less certain of the line between us than all the others have been.  Her certainty is painful to see, so I try not to look at her more than I have to.  That has its own dangers;  like the others, she thinks I should make more eye contact than I do.  I glance at her now.

            'Dr Fornum, crisp and professional, raises an eyebrow and shakes her head not quite imperceptibly.  Autistic persons do not understand these signals;  the book says so.  I have read the book, so I know what it is I do not understand.

            'What I haven't figured out yet is the range of things they don't understand.  The normals. . . .  I know some of what she doesn't know.  She doesn't know that I can read.  She thinks I'm hyperlexic, just parroting the words. . . . She knows I work on a computer, she knows I went to school, but she has not caught on that this is incompatible with her belief that I am actually nearly illiterate and barely verbal. . . .  She does not like it when I use big words (as she calls them) and she tells me to just say what I mean.

            'What I mean is the speed of dark is as interesting as the speed of light, and maybe it is faster and who will find out?

            ' . . . She doesn't want to know what I mean.  She wants me to say what other people say.  "Good morning, Dr. Fornum." . . .  "Yes, I can wait.  I don't mind."

            'I don't mind.  When she answers the phone I can look around her office and find the twinkly things she doesn't know she has.  I can move my head back and forth so the light in the corner glints off and on over there, on the shiny cover of a book in the bookcase.  If she notices that I'm moving my head back and forth she makes a note in my record. . . . It is called stereotypy when I do it and relaxing her neck when she does it. . . .'

            The large corporation that Lou and his fellow autists work for is a pharmaceutical company, and there is news before the end of chapter one:  their company has a new experimental drug protocol that might 'fix' the last generation of autists;  and their boss—their 'normal' boss—has a new boss.  This new boss, Mr Crenshaw, fancies himself as the new broom, and one of the things he would like to sweep away is Division A.  He sees an opportunity to do a big flashy corporate thing that will boot him up the ladder even higher:  he is going to bully Division A into being human guinea pigs for the new protocol.  He is going to bully them by threatening to fire them if they don't cooperate:  that this is illegal is beside the point, as Mr Crenshaw sees it.††

            I genuinely didn't know till the end—till Division A makes its individual decisions—which way any of them would decide;  and there is some suspense about whether the Machiavellian Mr Crenshaw is going to get his comeuppance or not.  There's also a fascinating subplot about Lou being stalked by someone who feels Lou gets an unfair advantage by being classed as 'disabled'.  The stalking isn't fascinating, just sad:  but Lou's reactions to what is happening is fascinating, because of the little sharp graphic view it gives you into what it might be like to be autistic.  (Lou says:  'The only role I play is normal.')  Lou and Lou's thoughts and reactions are the real delight of this book, and the seamless way Moon presents Lou to the reader:  he is so clearly as human as you or I†††, and Dr Fornum is just daft.  I don't know about you, but I've been known to move my head back and forth not to relax my neck, but to make something twinkle.

            The story is told mostly from Lou's perspective—and in present tense:  I should really shut up about how much I dislike present tense narration, because once again it works a treat here—but there are occasional shifts to other people:  Mr Aldrin, Division A's boss, and Tom, Lou's fencing instructor.  One of the things this does is give you a reality check on Lou:  he is very bright and very observant, and it would be easy to assume that what he says is the truth, because he explains it so painstakingly.‡  But he's wrong sometimes, as we all are.  Another semi-incidental pleasure, and I don't know if Moon meant it as ironically as I read it, is that some of the things that make Lou an autist also make him a hero:  not merely the protagonist but an honest-to-goodness heroic-type hero.  When Lou's stalker confronts him—and manages to confront him because Lou is careless the way anyone might be careless—Lou defends himself partly by his fencing reflexes, but also because of his pattern recognition.  He recognises his stalker's attack pattern, and merely blocks it.  Hot gonzo.  I love this.  And when he decides he needs to think seriously about the drug protocol he concludes that he needs to learn how the brain works . . . so he merely picks up a few upper-level college texts on brain function and brain chemistry and reads them.‡‡  He's good at patterns, you see. . . .           

* * *

* Even when I'm not sitting on the world's most uncomfortable too-low backless bench.  This is another reason to learn to knit, of course:  productive fidgeting.  Fiona yesterday said that was one of its purposes for her:  there are times you can knit when you're being bored out of your tiny mind when it's rude to read—and if you can't fidget you'll die.  Indeed.  I'm seriously considering taking MY KNITTING with me to the big horrible bell ringers' admin meeting this weekend.  No, I'm listening!  Really I am!  I can knit and listen!  —Actually I'm not sure I can, but they don't have to know that.  And even if I'm not listening it won't be the knitting that's the problem. . . .  It is really providential that I decided/was yarnbombed into trying to learn to knit just now. ^

            Do autists ever like knitting?  It's sure a pattern thing.       

^ And no, I haven't forgotten since yesterday.   

** On the grounds that I know only too well:  'The wretched thing has disappeared, this was the only edition I could find.'

*** I have to get over the idea that all my fiction reading happens in the bathtub.  Once I get to bed lately it's either large heavy hardback homeopathy books or frelling bob major on Pooka. 

† WAITING FOR HELLHOUNDS TO EAT

†† 'Mr Crenshaw is in the hall again. . . . I say, "Good morning, Mr Crenshaw," because that is appropriate, and he grunts something that might have been, "Morning."  If he had had my speech therapist, he would enunciate more clearly.'

††† One of the reasons I'm writing about this book tonight rather than some other night is because of an article on 'creative people' that was tweeted earlier today:  http://bit.ly/hZGe9i  which really pisses me off.   This is the rankest Othering, thinly veiled as psychological research.  These twerps would get along with Dr Fornum.  Creativity is a continuum, and we're all on it, like we've got beating hearts and some hard wiring to learn language.  This article would have a lot more credibility with me if it said something more to the effect that these are the kinds of things that happen if you find a way to USE your own individual creativity and integrate it with the rest of your life.  Professional writers are just one of the visible ends;  we're not the whole show.  The autistic spectrum/continuum connects here too, although I don't know how or where;  I know there are 'creative' autists—like I know that I have some Asperger's, OCD, schizophrenic, you name it, if it's weird mental I have it, symptoms.  I don't think this is because I'm crazy or an artist:  I think it's because I'm a NORMAL HUMAN.^

            Grrrrrrrrr.

^ Lou says:  '[Marjory] uses her hands when she talks.  A couple of times, she flaps them in the way that I was told was a sign of autism.  I have seen other people do that, too, and always wondered if they were autistic or partly autistic.'

‡ 'Supposedly autistic persons do not care what others think of them, but this is not true.  I do care, and it hurts when people do not like me because I am autistic.'

‡‡ 'If I understand the textbook, I remember things like what percentage of cars in the parking lot are blue because I pay attention to color and number more than most people.  They don't notice, so they don't care.  I wonder what they do notice when they look at a parking lot.  What else is there to see besides the rows of vehicles, so many blue and so many tan and so many red?  What am I missing, as they miss seeing the beautiful numeric relationships?'

Fiona Rules

 

Fiona soooo rules.

            I was completely convinced that I was too stupid to live, unteachable, untrainable, an exceptionally dangerous menace to society*, etc, by the time she arrived today.  This was so predictable it almost didn't bother me (much).   But I admit that the prospect of making a fool of yourself to someone a quarter century younger than you are is even more appalling than the prospect of making a fool of yourself generally.**

            And there certainly was that moment when Fiona was trying to coax me through my first knitting stitch when I Knew That I Was, not merely too stupid to live, but The Stupidest Person Who Ever Lived and Fiona would have better luck teaching the hellhounds to knit. 

            And then I started DOING IT.

Yes! It's a SECOND ROW!

. . . lumps and all.

 Meanwhile, Fiona among others had said that acrylic is not always the devil's yarn and had its uses as for example for babies who will spit up a lot and leak around their nappies, and whose clothing traditionally spends more time in the washing machine than on the kid or . . . hellhounds.  Who don't leak (much) but can't be trusted in the throwing-up department and who happen to be allergic to posh natural fabrics like wool.  So Fiona had brought some acrylic yarn-ends for me to practise on. . . .  

And purling too! Which is VERY CONFUSING if you've just learnt to knit!

I also learnt that acrylic on metal needles is VERY SLIPPERY. The stitches kept sproinging off the end and having to be chased back.

 . . . Because she also said, thoughtfully, her fingers a blur of stitches as she threw off squares for a baby blanket, that a hellhound blanket might be a good introductory and interstitial project, in that it can be put together out of nice individually manageable squares, and I can just frelling KNIT the squares and never mind getting myself all bollixed up and backwardsed by trying to learn to purl right away, or ribbing or any of that other high-level legwarmer stuff, and I can knit and knit and knit and knit (squares) till it is TOTALLY SECOND NATURE and possibly third, fourth and fifth nature, and IF I EVER SEE A SQUARE AGAIN I WILL RUN AWAY SCREAMING.  And then next month she can remind me how to purl and maybe look at that scary legwarmer pattern again.  Also knitting squares will mean that I have lots of practise casting off which appears to be one of those knitting bugbears.*** 

Which of course necessitated rushing off to Mauncester for fresh supplies. 

My poor camera is struggling with bad indoor lighting here. The right-hand one is dusty pink and the left-hand one is a different shade of dusty-pink and cream stripe or tweed. The middle one is in fact grey.

And yes, you're reading the brand name correctly.  Distressing to find acrylic named after you.  And also . . . who do I speak to about colourways?  I wanted an amusing assortment of colours for my hellhound blanket squares and nothing is amusing with anything else.   Also there is a certain minor consideration of practicality that needs to be addressed here:  we're talking hellhounds.  Their feet are dirty by definition and 'hair factory' is just another name for 'dog'.†  What I really wanted was something tweedy . . . or rather several somethings in a variety of tweedy . . . but these will do.  And they feel nice in the hand:  they don't say acrylicacrylicacrylicewwwwwww.††

 By now it was time for Fiona to go home. †††  But bell ringing got cancelled tonight‡ so somehow Fiona and I just sat around chatting and knitting.  

What is this? What is this new madness that is distracting the hellgoddess from HELLHOUNDS?

It's growing . . .

I had decided to start on my first square, so I had a brief lesson in counting.  But there was still the dreaded Casting Off to come.  I was going to stop . . . any minute . . . and let her show me how to cast off.  But we kept chatting . . . and knitting . . . and then. . . .

YAAAAAAAAY. I'm aware that it's not really very square-like, but it's the right number of rows and stitches and Fiona and I decided to assume that it and its friends would stretch a bit.

AND MID-SQUARE‡‡ MY VOICE TEACHER CALLED.  YES!!!  I HAVE A VOICE TEACHER AGAIN!!!!  AND I HAVE MY FIRST VOICE LESSON WITH MY NEW VOICE TEACHER NEXT MONDAY!!!!!!!  YAAAAAAAAY!!!!!!

Clearly Fiona has excellent mojo.

* * *

* With thanks to everyone who sent me this link, including Mirkat in the forum:  http://icanhascheezburger.com/2011/02/04/funny-pictures-mayb e-i-shouldve-knit-one/

** As I have said several times recently, remind me not to start a blog next time.  Or to stick to topics less embarrassing than one's own life and pratfalls.  Preferably something noncontroversial:  Politics, say.  Or at very least not to announce things before I do them.^

^ Except that suspense is such great blog material. 

*** I'm sorry, but until I know better I refuse to get too hysterical about sewing squares together.  I've put up too many fallen-down hems and sewed up too many holes, not to mention darned too many socks.

† Possibly for 'domestic critter'.  But I've known cats that didn't shed much.  And of course cats that did.  Shed.  Much.

†† The body part I'm having trouble with isn't my skin, but my left thumb, which seems to be spending rather too much time pushing on the pointy end of a needle which is trying to go somewhere I don't want it to go.

††† We spent over an hour in the yarn shop.  How did that happen?????

‡ Ordinarily a damn, blast and My Life Is A Ruin moment.  Tonight . . .

‡‡ When I should have been bell ringing

Complicated Sunday

 

Yesterday was an ME Day From Beyond the Infernal Regions* so what a good thing I had a guest post, and the (further) excuse of it being a Saturday night before a getting-up-for-service-ring Sunday morning.  And also, while the oppression of spirits contingent on the feeling that you've let the side down was probably a contributing factor to yesterday's horizontal and crumbly state, I am very glad I didn't have to go to four hours of rehearsal today.  If I'd lost two days in a row from what passes for my normal life** tonight I'd be freaking myself out into another ME day tomorrow***. . . .

            Last night as I was leaning† against the kitchen counter at the cottage, waiting to see if hellhounds were going to eat their final snack or not†† I was flipping through a catalogue because I had absolutely no brain for anything more demanding.  The catalogue I was flipping through was for dog kit, for pity's sake.  You wouldn't think there would be enough stuff you can buy for/about/over/under/through your dog to fill up a catalogue.  Well, maybe you would.  I wouldn't, and I'd be wrong.  But among the forty-nine squillion dog beds, dog coats, dog harness, and dog feeding stations—every one of which available for monogramming, my gods—there was a . . . pill crusher.  Twenty-five pounds for an electric pill crusher.  Jeezum frelling crow. 

            Hellhounds get a homeopathic pill each every day.  It's steadied the pathology of Eating Rituals down a lot.‡  The way you give a homeopathic pill to someone who might spit it out again is you crush it between two spoons, or with one spoon and the pill folded up in a clean piece of paper on the kitchen counter.  The point is you don't want to touch it with your hands or you may denature it.  (In emergencies you do whatever you have to—and believe me, I have—but the rest of the time, you don't touch the pills with your hands.)  I do the one spoon and a piece of paper version, because I find it easier to tip the resulting powder under a hellhound lip from the fold in the paper.  Homeopathic pills tend to be hard little beggars (you can get the soft tabs but I don't:  they're too big, and take up too much room in the bottle) and can require a lot of squashing.  Recently I shifted to a slightly larger size of pill, trying to hit the happy medium between having to make up a fresh bottle too often because the pills are so scwurgling large and having enough powder when you've crushed one that if the hellhound moves at the wrong moment you've probably still got enough powder in his mouth to count as a dose.  Crushing these new bigger pills was giving me Masseuse's Thumb and I want to keep typing and playing the piano, thank you very much. 

              Peter gave me a pair of pliers.

               I love them.  I've been crushing homeopathic pills for a decade now to give various more or less reluctant critters‡‡ and I hadn't really thought about it till these new pills made me think about it.  But pill-crushing has always been a nuisance, it just hasn't been enough of a nuisance to do anything about.  It's now about two months in and I'm still smiling every day when I put the pill in its folded paper between the jaws of my lovely pliers and close my hand ever so slightly and gently and . . . squish.  Six quid and you have not only a pill crusher but a, you know, tool.  Electric pill crusher?  Good grief. 

* * *

* Hey, I'm only the hellgoddess.  There're realms beyond me.  

** Ie going a few rounds with PEG II till it gets bored, knocks me down and sits on my chest.  At least it's here.  This is better than when it isn't.   Have I mentioned recently that what I really wanted to grow up to be is a lecturer in functional materials chemistry? 

*** Which I CAN'T AFFORD.  Fiona comes tomorrow to teach me to knit.  I've been talking about this on the forum:  I'm really bad at learning practical skills out of books, embarrassing as that is to someone who has always preferred books and feels the real world is overrated.^  I suppose there's some merited irony here about how if that's how it is then I should just stick to books and forget the three-dimensional skills.   I can scramble eggs, make brownies, and drive Wolfgang^^—oh, and plant roses—how much frelling real-world input do I need anyway?^^^

            ANYWAY.  I have a new knitting book~ with better pictures and I was planning on cracking it yesterday but it didn't happen.  I might just conceivably squeeze a few minutes to study the nice pictures tonight . . . but it's probably going to be Fiona.  May I remark that this seems to me very typical:  I finally find someone crazy enough to do a little secretarial work for me and . . . I want her to teach me to knit.  

^ So this morning at service ring Vicky tells us that the service quarter that she'd ASSURED me on Friday was a completely optional service quarter and we were welcome to use it as one of our practise quarters because it didn't matter if we clanked a bit and/or fired out+ . . . should be rung in honour of some inconvenient person who is leaving our church (I don't pretend to have a clue about Anglican hierarchy:  this is someone who wears a frock and takes services) to go elsewhere.  Which means this quarter has just become an official quarter and one that the tower will want to, and ought to, get.  Which means that I immediately tried to drop out and Vicky won't let me.   So I figure I have two choices:  I can upset Vicky, or I can upset me.  HAVE I SAID THAT I THINK THE REAL WORLD IS OVERRATED?++ 

+ Didn't get it.  Firing out is usually when someone or ones goes or go so disastrously wrong that the conductor can't sort you out again and you have to stop in confusion.  But you can also lose a quarter because it was called 'wrong' for one reason or another—yes there are rules:  lots and LOTS of rules—or because two bells swapped over and went merrily on each other's course (which is easier than you might think).  Quarters are fraught with perils.  

++ Or I could give up this ringing nonsense and take up knitting . . . oops. 

^^ I've only run into a gate once in sixteen years 

^^^ Bell ringing!  GAAAAH!  Two kinds of bell ringing!  GAAAAAAAH!  Waaay too many kinds of music!  GAAAAAAAAAAAAAH!+ 

+ I was thinking about The New Arcadia Singers' repertoire again this morning while we were out hurtling:  Palestrina and Tom Lehrer, approximately.  I was listening to Steve Earle on Ruby at the time.  Probably not Steve Earle however.  Regretfully. 

~Hope springs, uh . . . infernal 

† heavily 

†† They've been going through a more extended and tiresome Food Ritual Period than they have in some time, and this would have to overlap with, and doubtless be aggravated by, their late-night-snack dog food having its recipe changed.  ARRRRRRGH.  And it's not like there was any warning or anything—when I signed on to the Third Mortgage Dog Food site a few weeks ago, there was everything just as usual.  But when it arrived it was the old logo on some scary new stuff.   What? said the hellhounds.  What is this foreign material in our food bowls?  We knew that food/the contents of our bowls was the enemy.  Careful, they say to each other wisely.  Don't get too close.  Let's crouch over here on the far side of the kitchen where we can keep an eye on it and take appropriate action if it moves.

            They might eat it if they had to chase it first.  Domestication has its drawbacks.

‡ Every time in the last fortnight I've wanted to smack their little heads together I've reminded myself what it was like before I figured out they were allergic to cereals and before I figured out a remedy that would pull things together a bit.  And I know it works because if I take them off it for more than a day or two they start slinking around the corners and making 'avert' gestures when I get the bowls out.  I don't even want to think about getting them through this recipe change without its help. 

‡‡ The books and your friendly neighbourhood/conference expert will tell you cheerily that most dogs will just lick them up because they're sweet.  This hasn't happened to me yet.

Dog Surgery–Guest Post from Diane_in_MN

 

Last September, I scheduled Teddy for a preventive gastropexy.

Great Danes are poster dogs for bloat—when the stomach fills with air that can't escape–  and torsion—when the stomach twists, cutting off circulation, damaging other organs, and resulting in shock and death.  This is an immediately life-threatening condition, and more often than not requires emergency surgery, which is not guaranteed to be successful.  A gastropexy, or stomach tack, secures the stomach to the abdominal wall.  It doesn't prevent bloat, but does prevent torsion, making the condition less likely to be fatal and much easier to treat.*  And this is a comforting thought, especially if one is away from home (and from one's own vet and emergency clinic) with one's dog.

Gastropexies can be done laparascopically, and in fact Tasha's was done that way a few years ago at the University of Minnesota's vet clinic.  The advantage of this method is that it replaces a ten-inch incision on the abdomen with a two-inch incision on the flank, which was a big plus with a rowdy girl like Tasha.  But Teddy, although he has his moments, is in general a quieter dog, and he would have been much more stressed than the Alpha Bitch by spending two days at the University.  One of my vets also works at our local emergency clinic and so is very familiar with the procedure—she agreed that it would be a treat for her to perform a gastropexy on a healthy dog—and I knew that she'd let me bring him home as soon as he came out of anesthesia if everything looked good.  So we set the date.

Preparing the average dog for surgery doesn't take much time or effort: some basic blood tests to make sure that all systems are fine and an empty stomach are generally all it takes.   Teddy's pre-surgery prep would be done on the morning of the operation.  Preparing to bring the dog home can be another story.  The average dog does not necessarily cooperate with post-surgical instructions like "Leave stitches in for fourteen days."  This is why most people who've spent any time in veterinary offices are familiar with the Elizabethan (or E-) collar, the hard plastic cone that keeps the critter wearing it from chewing on stitches or bandages.  I knew that my vet would want to send me home with one.  But an E-collar for a Great Dane is wider than a big lampshade, doesn't fit through doorways very well if at all, and is heavy.  Leaving aside the question of how Teddy would react to one (not a question at all, really: he would hate it), I didn't want one banging around the house.  I had another option: the Bite-Not Collar, a hard plastic tube that fits a dog's neck from ears to shoulders and prevents him from bending his neck to reach the stitches or bandages.  I had bought one years ago for another dog, but she'd been a good patient and hadn't needed to wear it.  I didn't think Teddy would like it any better than the E-collar, but since it would let him see where he was going and walk through a room without crashing into doorframes or furniture, there was at least a chance that it would work.   Hope is good.  So I pulled it out of a drawer and went to see if it would fit him.

It was, of course, a wasted effort.  Teddy is a suspicious dog with a strong sense of self-preservation in the face of unknown sinister objects, and after one look at the plastic tube he decided he wanted no part of it.  Whether it would fit him or not was moot, because his neck never got anywhere near it. So the Bite-Not Collar went back into its drawer, and I hit the computer to look for alternatives.

The device that looked least offensive was the Soft-E-Collar, an E-collar made of cloth-covered foam with a wired edge.  A local store carried them and had them in stock.  So we drove forty miles, picked our way through a downtown street-widening project and into the store's minuscule parking lot, and emerged with the last one they had in Great Dane size.  Once we got home, I threaded the thing onto a spare buckle collar and trapped Tasha to be a guinea pig.  She's more confident than Teddy and generally unlikely to attribute lethal intent to strange artifacts, but she was appalled by the Soft-E-Collar.  Her first reaction was to freeze, and when that didn't make it disappear, she spun around the room until I stopped her and took it off.  After this display, there didn't seem to be any point in forcing it onto Teddy, who would probably have gone catatonic if I'd put it on him.  Since it wasn't returnable, it went into the drawer, too.  Now we'd have to hope he'd be a good patient.

After the collar failures, we had next to consider living arrangements.  I knew, of course, that Teddy would need to be kept quiet until his stitches were out—outdoors on lead only, no stairs, and no playing with Tasha—but he sleeps in bed, and climbing up on a bed was also off-limits.  The stairs could be blocked with baby gates, and Tasha would happily spend the day on the sofa in the TV room; I would sleep on the sofa in the living room, and I decided to get a dog bed for Ted.  This was not quite a no-brainer, as Teddy treated our last dog beds like giant stuffed toys, and after he destroyed the zippers on several covers and then began eviscerating the beds and flinging their innards around the house, I had taken them all away.  But I thought he might be more comfortable on something softer than a blanket on the carpet, so I bought a bed—but a cheap one, in case he rediscovered his taste for destruction.

The surgery went well, and Teddy spent the afternoon in recovery, letting the staff at the clinic know that he wasn't a happy camper.  I collected him late in the day and brought him home, and made him less happy still by wrapping him up in a pressure bandage, as instructed, for the rest of the evening.  Ideally, it would have stayed on for a full twenty-four hours, but since he would only stand around and look abused while wearing it, I gave up and took it off.  His incision was closed with staples rather than stitches, but they still had to be protected from licking or chewing.  Since the restrictive collar option was out, at least as a first choice, Ted started wearing a T-shirt.

A few of my husband's old T-shirts were still whole on the rag pile, and after a little judicious scissor work, they made very decent protective garments without being too binding.

I don't feel good and this thing doesn't help . . .

Teddy was not exactly thrilled, but at least he would lie down while wearing one.  Not, however, on the dog bed.  Not ever on the dog bed, which turned out to be as useless as the Soft-E-Collar.

Dog bed? I don't think so . . .

Things started getting better the day after surgery, when the aftereffects of the anesthesia finally wore off.  Teddy was on pain medication for several days; it had a dampening effect as well, but since I didn't want him to be active during that period, I was okay with that.  By the end of the first week, he was off all medication, was on his second T-shirt (once you start cutting into them, they don't last long), and was feeling enough like himself to chew his Nylabones.**

Sometimes I chewed a fuzzy instead . . .

I was pretty generally fed up with the sofa by then, and Teddy had gone from ignoring the dog bed to investigating it as a possible new toy.  So we moved into the first-floor guest room, and life improved substantially.

The staples came out after fourteen days.  By then Ted was feeling very perky indeed and was more than ready to shed the last T-shirt and get back to normal life.

Now I can kill this fuzzy!

Tasha was released from the TV room and was greeted by Teddy with more enthusiasm than she appreciated.  He got to go out and run like a maniac (and, alas, find a couple of new places to try to dig).  I got to go back to my own bed.  After another week or so, Teddy chewed the zipper off the dog bed cover and made a good try at ripping the bed itself open, and I took it away and hid it.***  And I'm much more comfortable knowing that IF he should bloat, his stomach will stay where it belongs.

__________________________________________

*  If there's no torsion, the air in the stomach can be released through a stomach tube or by puncturing the stomach wall from the outside with a trocar (hollow needle).  I was present when an emergency vet used a trocar on one of my dogs after he was unable to pass a stomach tube.  It was effective and very dramatic.

**  In almost forty years, he's the only dog I've ever had that actually LIKES Nylabones.  I'm amazed but grateful.

***  I was lucky and caught him before he could put a hole in the bed.  It has since gone to a friend—a friend who sews—whose elderly Mastiff will not try to pull the stuffing out.

The Suckage of Circumstance

 

So, how many crummy ARRRRGH sort of things can happen in a single day?  I don't mean life-ruination kinds of things, but definitely a few rungs up the hierarchy of eccch from merely bashing my foot against the attic ladder-stairs at the cottage AGAIN.*   Not that I didn't know the first manifestation of serious suckage was coming—I've spent all week bracing myself for it.

            I told Oisin this afternoon—and emailed Minnie this evening—that I'm dropping out of The Octopus and Chandelier.

            Sigh.

            It's time:  I don't have the time.  I never have had the time, but it's really in my face these last few weeks when rehearsal is about to ramp up to forty hours a day.  I am brutally behind on PEG II and while I got through last Sunday's rehearsal by reading a lovely book, there was still a small voice in the back of my mind screaming YOU SHOULD BE HOME WRITING PEG II!  YOU DON'T HAVE TIME FOR THIS!  And I don't have the moral energy to shut my conscience up when . . . I'm not even getting to sing.  Which is what I signed up for. 

            Sigh.

            I mean, I was already behind on PEG II when I joined the company and paid my membership fee last summer, and I was more behind by the time we started rehearsals in—November?  October?  But being behind on a book is kind of normal for me** and it wasn't a huge big deal yet.  I have some hope that PEG II and I are finally entering into a happy fruitful phase instead of the drooling demon from hell/inscrutable granite monolith phase we've been in for the last two or three months.***  Which is all the more reason not to spend the next month mostly in rehearsal.

            I also realise that I got into this slightly on false principles—my own false principles, mind you.  It's not like they had a hypnotist at the door last summer at the 'meet the gang and SIGN UP HERE' get-together intoning 'You will sign up.  You will sign up.  Look at the nice shiny swinging something or other.  You are getting very sleepy.  You will find our membership form irresistible.'  But the amateur local theatre thing is the whole group thing.  And I don't really do group things.  I haven't even made it to the annual tower lunch the last two years.  I want to ring bells and go home.  And I also want to sing and go home.  I was talking to Oisin about this this afternoon too and he was saying in his kindly-music-teacher-and-professional-patient-as-Griselda-all-purposes-maven voice that, well, yes, the buzz is about it all coming together for the performance.  It's all about, and all worth it after, the performance. 

            Er.  Yes.  I believe you.  And I don't mind putting in hours learning stuff.†  But the thrill of after the performance is not going to happen for me this time.  I will probably try again some other year . . . some year when (a) I'm not trying to finish a book the exquisite beauty of whose inner soul seems to be made chiefly of flint and rabid vampire bats and (b) the back row of the chorus has more to do, which is to say sing.  There's an uneasy subheading to (b) which is—as I've told you—the O&C chorus that is having a really good time are the dancers.  I am not going to learn to sashay around the stage while singing.  There are LIMITS.  And so I am wondering uneasily if this isn't kind of generally the case with musical theatre?  Doesn't the chorus usually sashay, one way or another?  Maybe I should learn to paint scenery.  No, no!  The idea is that I WANT TO SING!††

            Which brings me (cautiously) to the next thing.  You know I've been teasing Oisin—pretty much as relentlessly as he'll let me†††—about the New Arcadia Singers‡—the nice little singing group he's going to start.  Since he's never quite told me to shut up I've kept on nagging.  Shhhh.  Don't tell.  It may be working.  He was talking this afternoon about stuff like when we'd meet‡‡, how many people we'd need‡‡‡ and what subscription/expenses fees should be.  And before any of you say ROBIN, HAVE YOU LOST YOUR MIND?    YOU'VE JUST SAID YOU'RE DROPPING OUT OF O&C BECAUSE YOU HAVEN'T GOT TIME.  True.  But my sanity also has its limits.  And I'm dropping out because I haven't got time for 1,000,000 hours of rehearsal this month, most of which involve standing around and waiting for a cue to sing ten words and then wait some more.  I wouldn't be dropping out if I got to sing.  I would be tying my conscience up in knots§, putting a bag over its head, and shutting it in a closet.  And even if The New Arcadia Singers start up in March, after O&C is over, I'll have turned the fabulously complete and utterly satisfying PEG II in by the time we get to frantic pre-concert extra rehearsals. 

            But the New Arcadia Singers are still pie in the sky.  Dropping out of O&C is real, and however much I feel this is the right decision, it still feels crummy.  Very crummy.  And then I got to tower practise tonight, put my first practise quarter up on the board, put my and Niall's and Colin's and Penelope's names in it—two more people to entice/threaten left for the necessary six to ring doubles—and Vicky tells me that we can't do it.

            What?  Sound of Robin's heart thudding to the floor.

            Our bells need a lot of remedial/repair work.  We all know this;  I think I blogged about it here.  Our annual tower meeting spent some time making a list of fund-raising possibilities.  We're presently waiting for a second quote on the work and then we have to tackle our parent authority for some funding—how much we can stick them up for has an enormous bearing on whether or not it's likely we can drum up the shortfall ourselves—or how soon.  Meanwhile we're ringing as normal . . . but Vicky feels it's not a good idea to do more ringing.  It's not going to look good when we go round hat in hand and ask for money . . . and the bells do need work, and we don't know when we're going to be able to afford to get it done, and what if something, you know, breaks?

            So . . . no practise quarters.  Frell.  At least not at New Arcadia.  So for my next trick I need to try and find another tower.  Who said this was going to be easy? 

* * *

* OWWWWW.  My left foot is All-Stars purple (again).  It looks better on shoes. 

** Some of you may remember the screaming last autumn, getting PEG I in.

*** ARRRRRRRRRRGH.   Why didn't I become an astronaut?   Or a petrol-station attendant?   Maybe it's not too late.

† Ahem.  Method ringing.  Also on handbells.  Why can't I get passionately worked up over something . . . easy?^

^ No.  I have to decide my next challenge is frelling knitting.  Which is knitting my brains.  I admit however that some of the reason I decided to let myself hear its siren song at last+ is that it's another of these things you can do indoors and sitting down.  This is important to someone pushing 60 and resigned to the likelihood of a permanent relationship with her ME.  I'm also under the impression that when you're not counting wrong, dropping stitches, ripping things out, and screaming, there are long soothing stretches of peace  and productiveness and clicking needles.  Yes?  After you get past the Mutant Lint Second Row stage, that is. 

+ It's not like it doesn't totally appeal to me.  It does.  It has for a long time.  But among other drawbacks, I'm a klutz.  Me, knitting needles and yarn?  This does not sound like a good plan. 

†† Have I mentioned I still haven't heard from my Theoretical and Possibly Imaginary Voice Teacher?  A disembodied voice on the phone (occasionally).  She could be a computer programme.  Well, fine, but can it teach singing? 

††† In the first place he's a lot bigger than I am.  I remember this every time he stands up from that organ bench.  In the second place . . . I wouldn't know what to do with myself on Friday afternoons if I were banned from Oisin's studio.  I am programmed for a blast of music to wind-scour the webby corners of my PEG-oppressed mind on Friday afternoons. 

‡ Which name I have just invented.  Has a nice, er, ring to it, though, doesn't it? 

‡‡ Tuesday or Wednesday evenings.  Those are the only evenings I've got left.  And it's still going to cut into my occasional extra Tuesday and Wednesday rings.^ 

^ There's also the little matter of my husband and his peculiar desire to have me eating dinner at the same time that he does occasionally. 

‡‡‡ I was saying gaily, oh, ten or a dozen would do, and he—the weary and jaded choir director—was saying, no, you need enough that you can still hold practise when half of them don't show up.  Oh.  Dear.  Like bell ringing then.  Since I'm . . . er . . . obsessive, I tend to forget that most people aren't.  

§ Possibly with yarn that has REBELLED against being purled (wrong) again.  Tie someone up? it says.  Sure.  Makes a change.

Learning to knit. Slowly. Sort of. Maybe. Eventually.

 

LOOK WHAT ARRIVED TODAY.* 

Even the TAPE is cute

         I suppose I should put some knitting on them.  Umm.  I think I am purling** but it is not a pretty sight.   It looks kind of like Extreme Lint:  the sort of thing you might find after the dust rhinos under the bed have morphed into something that fights back if you go after it with a broom.***  Or like something an evil sorcerer is using to imprison a rival.  Every time he yanks on one of the knots a different arm or leg or liver goes 'ouch'.   I think I need more practise.  Like maybe a lot more practise.  I still haven't tried attaching a third row to the deformed monstrosity that is my second row.  For one thing I'm not quite sure which extrusions are the bits I'm supposed to be adding the knit row to.†

            I've told you, haven't I, that the tower captain at my old tower—East Persnickety, where I started to learn to ring the first time twelve years ago—used to say of his wife (he'd been a widower some while when I knew him) that she'd picked up bell ringing quickly because she was used to reading knitting patterns?

            It doesn't work the other way.  Unless of course there's an unsubtle comment on my bell ringing going on here.  Wait a flaming minute though—my old tower captain's wife didn't ring handbells.  If I can ring the gorblimey 3-4 to ungleblarging bob major I can learn to knit.  Probably.  I seem to have said something reckless to Niall tonight about learning the 5-6 to bob major too.  I think it's a displacement activity about learning to knit. . . .

 * * *

Oooooh. Carrying on the O.O.O. theme

 * In case you're interested:   DesignsbyTami.etsy.com and DesignsbyTami.com  http://www.designsbytami.com/Needlesnhooks.html  Somebody some time can tell me what stitch markers are.  Are they NECESSARY?  I notice that she also does these in ROSES.

            I am still haunted by these however:  http://www.etsy.com/listing/65917807/rose-quartz-handmade-knitting-needles-us  But isn't size 16 kind of huge?  What do you knit on size-16 needles?  Skateboards?  Jacuzzis?  

** Remember that the double whammy doodah cast-on I'm using http://www.knittinghelp.com/videos/cast-on means that you've already got a line of knitting—so the video tells me—and therefore your second row is going to be purling, not knitting.  Or something.  Anyway.  I'm still working on that second row of maybe purling.  I told you I had a lot of trouble finding a purling video that starts with the second row instead of halfway down your hauberk.^  If I could get that far, why would I need a video on how to purl?  But violinknitter found this for me:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2UH-htXoBwQ which is actually helpful except for the tiny little detail that her FINGER IS IN THE WAY for the crucial ducking-behind-the-horizontal-needle-and-doing-something-with-that-loop moment.  Maybe this is inevitable.  Maybe it's part of the Funny Knitting Handshake equivalent for the cognoscenti, the upper level haruspices^^:  when you meet in a yarn shop do your eyes flicker and you make a quick, faster than uninitiated eyes can follow gesture with an index finger?^^^  And then you can get on with discussing yak yarn and the best ply for sword scabbards?^^^^

Yes, I'm obsessed. And your--ahem--point would be?

^ Serious knitting 

^^ Surely there's a divinatory aspect to this knitting business?   A snarl of yarn must be just as good as a snarl of intestine, and less messy too.  Aside from not having to kill anything+.  Although the 'snarl' part may be the knitter . . . Hey, am I supposed to have undone any yarn I'm planning on knitting as opposed to keeping for a pet, and wound it up into BALLS?   At the moment since all I'm doing is fraying the hell out of the first three feet or so of my first floppy lump of it-came-this-way store yarn it's not too relevant but I suspect it may become so.  I mean, I suppose I'd better hope it does. 

+ Just shave it a little.  Careful with that thing, sonny, it's sharp.   We don't want any inadvertent haruspexing here, right?

^^^ I SAID INDEX FINGER, OKAY?

^^^^ Doesn't frelling Ravelry+ have a GLOSSARY?  'Glossary' has no matches in the search.  THANKS.  This is a lot like a video for how to purl when you're halfway through the twenty-third sleeve for your brothers the swans.  So if 'fingering' is for lightweight yarn, what is the term for heavyweight yarn?  Suitable for sword scabbards and tower bell cosies? ++

+ ARRRRRGH.  Have just lost another half hour getting hopelessly lost following my nose through some of the outlying suburbs of Ravelry.  A folk and fairy tale forum?  What? 

++ No, I wouldn't put it past me to buy a set of handbells so I can knit cosies for them.  I am pretty jealous of the felted wool bell-bags one of Niall's colleagues made for him and his bells. Niall, just by the way, was late today—Colin and Fernanda were already here and we were sitting around with our hands twitching waiting for the man with the BELLS to show up.  I NEED my own handbells!  Clearly!  And then of course I could knit cosies for them . . . in lurid colours . . . I'm looking forward to this. . . .~

~ Uh-oh

*** The dust rhinos don't have a chance under my bed.  I have boxes of books, of All-Stars and of vitamins^ all jostling for position under there.  And the hoover.  Which is dusty. 

^ I have ME.  I take amazing numbers of vitamins.  And I tend to buy them in wholesale quantities for the slight break on the severalth-mortgage price.  

† http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4xho-iQdGNE&feature=channel   Sigh.

The night after the night before

 

I probably shouldn't do this.  But I can't help myself. 

Mirkat writes: 

. . . I was handed HERO when I was 10 [my first fantasy novel] and immediately became lost in that world. All of my early fiction (for class assignments, etc) oddly involves lost crowns, dragons, girls who fight like boys, or some combination thereof. It's kind of embarrassing, really. . . . What I'm saying is, what Tolkien is to you, is what YOU are to me. . . .

I'm someone's Tolkien???  Blither blither blither eep eep eep eep.   Okay, my life is worth living, despite some days to the contrary.*  I don't recommend the '50s and '60s for growing up in—it was all Mom at home baking apple pie** followed by pretty much the same thing in tie-dye ***—and I love it that there's now so many good fantasy stories out there†.  But there is that thrill of only you (and possibly your best friend) know—which I (and my best friend) had about LOTR, and which kind of thing I don't think is a possibility in today's plugged in and tweeting and texting world.  I don't disappear over my head even into books I love any more, but I consider that a function of age:  there's too much of me and of my life grounding me here, whether I want to be grounded or not.  But can a modern kid disappear into a story the way I could forty or fifty years ago?   If my ex-shrink were here she would say 'take the stroke, Robin' but I'm busy telling myself that it's different now—it was different even (almost) thirty years ago when HERO came out, or whenever since then that Mirkat read it.  

EMoon

It is annoying when you spend a lot of time designing (with or without help–I have help) a website, 

Oh, gods so do I have help!  There is no way . . . although this is another rant.  I remember when I was young—although some of this was the proving-you-are-competent feminist thing—we were all supposed to learn basic mechanics and change the oil in our own cars and things.  I never did.††  Life is short and this is what experts were made for.  When I was young I was embarrassed by my lack of total ability to do everything . . . and an equivalent lack of enthusiasm for trying.  I could make bread and write a story—cut me some slack here.  But slack-cutting came much later.  Bless Blog/sitemom:  if I had to do any of this myself I would still be using a typewriter—and bless all those other blog/site moms and dads and Computer Men/Angels out there.  I would much rather those other writers and sculptors and inventors of cures for cancer who would rather knit and ring bells in their free time do so if that's what they want to do. 

writing the content, trying to answer the questions you know people ask…and then they don't bother to go one step further than "Oh, here's here website–with an email link–so I can ask…" those questions you answered.

I still do not understand how someone can NOT SEE the PEGASUS II COMING IN 2012!!!! banners everyfrellingwhere.  Do people just like the idea of the author's head exploding when another of these emails comes in?  Ever so slightly counterproductive, you know, chaps, if you do want the sequel.††† 

I had an email today from a fellow who plaintively said that DEED wasn't available as an e-book and please would I see that it became one. . . . It is available as an e-book and its listing on the website clearly says so and gives the link to order it from its publisher. . . . In a fit of evil-cowishness,

The world would collapse in a little puddle of phlegm were it not for evil cows.  We are necessary for the maintenance of social order.  Mooooo. 

I copy-pasted what I'd put on the website to the email reply. At least this reader came back sheepishly with "Guess I should have looked around the website more." Yea, verily. I put stuff there for a reason. . . . Read the !**! site FIRST.

Yes.  And reread any of the bits you didn't quite understand first time.  There will be a quiz later.

Then there's "Why don't you write more in X group?" or "When are you going to write more in X group?" sometimes with a plaintive "It doesn't seem like that finishes…" or "It just ended too soon/suddenly…" Desire to scream. Yes, it blinkin' well DOES finish, that's the END, that's ALL. "You could write more about [character] and [character] and they could…"

Yes.  You could.  You could also have a midlife career change and become an astrologer or a bank president.  I'd rather you didn't but I appreciate that the stresses of being an author with a web site and an email address are extreme. 

STOP! Write your own !**! book. With your characters. 

Special emphasis here, says She of the No Fanfic/fanart/fandangodoodah mandate, on the 'your characters'. 

What my characters do after the curtain call and they're offstage is their (and my) business. I "could write more about" them if I treated them like paper dolls…but that's now how our relationship goes.

Yes.  YESYESYES.  Characters are people too.‡‡  ARRRRGH.

Sometimes characters do come back and want me to tell another story about them. (Actually it's usually their friends, relations, co-workers who come to me and nudge-nudge-wink-wink…"You don't know what he/she was like, really. I know that's what he/she told you, but there's a far more interesting story–mine–and it will completely change your mind…")

Sigh.  Sometimes these people come and have a cup of tea with me but they never stay. 

But anyway…people who don't bother to look at the lovely buffet set out for them before asking if there's any butter for the rolls, or stuffed mushrooms, when those are prominently displayed…annoy me. Lots.

 Have I suggested yet that the Evil Cows should have a funny hat or a handshake or a Citation of Purpose?‡  We should be working on this.

Black Bear 

[Quoting EMoon] (Actually it's usually their friends, relations, co-workers who come to me and nudge-nudge-wink-wink…"You don't know what he/she was like, really. I know that's what he/she told you, but there's a far more interesting story–mine–and it will completely change your mind…")

I love this. I have to admit that when my brain occasionally spins off ideas about further stories in other peoples' worlds, it almost NEVER involves the main characters. I latch onto someone who I feel got short shrift on paper, and think gosh, what would a story about them be like? Hmmmm….

I would have said there were at least two categories of this:  the characters who got short shrift because that's the way this story goes, and the characters who got short shrift because the author screwed up.  In one case you want to invite them over for dinner, in the other case you want to get them into intensive care fast. 

But, for all my sins, at least I've never tried to tell an author what they should or shouldn't write.

After three years as Robin McKinley's blog mod you should be at least wise enough not to admit it even if you might have done in a weak distracted moment at the end of forty-eight hours with no sleep at a SF&F con with 24-hour programming‡‡ and you're hallucinating dinosaurs and there was that great story about pterodactyls in Philadelphia and suddenly there's the author at the next table at the café where you've gone for a major caffeine transfusion, tucking in to a cinnamon roll as big as her head and . . .

About reading directions–people don't. They just don't.

Sigh. 

As I've probably said 4000 times here–part of the angst of my job is knowing that the stuff I pour my heart and soul into writing isn't actually read by 90% of my target audience.

::Tiptoeing quietly away now::

Doesn't mean I didn't do a good job of wordsmithing, just means in certain situations people aren't predisposed to read information they're not looking for. (Or sometimes even information they ARE looking for. One of my zoo stories involves working as a gardener in the tiger enclosure. The tiger had had cubs so she was off exhibit all summer. We had a label on the safety rail. We had a label on a vertical panel next to the rail. And we had a video screen showing the inside of the tiger den with the mom and her cubs. All said in some form "OUR TIGER IS OFF DISPLAY, YOU CAN SEE HER ON THE MONITOR." And Every Single Damn Day we were working in there, we'd get people coming up, leaning directly ON the rail with the label to shout at us, "Where's the tiger? Hey, is the tiger in there with you? Oh my god! Where's the tiger?" EFF.)

::Gone away . . . I didn't hear any of that . . . see you tomorrow. . . ::

 * * *

* Not today, actually, except for the frelling shortness of it, when I was going to get 1,000,000 more things done than I have.^  I tweeted this earlier:  one of Monday's useless errands to Mauncester got a rematch today.  I took hellhounds along and decided to have an adventure on the way . . . which turned out to be a much bigger adventure than planned when I found an entire frelling nature reserve which I had no idea existed behind an innocent-looking hedgerow on the old Roman road into Mauncester.  This is a bit like going into a wardrobe to rub your face on the fur coats and finding a faun, a lamppost and a lot of snow.  Have I mentioned that I've lived here twenty years?  Gah.  Local knowledge FAIL.  Of course my first thought was, I wonder how prone to aggressive off lead dogs it is?  And my second thought was, ooh, it's all open upland/downland/moor/heath, it should be reasonably difficult to get lost in.  Not that I won't have an involuntary try the next time we go there.  Of course we'll go there again.   Columbus, Cortez, Amundsen, Armstrong and McKinley.

^ I have this insufficiently examined theory that every night I'm not bell ringing is ten hours long.  Um.   But I really need to get on with the second row of my knitting before you all lose faith in me.   Well, I've had some difficulty finding videos that aren't even more confusing than the books.  The books never show you which is the short end and which is the working end of your yarn. 

** And while I was/am not a Kennedy fan and the whole Camelot thing makes me want to throw up, look who came after.  Okay, not a Johnson fan either, but we ended the 60s with Nixon, which is enough to blight anyone's young adulthood.^

^ All you guys blighted by various shrubberies . . . sympathy.  

*** Well no, I don't think I exaggerate all that much.  The sexual revolution was basically the freedom to get called frigid if you didn't put out.  And you were still doing all the cooking.  Bad attitude?  Me?  I've always been better at books than people.

† Even if it is under pressure from great galloping raftloads of awful.

†† As far as I got was the taking of the spark plug out of the dead motorcycle, waving it around in a mystic gesture while murmuring an anagogic chant . . . putting the frelling plug back in the frelling bike, and hoping it frelling starts this time.  Which it very often did.

††† And if you don't . . . go jump in the lake.  Haven't heard that imprecation in years.  Last night's blog also produced a pleasing little flurry of supportive emails.  One woman suggests lake-jumping:  'In particular, at the annual St. Paul winter carnival in Minnesota, a hole is cut through the ice and several individuals indeed jump in.'  Do they scream?  It's better if they scream.

‡ To Whack the Holy Frell Out of Anyone Who Deserves It.  The application form for deservingness can be downloaded from this site.  See last night's post on the presence of the word 'sequel' in any communication with this author.

‡‡ Or dragons, mages, pegasi, hellhounds, etc

‡‡‡  Ask me how I know about the dangers of 24-hour con programming.